Posts by Zed

    I’ve been doing flight sims since SubLogic’s Flight Simulator on the Apple ][. An addict to them of sorts but just lost interest. That changed with the Oculus DK2 and FlyInside. Been hooked ever since.


    Tome:


    Even back at that level of the technology, people would post some pretty amazing user forum posts about what VR was like for them when they tried it out. One guy loved real flying and had lost his medical. He wasn’t able to really relate to flight sims on a monitor but gave VR a try just to see if it might really be like he had read other people say - that you “feel” the altitude, feel the fear, are in the cockpit instead of watching what it would look like on a monitor, etc. He said when he put on his headset and was able to look around, it was very emotional for him. He said he just sat there looking around in the plane and outside, and was blown away.


    A flight instructor also posted about a setup he used for his students. His flight school used computer sims to help students but some couldn’t turn the 2D monitor representation into a 3D mental picture to help with their real-world patterns and approaches. He said that when he put those students into VR they were able to practice everything they couldn’t on regular monitors and “got it”.


    Unrelated to the fidelity of VR flight simulation, there are people who have never had stereo vision even though they have good vision in both eyes. There are lots of reports of where they put on a VR headset and start seeing stereo. The odd thing is they keep seeing stereo after they take the headset off. VR is being used extensively in brain and vision studies.


    I think most would agree VR is hard to describe and do justice to. It’s an experience. The brain is working to process all it sees and is seeing the virtual world very much like the real one but not quite. It’s not that different from how the brain processes optical illusions but much closer to reality. It smooths over things like maybe the colors aren’t dead on realistic, maybe there’s scenery that is flat (which sticks out even more in VR), funny looking bridges, buildings, or trees, or whatever. The brain kind of looks past the problems and you interpret and perceive things as real. Plus you get the ability to freely look around in the virtual world just like you do in the real world. Just the ability to look all around is huge. But the bonus is it all feels more real when you can do exactly like you do in a real airplane and lean forward and back, or crane your neck, or whatever to see around wings, struts, over the nose, etc.

    Racing sims are another treat. When you are wheel to wheel at high speed it gets pretty intense. For me, VR is a way to see and experience things I will never get to do in real life. Explore the Titanic, go to the moon in Apollo 11, jetpack around the International Space Station, drive formula Ferraris, Lotuses, etc, fly amazing aircraft, explore the world, etc. I love flight sims but VR can take you other places too.


    I always recommend people try it if possible. It isn’t for everyone. But depending on what kinds of things people are into, it could turn into quite a way to sim and game.

    How is the clarity compared with other headsets you have used?

    It’s excellent. Pretty much edge to edge is clear. The lensing rocks. One thing, though, is instead of fixed god rays, you can get very light ghosts that move across your field of view depending on the scene. But in flight sims in daylight, not even noticeable for me. But just about everything you see is clear and in focus. It’s a big improvement over Vive/Pro. And it makes a difference. You can just glance at things instead of having to turn your head. And the combination of RGB LCD makes screen door much reduced (can still see it if I look for it) and instead of needing two pixels to make a white pixel (green/blue plus a green/red), a single pixel can make white. That makes text on dials and gauges much more clear since it’s almost always white. Invasion stripes, clouds, and text now look so much better.


    Phil - on the plus side, if you are only doing seated, you only need a single base station and can just put it in front of you. As a bonus you also get seated/standing facing the general direction of the base station. Still, it’s $150, but you really only need one.

    There’s apparently an issue with being able to press-click the joystick on the controllers but you don’t have to get those right away.

    After trying it, I have to say Index is the hot setup for flying and driving. Anywhere you can have fast relative motions. The 60/120 Hz display rate is so much nicer than 45/90. It’s a 33% increase for me and it’s just so fluid. And sharp. There is another thing happening with the backlight - it’s flashing very fast. Much faster than OLEDs in Vive/Pro flash. And that really tightens up the display. You don’t get blurring in a frame due to head movement. It’s more like how you see things in real life.

    The face gasket seems more for those with narrow faces and wide-faced people are asking for a different gasket. There’s the Index controller joystick button thing. And black levels are more gray since it’s an LCD. Those who want to hunt zombies in near total darkness might not like Index.

