Is VR worth it in Microsoft Flight Simulator in 2023!!??

I've been an early adopter to VR for years and have tried several headsets and countless games and simulations. But my god, is Flight Simulator VR a mindblowing experience. I have tried many racing games, but when I experienced the speed of a F18 with a headset, I actually félt the extreme velocity. And I have played numerous horror games, but never have I felt so sweaty as flying into hurricane Lee with my VR-goggles and a tiny private jet. The flatscreen and VR experiences for Flight Simulator are miles apart.

Nahh, for VFR it's funny and games. For IFR No!

Hi im looking for the right pheripals to play microsoft flight simulator in vr at 4k using a 4090 13900k build, you think logitech g saitek pro flight yoke+ hp reverb g2 would be a good combination?

I can't play use this without vr. It trully feels like a next gen experience.

Many people saying cocmpit is blurry and is an issue for them. Hope they get to at some point try The Crystal

Do like your video, thank you!

I do however wish that content creators would convey more the joy that comes with experiencing this "game" in vr, the wonder of it. Vr flight sim guy tends to do that well, and it comes across as authentic

Personally with a 1080 and not really looking to upgrade, I think I may stick with xplane for now. Also get to move my hands!

I tried vr with my quest2, the feeling in the cockpit was amazing but my vision out the window was super blury. I prefer my screen for now, until I upgrade my PC and vr headset

you dont use rudder?

Enjoyed your discussion on VR's pros and cons. I've noticed the stark difference in frame rates, between 2D monitors, and VR. I've been using flight sims since the early 80s, so, yeah. It took about a week to get used to VR. By the way, I'm legally blind, and monocularly sighted, with minimal field of view, and very low acuity, at 20/150R, and 20/200L (with lenses). As much as I love to fly within VR, my biggest problem is, I can't see ANY of the instruments. The only instruments I can use in VR, are ones that are analog. I can at least extrapolate altitude, heading, vertical speed, airspeed, and maybe fuel with analog. However, there's no way I can see the LED readouts of the stacks, or devices with text type readouts in VR. Even on 2D monitors, I have trouble seeing tiny text. I have to use the zoom wheel, when on 2D monitors, or I can lean into the controls to see them, in VR. Glass cockpits are out of the question, unless I can use a zoom wheel, or lean way in, or use a little hack to reposition my pilot view, by pushing well away from the desk, then hitting space bar, which resets me. When I move back to the desk, I'm now, always very close to the instruments, and can sort of read glass cockpit instruments. Still have trouble seeing the soft keys, and menus on those screens, though. And that's why I usually fly older aircraft with nothing but analog instruments, and scooch over, and in or zoom to see the stacks. At least that's one cool thing about VR. By the way, being monocularly sighted, I see in VR, what I'd see in real life, and that's a major difference between 2D and VR. It's now easier to fly in VR, for me, than to use 2D, because it's more like what I'd see if I were in a real aircraft. It just feels right. I had set up three 40" screens for a multi-view cockpit, but once I got the headset, I abandoned the multi-view setup. When I pick a plane, it's usually one with excellent visibility to the ground, and analog instruments. Can't stand planes who's engines, and wings block my view of the ground. LOL Thanks for the video. :)

It's better in MSFS than it is in X-Plane 12 I know that for fact.

Can I play using VR on series x?

Important (for me) question: Every single video shows a shakey/jittery camera footage when somone uses a VR headset. Is it really that shakey/jittery or what is the reason?

So much so that it's hard to watch on a big TV. Can't imagine such shakiness with even bigger screen (lenses close to my eyes)

If that is due to talking. How is it while using the vr headset and talking. Is it perceived as shakey as watching the video itself?

can you move your head only sideways or also back and forth ?

What if a person wears glasses. Can the VR headset be corrected for the vision or does the user have to wear glasses and if they have to wear their glasses will the glasses fig in the VR headset?

