Hello, everyone. Noob here.

I did a search here for VR vs hardware (actual sit-in cockpit with flat-screen, etc) and nothing came up; probably because of my inability to search for this properly.

I looked for this a while back, and honestly it didn't seem that the VR world was up to par back then, but things have apparently changed. I have a cockpit-cabinet sitting in my house that I would like to outfit with controls, screens, etc. However, I was told not to bother. To just go VR and that I won't be disappointed. 

But what is the consensus here?

Couldn't you do both?

I'll keep it simple and start with that question.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Build or use what you want, there is no wrong way to enjoy ones games.

Bang for the buck, I would choose VR. Way too much hardware and materials in a home multi-panel cockpit.

I do both. Though I don't fly that often with the flat screens, I will when I want to get some really nice screenshots. The rest of the time I do this: I start the sim and let it load up to the airport I am departing out of. Then, while in screen mode, I do all my setup (fuel, pax, check and/or setup weather, check my flight plan, and a host of other things I do before I fly. Once I'm satisfied with my flight setup, I switch to VR, start her up, and fly. After landing, I'll dwitch back to screen mode, check my log book, and tidy things up before exiting the sim. Works well.

This is good to know!

thanks for the input. I'm glad technology has gotten to the point where there are really no wrong moves anymore. Choose what you desire. I guess there's nothing wrong with experimenting and finding out what works -and what doesn't. Modify as necessary.

 

I'm actually a commercial pilot by trade, so I'm definitely accustomed to knobs, switches, and buttons. But from everything I've heard of the VR world -it's just too unreal (real) to pass up. 

Thanks for your help!

I do both, but mostly fly in VR. Quite often in cruise I stay in VR and remove my headset and interact with the 2D double-eye view on my 75" TV.

Thanks, Reset.

Wow 75" TV. And the resolution on a TV that size is decent?

I'm guessing the VR view is handling all of the heavy lifting at cruise -not that there's that much resolution up there compared to down below anyway. Ok, interesting, so there IS a way to be interacting with both.

I also see that people have their systems pretty much at full tilt with the 32GB Ram, etc. I'm guessing a sim machine is not the place to cut cost with performance. 

A stupid question:

How do i post pics of my cabinet project. There's an insert image from URL box -but honestly, i haven't figured it out -sorry.

I appreciate it!

22 minutes ago, Rhetro said:

A stupid question:

How do i post pics of my cabinet project. There's an insert image from URL box -but honestly, i haven't figured it out -sorry.

I appreciate it!

 

Ok.

Thanks, Charlie. I'll check it out!

Trying out ImageBB

 

 

Ok, I posted them. Waiting for approval.

Sorry for the mess while i'm figuring it out!

Thanks for your patience

I suspect if you built a fully-enclosed cockpit with a screen for each window of the plane, you could make it feel more real than VR.  Current VR headsets, even the $1000+ ones, don't display as much peripheral vision as humans are capable of seeing. A lot of your sense of motion comes from seeing the world go by out of the corner of your eye, and VR headsets are not yet capable of fooling you with that sensation. 

I use VR in MSFS, and I also used to mess around in level-D sims, sometimes on motion and sometimes not (a friend worked for the airline, and we could fly whenever a real crew wasn't scheduled, but we could only go on motion if there was an instructor with us). On motion, of course, the sensation of moving was all but 100% authentic. But I was very surprised that even when the motion system was locked down, it still felt a lot like you were flying. It's because there were absolutely no visual references to tell you that you weren't, and the "field of view" was quite wide. 

That's something I've yet to replicate with a desktop sim even in VR, though I am toying with the idea of setting up a test cockpit with wrap-around monitors to see if I can get there.  That said, VR is pretty amazing. It definitely makes you feel like you're in a physical cockpit a lot more than flying with flat screens does. And every once in awhile, usually when I'm flying something fast like an F-16 in DCS and pulling more intense maneuvers than you'd do in, say, an airliner, I'll get a touch of that feeling of actually flying, but it doesn't last.

 

 

 

 

I have only just started flying in VR (a little over a week ago now). My argument in favour of VR over building a cockpit came down to variety. If I built a cockpit, I'd essentially be limiting myself to flying one model of aircraft (or, at best, one class of aircraft if I built a sort of generic cockpit). But in VR, I can fly anything and everything.