You have to change your cockpit interaction setting to lock, instead of the legacy mode. The controllers still act a bit clunky but I assure you that changing that setting will help things for you.
Itās not the cockpit controls and dials that are the problem. Itās the drop-down menu that canāt be used either with the controllers or with the mouse. Legacy vs. Lock has nothing to do with that issue.
We can grab the yoke with the small left joystick, not sure if itās useful but it works
Also some dials, rotary knobs and buttons doesnāt work properly with Reverb G2 controllers, even in lock mode (however lock mode is still better vs. legacy for the VR controllers).
Trying to try out both VR controller modes after the update.
It seems like āraycasting modeā is on by default. I donāt understand the attraction of this mode. If Iām going to point at something, I might as well use the mouse. But, regardless, Iād like to try it. As it is, I can point at things but not control them. I guess I need to chance my cockpit interaction mode from ālegacyā to ālockā maybe?
More importantly, I want to try āproximity modeā. THIS, to me, is why to use VR controllers. I want to have one hand on my real-life yoke and the other free to actually REACH for switches and knobs in my virtual cockpit. But how to do I enable proximity mode?
What SU7 has brought is a broken VR system. The menu can no longer be selected by mouse or VR controller. The VR controller functionality is appalling! Nothing even close to what xplane offers.
Quite frankly, the fact that Asobo could have released this without knowing that they had broken the menu functionality, abaility to move menu windows (selected by keyboardā¦ like the VR map) etc and the CTD when you attempt to switch from VR back to 2D is incompetence of the highest order.
It would seem that they didnāt learn a thing after the mess that was update 5!
@MaxJet60 Yes, the broken mouse/controller interaction with the toolbar is a major mistake and needs to be fixed ASAP. Not sure how that got through.
As far as VR controller interaction, Iāve only used Xplane VR controller mode a little bit but I think MSFS has done closer to that than it appears at first. By default, the MSFS controllers are in āraycastā mode, which is fine for pointing at menu options but not at all immersive for VR flight. The āBā button on the controller (on the G2 at least) switches the controller to āgrab modeā. In this mode, pressing the trigger (by default but can be changed in controller options when in VR) allows you to āgrabā a control. Instrument interaction mode has to be on ālockā mode for this to work but once you do that and switch to āgrab modeā, I find it works quite well (but, again, I have limited experience for comparison).
Using āgrab modeā, I just went for a flight in the C152 in which I used my honeycomb yoke for the yoke and then had my right hand using the VR controller to āreachā and āgrabā the parking brake lever, the throttle, mixture, even the coms frequency dials. I also tried to do the trim wheel this way and had mixed results (with it sometimes going to the limit and causing me to crash).
I think Asobo has some things to fix (obviously) and they need to document better (I think) how to use the VR controllers, but this flight I did in the C152 is the most VR controller use Iāve had in a flight sim yet and it was interesting. Not sure Iāll stick with it, because my desk area is not set up for reaching for things, but it was cool.
Hereās a copy of my notes on this:
Well, the controller support is out, and itās not a good job, unfortunately. The sim is completely grounded in VR after the SU7 update. Unplayable. And the controller support is very rudimentary and worse than older sims, and has introduced the bugs that killed the VR experience entirely. As updating is not optional, for most if not all VR users Asobo just killed the sim, period. Such bugs need to be figured out by QA and fixed before releasing a mandated update and killing the sim. It took me all of 15 minutes to see them all. What is their QA doing? Is there any QA for VR at all?
These are my observations from the first short session with SU7:
Good:
- Laser and direct control are working.
- Rotational controls are working (kind of).
- Controller image is small, unobtrusive and tasteful
- There is haptic feedback when you touch the control
Bad:
- Huge FPS drop!!! I have a high-end PC - Ryzen 9 5900X / RTX3080 / 64Gb RAM / HP Reverb G2 - and from ābarely adequateā on mostly medium settings at WMR OpenXR rendering at 70% and game render scale at 100% TAA it got to the vomit-comet on the same settings as before, unable to maintain even 22.5FPS anymore (which it was easily maintaining before), so motion reprojection falls apart. A lot of stuttering that werenāt there with this settings before. Any lower settings and it becomes too blurry to enjoy. The sim should get more optimized with updates, not less!
- VR Menu can be triggered but is often unreachable, and even when it is reachable - its icons usually canāt be clicked. It worked for me for a minute somehow, but then I couldnāt press any of the VR menu icons and no matter what I tried I couldnāt open any menus.
- Rotational controls are terrible: no matter how slowly you try to turn your controller, heading jumps by 20-30 degrees at a time, and all rotational controls jump by a huge margins. Itās impossible to tune anything to any degree of accuracy at all. Come on, X-Plane did it right in 2017!
- Rotational controls do not click, there is no haptic feedback on rotation āclicksā which is so great in X-Plane. You hear the sounds, but feel no encoder clicks. Why, itās free and easy to code this, has anyone thought through the VR implementation, compared to existing VR sims?
- There is no haptic on flipping switches, as far as I noticed. Nothing happens after haptic feedback when flipping the switch.
