What is the current VR of choice today for MSFS?

[roland_lfor]

On 7/18/2024 at 8:31 AM, MarcG said:

Yeah that's what I've heard too and why I chose it over the Pico 4 (well that and cheapness!), a good mate has one and he's impressed so it might not be much of a downgrade at all. Arrives today, I'll be sure to to a quick side by side comparison at some point.

What is the interface required using DisplayPort? WMR, SteamVR or other?

[MarcG]

6 hours ago, roland_lfor said:

What is the interface required using DisplayPort? WMR, SteamVR or other?

DisplayPort & SteamVR (I bought this to avoid the WMR woes so it wouldn't use that!)

[KL Oo]

How do you guys go running external apps from without your VR headset/world. I'd love to try it and buy a Crystal Light, but I think of the apps I've got running on my second and third monitors (LittleNavMap, Pilot2ATC, Self Loading Cargo etc) and reckon I'd be forever taking the headset off to look at them... 

How do you guys get around that? I kind of get for low and slow VFR where most of its looking out the windows or guages its probably OK, but not sure how good VR might be for airliner type flying with charts etc open.

Would love to hear peoples experiences.

 

[roland_lfor]

If you need only to see them in VR, you can use OpenkneeBoard which is able to capture any desktop app.

You can also have a look here and try to interact

 

Edited July 21 by roland_lfor

[Lord Farringdon]

Hi Guys,

I have only recently experience VR in a flight simulator and it certainly lives up to what people say on this forum in regards to immersion. I would like to go further and buy a headset and am considering the Quest 3. I am not a gamer! That is to say I am not into the latest games on Steam and so I don't see me making use of whatever Steam offers for Quest 3.  My core focus is flight simulation and that includes currently MSFS but will also lead to DCS.  I tried DCS in the past and just couldn't mouse around quick enough to avoid getting shot down everytime, so I gave that up as a bad joke. But I would like to give it another go with a VR tool. 

Although this is an MSFS forum, I note a lot of you guys use VR headsets for many other things, mostly games but also films/sports/fitness etc and so I imagine your choices of headset revolve around your primary interests which may not necessarily be MSFS. But for someone like me, just a flight sim guy, would the Quest 3 ( the currently touted VR headset for price/performance) be a wise choice for MSFS or, is there a specific headset which is better optimised for MSFS/flight simulation? 

Cheers

Terry   

Edited July 30 by Lord Farringdon

[craigeaglefire]

4 hours ago, Lord Farringdon said:

would the Quest 3 ( the currently touted VR headset for price/performance) be a wise choice for MSFS

The Quest 3 is a reasonable choice for your rig specs,

& you will need to carefully tune whilst learning all the VR variables,

a 3060 GPU would struggle to run any higher resolution VR headset…

[Grindathotte]

The PSVR 2 will be PC compatible soon; it might be worth hanging on to see what the reviewers say.  It could be an option.

[flibberflops]

1) If you want the clarity.... the Pimax Cystal Light seems to be th way to go.(or possibly a varjo aero if you can find a cheap 2nd hand one... reasonable ones do pop up on ebay)

2) With Slightly less clarity but much wider FOV... go for the Pimax 8KX (you can't buy these new now but can can be found on ebay at pretty reasonable prices)

(Note both of these options really need the mother of CPU/GPU combos)

3) Finally on the value end (and probably better as an all round VR experience) the quest 3 seems to be the prudent choice.

[strider1]

Your experience is going to be subpar with 3060. Maybe ok with low end headset, which is going to be a comprise compared to the Crystal Light.

 

[JacquesBrel]

2 hours ago, flibberflops said:

(Note both of these options really need the mother of CPU/GPU combos)

You don't need a 4090, but personally I would really not want to run any of the suggestions in 1 & 2 on a 3060. 

[Lord Farringdon]

Thanks for your informed input guys. My recent experience was at a cafe that was set up with DCS and VR. It was a free demo so no other players involved but with the seat vibration, bass speaker and sparse scenery, the P-51 VR experience was certainly an immersive pleasure.

When I got home and raved about it, my son dug out his Rift S from storage for me to try. There is no doubt it was pretty immersive doing low flying and steep turns through valleys in the Flying Iron Spitfire.  I swear I nearly fell out my seat a couple of times. But, I found the resolution very poor and in no way did it do justice to the MSFS graphics. I also tested it on airliners and again, resolution was an issue fundamentally with reading instruments. Moreover, flying around a hi-fidelity city and airport,  it was just a low res stutter fest which soon overwhelmed the immersion.

