Anyone going to sim in VR?

[blueshark747 1,843]

7 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

Sure, but 25 FPS flatscreen is about 1/3rd of the framerate that you want for VR, so there’s going to be a lot of slider adjusting and other compromises necssary.

The G2 is great headset for display clarity. The potential issues are the pixel count being too high to be practically useful, the need to use WMR (7% of the VR market, and falling) and the poor tracking of controllers (at least the latter is not a problem for MSFS right now!).

There is a lot of love for the G2 here, which is great, but it’s verging on a “G2 master race” vibe at times. I don’t want any VR newbies reading this to think that this is the only headset that they can use for simming. Much cheaper and more readily-available options such as the Quest 2 or Rift S are also excellent and very popular possibilities for flight sim use.

Spot on!

People also need to understand that simple high pixel count isn’t the end all to an overall image display. Oculus are knowledgeable in creating very effective displays via pixel patterns/arrangement to where an extremely high resolution isn’t needed for the best display clarity. The very high pixel resolution of the G2 comes with a method I’m just not a fan of regarding the tunnel like FOV sweetspot area. I prefer the Oculus method of well thought out pixel patterns and Samsung Oddysey Plus SDE filter tech at a lower resolution over HPs method of just throwing high resolutions at HMDs where folks still have to downsample it out of the box for performance sake anyways.

[turbomax 3,286]

26 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

Much cheaper and more readily-available options such as the Quest 2 or Rift S are also excellent and very popular possibilities for flight sim use.

thats because those have been on the market for quite some time. HP G2 is only now slowly  trickling down into the market, I bet the HP G2 will become the VR headset of choice by next year for MSFS, as more RTX 3080Ti/3090 class GPUs become available at reasonable prices. I for one, will sell my 2 year old Samsung Odyssey, even though it has the same or higher resolution than those Quest/Rift S. looking forward  to tomorrows feedback from all kinds of VR configurations of users.

[turbomax 3,286]

31 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I don’t really fly AF FS2 any more, but those guys did code a great engine. 

unfortunately lacking too many features that we have come to take for granted. otherwise there would be more than only few thousand users.

[Lobaeux 3]

Can’t sim without VR, so the choice is actually pretty easy for me. 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

41 minutes ago, turbomax said:

thats because those have been on the market for quite some time. HP G2 is only now slowly  trickling down into the market, I bet the HP G2 will become the VR headset of choice by next year for MSFS, as more RTX 3080Ti/3090 class GPUs become available at reasonable prices. I for one, will sell my 2 year old Samsung Odyssey, even though it has the same or higher resolution than those Quest/Rift S. looking forward  to tomorrows feedback from all kinds of VR configurations of users.

I'm guessing from your comments that you haven't used much Oculus gear? Resolution specs on paper do not equal VR image quality. At all. Because there's a lot more going on with VR than just pixel count.

I currently own the Odyssey+.

For flight sim use, Rift CV1<Odyssey+<Quest 1<Rift S<Quest 2 (all HMDs I currently have sitting on my shelf and have used in variety of sims, although my Quest 1 flightsim time is minimal).

The Quest 2 is miles better than the Odyssey+.

G2 is a popular sim HMD, and yes, it's likely to become more popular over time. But it only represents a tiny fraction of the VR market - something like 2%, compared with Oculus's >50%. Those numbers are not random, they reflect price, ecosystem and consumer's wariness about buying into the WMR platform (7% of the total market with WMR headsets combined, a number that is steadily declining).

I'm sure I'll get a G2 once one is available where I am, but I certainly wouldn't look forward to going back to WMR (spent a year there with Odyssey+, don't miss it at all!)

 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

25 minutes ago, Lobaeux said:

Can’t sim without VR, so the choice is actually pretty easy for me. 

You're overstating the case, you absolutely can sim without VR, it's just not fun or worth doing at all. 😉

 

[JasonHarris 96]

1 hour ago, blueshark747 said:

Spot on!

