I tried it on xplane with the oculus CV1, but gave up for the following reasons:
Poor resolution- couldn’t enjoy the scenery add-ons I’d paid for.
Unusable performance in airliners. I could only use it in Cessnas etc.
By the time I got MSFS I’d sold the oculus on eBay, and it didn’t support VR initially anyway.
It’s been a few years now and I’m wondering how much the headsets have improved, along with the software. Is it worth dipping my toes in again? I do have a better graphics card now than I had in 2019 (was a min. spec card for MSFS and oculus, I think what I have now is mid-spec).
I think there are a lot of VR evangelists who will tell you it’s absolutely worth it, but we rarely hear from those who sampled VR and left, probably because they just don’t bother to participate in these conversations anymore. The truth is, this is a highly subjective experience and you won’t really know if it’s worth it until you try it.
This might be a determining factor in how enjoyable your experience is unless you want to spend a lot of time tinkering and settle on some compromises.
I would be reluctant to spend a lot of money on hardware with FS24 looming on the horizon. VR itself has perpetually seemed in flux as well, with waning support from Microsoft and various vendors. Even getting minor updates from Asobo on the VR front seems like it’s a struggle.
I tried the Reverb G2 briefly until it stopped working and I sent it back. I’ve been watching closely from the sidelines ever since. I’m not going back until there’s a major overhaul with VR hardware, GPU hardware, and the software needed to drive it. And it sounds like I might be waiting quite a while there.
I’ve only had used the Oculus quest 2 and VR performance was lackluster in some aircraft and great in others. But the other day I read on a Steam forum about launching MSFS from the desktop and not through Steam VR and sure enough it worked. You start Steam VR, but launch MSFS from the desktop after Steam VR is up and running. All my aircraft get the same frame rates now unless launching from a graphics intense airport like KJFK or the like.
I cannot speak for how VR has improved, all I know is that I’m impressed with what I’ve got - with a couple of caveats!
It is highly dependant on a well-balanced higher end rig to enable the best performance, obviously, but my kit (Ryzen 7-5800, RTX4070 plus 64GB RAM) is perfectly adequate to power a Pico 4. But in all honesty it’s, for me, not really good enough to use in the big stuff as I simply cannot get the sharpness needed to quickly read the glass panels. For VFR work with GA aircraft however, I wouldn’t be without it!
The recent release of VDXR has made significant improvements in performance and I now regularly get 50fps so a nice smooth, stutter-free flight is the norm.
But only you can weigh up the options and make the decision.
Thanks. I purchased Virtual Desktop and before I was at a solid 36 in all aircraft and now I am seeing 72 in some aircraft, but never below 36. Virtual desktop is awesome.
I can’t imagine flying in 2D anymore. But to have the best experience in VR you must invest a lot - in my case it is 7800x3D, 4090, Pimax Crystal. With such setup you can really enjoy VR, without tinkering with settings.
If you’re willing to shell out the big bucks for a top-end PC and a decent HMD like the Varjo Aero, and don’t mind tinkering a bit, MSFS in VR is a truly next-level experience and, for many of us, the pinnacle of home flight simulation. Havent flown in 2D since 2020.
The resolution in most VR headsets is not the best, but it is getting better. I love VR but do NOT use it all the time in MSFS. I use VR around 10% of the time when playing MSFS. However, VR is amazing in first person shooters like Medal of Honor and some racing games like F1 2023. MSFS and VR do go well together sometimes, but VR does not cut it if resolution is important.
There is a setting both in MSFS and OpenXR Toolkit allowing changing the world scale. Scale perception in VR is highly individual, it depends on the personal IPD (Inter Pupillary Distance). The only thing the application developer can do about it is to provide the option to change the world scale, which Asobo (finally) did.
The physical resolution in Pimax Crystal is 2880 x 2880 per eye, which is more than most 2D displays. Also the lens is of high clarity. There is a significant improvements in clarity in modern headsets like Pimax Crystal and Varjo Aero, over the previous generation (HP Reverb G2, Valve Index etc.) especially due to glass aspherical lenses.
It can be an individual thing. Once I found 3D stereoscopic gaming (3DVision), I didn’t want to play games any other way, yet my friends rather play higher res 2D. Go figure.
I feel the same about VR. For me the Stereoscopic effect trumps resolution, but modern headsets have much better resolution, pixel density and lenses these days that I dont think the argument for lack of clarity/resolution is valid any more. Whats more relevant is performance (or lack thereof). Those twin views don’t come cheap. I upgraded to a 4090 purely so I could play VR with better refresh rates. The higher the res, the more the graphical features, the lower the performance.