I would have loved to play it in vr on pc it would be more fun than on console i find it so unfortunate that on consoles the ecosystem is more limited for vr but as long as it not 100% developed and which will always have comfort concerns for some people i have the impression that it will be never democratized unfortunalely

I have been waiting and looking forward to the release of this game. However, when it came out, I realized that I couldn't play it because my computer simply couldn't handle it.
I was already planning to buy an Xbox console, but with time, I forgot about it.
But this year, I finally got myself VR headset and an RTX4090, which means I will finally get to try out this game.

2022 is the first year VR is playable in MSFS, lol. It took a 13900k and 4090 to finally get it done but VR is the only option if you have the beefy hardware.

cant wait to try this. I also have lots of experience with flight sims going back to secret weapons of the lufwaffe. Going to purchase the game soon, running a 13700k CPU, Gigabyte RTX 4080, 6200mhz ddr5, valve index

I am looking to get into MSFS with VR. Do I buy the PC version or the steam version? PC version is half price for some reason. I don't understand why. Could you please help me understand what version to buy and what is the difference?

All said vr sim with a motion set up ( bump and grind) is about it ..put a large industrial fan blowing in front of your sim rig and let her rip...

You will be as close to flying as you can get!!




Oh and ignore your nosey neighbors complainig about the noise coming from your place...
They're just jealous...


🐦

I find it comical that Microsoft never released a headset that pairs perfect with this game

Here is a tip: Talk with less 'umm' and 'uh' , just pause and think about what you re going to say. Your video would do much better with less 'umm'.

So, in 2D my PC runs at like 30ish fps @ 1080p. I prolly shouldn't even bother trying with VR should I?

Woah, that was a lesson!

Super well explained, thank you so much!

Is this game worth the 3x more expensive than FS4?

Great video, thanks. My opinion is, that we're just no there yet. We're getting there but it's still not quite what we imagined it would be.

2d flying is impossible after using VR to any level. People use a mouse to move their head. Its terrible after just moving your head and seeing the depth too. Its like you have a broken neck and one eye when you go back. Even with the lesser graphics with a cheaper system.

Flightsims were boring to me - but with VR i am now a real fan....

VR On MSFS Is still worth it for me, i been playing it alot since fsx and p3d, and now MSFS is so much fun!

can you please make a guide? i’d love to see it!

are you using a c172 mod?

Does anyone think getting a G2 at this point is worth it? Isn't HP leaving the consumer vr space this year? I have a valve index and it's decent for vr flying but I'm looking to change my hmd sometime this year. I've heard so many great things about the g2 for msfs. It's either that or the varjo aero for my next hmd.

I’m just now starting the VR tuning step, and have been looking to understand the visual data flow as the first step to understanding why is my realistic feeling VR experience such an unrealistic seeing experience. A light bulb illuminated for me when in the last segment of your video you talk about being close to the screen and the small number of pixels displaying the car. I have been comparing seeing 2D on a 24” 4k display viewed from 20 inches away, (8 million pixels in view at once) to being closer to My Quest 2’s wrap-around screen displaying 3.5 million pixels. The perceived sharpness from the reduced pixel density is very distracting, even though I know that my brain naturally throws away detail outside my focus of attention. This was the most valuable part of your video for me.

IT IS. In fact, once you try it - with moderate success - you just cant go back to flying with a display in front of you. You loose a tad of clarity and sharpness, specially if your system is low - mid tier and you have to pull settings down,, but the immersion is complete. VFR flights are insane in VR.

VR is the way to go if you are a flight simulator fan.

So flught simmers make better instrument rated pilots? It's funny to me that pilots won't trust their instruments. Idk if I'm level. Look at the instrument that tells you if you are level lol. Then trust it.

