I’m 52 and I first tried a VR headset on back when I was a teenager in the 1980s. It was at a special exhibit at Epcot and not everyone had the chance to put it on.
Back then I figured it would be common place when I was an old guy in my 20s/30s.
There are only 15% VR Users because of not well supported in MSFS. Asobo is not interested in VR and they only implement it as much as needed because of community pressure. It’s a SHAME and thats the problem when the decider in such Comanies don’t like VR or only focused on making money. Sell it as payable addon. I cannot understand this policy, short view and stupid, because VR ist made for Flightsim!
Honestly I’m really surprised by that 15% number. I mean, that seems like … a lot, no?
Pretty certain more than half the user base is XBox based, but let’s say it’s half, that means 30% of all PC users use VR? 1 in 3. I find that hard to believe, I would have assumed it’s well under 10% even have a headset, and maybe half of those use VR regularly in MSFS given it’s high hardware requirements and quirks.
If that number is correct I find it even more baffling that they don’t seem to spend hardly any resources on improving things.
VR was not made just on the premise of being used for Flight Simulation. I have no idea where you go that idea from. While VR is a neat technology it’s going to take A LONG TIME before you start seeing it become common use. It’s still a fringe technology. Most headsets worth getting cost upwards of over $1,000 minimum and at that price you could get a workable computer that allows you to do so much more than just an advanced pair of “glasses”. They’re bulky, there’s the issue with eye strain or other physical/mental issues related to using over long periods of time that haven’t been thoroughly documented, etc.. While ‘feeling’ the experience of flight in a more visual manner might be intriguing I personally don’t see the benefit at the risk of possibly harming my eyes, becoming motion sick and puking on my computer, or any of the other hazards that I’ve seen people who use VR talk about on here. VR could make a lot more sense for FS if people still weren’t restricted to being stuck in a non moveable chair. Having seat motion to aid VR would seem worth it. But alone visually, not yet sold and the technology needs more time to mature and for the userbase to become more solidified. I know someone’s got to do it but I don’t need to have an image shoved in front of my face to enjoy it.
Finally someone said it. I was constantly bothered that so many are claiming “only” 15% of VR users is not a lot.
Economically 15% is huge! Especially considering those 15% are mainly “hardcore users” who are constantly buying new addons and PC Hardware.
Your maths/math/mathematics (covering all my bases!) is off a bit.
I’ve heard it’s ~70/30 split between XBox/PC (but don’t quote me on that) and the 10% to 15% of users on VR would apply to the portion of the user base that can use VR, not the overall player base, which is PC only.
That’s an assumption, but basic market segmentation for specific user groups are done from the target group that can access a certain feature, not the overall group. It would be a useless stat otherwise.
So it’s ~10% to 15% are VR users of the ~30% PC user market of the overall active combined platform MSFS user base. And that VR user base is also stratified, it’s not a solid mass of free spending VR fanatics (see points below).
This is probably closer to reality, as 10% of the PC user base. So, no, it’s not a lot, or not as big as you think it is.
This part is true, but doesn’t mean what you think it does. It’s a very small % of people who will do this, even among the VR users.
I’m constantly amazed at some VR users who seem to have amassed a huge collection of VR headsets, it seems like they’ve bought every one out there in search of the “one ring” headset. Similar to FPS chasers and the quest for max FPS at all costs…literally. Sometimes they’re the same person!
That’s great, spend your money on what you want, but that type user is a tiny percentage of the market and what they spend is way outside the average customer spend.
I’m fairly sure there are also just as many (if not more) VR users like me who are quite happy to use the VR hardware they have and enjoy it as is (with ever improving performance due to great software like OpenXR++) while waiting for it to develop more. We like it, but we’re also ok with NOT spending money on constantly buying new addons, hardware, and GPU’s etc until absolutely necessary. Wants are not always needs.
The flightsim market is actually quite broad, and MSFS is making it more so, which is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I think this is just a misunderstanding of that particular phrase, one which was really not meant to be taken literally. To say “(x) was made for (y)” doesn’t mean specifically, it’s just a way to express that one thing is extremely compatible with another other thing, to the point that it seems as if it was made for it, and in the case of VR and flight simming I’d have to agree. It’s a really good fit.
Most headsets worth getting are over $1000? The very best of the best… Varjo Aero etc, absolutely, but the Reverb G2 continues to be an excellent headset which is available for half that price, and same goes for the very capable Quest 2, at an even lower price. You’re right, really really good VR is expensive right now, no way around it. As with all things tech though, the cost trend is downwards. If you compare the Varjo Aero and Pimax Crystal, that’s a reduction of 50% cost in a year, for two broadly comparable headsets.
Bulky? I’ve worn a helmet several times during real flight, one that is far bulkier and heavier than any VR headset, and after 5 minutes I forgot I was wearing it. Bulk isn’t really an issue, weight and balance are somewhat of an issue. We aren’t racing or doing air combat here though, so rapid and violent head movements aren’t normally a major thing in civllian flight simming, and that’s the only case where bulk will really work against you. Most modern headsets are pretty well balanced though, and those that aren’t usually have some aftermarket mods available to fix that.
