Vive Pro and Aerofly - Amazing!

  • I do not see any screen door.

    Hi, it's mister Negative again. 8) Iit's all very personal. Some see the screen door effect, some don't. It's the same as with smoothness or blurries in P3D: some say their sim runs utterly smooth while others would say that same sim isstuttering all over the place. I do see the screen door effect. You can somehow ignore it or forget about it, bit it IS there. No denying possible. If you don't 'see' it apparently doesn't bother you or you forgot about it thanks to the immersion (which certainly can happen!) but it is there. Quite often I also didn't notice the screen door effect during my VR flights in AFS but I never gotten used to the low resolution which also is something some people have no problems with at all. So definitely try to get a demo somewhere before you buy a VR device and if possible try it a few times. If you don't mind the screen door effect, the low resolution and the small FOV VR is absolutely very immersive and breath taking! (Yes, I thought I'd better end positive. 8) )

  • Nice positive. I can see the screen door in my big screen TV and even on my monitor if I look for it. Doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of shows, movies, or the very few games (1?) that I still play on a monitor. It’s whatever floats your boat, and obviously not everyone likes VR, but VR is what put me back in the virtual cockpit after giving it up after many years and it’s still a huge thrill. Just yesterday I did a 10 hour flight in a Connie in the Pro from SFO to PHNL with a bunch of guys. I’d get up out of the captain's seat and go check on the engineer's station, the view from the copilot's seat, and even look outside to see the view of the wings, fuse, and tail as the clouds went by. All full size. All a very realistic view that I’d never get to do in real life.

    Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, MFG Crosswind pedals, 2 dof Motion, Valve Index

  • Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

  • I have the Rift and love it. I do not see any screen door. But to look out the window and look down at 30,000 ft. is amazing. I have never flown a sim without VR But for those that do not have VR try to demo it at a store or a friends house. I can get off work and fly miles from home and I feel great even if I land in Zurich. I still get to work on time the next day.

    I feel the same way, also using a Rift. The screen door is definitely there but I only notice it if I'm intentionally focusing on it. To me this generation of vr devices have clear room for improvement, yet they are good enough that I find the overall experience totally enjoyable and very worthwhile. If it weren't for VR, I never would have purchased AFS2, and I have zero interest in flight simming on a 2D screen. Honestly, I hate to admit it here, but I don't really see the long-term appeal of 2D flight simming ^^ I have plenty of RC planes and toys that I'd much rather use than spend that time simming on a 2D screen. But in VR it's that sense of scale, depth, motion, altitude, speed, and really being inside the cockpit that makes it a completely different experience. It blurs the line between pretend-flying vs. actually being able to fly the aircraft from the same 3D visual cues you'd use in real life. I can't land the Pitts to save my soul in 2D but I can grease it in nice and smooth in VR because in 3D I know exactly how far off the runway I am, as just one example. There's also no substitute for flying beside mountains that genuinely appear several thousand feet tall!

  • Last June at the Avsim FlightSimCon I tried out VR (Oculus) flying Aerofly2 @ LOWI. The screen door was there but I got by it fine as the depth perception was so amazing. It fact the whole experience was mind boggling. Still put off buying as the price was a lot highter a year back but I'm probably going to get off the fence and dust off my credit card. I am leaning toward Oculus but I sure would like some comparison points of view with the Vive. Thanks.

    Dave

  • Food for thought:

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    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

  • There are still some settings no one has mentioned. The Odyssey uses Windows Mixed Reality. That utility has graphics options and Refresh rate options which may or may not influence how it works with SteamVR. Things like a heading bug disappearing if you move your head back 1 inch might make a difference.

    Other than that, the pricing seems a little strange in that you can purchase the Original Vive kit (with first generation controllers and base stations) and the Vive Pro for the same price as purchasing the Vive Pro and the improved controllers/Base Stations.

    Too bad the Vive Pro did not come out originally with a kit price instead of a per unit price....

    HTC Vive Cosmos Elite

    Win 11

  • Food for thought

    Very interesting. I have to say though that I don't agree with him that the screen of the Vive Pro looks the exact same as the Odyssey: the Odyssey looks more blurred and less sharp, at least on the screens he posted. The difference is obvious. This makes me wonder in how far the Odyssey is better than the Rift: the pixels are less obvious and there is less SDE but what's the use of the overal image is less sharp...?