Now Rift S is old tech my son tells me and I didn't do anything to optimise my VR settings in MSFS so I might have been able to make it better but all settings in VR were already at medium! 

The Quest 3 would seem to be streets ahead in terms of resolution and I confess to being in so much of a first flush of enthusiasm for VR, that I very nearly bought one! I was having one of those " Dam the torpedoes and full speed ahead" moments. So I'm glad I consulted with you experts first. If this is the best I can get with an old Rift S then as most of you have opined, I may be very disappointed trying to run a Quest 3 with an old I7/3060 combo, let alone any of the more expensive options like the Primax Crystal that some have mentioned for best resolution.  A hardware upgrade will almost certainly be necessary.

So this might have to wait until MSFS 2024 when hopefully I can upgrade my existing hardware to enable it to support a reasonable resolution VR headset. Nevertheless, I have thoroughly enjoyed this foray into an immersive realm of flight simulation. I have learnt quite a lot of new terminology and now look forward to what VR technology improvements might bring in the near future. In the meantime,  I might just offer to buy my sons old Rift S. He will extort me of course but it will keep me near VR while I use it for s**ts and giggles.  

Thanks guys. 

 

Cheers

Terry        

Edited July 30 by Lord Farringdon

[TheFamilyMan]

There is no escaping that flight sim in VR is excessively GPU hungry, such that there is no substitute for a xx80 or xx90 series card if you don't want to deal with subpar VR visuals, e.g. stuttering and blurry low res image quality coupled with med/low MSFS graphics settings.  I consider my evga 3080 ti barely capable of driving the VR experience with my HP Reverb G2.  VR is still a long ways off from producing 4K 2D monitor image quality but the immersion is worth that compromise IMO.  I can't imagine that MSFS 2024 will be any more forgiving with VR.

Edited July 30 by TheFamilyMan

[JacquesBrel]

6 hours ago, TheFamilyMan said:

such that there is no substitute for a xx80 or xx90 series card if you don't want to deal with subpar VR visuals, e.g. stuttering and blurry low res image quality coupled with med/low MSFS graphics settings

I have a 4070 Ti and a Quest 3. It runs quite well at medium/high settings at around 1.25 pixel ratio. I had a 3080, and it was struggling at times, but with the 4070 Ti I have rarely felt the urge for a faster card, given the cost, and the amount of power tools I could get instead of getting a more powerful card.

[MarcG]

12 hours ago, TheFamilyMan said:

There is no escaping that flight sim in VR is excessively GPU hungry, such that there is no substitute for a xx80 or xx90 series card if you don't want to deal with subpar VR visuals, e.g. stuttering and blurry low res image quality coupled with med/low MSFS graphics settings.  I consider my evga 3080 ti barely capable of driving the VR experience with my HP Reverb G2.  VR is still a long ways off from producing 4K 2D monitor image quality but the immersion is worth that compromise IMO.  I can't imagine that MSFS 2024 will be any more forgiving with VR.

Did you use OpenXR toolkit with your G2? I used mine with that and my 3070ti, the resolution was lower than standard but still perfectly readable Garmin Screens from the seated position and general graphics settings were Medium to High. 

There's often this misnomer with VR and "needing high end GPUs" which is simply not true, decent results are capable on lower end cards with decent settings (certainly not everything turned to Off or Low for example), I ran my G1 with a 2070Super just fine for a couple of years prior to my last setup. My Oculus ran on a 970 before that, so it is possible.

[strider1]

2 hours ago, MarcG said:

Did you use OpenXR toolkit with your G2? I used mine with that and my 3070ti, the resolution was lower than standard but still perfectly readable Garmin Screens from the seated position and general graphics settings were Medium to High. 

There's often this misnomer with VR and "needing high end GPUs" which is simply not true, decent results are capable on lower end cards with decent settings (certainly not everything turned to Off or Low for example), I ran my G1 with a 2070Super just fine for a couple of years prior to my last setup. My Oculus ran on a 970 before that, so it is possible.

Depends on the HMD, Card, location, etc... I wouldn't call it a misnomer. In my experience I would call it mostly true. As an example, Q3, 6800XT, low settings, 30fps in the middle of nowhere, cities would be a slide show. Nothing was sharp with that headset. Another example: Pimax light, 4800S, NY City, I need to dial back most of my settings to medium. Otherwise is see lots of stutters. 

A lot of non VR users think they can buy a VR headset and use their mediocre computer and see what they see on their monitor with the same smooth experience. Not going to happen.