Yesterday, I was flying for a couple of hours in the new sim using VR and when flying through turbulence, I noticed that the movements of the plane (especially in yaw) felt very extreme (for only some minor thermal updrafts). I have similar experiences in other simulators (Condor 2/3 for example) and I always blamed the aerodynamics simulations for it but then it suddenly dawned on me that maybe, there is a different reason for it.
When I‘m flying a real airplane and hit some turbulence, the inertia of my body and especially the head would mean that it would want to stay in place and therefore not quite as move as much as the plane I‘m sitting in. For example: Entering a very strong but narrow thermal updraft will kick the airplane up while my body’s inertia leads to some slight compression of the spinal column dampening out the movement and making it less noticeable (at least visually).
In VR on the other hand, it seems that the camera/our virtual head is connected to the plane in a totally rigidly manner, making us notice even the slightest movement of the plane.
Usually, I would not want any artificial camera movements in VR as it can induce nausea/motion sickness but that’s because they are usually added to exaggerate external effects (making them more visible to compensate for the lack of tactile feedback etc.). I‘m wondering what would happen if there would be some sort of body/skeleton inertia being simulated between the airplane and the user/camera.
I‘m sure that there are similar topics and probably there were also some camera addons/plugins for FS2020 that I did not try… But I think, it‘s always best to have something like this as part of the base product.