    But for my uses it is hands down better than Vive Pro. My wife now gets that one for Audio Shield since that is quite dark. She might prefer Index, though, since there is so much movement.

    I hadn’t flown Aerofly for a while but now that I have my Valve Index, I thought I’d give it a shot again.

    For those that don’t know, Index can run at 80/90/120/144 frames per second. On 120 fps (just not powerful enough to do 144), and at the higher effective resolution of Index, it looks amazingly real. The Bücker and the Corsair are just really breathtaking. The other planes too, and I haven’t tried them all yet to see how they look in the Index, but with the added smoothness, resolution, slightly more fov, and the sound which is now basically surround sound, it’s pretty nuts. Above a couple of thousand feet it is easy to get lost in the experience. You have to try it to know what I’m talking about but it’s a big step up. Highly, highly, recommended!

    @Rune - There are a number of new things about the new cards. Though Jensen Huang tried to say the 2080s were eight times faster than the 10s, that was an unfair comparison and he was speaking of the raytracing capability. The fact is that the 20 series has significantly more pixel renderers that do more per clock than in the 10s. In addition, the 20s have more and faster cache and higher bandwidth to faster memory. Not counting the RTX and DLSS technologies, dropping in a same level 20 series card (e.g. 2080Ti for 1080Ti) will get you an immediate performance increase as long as your system wasn’t limited already some other way. DLSS and RTX are bonuses on top of that. Where the speed increase pays off is in high frame rate applications like VR. There was an interview with an Nvidia engineer this week where he noted that the raw speed increase is in the range of 35-50% but benchmarks will come out in a couple of weeks which will tell the most accurate story.

    While you are probably correct that DLSS and RTX aren’t supported yet in flight sims, that may not take long at least for DLSS. Getting DLSS support is free for the dev. All they need to do is submit their app to Nvidia so they can run it through their AI engine to generate the DLSS coefficients. After that, you get deep learning supersampling that effectively increases the resolution at much lower compute costs than regular supersampling. I’d be surprised if RTX gets implemented that quick but the driving sims are pretty much guaranteed to add it fast if you run those, and maybe some flight sims will add it eventually. You don’t have to implement it all at once either. It can be used just for better shadows which all the sims have issues with. And don’t forget that Jensen Huang discussed RTX is key for foveated rendering in VR. No headsets do super high resolution and eye tracking yet, but no headset really could before. Now that we have the rendering hardware to support that, new headsets will probably pop sooner rather than later. It’s now a race for the manufacturers.

    As to buying the next iteration, the choices out right now are fairly limited and for most of them we don’t even know the clocking. The next iterations will be the higher tier with more fans and blinky lights in general, but in the 10 series, the differences in clocks generally weren't really significant percentage-wise. That said, we don’t know what the ceilings are but will fairly soon and probably before preorders start shipping.

    Just my opinion, but for VR especially, I think the 20 series will be a significant uptick in performance that will come just by swapping cards. Anything else will be gravy. If headsets come out that need the VirtualLink interface and support eye tracking, there won’t be any other choice.

    I'm still dithering over pushing the "buy" button.

    On the other hand, I'm really curious about how Aerofly will respond to the extra power.

    All the Ti's seem to be gone for now. Benchmarks are said to be coming available September 12th though.

    There have been some new reveals that performance may be even greater in the 20 series thanks to larger and faster caches as pixel pipelines that do more per clock so just multiplying cores times clock isn’t the whole picture.

    I agree with Kisvakond. It’s likely an unfair comparison. It’s like saying a front end loader can lift more cars than I can. That’s true, but I don’t go around trying to pick up cars.

    I don’t see any way that the 2080 line is that much faster than the 1080s if you just look at the structures they have in common. There could be more advantage, though, if structures like the ray trace engines and tensor cores can also be used for current tasks. But if they can’t, any real advantages will need to wait until the new features take over some of the existing tasks due to devs supporting them.

    At least for now and until the new features require the 2080s, it’s looking more like at least a 25% performance boost according to pundits. That may or may not be enough to justify the prices but it’s all we have until we get real benchmarks using fair comparisons with the 1080 series.

    I have a 2080Ti on preorder from Amazon but can cancel at any time. I'll be watching closely for benchmarks and either keep it if it benches well, or cancel it if it doesn’t. The only other reason I’d get one otherwise is for new headsets that need the VirtualLink connector.

