I hate to call this one out but the last two updates haven’t even fixed the issue of disappearing VR controllers despite for me at least being the single most annoying VR issue with MSFS.
What is the issue?
The VR controllers disappear from screen after half a second of being activated by button press. What’s completely bonkers is it doesn’t do this throughout MSFS until you’re in the cockpit, where it’s needed the most. This leads me to believe someone actually coded it this way and was part of the tasks acceptance criteria.
For none VR users to understand it’s your mouse cursor disappearing from the screen half a second after you move it and you can’t get it back on screen unless you press the mouse button, then it disappears again after half a second and you end up constantly fighting the mouse to stay on screen - very annoying!
I don’t want this to appear as a rant so I say it’s a complaint against the lack of support and direction against Asobo and the connected Microsoft Team for VR users on the simplest of issues stemming back over the past year (when the disappearing controller issue was originally brought up). I know you guys are both doing fantastic work and each update brings major benefits to a strong loyal community. But this controller issue breaks all immersion and creates frustration around your hard work.
I also wanted to ask and involve the VR community to share their single most annoying issue in the hopes we can get it seen as the votes on VR issues will never reach the top of the pile.
Is this affecting everyone using VR? If seems a fairly fundamental issue if it’s a bug in the system and I’d expect the VR community which is quite substantial to be going nuts, and they don’t seem to have been. Could it be related at a specific setup or hardware configuration?
It does affect us all (as far as I know!)
But the VR community is quite split on those who use their hardware peripherals and those who prefer to use the VR controllers.
Most, I believe, are happy with stick/yoke/throttle and mouse so this doesn’t affect them in any material way. Most people probably don’t even power on their VR controllers when simming.
Personally (and I have written quite a few times on the subject) I prefer the use of VR controllers and this issue is extremely irritating to the point where I’ve had to give in and join the majority in using the mouse.
The VR controller implementation really needs some work in many ways - not just the “timeout” issue described but I find the triggers aren’t very good in terms of determining whether they are pressed or not and there is another thread on yoke/throttle interaction which is also very poor.
Lots to work on in this regard - maybe now the performance is starting to level off and DX12 is coming along, they can turn their attentions to improving the overall VR experience? Hopefully so.
I don’t think my vr controller is much usable in MSFS, but I have only a Gear VR running on steam using Ivry. I usually prefer using the mouse if I have to do something not binded to the joystick because the VR controller behavior is really annoying. But the issue you presented may be related to another one I experiment, when the controller changes a window size when reactivated if I had changed that window size before it disappeared. It’s like if I was still resizing it all that time with the hidden controller. Or maybe it reactivates at the last position with the button pressed.
most annoying for me is the intermittent fps drops i see. i literally change nothing and the fps drops, then i mess around for a while trying things to fix it, usually end up defeated and give up. then i fire up msfs after a break and everything is ok (probably).
I believe it does affect everyone. And anyone who came into MSFS from the VR side is goind nuts For ages now, since MSFS initially introduced VR without any controller support at all. I think the only reason that community has not been more outspoken is because many flight sim enthusiasts, unlike VR fans, treat VR as a display you wear on your head, a glorified TrackIR. They still use the mouse. A surprising number of people argued with me in my original VR Controller support thread (that was #1 in VR wishlist for a long time until controller support was implemented) - the essence of the argument was “we don’t need no controllers, mouse is all we or anyone would ever need or want”.
