My DIY Motion VR Cockpit + Pendular Yoke / Joystick / HOTAS

[dogmanbird 269]

Yeah, I tend to agree being somewhat limited to a single aircraft. I think it would still be great to mask out specific parts to substitute with our own generic panels and controls that may cover multiple aircraft

If you get a chance to view the Xr3 videos, the through the lens view of the passthrough is good enough to read most labels and gauges, and that's from nearly 2 years ago. I don't think we're too far off that creeping into cheaper headsets. 

I'm a little surprised someone hasn't jumped at producing cheap modular blank plastic frames/panels simmers can assemble, that basically replicates the cockpit layout of a particular aircraft, which creates a surface for pointcontrol or leapmotion users to get some tactile feedback. Wouldn't need to be elaborate, just enough rigidity to provide a touchable surface in the right location. Although there might not be enough users at this stage.

[Roman Design 344]

On 9/16/2022 at 10:48 PM, dogmanbird said:

I'm a little surprised someone hasn't jumped at producing cheap modular blank plastic frames/panels simmers can assemble, that basically replicates the cockpit layout of a particular aircraft, which creates a surface for pointcontrol or leapmotion users to get some tactile feedback. Wouldn't need to be elaborate, just enough rigidity to provide a touchable surface in the right location. Although there might not be enough users at this stage.

VR users are only about 2% of gamers, and I guess the market is just not there for something specialized like that.

On 9/16/2022 at 10:48 PM, dogmanbird said:

I think it would still be great to mask out specific parts to substitute with our own generic panels and controls that may cover multiple aircraft

That's the use case I haven't though of. Yes, that would be very useful. Even let's say, if my encoder box and switch box would be visible in VR they would be easier to work with or could be made more elaborate (though not very realistic). Or Radio/AP panels could just be replaced with your setup, where you can see your hand operating these, while glass panels could be left in VR. That actually sounds like a very useable idea. With a bit of work one could integrate his compact Ratio/AP/Switch panel setup into most aircraft that would look plausible in VR. Throttles could be added that way too, along with yoke/joystick. There are many things that don't need very hi-res display for. And this would be especially valuable for people who already have expensive panels set up (like Logitech radio/AP etc. and large throttle quadrant setups). This would let you integrate your existing setups that you spend many hundreds of dollars for, into VR. I hope when the next generation of HMDs introduce high quality passthrough feeds, this will become more common and easy to do.

[Kassu62 30]

Check videos from here

https://vrm-switzerland.ch/

All switches are real and working, but instrument displays are virtual. This works fine in small cockpit, but in big plane with hundreds of switches you don't save so much.

[Roman Design 344]

7 hours ago, Kassu62 said:

Check videos from here

https://vrm-switzerland.ch/

All switches are real and working, but instrument displays are virtual. This works fine in small cockpit, but in big plane with hundreds of switches you don't save so much.

That's very impressive. They don't use MSFS though. Maybe it's the corporate version of XPlane or something else. And they have custom Varjo setup with some extra cameras that do amazing hand tracking with full 3D model of your fingers rotating knobs. Such presition is not possible with Leap Motion at least. And hand tracking is not supported in MSFS at all, with OpenXR Toolkit it is possilbe but there are still problems with it. I'm involved with it from the beginning and testing betas. Because it has to overcome MSFS VR implementation problems it's not exacly possible to that degree yet. Regardless, you can model a cockpit with all switches and use virtual displays in the similar way, and just use hand tracking for visually seeing where your hand is, not the actual interaction, it should work fairly well. But building a whole cockpit and a motion rig that can support all that weight is way above most people's budget, certainly mine 🙂 My rig is compact and on a very tight budget. Its value is an amazing bang for the buck ratio 🙂 Now, if someone has a budget for 6DOF rig that can support a full cockpit weight - great gor him, but just the motors/actuators needed would cost several thounsand dollars. The whole rig would cost anywhere from 6 to 15K in parts/materials only. Theirs are more expensive of course, but they are a business and the rig is cerified.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Roman Design