    IMHO relying on real time raytracing on a flight simulator is a huge gamble as this technology is not yet adopted by anybody and only pushed by Nvidia to push AMD and game devs....

    Going over to RTRT would cause a massive decline in user count.

    Have to agree on the first point at least to a first approximation. We all know how well VR-SLI has done and how widely adopted it is. IPACS is small and has their hands full for now anyway. Bigger fish need frying for now at least.

    But presumably it could be an option instead of a requirement just as setting image quality is now. Shouldn’t have to exclude those without RTX-capable cards.

    The rumors are firming up and they will be called 2080 and 2080Ti (what will be available starting Monday). There is box art and photos of cards at videocardz.com.

    They will be beasts. The Ti has 800 more CUDA cores than the 1080Ti, 11 GB GDDR6 VRAM, and all the 2080s and 2080Tis have VirtualLink USB-C alt-mode connectors on them (so far) for next gen high res VR. That connector can push four 4k streams at 120 Hz. Nvidia also did away with SLI connectors and now has backwards NVLink connectors. The bridges are expensive, though, for the Pascal line of NVLink bridges - $599 each. We don’t know what the Turing bridges will cost but since they did away with SLI, it’s hopefully significantly less than that for consumer cards, and also hopefully, they allow one card per eye and just work. Having to have the app do the support is what basically killed VR-SLI.

    There’s been lots of leaks and this generation looks short-lived but that’s speculation. There’s supposedly a die shrink coming that will make even these seem slow. The short generation is why the computer rags think the strategy is to skip Founders Edition cards and just let the AIB manufacturers have at it as well as releasing both the 2080 and 2080Ti right out of the gate. 2070s might wait another month though. There just hasn’t been anything leaked about those yet and all the buzz is on the 2080s for now.

    Prices are rumored to be in the $800 range for the 2080 and around $1000 for the 2080Ti. There have been clues that there may even be a Titan direct from Nvidia.

    Orders are supposed to open Monday but don’t know when shipping will commence. Possibly Monday or maybe they are preorders. Also no real benchmarks. The only real benchmark was Jensen Huang showing about a 6x speedup using the ray tracing cores instead of CUDA on the 10 series as shown in the video above at the 1:00:00 mark. Other than that, speed improvements are anywhere from 20% faster to 6 or 8x faster depending on what you are doing.

    They look like very nice cards that not only support the next gen VR - and start the race to formally bring them to market since they can now be driven and there is a sufficiently fast interface to do it - but allow ditching some of the crutches we've had to use in flight sims. For sims that are CPU limited, it allows more time for the CPU and also takes some of the pressure off.

    I know what I'm doing Monday afternoon...

    Thruth is probably none of us here really knows what the F15 is capable of. Just cause one source in the internet says so doesnt meant it is correct. It will take a lot more research and right now it doesnt make sense to try to match the max speed only. If you had data for a level deceleration from say 400 to 300 kts then it would be ok to try and tweek the drag. But transonic and supersonic drag behaves counter intuitive, first it rises really high than it actually gets lower when you fly faster and so on.

    But this isnt simulated correctly yet, might be in the future

    Um, the F-15 is a fairly old plane and first flew in 1972. Older models already sit on pedestals and in boneyards, or are already disposed of as scrap. If you search Amazon's book section, there are 273 search results for F-15 Eagle - many of them technical. The aircraft is pretty well known and while some information may still be classified (probably only certain systems and not the plane itself), it’s pretty trivial to get good performance numbers for it. Just saying one reference does not a simulator make is a cop out. I'm not the one trying to market a simulator. I only mentioned supporting information for Dirk's original comment.

    You can certainly do what you want. I only commented in this thread because I thought just saying "don't go so fast" is a pretty lazy way to develop a "simulator". That approach will get FS2 a reputation as a game and not a simulator pretty quick. Not my sim, though, or my call on how to run your business.

    Dirk - an arcade mode might be useful and not that different from the difficulty levels in other sims. Again, only my opinion, but easy to fly is still different from performance way outside the envelope. Otherwise we can sit back and wonder when we get our supersonic 737. ;)

    As far as I know the F15 is theoretically able to fly faster than mach 3! But the canopy will melt away above mach 2.5 and the engines will melt also when using the V-Power for too long.

