Yes, good point, probably true as well.
VR brings its own issues.
Mostly sliding down the expensive rabbit hole of buying more peripherals and controllers…or maybe that’s just me.
I pretty much only play simulators these days and all in VR with my Reverb G2, prior to that I had the Samsung Odyssey (not the +.) Whether it’s AC, AMS2 or RFactor 2 with ffb wheel bases, pedals and so on or Elite Dangerous with HOTAS and rudder pedals and now MSFS with yoke, throttle and my trusty rudder pedals. All of the controllers have been upgraded from the cheaper versions I initially started with as I fall deeper and deeper down the hole. I’m currently using the Logitech flight yoke system which I bought recently for a very good price after persuading myself that I need to ensure I’m playing this regularly for some time before spending out on more expensive gear. Then again, I keep looking at the add-ons I can get with this system like the autopilot multi panel and its trim wheel….I mean, c’mon surely I need more buttons and switches so I don’t need to use the mouse as much right? 
I love VR and I love MSFS in VR …. but for those of us with weak wills it’s a slippery slope. 
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I bought Vive years ago, never really used it, however let friends borrow it…they are addicted they now bought the latest vive, would never fly pancake. I seem to get vertigo, not only that I would find it hard to fly with my Alpha and Bravo
I have the Reverb G2 for MSFS, Oculus Quest 2 for everything else.
I cannot fly on a flat screen (or even three flat screens) anymore, it’s just not the the same.
Avionics, cockpit labels, etc. are much clearer in the G2 than they are in the Quest 2 (with beefy graphics card and higher render scale), but took a hit with SU5, as they seem blurrier now when they used to be tack sharp.
In SU5 however I love the new cockpit interaction via the 3D mouse, much easier to quickly turn knobs (for me - apparently many don’t agree). Although SU5 seems to have issues with how it deals with interrupts, and this combined with low cost peripherals such as the Logitech Throttle Quadrant that have jitter can cause the 3D mouse to freeze and lag.
VR is the only way to fly (for me!), and I hope that some of the issues with SU5 that are more noticeable in VR than they are on flat screens (blurrier avionics, downgraded AA, broken reflections) will get some love in the upcoming hotfixes!
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My friends say the same, its weird I just find VR difficult personally. And its not an age thing I am 46 one of my friends addicted is 74.
This poll may be biased towards VR players because it asks about VR, and other players may ignore it.
Better would be something neutral like: What you use to play MSFS - monitor(s), track-ir, vr.
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Yep otherwise 2D simmers still currently out number VR users.
I haven’t flown msfs without vr to date and never will. 2d is terrible
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Absolutely agree - I’m a simple man, I see VR in the thread name, I click.
I have a Rift S and while MSFS is a nice experience on it, I still think it’s gonna be a couple of years before we get a truly immersive experience. We need better tools that integrate outsider information, charts, programs inside little windows without leaving the cockpit. We need better resolution headsets and the hardware capable of running it smoothly. We’re off to a good start, that’s undeniable.
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I’ve been flying rc model planes and drones through First Person View for over a decade, through the onboard video cameras. When FPV goggles came out I was the first to buy a set, instead of an outdoor monitor. It’s not 3D (although it can be done) but the immersion was and is fantastic, especially with headtracking, head up displays and super accurate variometers that talk to you, for electric glider flying.
So it was natural for me to go with VR in MSFS. I had TrackIR and that really is great, but VR is on another level (pun intended). Heck, I can stand up in the Spitfire with the canopy back and all I need is a fan in my face and I’m there over the Alps, screaming my head off with sheer joy. I keep reaching for controls that are not really there, or I take the headset off and I’m facing the wrong way.
It’s hilarious, it’s fantastic and if you have never tried it you won’t believe how just good it is.
Well, when it works that is. 
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I’ve actually decided to get rid of my Valve Index headset as VR is not yet ready for prime time.
It’s a cool tech demo, but – for me – pretty much unusable for anything but joyrides due to the low resolution. Until the headset panels reach approximately 8K resolution – and GPUs can push enough pixels for it – it’ll remain too blurry to read most text on the avionics without leaning comically far forward all the time.
VR is awesome for flight, especially combat, aerobatics and VFR flying.
It doesn’t work well enough in FS2020 though. The implementation of VR by Asosbo seems more of an afterthought than a part of the flight experience which they take seriously.
For what it’s worth while the index is in my opinion a great bit of kit for many other reasons, it is pretty “last gen” in terms of pixels per degree. The G2, Vive Pro 2 and pimax 8k are all already pretty legible IMO.
For example while it certainly isn’t as crisp as a 4k screen, I have no issue reading any of the displays on my G2 running at 100% OXR and 100% in game res, no need to lean forwards to read them.
However one aspect that goes beyond resolution (and the PC power required to actually make the most of it) is actually focus, or more specifically accommodation. All current VR headsets are focused at optical infinity, about a couple of meters away. The problem here is that when something is up close, your brain has learned to pull focus back, but with a fixed focal plane as found in a VR headset this results in an effect called vergence accommodation conflict.
Basically your entire life your body has learned to use depth cues (such as how converged your eyes are when looking at an object) to determine where to set your focus. It tries to do that in VR, but obviously everything is in a flat focal plane and so it goes blurry because your eye is trying to focus on something at eg 1m rather than the 2M+ that it actually needs.
It’s really noticeable right up close, I can hold an object at arms length and have it crystal clear and yet bring that object close to my eyes and it counterintuitively gets more blurry and hard to read/see detail.
Where this happens will be different for people with different eyesight, but if you find in VR that things fairly clear when they are a few meters away but blurry when closer there’s a good chance this is what’s actually happening.
Oculus showed off a prototype a while ago which used a combination of eye tracking and solid state varifocal lenses to provide changing focal depth and remove the issue of vergence accommodation conflict, making it far more comfortable to view things up close and also add effective depth of field. When/if we will see that tech arrive in a product is anyone’s guess, but until then (or a paradigm change in display technology such as using light field displays) just increasing resolution will only go so far in improving the legibility of really up close objects.
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I’m going to ask you to look at a particular plane:
- Cirrus SR-22 with G1000 (either the NXi or the stock)
and confirm to me that you can comfortably read every piece of information on the MFD at a comfortable sitting position.
I’ll have a look tomorrow!
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Thanks! (adding padding for the forum’s demand that all posts be 10 chars)
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It’ll be interesting to see, not a plane I’ve spent any time in.
Out of interest, by way of comparison the Index is 1440x1600 per eye and roughly 130 degrees FoV while the G2 is 2160x2160 per eye and has a smaller ~90-95 degree field of view.
It’s a massively gross simplification (given how FoV is not really measured in a standard way, binocular overlap, how lenses come into play and many other factors as well), but as a really rough metric for having some way to compare sheer potential accuity of image you could make the comparison of index = 3200/130 = 24.6 pixels per degree, G2 = 4320/95 = 45.4 pixels per degree.
As I said, a very very imperfect comparison but it does go some way to demonstrate the deficit the Index is trying to make up compared to other current VR headsets in pure visual accuity terms (in the Center, the index arguably does better than most with maintaining more uniform clarity over a large portion of the view with its dual lens arrangement).
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I occasionally fly in VR, but only for short sightseeing flights in bush planes. I can’t do much more than 10 minutes in it. All my serious flying is with my monitors since I use multiple monitors for things like Navigraph charts and Pilot2ATC…plus I find it more enjoyable. I pull out my VR headset maybe once every few months.
G2 up in here. Also have quest 2 but I don’t use it for sim anymore as G2 is better for me