VR feels like an agfterthought, and controller support is way behind other sims. I can’t understand who would think that inability to interact with both controllers at the same time was a good idea? Or the disappearing controllers… Or unusable rotation adjusment, or mouse-like interaction, or operating multi-engine throttle or prop levers only one at a time, or necessity to click switches instead of flipping them, or not fixing the simple process of going out of VR and back in (usually still results in 8fps requiring reboot). I’m not even talking about hand tracking support. VR UI was clearly not planned or implemented properly. It’s not difficult to fix - “the other sim” has done it right in 2017 when they introduced VR controller support. It just needs a little bit of attention. Asobo has done a great job with other aspects of the sim - beautiful visuals, steadily improving flight model, improving weather and SDK, adding more advanced prop models, performance optimizations etc. - they clearly actively keep developing the sim and it gets better and better. Just not VR. I hope somebody who makes decisions there realizes that VR is steadily growing and will onlyu grow faster with Meta and needs more attention…
I exclusively use the VR manipulator and not the mouse flying VR. I use this along with a physical yoke/stick, pedals, TQ. For me, it is far more immersive to use the manipulator to turn knobs, flip switches, press buttons… This works well when properly set up for many aircraft including the PMDGs, the Fenix. But. But… the issue with the mouse cursor disappearing is a major problem with certain aircraft where you have to push knobs that have interior buttons (like the HDG knob on the 747 and some of the knobs with press actions on the G1000). Basically, I can bind a secondary (and tertiary for airbus pull actions) to the manipulator, but when the mouse magically disappears, this action no longer works. I have to put the focus back on the MSFS window (in VR no less) and shake it to wake it up. Then perform the press action. This is not viable when flying on VATSIM and you get a heading assigned, then have to perform all those actions just to fly a HDG instead of following the programmed flight plan.
I don’t know how it is possible this has existed for so long in this application without being addressed. Clearly it is possible - aircraft like the PMDG and Fenix work just fine. Same with the FBW A320. I have had amazing experiences flying VR on VATSIM with these aircraft. Why oh why do some aircraft still suffer from this ‘must have the mouse cursor active for secondary knob press actions’ issue???
Rudimentary hand tracking works now with OpenXR Toolkit - with Leap Motion controller and maybe other solutions. Unfortunately it’s limited by having to emulate VR controllers, with all their problems. Proper hand tracking support can be done (like it is in DCS) and that would be amazing. Many next generation HMDs are coming with passthrough and possibility of hand tracking. I fly with hardware that I built: a pendular yoke, Boeing-style throttles, encoder and switch boxes on a motion platform. So I have no room for a controller. Grabbing it from my lap every time is annoying, and leaving it strapped to my right hand (like I did with XPlane where I could operate throttles in VR) gets in the way of using hardware controls. Hand tracking is a perfect solution, even imperfect as it is now.
Same as it has been since SU5: Really obnoxious shimmering/aliasing on trees and autogen buildings, especially in bright lighting conditions and at mid distance. They promised DLSS would fix this, and it really hasn’t.
Same here. I have no clue what is causing this. Sometimes I have tons studders with 25 FPS and the other day smooth 40 FPS without changing a thing.
The inconsistency is the most annoying part.
On a separate note, I had issues yesterday with my panels like the ATC window not being clickable after appearing. I had to leave VR mode to move the pane away from the dashboard. Other times I could position the window but the buttons at the bottom of the pane (like the ATC responses) were not clickable. All of this worked fine in the beta and as late as Friday, so I’m going to disable addons and try to debug, but if others had issues like that, I’d be curious to hear about it.
The most annoying for me is the camera position shift at engine or battery shut down at the end of a flight (glad it does not appear in Fenix or PMDG aircraft).
the most annoying thing? if youre in VR on the world map and choose to load a .pln file, it opens a windows dialog behind the msfs window and steals focus so you can’t ctrl-tab out of VR to bring it front or interact with it. Luckily the ‘ESC’ key closes it, so you can then ctrl-tab out of vr, open the .pln, and ctrl tab back into vr.
2 ways to fix:
make a floating vr interface for loading .pln files when in vr mode
allow loading .pln files from the avionics without going back to world map
as far as controllers go, it would be nice if the options menu had a 3rd choice for yoke control (or anything i have a physical device for like quadrant): instead of just 1. toggle/2. hold: 3. NONE. i have a real joystick, i dont want the controller grabbing it at all.
Definitely VR controllers for me as well. There are many small issues like you mentioned, the biggest one for me is the awful yoke and stick handling. I made the below wishlist thread about this, please vote if you agree!
For my Rift S touch controllers I simply hold the X button and it will keep the controller from disappearing as long as im holding X. It gets very cumbersome and annoying as you have to hold it while trying to push other stick functions in the cockpit, but I’ve been doing it ao long its second nature now. Can’t speak for other VR headeet controllers though.
For ages now, since MSFS initially introduced VR without any controller support at all. I think the only reason that community has not been more outspoken is because many flight sim enthusiasts, unlike VR fans, treat VR as a display you wear on your head, a glorified TrackIR. They still use the mouse. A surprising number of people argued with me in my original VR Controller support thread (that was 
