True… altering values in the cockpit is difficult if your head is’nt deadrock steady.
But… the good news is that you can freeze/unfreeze the tracking part with F9.
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I have an ultrawide monitor and a TrackIR. I have the TrackIR configured with a big deadband in the middle so I can look around the panel and at much of my desktop hardware without moving my forward view. If I want to look out at my C172’s left or right wing, I just have to move my head a bit more. I wear my TrackIR’s target frame on my ball cap under my headset, and find it tracks very well in 6 degrees of freedom (e.g. if I want to lean forward to look past the forward door frame for the runway or for traffic, I can do that realistically.)
I prefer that setup to VR because it allows me to use physical hardware for all my controls. It is still very immersive. Possibly even more so because I’m using real switches, knobs, etc. for all my cockpit interactions.
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That is the big big downside to VR that pro VR users never seem to want to address. Without realistic control across a multitude of aircraft VR just doesn’t work for many of us. Using the mouse to operate knobs and switches when flying is just a deal breaker. Now if a mix of visuals and control can be realised for the home sim using AR or something else then that may be the ideal. Until then I’ll take immersive control over VR.
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Tobii is great still get to look around obviously not quite as immersive as vr but no performance hit. The tobii does a great job with an ultra wide monitor and is brilliant happy medium I think.
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I’ve got my tobii calibrated quite well so there’s minimal movement when using a mouse. It did take a while to get right using the sensitivity settings in msfs
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Interesting. I have nearly always flown in VR. I have a reverb G2. There are for sure limitations and I wish there was an easier way to tune the system but I much prefer it over 2D simply because you can look anywhere. I agree that the resolution is not the best but I still feel that the views are stunning. Having already invested some serious dosh into the Reverb and a rig with a 3090 card it will take a while to convince the missus I need another 10K upgrade! - Fly safe everyone.
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In order to minimize this problem I use a X52, Alpha yoke and 2 MFDs so I have tons of buttons, knobs and and rocker switches available that I can recognize by touch. I also use VoiceAttack+HCS to assist with things like heading bug, altitude setting and ATC.
It ain’t perfect but good enough for me not to be a deal breaker anymore.
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I currently use a TrackIR with a 50" screen and it works great for me. I use the cheapo included hat clip that I’ve attached to my headphones with zip ties. It tracks every bit as well as my HTC Vive does. It’s not 1:1 head motion like you’d have in VR, but once used to it, it works great. Make sure there are no bright light sources behind your screen or behind you, and TrackIR works perfectly, even in a dark room where eye tracking can struggle or fail.
Personally, I’ll be going with a 3 screen wraparound cockpit. I’ll be getting another pair of 50" screens and I think that paired with my Air Manager cockpit will surpass even VR for both immersion and functionality.
I don’t think anybody can argue that visually speaking, VR is by far the most immersive experience. In fact, seated experiences like flying and driving are the pinnacle of visual immersion in VR.
But for me, it takes way more than visuals to immerse me within an experience. And like you, the second I have to reach for a mouse or an awkward VR controller to control knobs and switches, my sense of immersion is broken, regardless how good things may look in my headset. Hence my current setup and the plans to add another pair of 50" screens.
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With TrackIR I have a button on my HOTAS assigned to Centre the view (up) and Pause (freeze) the view (down). Frequent use and muscle memory means that using it is now completely instinctive. I couldn’t fly without it.
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Got my Tobii today. All setup in spite of the lack of clear instructions. Looks good. Was able to find how to center and lock the view. Most important feature in my opinion. Can’t have the screen jumping around when I’m looking at my pop-out screens. More fine tuning to come. Eye tracking is turned off.
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I use TrackIR. I’ve tried VR at some demo show and didn’t like it for precisely the same reason that its adherents like it; namely, being unable to see the real world in my peripheral vision 
I started serious simming back in DOS Air Warrior. For those too young to to have been flying back in the early 90s when having more than 4 colors on your 480p monitor was still a new thing, I’ll explain how the display worked. Out of this small screen real estate, only about 1/2 was actually the 3D view out the window. The bottom strip was covered with a default instrument panel, the same for every plane, and strips on the left and right edges were for displaying info on nearby planes, such as they nationality, type, and distance from you (because beyond about 1000m, other planes were just dots). So basically, the 3D view out the window was an area measuring about 8" x 6" in the top center part of the monitor. Yet DESPITE this, I’d get so focused on it during combat that it grew to become my whole world, so it never bothered me that it was so small and I never noticed the surrounding stuff unless I made a conscious decision to check my IAS was at or above corner, or some such thing.
Some while later, I moved on to Aces High II, which was akin to MSFS in that planes were modeled in 3D inside and out, the real plane’s instruments were on the real plane’s panel, and it had a free-look camera that could be swung around in any direction. While this is a pretty useless feature to have if you can only control it with a mouse hat, TrackIR came out about then to make use of this feature. And I’ve used it ever since instead of a plethora of keybindings to look in specific directions that I’d been using up to that point. It doesn’t bother me at all that I “can still see my monitor and its surroundings” because, just as in DOS Air Warrior, I ONLY see the monitor screen unless I deliberately decide to see the real world around it.
