Request to developers: Aerofly Vr and sound settings.

  • This is something I mentioned in a previous thread, that i'm not sure ever got noticed.

    When using Aerofly with Vr, I find that the process is less simple than it should be, as instead of simply clicking on an Icon and seamlessly entering the game, I find I must first get to my STEAM library, then click Aerofly, then choose my preferred VR mode.

    However, entering non VR mode is as simple as clicking my Aerofly desktop icon, and boom, I'm in. I would like the two things to be equivalent, and not require the additional steps for VR.

    This is compounded by the fact that unlike the vast majority of current Oculus titles, Aerofly will not automatically switch the sound to the RIFT headphones upon initialization, but instead requires you to manually alter your system's audio settings from whatever the default is, to RIFT audio.

    The combination of manually changing Aerofly to VR mode and then also manually having to alter the Audio settings makes starting Aerofly feel much more tedious than it has to be, and I find myself sometimes just playing in 2D or forgoing a session altogether because of the extra steps.

    Which is strange since one of Aeroflys perceived strengths is how quickly you can be up and playing, compared to other sims.

    It would be great if this was something that could be looked at, especially the part about having to manually alter the sound settings. The accepted practice now is that games automatically switch you to rift audio when playing in VR, and once you have that convenience, you do miss it, especially as Aerofly is the only VR title in my collection that does not follow this practice.

    Thanks guys.

    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

  • +1

    I used to be able to launch FS2 from the taskbar steam icon and it would first ask what mode to play in: desktop,oculus,steam. A recent steam update stopped this working, so now I too launch the steam library, go to Fs2, right click on "Play" and choose play in oculus mode. A bit tedious.

    As for sound, I first launch SteamVR (even though I have rift) just to get the sound switched over to Rift, though it also has the benefit of enabling audio mirror to my bass shakers. It would be nice to skip this step as Oculus Home now also has auto-audio-mirror as well as auto-audio-switch-to-Rift, but FS2 doesn't act on it.

    • Official Post

    Aerofly FS2 can easily be added to Oculus Home. The first thing that you need to do is add the parameter "-othervr" to the load options (right click Aerofly FS2 in your Steam library and go into preferences), then make a batch file running the exe from the Aerofly bin64 folder, use the free application "bat to exe", find a free Oculus application and install it and delete all of its folder contents then place the created exe into that folder in Oculus folder. Then when you run the application in Oculus Home it runs Aerofly.

    You can also change all of the applications icons so that you can see the Aerofly icon on Oculus Home as well.

    This works well.

    For the sound, i'm not too sure what you are doing there but all of the default settings transfer the sound perfectly into the headset, then when you are not using the Rift the sound goes right into external speakers.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • For the sound, i'm not too sure what you are doing there but all of the default settings transfer the sound perfectly into the headset, then when you are not using the Rift the sound goes right into external speakers.

    That's never, ever worked for me. Ever. ;(

    When I start the Rift and Aerofly, the sound comes from my speakers unless I manually select Rift in my computer's audio settings. That's always been the case, and was the case for most Vr titles until fairly recently. In the last few months however, almost every title (actually all that I know of) does this automatically, but not Aerofly.

    Can anyone else out there confirm that it switches automatically for them? :love:

    Also, the icon and Oculus home thing is a good workaround (kind of) but not really what I think the majority of people want to do...... I myself actually would be hesitant to repost this on other forums, because I suspect users will then ask me, why they should have to do all that?

    It's too reminiscent of the under the hood tweaking that was/is the bane of FSX, and that Aerofly is supposed to free us from. (mostly)

    Though I will use it as a hopefully temporary workaround.

    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

    • Official Post

    My response to you was merely just an independent solution that I can confirm works if you should so choose to use the suggestion, nothing more.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • I've never had sound auto-switch to Rift when running FS2. I need to do it manually from the taskbar or run SteamVR. I went to the trouble of doing the oculus home thing with bat2exe in the hope that Home's auto-switch to Rift would kick in. It didn't.