I have owned two VR headsets, an Oculus Rift CV1, with 500+ hours on it, and the Reverb G2, with 1500+ hours on it. I have never experienced any kind of eye strain with either of them. Eye strain tends to get caught pretty early in alpha/beta testing during development (see early Pimax Crystal complaints and subsequent fixes). The only physical ailment I have experienced is a facial redness ring around my eyes from headset pressure after a long session, which my wife calls “raccoon face”. 
It fades after a few minutes, but she laughs every time she sees it.
The majority of motion sickness experiences come from simulations where there is no fixed frame of reference (things like Beat Sabre etc, or maybe No Man’s Sky). In simming, whether flying or driving, you almost always have a solid fixed reference from your cockpit and/or canopy frame, which move very little relative to your eyes. If the world is moving against a fixed frame it’s really not much different than simming on a monitor with track-ir, where your reference is the static monitor edges and the room outside of that. Vehicle simulation is pretty much an ideal case when it comes to avoiding motion sickness in VR. Not saying that some don’t get sick, and I really feel for them, but the likelihood of nausea is much lower here than in other VR experiences.
Plenty of those are available now, and even some homebuilt versions, such as Roman’s, most are still expensive though! In some cases they could make motion sickness more likely, if they are not set up perfectly.
Great, but it’s not just an image shoved in front of your face like a monitor, its quite the opposite. VR gives depth perception, which pancake mode cannot, and that’s the entire point of it. Your focus is primarily outside of the cockpit most of the time, usually focused at infinity, and the difference in depth between that and the cockpit is where the real fun begins.
^ you are arguing with someone from the deflection aka pr team
I see there are still many misconceptions about VR. As usual, from people who never tried (or worse, tried it for 5 minutes in the worst possible conditions…). It’s no surprise VR is only 15% of the users, when some people still make claims such as UpstateElf…
I’ve been using a VR headset since 4 years, recently switched to my second one. First one costed 450€. Second one costed 429€. The real expensive thing for VR simmers is the same as for 2D fliers: the video card, which costs a fortune, contrary to VR headsets.
Thats the reason (i guess) why Asobo neglect VR… money and prejudices.
I can’t say more about it because Ramasurinen already described it in detail in his post.
That’s nice, but you are one single anecdotal data point among many.
That’s also a dissmissive and non-scientifc response to a potentially serious health and safety issue that can vary across different age groups. Headset manufacturers (and app devs) wouldn’t include warnings (that a lot of people obviously ignore) if they were not worried about having their ■■■■■ sued down the line.
This is science:
Understanding, Addressing, and Analysing Digital Eye Strain in Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Displays
Digital eye strain (DES), caused by prolonged exposure to digital screens, stresses the visual system and negatively affects users’ well-being and productivity. While DES is well-studied in computer displays, its impact on users of virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) is largely unexplored—despite that some of their key properties (e.g., the vergence-accommodation conflict) make VR-HMDs particularly prone. This work provides the first comprehensive investigation into DES in VR HMDs. We present results from a survey with 68 experienced users to understand DES symptoms in VR-HMDs. To help address DES, we investigate eye exercises resulting from survey answers and blue light filtering in three user studies (N = 71). Results demonstrate that eye exercises, but not blue light filtering, can effectively reduce DES. We conclude with an extensive analysis of the user studies and condense our findings in 10 key challenges that guide future work in this emerging research area.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3492802
Lets not get into handwaving things away because they don’t personally affect you…yet.
Pdf download here: https://perceptualui.org/publications/hirzle22_tochi/
Agreed, and good point. You’re right. I may just be extremely resilient to eye strain (22+ hour sessions developing don’t bother my eyes in the slightest). On the downside I am hypersensitive to stutters , juddering, and flicker. Some can handle a Reverb G2 at 60hz… or fly without motion reprojection, and I have NO idea how they do it. I have to close my eyes after a few seconds in any of those cases.
You’re correct. I have not. But like I said, my post was based on what I’ve seen other VR user’s post on here about some of the negative side effects or issues of using VR versus the “pancake” method. Suffice it to say most anyone who invests any decent amount of $$ into whichever side of their FS experience is going to be rather one sided whether that is with or without VR. Be that as it may, with VR being a fringe technology that is still in it’s infancy and intriguing as it may be with what it offers within FS, the lack of support or “interest” from the development side is not al the surprising considering the low levels of users out the gate. As more people use VR I can see MS taking a more direct and renewed approach towards further development towards that particular userbase. But it’ll take time. Not everyone out there sees new technology as automatically needing to be the new standard. Reminds me of how we’ve always used combustion based engines in cars since they first came out and now the power upstairs are trying to force everything to become electric based. No doubt they’ll make it happen but it’ll take decades for that to happen. Same for VR, it’ll happen where it starts to become closer to the standard/norm but it’ll take a long time to get there. Until that starts to happen more rapidly, I think the level of interest and support currently given is simply a reflection of the popularity of it and the over feel of the publics ‘confidence’ in it. It’s still too new and rather expensive for the majority of people out there.