People also need to understand that simple high pixel count isn’t the end all to an overall image display. Oculus are knowledgeable in creating very effective displays via pixel patterns/arrangement to where an extremely high resolution isn’t needed for the best display clarity. The very high pixel resolution of the G2 comes with a method I’m just not a fan of regarding the tunnel like FOV sweetspot area. I prefer the Oculus method of well thought out pixel patterns and Samsung Oddysey Plus SDE filter tech at a lower resolution over HPs method of just throwing high resolutions at HMDs where folks still have to downsample it out of the box for performance sake anyways.

Well that is true, to an extent.

     Some arrangements of rgb in the pixels can give you better quality when talking about the same resolutions but there is no comparing something like the rift S and the G2.   The oddysey has less SDE than others at the same resolution but it is also know for a slightly softer image.  Not having noticable SDE is good, that doesnt mean the image is clearer.

      When you want clarity, there is no better way than throwing resolution at it, the others may do things to try and hide less resolution but it doesnt make it compare.   It was the obvious way to try and get the best from what was the state of tech at the time.  Higher resolution does give you the issue of performance and thats its only real con.   The rift S and odyssey didn't have a 'method'  they juts had what was available to them at the time and within constraints of average consumer hardware to run it.

[marsman2020 1,310]

15 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I'm guessing from your comments that you haven't used much Oculus gear?

I refuse to buy a $400 piece of hardware that requires I maintain a Facebook account and allow Facebook to know when I am using it and for what in order to be granted the privlidge to use my $400 piece of hardware.

So Oculus is right out based on that.

[Ident 198]

4 hours ago, SimFx said:

Flight sims might be the only thing I'll ever play in VR.

You really should try Half Life Alyx. Sadly it will set the bar for all other non flight sim VR titles that they cant live up too but man oh man, Alyx is amazing in so many ways.

[Ident 198]

1 hour ago, blueshark747 said:

...I’m just not a fan of regarding the tunnel like FOV sweetspot area.

Agreed for flight simming. Got my G2 weeks ago and love the no screen door effect but that was one of the first things I noticed that I didnt like. Thing is in simming you notice it big time. I recently started to replay Half Lfe Alyx and its not as big of a deal. My take away from that is that while in the cockpit its normal you scan your your panel with just moving and your eyes and probably safer done like that in RL. But in Alyx where you are always in a more 360 room and looking everywhere in big movements, I tend to never look out of the corner of my eye and move my body and head more. With most VR games designed like that, I can see where flight simming has little say as the masses are more pleased and dont see the bad results as much. All the same, with the ability to jump in and out of VR on the fly while simming, I dont wear the hood during all of the flight unless I want a enjoyable lazy 100 dollar burger VFR type of flight.

[turbomax 3,286]

40 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I'm sure I'll get a G2 once one is available where I am

"Location:Republic of Kiribati" is that not where HP has that new VR manufacturing facility? I was wondering why it took them 5 months to deliver all these orders.

[dogmanbird 269]

imo star wars squadrons is a potentially terrific game too, for who manage to get it running consistently.

Alyx is quite an achievement. Sure has raised the bar

[Lobaeux 3]

1 hour ago, OzWhitey said:

You're overstating the case, you absolutely can sim without VR, it's just not fun or worth doing at all. 😉

 

No, i literally can’t, LOL!  I have a very small monitor that sits to the side of my rig, the monitor isn’t mounted to the front.  My rig is set up for VR, not monitor usage. 

[marsman2020 1,310]

Squadrons is running pretty well on my machine as well, so I'm looking forward to trying that.  As well as Elite Dangerous.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

12 minutes ago, Lobaeux said:

No, i literally can’t, LOL!  I have a very small monitor that sits to the side of my rig, the monitor isn’t mounted to the front.  My rig is set up for VR, not monitor usage. 

Who needs a monitor? If you ever need to sim without your HMD - just listen to the speakers during the takeoff roll, you can kind of hear when you're getting off the runway. During the next few hours after you rotate, all is going well unless you hear a loud crash or a strange splashing sound. Landing is tricky though, still working on that bit!