- Yoke canāt be hidden anymore, and switches obscured by the yoke canāt be easily manipulated via laser either. The controller tends to snap to the yoke instead, and I have a hardware yoke, I need to access switches, not steer the plane with a laser! But I canāt. There should be an option to disable yoke control, so laser would go through to operate switches behind the yoke.
- I donāt think itās possible to change the controller button assignment, at least I havenāt found a way to do that. A button opens the (unusable) VR menu, B button triggers the laser. Menu button doesnāt do at all, instead of triggering menu. Grab button activates the controller (instead of it being tracked constantly when moving) and thereās no way to reassign those that I can see.
- Controller doesnāt appear by itself, it has to be triggered by pressing a grab button. That adds a completely unnecessary extra step every time you need to adjust something, if you havenāt used a controller for a minute. Every time!
- Thereās no reason to hide the controller, it should always be present, as long as itās tracking. If itās on your lap or on the table in front of you - the ghosted image should be there so you can grab it easily. Instead it disappears completely, very quickly, without ability to adjust the timeout or its behavior.
- I have a very strange joystick-related glitch, the button assigned to something else now changes the view to external camera, in parallel with whatās it supposed to do. Very strange. It does 2 actions at once - what I had mapped AND jumping the camera.
I wonder what kind of QA can let it all through at this state? Beside the FPS decrease, the VR controllers are barely usable and canāt adjust anything to any degree of accuracy, nor can they open menus. I have waited for this for almost a year, since VR was introduced without controller support. But this is a whole lot worse than what X-Plane has. I was expecting the functionality to be at least as good, if not better, considering Asoboās resources. But itās much worseā¦ I hope the hotfix is coming, but any kind of QA testing should have exposed all those issues. I donāt understand how it was possible to release it like thatā¦
On the HP Reverb G2 controllers, the B button switches between raycast mode and proximity mode and I believe this canāt be changed. However, the button for the menu (A by default), the button for grabbing and activating (trigger on the G2 by default), and the controls for brakes, yoke, etc, can be re-assigned in the control options menu. In order for left and right controller to show up in the control options menu, they need to be active, which means you need to be in VR. Once in VR, with active controllers, you can use the normal control options menu to map the VR controller buttons (except, I believe, the button to switch between raycast and proximity mode, which seems to be fixed).
I think/hope that the inability to open the tool bar options with the VR controller is related to the bug that prevents the mouse from working with the tool bar.
I thought the difficulty in controlling rotational knobs was just me! Glad, in a way, to know itās not.
Good to know the buttons can be adjusted. Thatās the most minor thing though, I could live even with the fixed buttons. But the rest of them are much more seriousā¦ X-Plane had perfect rotational controls in 2017 I think. How hard could it be, provided Asobo/MS resources?
While button assignments can be changed, there is no way to change the assignments for thumbstick X-Y motions for Reverb G2.
I am unable to control anything BUT the yoke (with the controllers). If I point at switches and knobs I do get a little āfeedbackā shake, but the the switches and knobs to not change color (or get outlined) to indicate that I can change their setting, nor can I actually change their setting. Anybody else have this? And, of course, I also have the menu problem that everybody else has.
More and more I get the feeling that some folks at Asobo have no clue what they are doing. It simply canāt be overseen by the devs that toolbar UI isnāt accessible with mouse. I donāt believe it.
Sorry Asobo the implementation is very poor and disappointing. This is an E minus job. The Reverb G2 controllers are useless. I would echo the point that in this day and age you should be producing something better that x-plane in 2017 but this implementation is a joke. There is no obvious consideration to how the human factors element interact with the controllers and cockpit controls. To be honest it easier with a mouse than this mess. Please relook at the whole VR control concept.
You need to change your cockpit interaction setting to lock instead of legacy mode.
Iām sorry but this doesnāt work for me. Iāve always been on Lock mode, and I checked again to make sure. I still canāt manipulate the toolbar in VR with either the controller or the mouse.
Does anyone know how to make the yoke/stick move with controller tilt axis, like in VTOL VR?
Amazing - thank you so much, Nexter11! After not even being able to interact with the instruments, that is a hugh step forward (for me). While I do fully understand everybodyās anger about the menu interaction, this part, at least, I think is super cool and holds a lot of promise for the future.
The setting can be found in āGeneral Optionsā ā āAccessibilityā (in the āUser Interfaceā section).
Could you tell me where to find this in the menus please?
Edit: Found it!
It is interesting that there have been NO YouTube videos on the hand controllers at all!
This is because the long awaited implementation of these in MSFS is pathetic! The serious VR simmers on YouTube all agree that they will not be bothering with the hand controllers for now.
Clearly VR is the poor relative for Asobo. They are simply not interested in this side of the sim despite the fact that some of us ONLY use the sim in VR.
As for Quality Assuranceā¦ what Quality Assurance?
It was interesting that in the latest Q and A serssion with Microsoft and Asobo held the day before the āCock Up of the Year Editionā was releasaed on 18th, VR hand controllers were not even mentionedā¦ An indication of either the lack of interest by Microsoft/Asobo in this area or their embarrassment knowing what a mess VR is now in.
Had the mess been in any area other than VR, we would already have a patch. However, we will have to wait until Asobo can be bothered to fix VR. I reckon they will do nothing until Update 8 in late February 2022ā¦