  • Very interesting. I have to say though that I don't agree with him that the screen of the Vive Pro looks the exact same as the Odyssey: the Odyssey looks more blurred and less sharp, at least on the screens he posted. The difference is obvious. This makes me wonder in how far the Odyssey is better than the Rift: the pixels are less obvious and there is less SDE but what's the use of the overal image is less sharp...?

    I give him some leeway on this because he's essentially wedging his cellphone up against the headset to get a picture, and depending on a number of factors too small to correct by hand, the images are going to be a bit different.

    I put more weight into the fact that the actual OLED screens in the Vive pro and the Odyssey are identical, made by the same company.

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

  • I give him some leeway on this because he's essentially wedging his cellphone up against the headset to get a picture, and depending on a number of factors too small to correct by hand, the images are going to be a bit different.

    I put more weight into the fact that the actual OLED screens in the Vive pro and the Odyssey are identical, made by the same company.

    Makes you wonder why the Vive Pro is so much more expensive.

    BTW Just noticed (I sometimes am a bit slow) the Odyssey isn't for sale in Europe... What an odd decision is that! If I wanted to buy it would cost me 699 euro's instead of 399 dollars...

  • Well, here goes. My mini review of the Vive Pro.

    Most of the stuff you have heard is true. The headset is much more comfortable that the original, and even more comfortable than the Deluxe Head Strap addon. It works seamlessly with your existing hand controllers and base stations. Setup only takes a few minutes if you already have a Vive. It even remembers your boundary settings.

    Everything is noticeably crisper. Reading text is much easier in any program than it was before. Games will look better defined than they did in the original Vive. I don't notice that much of a difference as far as "screen door effect" is concerned. It didn't bother me before and it doesn't bother me now, but it is still there. I don't think the headphone speakers are quite as good as the ones on the Deluxe Head Strap, but they are fine. They are just a little more "tinny".

    Now, as for using it with FS 2, there are some interesting issues. The new settings menu looks at your computer system and assigns a "default resolution" for the Pro based on what it finds. In my case that was something like "142%". If I try to play FS 2 at that setting with everything except shadows on Ultra I get very bad stutters. Fortunately you can create a setting for every VR app you have (it is very easy and intuitive), and I find that if I lower this to "100%" I can fly almost anywhere with very nice smoothness and crispness. The New York DLC runs perfectly, but that was always a work of art as far as optimization goes. The gauges are easier to read and scenery remains sharper farther into the distance than it did with either the Vive original or the Oculus.

    Why did I say "almost anywhere"? Because the Chicago DLC is too much for the Pro. I get severe stuttering whenever I turn to face a new direction. You can fly along and everything is wonderful, but then it will start stuttering after twenty seconds, and continue doing so for up to five or six seconds. And anytime you turn more than a few degrees the stuttering will show up. You can lessen this by cutting way down on your graphics settings, but curiously I can't make it go away entirely even with everything set on minimum. It gets better with the lower settings, but it is still there. This is probably a memory loading issue of some kind.

    So, do I recommend the Vive Pro? That's tough. If you are someone like me who wants to stay on the leading edge of VR, and you can afford it, then sure. It is better than the original in just about every way. If you already have a Vive or Oculus and you are happy with it, then I might wait until it is available at a lower price. And if all you want it for is to run FS 2, then you have to ask yourself how important the Chicago DLC is to you. Maybe I just have something funky going on, but it will be hard to fly around Chicago and really enjoy it with the Pro. So, there is a lot to think about.

    Edit: Let me add that all testing was done with super sampling set to zero. You won't need super sampling anymore!

    Edit Edit: When I refer to super sampling I am also referring to the Render Scale Factor inside of FS 2, which was set to zero for all testing.

    Edited once, last by Oldar (April 12, 2018 at 6:34 PM).

  • Makes you wonder how performance will be with the Pimax 4K...!

    And BTW, I think that resolution setting which you had at 142% is the exact same option as AFS2's Render Scale Factor. Aren't you still using that one? Might be why things ran bad on 142%.

  • To give people a better idea what to expect, what exactly are your system specifications?

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5