More realistic head movement

[passer1212]

The head movement is not realistic. It is as if we had our head anchored to a tripod. It does not react to accelerations (on all axes), bumps, turbulence, etc. It would be much more immersive if there was the possibility of adding a slider with its activation and its level of realism. In VR it would be very immersive.

[Pieter2427]

@passer1212

In VR it would be very immersive.

in VR it would be instantly vomit inducing. Do NOT shake the head of a VR headset.

[passer1212]

When you fly in a plane in reality your head moves due to inertia. If you get dizzy, it’s because you’re not used to it. But for those of us who are, we’d like to recreate the same feeling of realism. If you don’t want it, you can turn it off.

[Pieter2427]

I fly IRL, I’m aware of head movement. However, your eyes usually correct for that to quite some extend.

If you move the camera in VR space, the user will get very nauseated, because he/she doesn’t have the g forces to go with it. It’s just good old motion sickness, only the cause is reversed.

It’s common knowledge for people who create VR spaces to never ever shake the VR camera.

[Mustang242Sqn]

In 2D, I think more options around head movement would be good - the user should be able to choose how rigid the camera is. The more rigid, the easier it is to use the mouse to click controls during turbulence. The less rigid, the more you can ‘feel’ the turbulence with visual cues.

In VR, a different approach is needed where the camera movement is less impacted by sudden aircraft acceleration from gusts. A2A Simulations attempted to solve this in their Comanche by moving the aircraft cockpit 3D model around the camera. It works pretty well and really helps in VR.

I hope VR camera improvements come to MSFS2024, because heavy turbulence can really make VR uncomfortable with the camera fairly rigidly locked to the aircraft. I feel like my head is clamped in a vice, attached to the airframe.

It’s right that the VR camera shouldn’t be moved by the turbulence, but the aircraft should move with the camera lagging behind with slower acceleration.

Here is an old post that was dedicated to the issue:

MSFS is breaking the VR golden rule: don't move the camera, the user is

I believe the current “movement feedback” in VR is wrong and nausea inducing (which could be the intent to make it lifelike but I doubt it is a design choice). As a matter of fact this might be all related to another effect I find wrongly done. When flying in 2D prior access to he VR, I’ve been noticing when there is turbulent air, the aircraft seemed to be oscillating around a certain point (say like the CG) while still travelling along a nearly linear path, whereas I’d expect the aircraft jit…

[passer1212]

In fact, in a plane, everything moves on all axes. It’s not exactly a stable environment. But I think a subtle movement of inertia would give it a brutal immersion.

[passer1212]

The guys at A2A have made a very good adaptation with the Comanche and it seems more realistic to me considering that the movement is still very subtle. In reality, when we are in a bumpy environment our body absorbs part of it, our natural image stabilization does its job and thanks to the proprioceptive system we feel the variations. We have limited this last one in the simulation but adding that extra layer of inertial movement would give us very valuable extra information about how the plane is behaving.