Hi chaps,
Surfacing from 3 (4?) days of virtual reality madness here and thought I would share my impressions.
Encouraged by Swoop and OD I decided that as I’d been a good boy, I deserved an early Christmas pressie to myself with getting Oculus Rift and dipping my toes in VR.
I’d tried it at Cosford flight sim show on P3D where it seemed pretty cool and and also tried DCS using a smartphone hack, but it was a bit of a punt as my PC is now showing its age. Graphics card is OK (1070) by i7 2700K is now a bit slow and unfortunately my motherboard is a CPU upgrade-dead end.
Ok - below minimum specs I thought - but here goes…
The result is simply beyond F&^&%%&g awesome!!! Much better than the smartphone. It is also way better than the demo I had at Cosford as with hundreds of folk trying the headset on, the fitting was kept loose. What I didn’t realise then is there is a small sweet spot in the middle of the lens where everything is clear and focused.
I spent first day just jumping into various DCS cockpits and having my jaw drop each time. Look at the rivets! Look at the wear and and tear! Flying the Huey was incredible - I was able to hover taxi, do spot turns, and even land in the vague place I had nominated.
Meanwhile taking a Mustang up, you look back - and THERE is a bloody P-51 wing with sunlight reflecting off it. Simply insane.
Weirdly even though my CPU is old, I only experienced stuttering/pauses on a couple of missions so far - first the big F-86 vs MiG furball dogfight mission (flying though contrails OMG) and then on the Hawk on a Mach Loop challenge. Maybe it is down to how well the pit is optimised?
Drawbacks - obviously you need to dial the outside world detail down from a 2D screen - but your brain fills in the details in no time.
For combat there is the obvious problem of spotting stuff. I’ve mostly been playing with labels on but get in close and its a bit of a wild guess if you are used to precision shooting of engines, fuel tanks etc in Cliffs. However, 1) it is easier to keep track of the bandits in VR than even with TrackIR (something about the body remembering head position maybe?) and 2) when you do get close, relative velocity is easy to see/sense - no more overshoots…
Then fired up FSX which I haven’t touched in years. You need FlyInside which interfaces with Rift + FSX and there too I was blown away by the immersion. Literally grinning with joy doing aerobatics in the default Mustang at Duxford - while a max rate climb in the Eurofighter from Coningsby saw me reach 45k in no time and had my eyes telling my brain that we were being pressed into my seat. Finally I ended up sweating like crazy in one of the default Acceleration missions - a night IMC carrier landing in a F/A-18. Bingo fuel I ended up losing my wingman and crashing into the sea… Even though it was virtual I was close to panic at one point.
I also fired up War Thunder - which again hadn’t touched for ages and once it had d/ld gigabytes and gigbytes I tested out a few planes. F^&% me! OK its got small maps, and the upgrade system is a baffling as hell - but bloody hell it looks absolutely amazing and smooth in VR. I was squealing with delight taking a Spit for a dusk test flight and seeing the metal reflections on the wing. Taking a Zero for a test flight meanwhile there are animated crew waving you off - amazing!
Cockpits obviously not up to DCS standard, but still pretty good and with a pilot figure.
Combat is unbelievably intense - I tried a few of the SP missions, and the experience of flak, AAA, contrails and smoke of aircraft going down was just incredible - you feel right in the middle of the action. Even though its a small map - one of the BoB missions gives Cliffs a run for its money in terms of sheer spectacle - He111s stepped up, flak, tracer, parachutes, smoke, contrails from high bandits. Heartrate goes though the roof.
Spotting in War Thunder seems to be easier. There are blobs or smudges for long range contacts - but again once you get in close you can keep tally on them quite easily. Reflections & shine also give you good clues - I ventured online briefly and was grinning ear-to-ear after flying in formation with another player in a Yak on a low-level chase on the Stalingrad map. Just so atmospheric! Relative motion also means it is possible to pick up small contacts below you.
Finally - the Oculus also made me cry. I bought the Apollo 11 VR experience which is billed as an interactive documentary. There are some sim bits where you get to control stuff, but its more like a 1hr 45mins documentary. Starts quite slowly with Kennedy’s famous Moon speech and then you are at the launch pad in 1969 with Neil & Buzz looking up at a Saturn V. You then are put in the cockpit and experience the launch, complete with authentic radio recordings. Having watched Apollo 13 and Last Man on the Moon I ended up blubbing at this point through sheer joy and wonder at being able to experience what it was like at that historic point for humanity when we sent man to the Moon. I thought virtual reality tech would be neat, but I didn’t expect to be moved emotionally by it.
In short this has revitalised my interest in flight simming - even on the civil side just flying about and gasping at stuff. I really think this is the biggest breakthrough for flight sims since the invention of 3D graphics cards. YMMV however…
Drawbacks.
- Its expensive £595 + whatever you need to upgrade your computer
- Combat seems to work fine in War Thunder - but more complicated/CEM aircraft in full real? ARe we going to be able to spot tiny ground targets on the Normandy map? Are there gonna have to be seperate VR/4K servers for MP?
- Nausea. If you get car/air/motion sickness - you probably will want to stay well away from VR and especially combat flight simming…
- Glasses wearers. Weirdly because VR tricks your eyes into thinking that stuff outside your cockpit is actually far away - if you need glasses for driving, you may need them in the rift too. You can wear glasses with the Rift, but it does put pressure on the bridge
of your nose and begins to hurt. Solution is either contacts or prescription lens inserts. - The ‘gimmick’ factor? At the moment VR is hot - but if it doesn’t get mainstream consumer buy-in will it go the same way as gesture control, 3D TVs etc? If PSVR takes off - then we can look forward to wide angle 4K+ headsets in a couple of years, if not then Vive + Oculus might just be something like TrackIR - used exclusively by hard-core simmers but the tech progresses no further…
- Other dangers - divorce*, forgetting to eat, forgetting to feed the dog, not sleeping
*In my case helps to have a very understanding wife!
