Ok I know, it is very close, and it has a lot to improve, and I have flown a lot as passenger always in a window, and I can tell you that it is close to real, by the same I have driven cars like in a Rally many times, and it is very close to the real, or walk and to watch in real life every day, and I can tell you that VR is close to the reality.
I went VR on Jan 15th 2017.
Last time I gamed on a monitor was Jan 14th 2017.
My current VR headset collection:
Rift CV1, Rift S, Quest, HP Reverb G2, Vive Pro 2.
I currently run MSFS 2020, DCS, and IL-2 Great Battles. Also very much enjoy a few made for VR games when I can squeeze the time in. Oh and Automobilista 2 for some racing action on occasion.
If a game does not have VR support, it is not on my rig. I can’t go back to monitor.
Thank goodness, I am retired.
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Opposite again. It is not only that you have the correct feeling inside the cockpit in VR, it is also that it gives you an idea of the topography of the world. Fly bora bora in VR and then in pancake vision, this are two complete worlds. The one is tangible, touchable, dimensional while the other is distant, unreal, numb. At least this are my impressions.
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I underestimated how big of a step VR would be. When the Quest 2 became available for quite cheap I grabbed one and I was pretty gobsmacked the first time I flew in FS2020. I can’t go back to monitors, it’s missing the sense of awe and scale you get in VR. The nice thing about VR is it will only get better as well.
I also have zero issues with cockpit interaction in VR. You know where everything is by feel with your joystick/yoke etc and using a mouse is obviously no different to with monitors.
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Maybe you should at some point try VR again but not with a DK1 but with a Reverb. 
Your stated “10m distance to mono” is simply not tenable.
I was initially disappointed in my G2 - I did a lot of research and spend an eye watering amount of money on my rig to get the very best outcome - and like you, “I felt like I had forgotten to wear my glasses each and every time!”
I am shortsighted. I can see clearly up to about 2m away (eg an instrument panel) but beyond that it gets fuzzy and “1080p” ish. So when I put on the headset and everything - including the panel - was fuzzy and lacked definition, I assumed the technology was just not where I wished it was.
Turns out that the G2 (and I assume other headsets) do something weird optically. Everything - including stuff near to you - is as blurry as if it was a long way away if you are shortsighted.
I dropped $100 on some plastic corrective inserts and the difference is night and day. I can read every number on every gauge. Everything is sharp and readable, and other than a very, very slight screen door effect, it is crisp and clear. Yes, more pixels would be nice, but I can’t help but wonder - do you wear glasses normally and are you short sighted? I would hate for anyone to walk away disappointed by the VR experience when it was something as simple as corrective lenses.
Having less realism makes you more confortable, so it’s more simulator 
Now with touch controls comming, you can even learn the position of instruments with muscular memory, in case you wanna practice for flying the real aircraft later, that is the purpose of a simulator.
I use VR, and I’m mainly a gamer, but I know very serious simmers that use VR.
If you don’t like VR ok, but don’t come with “if you use VR you are not simmer”
You want immersion. Try VR with my rig. I`ll never go back to “flat” simming.
Motherboard: Asus Rog Hero x11 wifi Z490
55" curved oled Tv.
CPU: Intel i9-10900K @5.3ghz per core.
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 turbo
CPU-Cooler: Liquid cooled 240mm
PSU: Kolink 1200watt Platinum
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4/3600mhz
M.2 NVME SSD: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus
M.2 NVME SSD: 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus
SSD: NVME Samsung 970 EVO 500GB
5.1 logitech sound system Soundblaster Z.
Next level V3 Motion platform on GT Ultimate rig.
2 Buttkickers on race rig with 300watt earthquake amp.
Sim Racing studio wind and tactile generators.
Saitek Quadrant.
Saitek Multi panel.
Honeycomb Alpha Yoke.
Honeycomb Bravo Throttle controller.
Saitek fuel controller and deicer levers.
Thrustmaster TPR Rudder.
VR. HP Reverb G2
400mbit Virgin fibreoptic net.
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Agree 100%, and talking about Bora Bora, which was one of the showcases for the Sim, why in the world Asobo left out the Huts over the water, after all the Huts is what Bora Bora is known for. I was terribly disappointed when I flew over and saw the submerged “shadows” of the Huts. Pity…
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The Vario VR-3 is not a consumer headset. Its not designed for use with games. You pay an £800 a year subscription because on top of other features it has its own unique and highly secure network connection. Its so, for example, a surgeon in London could over see an operation happing in Australia whilst wearing the headset. Industrial uses for it just require a whole different level of infrastructure.