    I used the -othervr for a while then took it out as occasionally I want to run in desktop mode and being locked into oculus mode was more trouble than it was worth - I'd forget where in settings I needed to remove it. It would be good if it could work as a shortcut suffix so I could have different desktop shortcuts.

  • My sound seems to be using the windows default with no app option to change that.

    IF the app defines where the sound goes then ALL will be happy as you'll simply set it and forget it (for most folk).

    Please add this chage to sound in the same way as FSX and P3D do and don't rely on an automatic DEFAULT location.

    Some want VR through the headset and others don't and I certainly don't want to have to tweak the windows default to bring back my external speakers when NOT using AFS2.

    BG2518-Bob

  • Concerning starting up Aerofly in VR straight from the desktop: I have been doing this for months already and I only had to add -othervr to the load options in Steam and that was it. No need for all those batches and what not: whenever I click the desktop icon of AFS2 (which was created when I installed the sim) I am in VR without any problems.

  • Concerning starting up Aerofly in VR straight from the desktop: I have been doing this for months already and I only had to add -othervr to the load options in Steam and that was it. No need for all those batches and what not: whenever I click the desktop icon of AFS2 (which was created when I installed the sim) I am in VR without any problems.

    ..and if you occasionally want to run in desktop mode, what do you do?

  • And of course, this is why I brought up the subject. The developers probably have dedicated machines, custom startups and all sorts of other coolness that might mask what the issue looks like from the simple user perspective.

    Hence we have to give a nudge now and then. 8o :)

    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

    • Official Post

    And of course, this is why I brought up the subject. The developers probably have dedicated machines, custom startups and all sorts of other coolness that might mask what the issue looks like from the simple user perspective.

    Hence we have to give a nudge now and then. 8o :)

    I'm black and blue from all of the "nudges" :)

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • ..and if you occasionally want to run in desktop mode, what do you do?

    Hm, good point... then I would have to remove the -othervr option... But well, I never run in desktop mode so for anyone who doesn't either this is the easiest solution. (Afaik there are startup options you can add to a shortcut but afaik they only work with Source games... maybe someone could investigate that further.)

    Regarding the sound: I don't have any speakers and only use a headphone which is plugged into the front of my PC: this enables me to simply unplug it whenever the Rift has no sound. Lucky me. Sounds like a chore if you have to change the sound settings everytime from within Windows.

    • Official Post

    You can also make a desktop shortcut from the root exe located in the bin64 folder of Aerofly and add the parameter to the shortcut you want for VR and no parameter for the shortcut you don't want to start in VR...

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • All very clever solutions (but not for all) to a simple one (for all) - add user sound output choice in the app pls.

    I want to crash bang out the sound in the sim studio via the hi-fi system and/or via the Throne Thumper and/or via Oculus headset.

    Sometimes when folk are in bed I still let it go through the speakers and cite the missing option in the app.

    BG2518-Bob.

  • You can also make a desktop shortcut from the root exe located in the bin64 folder of Aerofly and add the parameter to the shortcut you want for VR and no parameter for the shortcut you don't want to start in VR...

    Only problem is that I've tried that and it seems to be unstable. Occasionally it opens Aerofly without problems, and others it seems to hang Steam with a transparent/blank action box which you have to click to regain program focus. Steam doesn't seem to like opening Aerofly with the -otherVR option without questioning whether you wish to allow it, and your choice is not saved for subsequent attempts.

    Bleah.

    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

    Edited once, last by HiFlyer (July 13, 2017 at 11:19 PM).

  • I'm on holiday, so maybe someone else can test this. I've read that the latest Oculus update allows for launching Steam apps directly within Oculus Home. If so it may also do the sound switching which would be great.

    https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-1-17-up…ps-oculus-home/

  • Yes, that does work after a bit of fiddling, but once it's done, never delete the icon or uninstall it, as it can't be reinstalled after that, at this time.

    Essentially, you have one shot at getting it right, so make sure it's a good one.

    No sound switching for me.

    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