The issue with MSFS and VR is they keep breaking stuff and never fixing it. The thing stutters in all the wrong places and its very inconsistent. But when things work… well… it looks marvelous, but I spend as much time tweaking as playing… and just when you fine tuned it to death and its running just as you want… they go and drop a patch and you are back to tweaking out the stutters yet again. The game is becoming classic bloatware at this point.
Anyway, if you are ok with dealing with tweaking for hours then maybe give it a go because the rewards can be great … when it works… at least until the next patch.
This. If you have the cash for a beast headset OR beast graphics card, I’d buy an Aero or Crystal & turn the resolution down, then wait and see what 2024’s performance is like.
With AI, DLSS, etc, I imagine we’ll get more frames for what we have, GPU-wise moving forward, and the lack of God rays / screen door / fresnel lines that you get with glass lenses is a GAME-CHANGER, as far as “immersion” goes.
With 7800x3D, 4090, Pimax Crystal, DLSS Quality, resolution supersampled to 4600 x xxx per eye, with complex GA plane (A2A Comanche), with nearly all settings maxed (except Clouds which are High) and TLOD 250 I’m getting consistent 35-45 FPS (capped at 45 FPS which is 1/2 of the Crystal refresh rate = 90Hz) with only occasional stutters and I don’t need to change anything after sim updates. All works. The trick for me is powerful (unfortunately expensive) hardware with enough headroom to handle the massive resoultion required by the headset.
With 7800x3D, 4090 and Crystal I don’t turn resolution down. I actually turn it up and supersample at 4600 x xxxz with DLSS Quality. The CPU and GPU are strong enough to handle it for a complex GA plane (A2A Comanche) and a lot of add ONS running in the background.
I have a G2 and a 4070 GPU. It took a long time to get the settings (Windows, OXR toolkit, etc.) right but I use VR 100% of the time now and cannot go back to 2D now. I hear good things about the Quest 3 and will continue to watch that.
I’d reduce TLOD to 100 or a bit more if I were you. Should help a lot with stutters. I run the Aero at 5000x4xxx and can keep 45 locked very consistently with close to no stutters at all. But the simple. GA planes are best. Even though the Comanche runs perfectly at 45fps and mostly stutter free, with something like the 172 you have an extra level of smoothness. More consistent frame times I guess, it gets downright buttery, for lack of a better word. Sometimes feels more like 60 than 45.
Hey Skip,
Caleb. So, for me, VR has become the only way I sim anymore. XP11 had some great capabilites with it but once msfs202 rolled theirs out, it was similar to when cars on the road in fsx became a thing. Once you see it, you can never go back. Same with VR for me. As an airline Captian on the 737-800 in real life, I use VR nonstop. It is key to running flows and getting a “feeling” of being in the cockpit and running procedures I normally don’t use in real life. That said, VR is a must for my proficiency these days. There is no going back to flat screen flying. In fact, I cant count the number of times I’ve been in VR doing sim work and I will reach up to the glareshield to rest my arm, like I do in the real 737, only to smash my hand in to my monitor and quickly remember that “oh, im in my computer chair and not the real plane”. It’s very immersive and very useful for training and proficiency…with the proper equipment for getting a smooth running sim “under the hood”.
Lastly, hope all is well with you and yours. Maybe one of these days, we can hop in another Cessna and go chase supercells and tornadoes again.
Hey Caleb, great to hear from you! Sure, I’ll puke my guts out again through the window of a Cessna in the inflow of a supercell lol. I’ve taken on ownership of my dad’s Long-EZ and have been flying that as much as possible. Maybe I’ll rig it with GoPros and do some (extremely limited and distant) cloud chasing at some point. Let’s take it for a spin if you’re in the neighborhood or I’m out West.
Back on topic, my dream would be to use AR/MR with a full Long-EZ cockpit (or even a 172). That seems like the ultimate solution, but it’s not quite there yet. I wanted to love VR, but after my experience with the Reverb I’ve been resistant to try it again. It always seemed way too fiddly with too many compromises, whereas I can just throw on my headphones with TrackIR and a big beautiful 4k display and I’m immediately flying while I can also still use ForeFlight on my ipad, or a real sectional. I’ve been waiting for a major VR update to Flight Simulator, a turn-key headset solution, and graphics hardware that’s capable of fully driving it. Maybe I’ll be waiting forever though. I’m excited to see the possibilities in FS24 though, and maybe I’ll give it a shot again if the VR features get overhauled
This. If you have the cash for a beast headset OR beast graphics card, I’d buy an Aero or Crystal & turn the resolution down, then wait and see what 2024’s performance is like.