I get the impression though that Vario are testing the waters for releasing a consumer level version of the VR-3. Particularly if they’re starting to lend them out to influencers on Youtube.
Again, like others and I have said, it’s not a yes/no scenario. It’s not necessarily VR versus a pancake world (although obviously it is for some, judging by this thread, which is perfectly fine, it’s not a competition).
As I’ve said, I use both and for good reasons.
However, despite the many downsides of VR in MSFS at present (including faffing about with annoying bugs that sometimes result in giving up on occasions, or at worst a 1 in 3 attempt ratio for a successful flight without hitches, crashes, or even a workable mouse pointer showing up) VR really takes flight simming to another level. No pun intended.
I spent a very enjoyable afternoon today flying the alps in the close confines of a racing glider, ridge soaring, and was so immersed in completing a long difficult task that it was as if I was in my twenties again, yet flying in a hugely expensive sailplane that I could never afford back then (if it had even existed) in a place I could never afford to go to. As a pilot I was just there and free. It was a totally different feel to 2D, despite the hassles and lower graphic quality. Seriously, if you have not done such soaring in real life, I’m not sure you could appreciate it, I was WEARING the plane and knew exactly how it was behaving and where I was, despite the lack of G forces.
I tried part of the same course afterwards in 2D and it was (more colourful) rubbish by comparison.
Just an old man’s two cents.
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You shouldn’t and they don’t expect you to, but that’s because the Varjo is an enterprise headset and the subscription is a service contract… not uncommon at all in the business world.
I wish they would release a consumer version, but seems they aren’t interested at this time… and that’s their prerogative. Perhaps they don’t have the production capacity, perhaps they don’t want to get involved with consumer end user support. You can’t really call them greedy, they simply aren’t catering to the consumer market for now.
I’m sure we’ll see other options over the next year or two that are aimed at us, whether Varjo decide to change course or not.
For some game, like FS, skyrim, fallout etc…, after playing in VR, it is definitively too flat to go back to on monitor. On monitor, i play, on VR, i fly, just as simple as that.
Note that it’s not a matter of graphics performance for me, but of functionality – there’s not yet a fully functional EFB in VR that’s equivalent to just using an iPad with ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot, something I would be using if flying in real life and which is trivial to hook up to the simulator and use when flying with a flat monitor.
Lack of realism and detail means lack of immersion means not as fun (for me).
Those switches on the Honeycomb Alpha and Bravo are also a lot less “immersive” when you can’t see them or your hands. 
Fumbling for controls means lack of immersion means not as fun (for me).
Of course if these things don’t bother you, you might have fun anyway with your very nice rig. But they bother me, and that’s why I don’t regularly fly in VR.
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That makes sense, thank you for the correction.
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You’re making a lot of assumptions here. I did use the Reverb G2 with Flight Simulator. Even with its 2160x2160 resolution, the ability to discern a stereoscopic difference becomes insignificant somewhere between a few and a couple dozen meters depending on the scene/object. Other visual cues take over in the brain to create a sense of depth after that. That’s why best practices for VR development have recommend not rendering objects twice if they’re more than a few meters away. It causes a performance hit with little gain for the user.
The topic really interests me as a 3D developer who has created some virtual reality environments. Flight Simulator seemed like the perfect candidate for optimizations like monoscopic far field. Imagine if all that photogrammetry that’s hundreds to thousands of meters away only has to be rendered with a single pass. And it should be relatively simple to enable an optimization like that as there’s nice separation from the aircraft and the scenery.
SkipTalbot, I am also doing some work in UE4 with VR.
Is the monoscopic rendering still in the latest versions? I am on 4.26.2 and never noticed it even though I really spent some time developing with UE4.
Let me know if you want to exchange some experiences. UE4 in VR has some pitfalls, for example with DX12 enabled it loses the d3d device when enabling VR. Things like that.
Thats interesting, does MSFS currently render everything twice to all distances? If so it gives optimism for nice VR performance gains in future 
In all fairness I think they’ve had somewhat mixed messaging on the matter - while they are very much positioning it as a business only headset (you have to have a registered business to even order one!), they have on the other hand sent headsets out to youtubers like vr flightsim guy who’s userbase will overwhelming be consumers… I think it’s perfectly understandable that some will misunderstand as a result.
It won’t be long until we see some new consumer based headsets that will significantly up the game though imo, so I’m not too bothered about missing out on the varjo.
Also, you don’t have to buy the subscription. You can pay the one-off “full” price (several thousand more). As I understand it, the “subscription” is really a mechanism to reduce the initial capital outlay for companies and move some of the cost out of capex and into operational budgets.
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