VR has some way to go in MSFS and Asobo have not backed up promises to use a dedicated VR team to improve things. So at the moment you need very high end gear to get the most from it and even then it takes a lot of faffing about to get the best from it. I started with a 5600X, a Radeon 6800XT and the G2 headset and it was amazing, but very buggy until the Xbox version of MSFS was released. Things got better (CTDs were fixed) but I still could not get the sharpness I wanted or even get Motion Reprojection to work with a Radeon card. Now with a 5800x3D and a 4090 I can over sample the resolution plus motion reprojection works well, so I get a far, far sharper image in the G2 and a smooth comfortable experience. I haven't flown in 2D since. Sure, without workable hand tracking, the interface is clumsy just using the mouse and switches on joystick/yoke and throttle quadrant, but you compensate pretty quickly I have a Pimax Crystal headset on pre-order and with that the much better resolution and wider clear area of view will make things near ideal, especially if their hand tracking becomes usable. For me VR is so good, especially coupled with a motion simulator platform and something like a buttkicker for vibrations, the immersion of being IN a plane, glider or chopper is fantastic. I used to fly IRL, mostly gliders but also fixed wing and rototorcraft, so this is as close to real life as I can get in my retirement.

Every now and then I'll run MSFS 2020 without VR and it's great because the performance is a little better, graphics, and just ease of use not having to wear a headset but it never beats that immersion of VR. The developers have done a great job making it compatible for VR. I can run the sim on max settings in VR and it runs really smooth. I would 75 percent I play in VR.

My only gripe for vr is resolution and fov , when they fix that , I will be happy.

VR Was a game changer for me especially with aerobatics and helicopters. I am a 20 year real pilot in airplanes of a few types, and a commercial helicopter pilot. With aircraft like helicopters that you can fly sideways or even backwards, the ability to look around quickly and the advantage of depth perception made a world of difference! It now feels MUCH more like real helicopter flight.

Good discussion. "Worth it" implicates $$$ as well as the tradeoffs you discuss. I got my Reverb G2 in last Nov's $300 sale and VR is definitely worth that. At $600 regular pricing I'm not sure, and at $1200+ for the newer, better units it's a definite no for me. I agree with most of the rest of your discussion; you touch on the tradeoffs where anything besides visual navigation is concerned, and that's why I can't fly VR all the time. The overlays needed to see the charts, vatsim comms, nav maps, etc., etc. come at too great of a performance and resolution hit. In that connection, it's hard to show VR non-misleadingly in a vid like this. Your vid does not show what your eye sees. It shows the image before it gets projected to your eye through a mini-screen and lens, with all the FOV reduction, vignetting, loss of sharpness and contrast, and so on. If VR really looked anything like this vid, it would be totally worth it.

Hey what type a plane you fly in the video? is it Mooney?

Good discussion. Having been a simmer since the 90’s I was shocked in a good way with the realism that VR brought to the sim. Yes there are trade offs with the way objects are populated and that needs to taken into consideration with VR.

Thanks for taking time to comment on VR flying in MSFS2020. Honestly I wasn’t at first interested listening to another person comment on whether VR was worth it but listened anyways and was pleasantly surprised. You analysis was spot on. I’m not sure if you said you actually got your pilots license but could tell you’re comfortable in the cockpit and nailed the landing. I agree that tuning your system for a balance of performance and quality takes a lot of time and patience . I’m running a rather low end laptop with an RTX3060 and 16g of ram so it’s been a struggle to get a smooth flight. The HP reverb G2 helped on the quality side. The quality of your video is now making me consider AMD as a good choice for my next system.
I completely agree that selecting your airplane of choice is also important. What model of Piper are you flying? I usually fly the Cessna 172 with steam gauges and I also fly a lot of patterns so when I get the courage and money to go for a real pilots license hopefully it will be more familiar, although not sure how much sim flying in VR translates to the real thing. Looking forward to your next upload.

I think that VR is the future, but for me it still has some way to go. Have a G2, 8KX and Q2 but unfortunately find myself always using my 3 x 4K screens, due to edge to edge clarity, excellent blacks, comfort and FOV. I still have hopes that this will change in the future.

I fail to understand the draw of VR. I have TrackIR and can't tell the difference, and TrackIR is WAY cheaper, works without the absolute top-end vidcard, and MSFS has supported it flawlessly since back in the alpha testing phase, whereas VR was a post-release afterthought with many updates affecting it and still there are complaints. OK, I will say that VR, due to its higher resolution, makes the cockpit seem a bit more 3D than TrackIR on a monitor, but ONLY a little. And really, I don't consider that worth the price difference. Outside the plane, there's no difference at all.