So to me, TrackIR has the following virtues which I think make it the superior system vs VR
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TrackIR is WAY more reliable than VR. All TrackIR does is use a head-tracker to provide input to the game’s built-in free-look camera. Thus, most games support it natively. All they have to do is recognize inputs coming from this device and boom, done. MSFS has supported TrackIR since the alpha days and there’s never once been any problem with it. This is in stark contrast to the massive amount of extra work and months of debugging needed to make a game VR-friendly. VR was not in the initial project scope of MSFS but was added some months post-release due to popular demand, and the next year’s worth of updates had more VR fixes than anything else, and there are still problems with it although it now works reasonably well, or so I’m told.
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TrackIR is WAY cheaper than VR. TrackIR only has its own hardware cost, which is only like $100-200 depending on version, and works with ANY system. With VR, you have the cost of the headset, which IIRC runs from $500 to over $1K depending on model. AND with VR, you absolutely need the top-end video card because you’re running 2x very small 4K monitors instead of 1 big one with perhaps lower resolution (mine’s 1440 and it’s perfectly fine). So when building or updated a system for VR, that means an extra $1K or more spent ONLY for the highest model vidcard instead of the best non-Ti (for Nvidia) model. So basically, VR is about $1500-2000 more expensive than TrackIR, and I don’t think it’s worth it from an immersion standpoint.
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TrackIR is WAY more ergonomic than VR. First off, TrackIR either adds zero weight to your head or just a couple ounces if you use the ProClip. Second, you only have to turn your head like 20^ in any direction to get the effect of looking back over your shoulder. These 2 things mean MUCH less neck fatigue. Third, with TrackIR, your eyeballs aren’t inside sealed capsules with bright monitors blazing directly into them from only 2" away. That means the skin around your eyes can breathe instead of overheating and sweating profusely, and your eyes aren’t strained by the light right into them, which I’m sure will have bad long-term effects on vision down the road.
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TrackIR doesn’t intrinsically interfere with using the mouse to operate virtual cockpit knobs and switches. Just look at the part of the panel you want to mess with, move the mouse to the desired gizmo, and click or scroll away like normal. But it’s my understanding that VR makes this somewhat difficult, especially for knobs. And thus there’s a support market for peripherals in the form of physical knobs and button panels to provide inputs for things that VR makes difficult to use in the standard virtual cockpit. This is extra expense on top of the aforementioned extra cost just for VR itself, plus introduces more potential for conflicts, requires more desk space, more USB ports, more power, etc., etc.
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And most importantly for me, TrackIR CAN let you see the real world around you IF YOU WANT TO. As mentioned above, I’m totally immersed by my monitor when flying so just automatically tune out my surroundings and it never occurs to me that I’m only turning my head 20^ to look over my shoulder, or only moving it a couple inches sideways to reach some gizmo on the copilot’s panel. It all looks real enough to me that I just go with it. BUT, should the need arise, I can “unimmerse” myself at will. This I find ABSOLUTELY essential so I don’t knock over my adult beverage when reaching for it. But it’s just as important if you have roommates who might prank you if you blind yourself in their presence, or have kids and/or pets who will certainly get into mischief if they know you can’t see them, or a spouse/sig-o who might think you’re paying too much attention to a game instead of the supposed love of your life. Especially if the kids and/or pets are destroying the house and each other while they know you’re blind to the real world.
So that’s my take on it. I’ll stick with TrackIR, thank you very much. YMMV.
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That is probably the best reason not to be encased in a VR head trap. 
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I returned my Reverb G2 VR headset and now use TrackIR. You really can go back from VR as much as the evangelists say otherwise. The compromise in image quality, performance, and the PITA it is in general wasn’t worth it. I keep hoping the next generation of headset, PC hardware, and software upgrades will solve these issues, but I think we’re still a long way off.
I never really considered a multi monitor setup. It seems like it would be murder on performance, and in the bubble canopies I’m in I’m often looking straight up, (or down and even behind) as much as I am just looking left or right.
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55" and only 2ft away? Do you have it set to 4k at least? I feel like that would still be too close for comfort!
Hope you get your new cable sorted or whatever gremlin may be lurking.
You do get used to the Windows Mixed Reality process after a while
Thanks for the great discussion, folks! I guess it really does depend what you want out of it. For me, I think with VFR flying in particular and practicing the absolute basics like circuits, spin/stall recoveries, VR is the clear winner in that department as your situational awareness is unrivaled. I can also nail landings far easier in VR (again, situational awareness).
But with the more complex systems modelling that devs are taking advantage of, it kinds of sucks to not be able to use most of it because VR doesn’t allow you to interact with it without its frustrations. Pancake wins here.
It really is apples and anchovies.
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Yep, it says up front… 4K, I was confused there for a second.
Love 4K… Opened up a whole new world of editing files cause you can put them all over the screen.
Mostly, though, I got if for the life size cockpit view… the file editing was serendipity…
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There is a very good (a few actually) setup video for Tobii from Simhanger on Youtube. I was initially frustrated with setup too, but that vid was gold dust for me. Hihgly recommended.
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Thanks. I’ll check it out. Simhanger does good videos.
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