The simple fact is VR for the consumer market is entertainment focused, and the expense (primarily) is the brake that limits how far that will grow.
No matter how much you huff n’ puff about how great VR is, it’s still just too expensive with usability issues (and some unacknowledged health n’ safety issues) for the mass market.
Please don’t @ me over this.
I’ve a VR developer as well, a member of both MS and Oculus VR dev programs.
I’m fully onboard with VR, but it is what it is.
The hardware is still not there yet, at the right price point, to see this take off beyond what the current penetration is.
Closest so far is Beyond, so we’ll see how they do in the market soon:
Apples fabled XR/VR/AR ski goggles may be the right form factor, but it’s probably going to cost a looooooooot, but will no doubt be snapped up by many in the Church of Apple.
Genuinely curious, what were you doing during these 3 days?
When the initial VR update came out, I had a Rift S, it worked right away.
A while later I got a G2, it worked instantly.
More recently I got (and soon thereafter sold) a Pico 4 and had it running in MSFS within 30 mins (since it required some messing around with Virtual Desktop and Steam VR, which was new to me).
Now, of course each of these headsets took some tweaking to get it running at optimum, there’s so many variables. But just to get in a flight…what were the obstacles?
I hate to tell you this, but everything you just said there is why most people can’t be bothered to try VR.
We’re tech fiddlers, we can do this. Most people? Nah. Not interested.
I don’t blame them either. I’m kind of sick of doing it myself tbh.
The VR industry needs to do better, and focus on UX.
?? I mentioned 2/3 HMDs worked out of the box and one took <30mins.
That’s probably less time than to set up a new TV or Android Phone. That’s a far cry from 3 days just to get in a flight, which is what my question was about.
To be honest performance in just about every VR app has been excellent (obviously depends on hardware), it’s just MSFS that’s extremely fickle. Which is somewhat understandable given it’s scope, but still annoying.
My original question was just wondering what kind of issues would cause it to take 3 days to set up a headset just to work in MSFS. It’s hard to understand when it hasn’t happened to you.
Unless they mean optimizing, which is almost neverending, but again, I see that as more of an MSFS issue than a VR issue. Maybe the interaction between the two.
But that illustrates the exact issue with VR.
It’s still a highly variable UX from plug n’ play to major pitfa just getting started (your setup is not someone elses) and that’s not even considering the app optimisation. Sure, it’s better than it was but it’s still nowhere where it needs to be.
Beyond, to their credit, recognised this and have worked to make it better.
We’ll see if they have pulled it off. I wish them luck.
If the hardware experience can get better/cheaper and more reliable then the chances of more people using it go up, and the teams developing for it get more consistent VR development environments, which is the key to replicating issues yada yada yada and then bingo we have the truly virtuous development cycle.
Sure, but all that is a given when you have a somewhat open and immature platform. It’s comparable to PCs in the 80s or early 90s, stuff was complicated and people didn’t know what they were doing. I’m not pretending this isn’t the case.
But as I said, I came with no specific tech experience to 3 headsets and they all just worked, I was just curious what could go wrong for three days straight.
I can’t think of what could cause something like this except maybe true hardware incompatibility like there reportedly was between the G2 and certain AMD boards a while ago, or between the 3090 TI and several headsets. But since it worked after 3 days, I guess that’s not it either.
All it takes is one driver issue somewhere in the chain and you’re in for a world of pain.
Example: I resolved an issue with OVRService that was causing long load times in MSFS.
Took some detective work with process explorer to figure out, but that’s only because I had the skills and was stupid enough to want to figure out what was going on. Normal people don’t have time for that, and I don’t blame them. I’d still like to send MS the bill for debugging it for them😱
Welcome to random tech issue hell😂
Another example: the latest series of NVidia drivers post RTX 4* card release are extremely buggy, causing all sorts of different experiences from “I’m fine” to random CTD’s in MSFS.
“PC tech issues” related to a VR service driver is a VR & PC tech issue.
VR is much more intensive on your hardware, and as a result any instability under load is likely to be amplified. Ditto for intensive flatscreen and multi-controller setups. Then there is how loading all these things up interact in non-linear ways that are hard to replicate, leading back to Jorgs VR team replication issue.
I’ve experienced this myself remote debugging an aircraft control presets issue in Aircraft Manager for MSFS 2020 - Sonicviz for a user who has 10 devices on a low spec system, getting some strange timing issues. Pic isn’t said user, just by way of example, but you get the picture.
