No Absolutely!
Good new but just âspectacularâ is lacking in some details. 
But Iâll be blown away if the menu position bug and end of flight bugs are fixed. 
Good morning everyone. Any news for the implementation of Quad Views for VR in Flight simulator 2020? This is an amazing feature. In DCS it allows an incredible performance boost. It definitely needs to be implemented. But there are few requests for it, probably because very few people have a VR device with eye tracking. The implementation is not difficult and involves little work.
1 Like
Yes, anything to make VR better will be much appreciated. 
2 Likes
Untill Meta puts it in their non-pro model I doubt we would see it in the sim. I do hope Iâm wrong! 
Hereâs another video demonstrating the value of these techniques:
With future higher resolution headsets, this will become increasingly important. Itâs absolutely transformative in DCS as Steve says. I know Iâm playing a lot more DCS these days because of it!
2 Likes
Great video by VR FlightSim Guy.
Quad views has to be a must for VR in MSFS2024.
This is the sim that will benefit most from quad views with it rich graphical environments.
Build it in now to future proof MSFS2024 VR.
2 Likes
There are several barriers that youâre not seeing and thatâs making this very unlikely to happen:
- no platform other than Varjo and Somnium (aka both extra niche) support quad views out-of-the-box.
- itâs not trivial to implement quad views standalone in-game (meaning without my mod), especially for Oculus since they donât support fovMutable.
- itâs not trivial to implement quad views with eye tracking standalone in game on many platforms due to the lack of support for the vendor-agnostic eye tracking API (for example on Oculus, this API is not implemented at all).
- assuming MSFS 2024 may have a stronger focus on DX12, the Quad-Views-Foveated mod will not work. So back to 1) 2) and 3).
- without the game engine implementing stereo instanced rendering, quad views will be a waste of time as it will raise your CPU usage significantly.
So I wouldnât get my hopes up.
-
- and 3) are all driven by PC VR vendors having deserted the gaming industry. Most notably Meta not caring at all about PC VR gaming and not implementing any of the OpenXR support that makes sense for cross-vendor support. They only care about their Unity/Unreal plugin (which is basically a test platform for their Android AR/VR product), which they have made sure will not work on anything but their limited OpenXR runtime.
The Quad-Views-Foveated mod was driven by 1) 2) and 3) to attempt to fix the damage created by Meta.
- is the result of me deserting this dead industry. No vendors investing. Most content is now only designed for Oculus and their weak feature set. Nobody except Pimax focuses on PC VR gaming, and they are too niche to make a real difference unfortunately. No matter how much Meta is killing this industry, you are still giving them your money to do so.
Bottom line: unless Meta gets their thing together and addresses 1) 2) and 3), there is no future for quad views. In fact, we can even say without them stopping their carnage, there is no future for PC VR.
Sorry for the rough wake-up call. This is the reality today from the mouth of an industry expert who has now deserted this industry (my last day as a Mixed Reality/OpenXR employee was last month).
3 Likes
Yeah, i was just going to post similar. You forgot about mentioning eye tracking as well. And mainstream doesnt even include that.
Thanks for the reality check! All those seem like real barriers, but how was it so comparatively easy in DCS? Very high end PC VR is a niche within a niche, but you were able to do it as a mod. One would think that MS/Asobo could do something similar.
Who said it was a mod? Or easy?
Thatâs a solid question.
The key thing to understand for DCS is that this feature was implemented as the result of some sort of contract between Eagle D and Varjo. I know nothing of the specifics, but I assume that âsomebody at Eagle D was paid by Varjo to do this workâ.
So itâs about incentives.
For DCS the incentive was âEagle D wins a contract with Varjo for doing this work, with some sort of business/financial advantageâ.
What is the incentive today for Asobo to spend time to deliver a feature that will be only available out-of-the-box (unmodded) on:
- the Varjo Aero, an EOL device thatâs been abandoned by their vendor
- the Varjo XR-4, a $4000 device out of reach for the large majority of people
- the Somnium VR-1, another $2000 device that hasnât really made a name for itself yet AFAICT and still mostly out of reach for the large majority of people
Bottom line: you are talking about them building a feature for maybe 1 or 1.5% of the current VR population. Asobo dedicating development efforts to make the experience of such infinitesimal portion of the gaming population does not present any business/financial advantages.
Youâll say âbut we can also use QVFR on Pimax, Reverb Omnicept and more importantly Quest Pro!? And even as an FFR option on any headsetâ. The keyword in the previous paragraph was âout-of-the-box / unmoddedâ.
Who is accountable for supporting the modded solution?
The quad views support in OpenXR, whether 1.0 or 1.1 is an intentional feature to be provided at the platform level, not only game level.
(btw the only difference between the two is naming, even in OpenXR 1.1 the concept of quad views is a totally optional feature for the platforms to implement).
- Platform provides support for quad views via OpenXR API
- Game consumes API
Here we have 1) missing from all major plarform implementation.
The API layer (mod) takes the place of 1), by delivering the OpenXR API on top of the lower-level OpenXR stereo API.
It is not the responsibility of the game developer to provide 1). It is possible for the game developer to provide 1), however the #1 vendor in the industry has (purposedly?) made that significantly more complicated than it should be, specifically point 2) and 3) from my original message. The majority of my mod is dealing with these 2 points, and this is not trivial to understand/implement for a game developer. Writing platform code is a different discipline and state of mind than writing game code. I would not be able to write MSFS game engine. Conversely, they are not able to write QVFR.
FWIW on something like WMR which has proper fovMutable support, doing in-app quad views FFR would be very easy. Itâs in fact a test app that my former team wrote for WMR 4 years ago. But no, Meta wonât support this type of stuff.
So you end up with the sole accountable party being me, on my free time.
QVFR was implemented specifically for DCS, and therefore implements the minimum needed for DCS, that is DX11. Implementing QVFR wasnât too hard (because again, platform dev, specialized in OpenXR - not game devs skills). Supporting QVFR was way harder. For many reasons, but in general people running many mods, different game configs, different QVFR settings⊠think of it that for every one of the tools Iâve developed since 2021, the balance is something like <20% feature development (fun part!!) and then >80% user support, UX and often dealing with rude and annoying people. As you can see, this isnât a desirable position to be in, spending 4x more time on chores than on things you enjoy doing.
All of this with no real business or strategic benefit (if we speak from a company perspective).
TL;DR
There is no real incentive to implement quad views in any application today, not until all or at least the dominant platforms support it out-of-the-box.
6 Likes
See my reply above, especially about the responsibility of platform to deliver their side of things.
Thanks for that analysisâthatâs really interesting. As you say, hopefully Meta will eventually get their act together, but you never know. We can still hope for improved PC VR!
1 Like
Canât believe Asobo/Microsoft havenât snapped you up for MSFS2024 as head of VR!
Wouldnât be interested. I am a platform/system engineer. Iâm not interested in writing games or engines, but rather platforms for gaming.
1 Like
I totally agree with you. We need that Asobo and Microsoft telling us how they are improving the vr experience with a good explanation.
Many thanks for your work and explanations!!
If MSFS is to be a serious product for pilots, it needs to support VR. Itâs the future of flight training. So there is a market for a good implementation of VR with the right audience. Brunner, Varjo, and Lufthansa have already invested significantly in the technology. Although the combination of products is too expensive for the average user, this new paradigm saves millions for flight schools over the standard 6dof motion platform systemsâŠhttps://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/XGjPW_k5isA
I made my own 6dof motion platform with the Thanos Controller and invested in an XR-4 with the savings so I know that a home user can benefit. No other simulator has the features MSFS 2024 will soon have.
2 Likes