What’s your favourite ‘immersive’ flight simulator experience, and why?
It seems that there are three primary ways (are there more?) that one can have a more immersive visual experience with Flight Simulator other than your standard ‘2D’ single monitor in front of you.
I have tobii and a G2, and I’m finding it extremely difficult to go back to 2D. My preference would be VR if A) it was optimized and B) I had the money to invest in a more crisp headset like the Varjo Aero or Pimax Crystal and an RTX4090 machine.
I’ve yet to try a true multi-monitor setup. Does anybody prefer this method over the other two? And if so, why?
I have both VR and Tobii. I don’t use VR too often, only when I’m in the mood. It’s much less convenient, but so immersive. Tobii covers my usecase for pancake screen just fine. I have a big 4K screen though.
I’m a total convert to TrackIR… Gives me everything I liked about trying VR without the downsides of restricted visibility, physical discomfort, difficulty in making recordings, etc.
I wonder if TrackIR is better than Tobii. I liked the fact that I didn’t have to wear anything, but I’m not sure the tracking is as good. I turned off the eye-tracking because it made me feel sick and was kind of irratic.
they both have their up and downsides. The biggest upside of the Tobii is not strapping anything to your face. Eye tracking is very situational / personal. It’s lovely in gliders and some bush planes. In airliners it can make it hard to twist a dial when the value you’re dialing in is somewhere else on the screen.
I have the eye tracking part on pretty low sensitivity, so it stabilizes the view, but doesn’t jump around. In airliners I slide it all the way to 100% headtracking, no eyetracking.
Keep in mind that we are just in the first usable VR generation (imho). With better headsets and faster cpu/gpu in the next gen it will become better in any aspect, more comfortable, more immersive, less stressing.
I hope HQ-VR becomes less expansive soon so anyone have the chance to use it.
I wear headphones anyway, so clipping on a tracker isn’t really any worse for me.
With the TrackIR I find it easy to read instruments, though manipulating them can be a little tricky as you have to keep your head still to avoid moving the controls out from under the mouse while fiddling. (Or, I guess, there’s some way to disable camera tracking temporarily with a hotkey but I haven’t tried this?)
Never tried an eye tracker, don’t know how it actually maps head vs eye to camera movement.
I use an older TrackIR with a clip on a hat. I have a hotas button mapped to the TrackIR pause command so that I can manipulate small cockpit switches and dials.
I’ve never used eye tracking but I have been thinking about eventually replacing my current TrackIR with a newer model or with a Tobii. I don’t think I would like eye tracking while simming, though.
likewise. i have the tobii, but i don’t even use its eyetracking function. i find it works great as a headtracker. i’ve never have had to zero or re-center during a session - other headtrackers i’ve tried before seem to “drift” and need recentering from time to time.
I know a lot of people are really into the procedures and I guess they are fairly happy in 2D.
For me it is the experience of flying that keeps me coming back for more and VR makes it possible to have this kind of experience.
I have a Varjo Aero and very high end system, so my VR experience is really great. I don’t think I would be so into MSFS as I am today if not for the VR experience. It gives me a real enough experience of flying an aircraft that is just amazing to me for it to be possible and available in my lifetime and to have this kind of experience in my home. If it were only 2D I don’t think it would be so compelling for me personally.
Of course there are downsides to VR including:
discomfort of wearing a headset
pressure on my cheeks
eye fatigue
head and forehead itching under the headset
have to drink coffee with a straw
I can only use VR for a max of 3-4 hours for any given day for these reasons, but most weekend days I do that, with breaks in between, not all in one sitting.
I hope over time the form factors for VR headsets can become smaller and lighter.
I think the multi monitor custom cockpits I have seen look very cool and that looks like another awesome kind of experience but limits you to a cockpit that matches 1 aircraft. VR gives you the 3d cockpit of the aircraft for each and every one, so you can have a lot of different experiences rather than a one size fits all.
I’m almost all VFR, and find a 2d screen with TrackIR to be much preferable to VR, which has so many constant “immersion-breakers”. Different strokes for different folks!
I have had both TrackIR and Tobii down the years. TrackIR had that awful proboscis which was both unwieldy and flimsy. I put it in a drawer and forgot about it. Performance was spotty with any other light source such as a window in the room.
Last year, I purchased Tobii and for me, it was a massive improvement and has added enormously to both situational awareness and simple fun. Performance is solid and predictable. I would hate to be without it.
I use a 55" 4K TV for my monitor less than 2 ft from me. It essentially gives me a lifesize view of a GA size cockpit, with the panel at about the same distance as a real panel is when I’m in my chair.
I used to love Track IR, but I can’t use it with this setup because the tracker ends up at too much of an angle. There’s no good place to mount the tracker with such a large TV so close to me. The other issue I have with Track IR is I have a window behind me, so it gets confused by the light.
So I picked up a 3080TI and an HP Reverb G2. I LOVE the VR and I use it often. But not always. As others have said, the process of getting it started up is somewhat involved (Gosh I hate that Windows place you have to start in, I wish it just started straight up in the sim and I didn’t have to deal with all the clicking around and button presses from a keyboard I can’t see to get it started).
Sadly, 3 weeks after my warranty ran out my cable has apparently failed. It won’t recognize the USB-C connection. So I’m waiting on a new one to be delivered that I had to pay for. It’s possible I’m also a victim of the the latest nVidia driver debacle and something happened when I downgraded back to 29. Or, I’ve run over the cable a few too many times with my chair
I still haven’t tried a USB-C to USB-B converter either, I only have 1 USB-C port on my motherboard.
I’ll take better care of the cable when I get my new one.
When I’m just using the 55" TV to fly, I use mouse freelook to look around. Not as convenient as being able to move my head anywhere with VR, but, it works.
I tried the multi-monitor setup. Didn’t like it. One reason is you have to bring in the side monitors. That took up too much desk space and I felt boxed in. Mostly, It takes too much adjusting to get a somewhat decent alignment. You can get a decent panoramic view, but it’s too much work. I was using an inexpensive camera and OpenTrack, that was working pretty well, but it went crazy. Tobii will arrive tomorrow. I bought it on Amazon, so I have 30 days to try. We’ll see.