I’m sure some VR users also have a bunch of different devices plugged in, either to use via passthrough or temporaily removing the headset.
Depends how many hours in a day. I probably had a couple of hours each day. Installing/ uninstalling on windows 11, testing usb ports, testing the cable, trying air link….nothing got to Windows 11. That was day 1. Then I started from scratch with a laptop (Windows 10), where I eventually got it up and running, stuttering, so time spent on that. That was day 2. Then I turned to an old desktop on day 3 and reasonably quickly had a smooth ride on it, but the switch to vr button was completely unresponsive quite often requiring several clicks, which wasn’t apparent at first.
I followed exactly the same process on all 3 devices so as not to introduce new variables.
So my own personal journey has been very poor. I’m not a tech wizard, nor enjoy fiddling about with settings etc for considerable periods, I bought the sim to fly, but I can and did follow the very simple installation instructions posted by meta…to the letter.
The issue seems to revolve around factory installed Windows 11, I found a reasonable amount online about it. Upgrade from Windows 10-11 doesn’t appear to be an issue.
Bottom line, in my opinion only, up until presumably a plug and play headset is made by Microsoft, the 10-15% is unlikely to increase. Perhaps that 10-15% quoted is a direct reflection of those who enjoy the tinkering aspect? - I certainly know people who do.
A dedicated headset would have to incorporate Xbox users as well, I doubt it would sell in sufficient volume otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of VR, I’ve had one since the Oculus Go. I think VR will play a huge part in our lives in the future, from practicing driving tests, to test flying spitfires to college of all kinds.
Last night was 2 hours Real VR fishing.
I do have concerns of over use with my headset so am probably going to reserve the Quest for Oculus gaming. I just ordered a Pico. I’ll give it a try, if Windows 11 is a problem again……
I can bet there’s more problems with people trying to get their systems working stutter free than there’s with trying to get VR working…
There’s no barrier to VR entry, but there’s a lack of paths so people can know and use VR in the sim.
Invest more resources making people know what can be done(need first to improve the experience inside the cockpit) and there will plenty of people joining VR.
Since msfs as no priority making VR better, VR numbers growing will be slow…
I have to agree with Sonicviz and the rest. The main thing preventing VR to explode is entry barrier on price. Hardware is really expensive compared with what the average folk would want to spend.
And also the user interface and tweaking for a nice and smooth experience.
It is something that hit all the VR industry as it is necessary to develop better hardware integrations out of the box for major used games and at an affordable price.
I suspect that was the intention when introducing VR on a console, to have the hardware closed enoght to make it smooth and engaging for people. The problem is that VR is focused initially to some games wereas other types don’t take any advantage, and simulators are one of the bests use case scenario for this, but not many console gamers were up to it before MSFS.
I don’t blame either part on this, but as already said, it is required a new integrated approach to this from all parties involved if thet really want to make VR a reality.
Yes, I’d agree. I’d love to see a partnership with Meta and Microsoft on this. It is clearly not a smooth ride, for some, left to Microsoft alone and a maybe lack of investment. 10-15% users will understandably not promote that investment.
Meta clearly see VR as a big deal.
As for cost of headsets I don’t agree, personal opinion, the Pico and the Quest are half the price many pay for the obligatory mobile phone, often replaced annually. In the US the Reverb seems to be on a very good sale a lot of the time, not in the UK.
Edit: VR could be huge in the sim, and rightly so. Cost wise, I’d wager many have spent 1000’s on add ons, the cost of a VR headset (which has a raft of other games as well) would pale into insignificance - my opinion again.
Yes, I’m a huge fan of VR ….. and I’m afraid, very opinionated about it.
Back to ‘Real VR Fishing’ again tonight, if anybody’s interested, drop me a line.
Ugh that sounds horrible, sorry to hear that. Was that Quest 2?
Also sounds like a fairly uncommon experience though (at least I think and hope so!), especially considering Meta VR should be the easiest and most stable to set up.
My issue with Asobo saying VR is only 10-15% of the community and thus is low priority is odd because they hyped VR when it was released and promised it would be a huge part of the sim. Was that a marketing stunt to pull more players in ($$$)? VR has been out since December 2020 and we have seen very little features/improvements to it. Like others have seen, the OpenXR toolkit has done more for MSFS VR than the whole team…