I think you’re now straying a bit too far to the opposite side of the continuum where the VR fanbois who absolutely hate flatland hang out😉
VR is hardly “fringe”, It’s been decades of solving hard technical problems combined with UX/Health research. It may not be the B2C success the VC’s were hyping, but it’s most definitely solving productive use cases in the B2B area such as collaborative design etc, in addition to proving multiple viable niche consumer use cases from education to entertainment. So while the consumer sales are not mass market, they are in the millions of units for niche verticals to be sustained to keep the R&D going. The real problem is, as usual, technology marketers (and sometimes grifters, like Crypto) always wanting to put the cart before the horse, and trying to force mass markets before the tech is ready.
This isn’t accurate either. There’s multiple reasons for this, and the tech has also been under development for decades for much the same reasons. The big thing holding electrics back at the moment is battery storage, not enough, takes too long to recharge, and too heavy. They’re working on it, and it won’t take decades. Also, H2. Anyway, enough of that, back to VR!
@anon44786522 The biggest hindrance to VR adoption is that it cannot be demonstrated through any media other than VR itself. I was in the anti-VR camp for quite awhile. I figured that anything between good pancake and the Holodeck from Star Trek was a complete waste of time and energy.
Then on a whim I picked up an Oculus CV1… and then I discovered asynchronous spacewarp motion smoothing in it, and I was SOLD.
The CV1 was not a particularly great headset, but it didn’t need to be. It’s the depth perception that sells it. Going to a G2 was basically the same thing but just better in every way
I have an order in for a Crystal, even though there are some things about it I really don’t like. There is just no going back now for me.
I hope you can try VR at some point, with a really good setup and have an appropriate amount of time to adjust to it. The transition is not instantaneous, it might require some tweaking on the hardware and software side and some adjustment time on the brain side, but when it all falls into place it can be just magical.
The CV1 is a great headset, even now, despite it’s hardware resolution limitation, now boosted by great tools like OpenXR and better GPU’s which enable up to x2.5 Super Sampling on an RTX 3x GPU. See previous posted videos. Also lighter, and better colors/blacks than midrange LCD’s. It’s a dirt cheap way to get into VR even now, if you can get one. Also not a big expense if you don’t like it, or can’t figure it out. Oculus, to their credit, are still supporting because it’s still being used a lot.
It’s the difference between looking at a cockpit and being in a cockpit.
I don’t have the space to build a simulator with multiple monitors, instrument panel and something housing it all. VR solves this issue.
Just to clarify and help understand to people not in VR but interested, and thinking that might be harmful for the eyes (not for the budget reasons)
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Our eyes are designed for 3d view, not 2d like screens. VR glasses makes this happen through a technical mechanism based on how 3d vision is generated on humans and using what is called the “horopter” and “pannum’s area” for the technical details about how to focus the image to generate a 3d perception.
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The problem with the eye muscles is not the fixation, as you are looking as in 3d to the distance therefore they work normal but is maybe the lack of enough flicker with the eyes (hence try to do it consciously or stop at regular intervals) and also low refresh rate of images in the glasses (low frames, high latency..)
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The idea of motion sickness is trainable, and similar to learning to tolerate it in real life say in acrobatic flight. It is generated by doscrepancy between what you see in a 3d word and the body not having the proper perceptions (accelerations, propioception, interoception..). Hence, once the body learns that in this specific situation (with glasses) it should not expect real world movement it starts to adapt and motion sickness drastically reduces.
In summary, for those considering, give it a try with some one glasses if possible because go from 2d to 3d is a complete different story for this type of games and allow you some time to adapt. Some people will in a couple of hours whereas other will need short sessions (10min) for at least two weeks on slow aircraft until adapted.
Of course never saying that won’t be harmful in the long term wirhout proper studies, but it doesn’t feel so an I have been having them for several years without any more issues than working full time with computer screens.
@Sonicviz I’ll agree that the CV1 was a really good headset for its day, the best arguably, and with very good colours from its oled display (which I do miss), but I found the SDE very hard to ignore after awhile, the FOV was really tiny (though the G2, while better, is no champ here either really) and at the time there was a regular white flickering issue in MSFS with it that I was happy to leave behind.
Even with slightly inferior colour and blacks the G2 has been a welcome overall improvement for the past two years. We’re at the point now though where raw resolution on the newest headsets (Aero, Crystal, Bigscreen etc) is almost good enough for all aspects of civilian flight simming, and I think anyone being introduced to it now should probably experience at least a Quest 2 or similar resolution headset to start with, if possible. I would guess that civilian flight simming is probably the most demanding non-commercial / training use case when it comes to resolution needs in VR. If simmers can’t read the small numbers on FMCs etc then adoption will continue to remain relatively low overall.