I'd like to bring up a point I haven't seen discussed about why Microsoft is not planning to include VR in its initial release of MSFS 2020.

We now know that the gorgeous scenery we've been enjoying in all the Microsoft teaser videos will be streamed, via broadband, to end-users of the sim. We also know that there will be a cached mode and an offline mode. But the streaming mode will provide the most flexibility with the highest resolution.

But here's the problem. I personally subscribe to three websites which provide 4K streaming video as well as VR video. But on all three of these sites, you can't stream the VR videos. You must first download the VR videos in their entirety and run them locally from your own hard disk. You're not even given an option to watch streaming VR. It's simply a question of bandwidth. A 360 degree VR video is wasting tons of bandwidth in the sense that you can't possibly be looking in all directions at once. But if you snap your head rapidly from left to right and right to left looking out the cockpit windows, the VR scenery must be visible immediately from all directions for the immersion effect to work. A single view external monitor, however, doesn't face such a bandwidth issue. My guess is that the cached mode for MSFS 2020 will be where VR initially becomes available.

VR in games and videos have no real similarities in this regard. With videos, new data is used for every single frame. In MSFS, once the scenery for your current position downloads, the same data is used again and again until you fly far enough (probably obviously, but the speed at which this needs to happen will increase with airspeed). The engine will download the same amount of data whether you're in VR or not, and use that data to render the current view regardless of where you're looking.

it will work like Google Earth VR where streamed scenery will be stored in RAM.  It will render everything from afar, and when you fly closer you can quickly rotate your head without pop in due to scenery being stored in RAM.  If you fly away from a city and then come back, it will render it from afar and store it in RAM all over again.

Edited October 7, 20196 yr by Heli

7 hours ago, David Mills said:

the VR scenery must be visible immediately from all directions for the immersion effect to work.

The exact same requirement already occurs if you have a left and right single screen cockpit view, or you are using a TrackIR.

 

7 hours ago, David Mills said:

But if you snap your head rapidly from left to right and right to left looking out the cockpit windows, the VR scenery must be visible immediately from all directions for the immersion effect to work.

FS2020 is streaming scenery Data, not a 360deg video. The concept should just be viewed as a big smart harddrive in the cloud. 

As i said above, the sim would already cater for a snap left, right (or rear) view, or external sweeping 360 views, so it should cope with VR IMHO.

I accept that there may be some "pop" if the view has remained a forward view for a long time, but this has always been the case even in FSX. I assume that we will have user control over render detail distance etc.

Edited October 7, 20196 yr by smoothchat