XPlane is not running 3 instances of xplane. I am running it here and it’s one process.
Going back to the immersion topic, VR giving depth perception may be huge for me, as I find it very hard to visually see “how far away am I from the ground” in any of the current simulators. Having that bit of “visual data” would be wonderful, but the price of VR seems to me to be three things:
Loss of the local visible and tactile space where you have your flight controls. So if you’re going to fly VR, you’re going to grope blindly for your HOTAS, Yoke, throttle quadrant, etc.
For some people, vertigo or other uneasy feelings. I find 3D movies make me feel sick to my stomach. The 3D illusion is not quite realistic and not quite unrealistic, and exists in what many people experience as an “uncanny” middle space.
It is harder to share the experience with 2+ people.
I think that the “three 4k tvs around a touch ipad instrument panel” may be immersive enough for me, without nausea. But XPlane 11, ugly trees and all, with three 4k TVs as monitors, runs amazingly on my hardware, much better than MS FS does.
For multi-monitor surround flight sim use, XPlane is king, MS FS is weak sauce, and DCS is medium-weak-sauce. I have tried VR before and it made me feel sick.
I think I know why the person who reported it was “running three instances” thought that. In task manager in Details, you can see the classic task manager in a grid (rows and columns) in the classic format that has not changed since Windows NT 3.0. But in Modern Windows 10 they show a page where you can see that XPlane has THREE WINDOWS open. Of course XPlane has 3 windows if you set it up to have three windows. But those are windows, not processes. A Window is (in Windows) a square area where output is drawn. A process is a single entity having a single process ID. There are apps in WIndows where one window (Google chrome) can have multiple processes, but XPlane (and MSFS) are not multiprocess applications. MSFS is a single process, and single window app. XPlane is a single process and can be a single or multi-window (multi-monitor) app. Note by single window I merely mean the main windows. There are auxiliary popup windows (like the map and objectives that can be floated) in MSFS.
I think everyone who looked at MSFS for the first time had the experience you had. It really is mind blowing just how power there is in computing these days.
I have similar issues with VR with motion sickness. This is not helped by being very long sighted. I use a really wide monitor instead. MSFS needs to do some ultra wide work, but the effect is very immersive. Check out the Samsung C49RG9X.
Yes, I stand corrected, several times in fact, but except for your link, none of the links provided indicate to me that VR will replace current simulators. Note that this is a commercial rather than military simulator. Also note that the VR sims are for flight only, not the entire start to stop experience which would require tactile interaction at different physical locations.
That is the problem with VR. You are not a disembodied brain in a vat, as far as we yet know, and VR is very virtual and not very real, it removes all tactile and muscle memory elements of flight skills.
While the ability to see depth would be appreciated, at least for me, I do not want an immersive “look around me and render a picture of the world that I can’t touch”. I mean, some VR things go so far as to add a VR glove, but just like I can’t put a bolt on a nut with gloves on, I can’t touch a knob and feel it with VR gloves on. Until it’s holodeck, sorry, it’s not good enough.
Muscle memory, spatial sense, and a sense of a cockpit are, to my thinking, better done without VR goggles on. Check this guy out. He’s trying real hard now but it’s not working.
Watch the whole thing. It’s amazing. The dude has flight suit, and a replica cockpit. He can’t reach out and touch the real object while his VR headset is on.
I would go insane. I admire this guy, but I also wonder, wow, why. If you want to go VR, and don’t want to build a Cockpit, great, that’s your way of doing this hobby. If you want to go VR plus build a cockpit like the dude in the video, let me know if it all works… Me, I’m happy with four monitors and a flight stick/HOTAS, or a flight yoke and rudder pedals. YMMV. It seems a shame for example to wear gloves and not be able to touch the surfaces of the cockpit but also give up ability to see your own hands reaching for the physical cockpit this fellow worked so hard to build.