    So in my opinion the F15 speeds should not really be drag limited but heat limited (engines and airframe).

    I prefer facts over opinions especially when there are so many discussions of the F-15's "clean" maximum speed which would tend to indicate it is drag/power limited.

    Oculus software wont install, keeps telling me to reboot. I have followed all of their instructions, nothing works!!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr:(

    Might check on their company forum. Might get some help there. Sounds like a software conflict of some kind. Be sure to detail your OS, computer, any installation peculiarities, all messages, and look for a log file from the install and include that.

    Night time flying with the Odyssey is horrible for me. Smudgy delayed black shadows. The day time is great. Anyone else? My phone cant capture through AF2 but I have an example from a different game. https://imgur.com/a/3r702

    Yeah, it seems Samsung doesn’t drive their own panels properly. I don’t see those effects in the Pro. I don’t know what HTC does to drive the panels in the Pro but it’s notable in that the issues just aren’t there. Always really high quality visuals. But you pay for it.

    I think the point is that it is unrealistic that the sim allows you to do that intead of obeying the actual performance limits of the aircraft. At low altitude the F-15 maximum speed is Mach 1.2 - 900 mph, according to Wikipedia.

    Just saying don’t fly faster than that to make the flight realistic misses the point. The plane shouldn't fly faster than that in the first place.

    With cockpit sims you can get sick two different ways. If your computer can’t keep up and you get stutters, you may not even realize it’s happening but it can be a nausea inducer. You might want to keep an eye on frame rates until you know they are good and adjust settings as necessary.

    The other cause is just having what you see be moving when you don’t experience the same thing. The more cockpit you have around you and the gentler your flight, the less tendency for feeling sick. Aerobatics in the Bücker would probably be worst for that but are a kick.

    I have the Vive Pro which uses the same display panels as the Odyssey. I used to fly with the regular Vive which has the same pixel count displays as the Rift though different manufacturer and different field of view.

    Without a doubt I prefer the Vive Pro. The extra resolution makes a very big difference in gauge/dial readability and makes the experience much more immersive. Everything just looks great.

    I haven’t tried the Odyssey but in general reviews are good. They use inside-out tracking and in some rooms/lighting conditions can be an issue. You probably can hang some fiducial markers to help that if it is an issue, though.

    I remember when you got the Vive pro Bill you said it wasn't better than Vive as you needed to dial down the SS. Now that the new high performance OpenGL is out does this make a difference? Is the Vive pro not now able to run at a decent SS?

    Your experience with Vive Pro is not encouraging for those hoping for the Pimax 8K to appear in the near future. That's the reason I'm watching news on the 1180 so closely. I might even have to investigate GPU cooling as I gather these new cards will turbo boost a fair bit if they can be kept cool enough.

    Zed - what's your view on Vive v. Vive Pro on FS2?

    Hey Phil, apologies - I don’t check here for messages that often.

    I used to run with the Vive on FS2 but got the Pro as soon as they came available. (I use a EVGA 1080 Ti SC overclocked a bit more. I think it’s another 10% but like most of the settings, it’s been a while and I can’t quote the precise values.) Both for me have been very smooth in FS2 but my systems are beefy. I fly P3D mostly for myself since I can do real-world weather and multiplayer in FS2, but for demoing what flight sims can be in VR, it’s FS2 at least at first for the best in class visuals.

    Because P3D is CPU limited in VR, when the 8086k's came out, I rebuilt my system around that for a sure thing 5 GHz and am running 4-way memory at 3.4 GHz. FS2 is always smooth that I’ve seen but it was smooth even before. No stutters. No pauses. I delidded and used liquid metal to the heat spreader and have water cooling with a Corsair H105. At 5 GHz under load, it barely cracks 60C.

    Visually the Pro beats the regular Vive hands down for readability of anything in the cockpit. The scenery pops. The gauges aren’t blurry, I see the fine millibar lines in the altimeter adjustment window, etc. It’s just a very immersive experience now. Like I said, regular Vive was great and smooth, but Pro is nuts. For me it was worth it completely and I would never go back.

    I don’t remember my SS value but with the new system I’m running max on just about everything. I think SS is 1.2 but don’t remember. Whatever it is, it looks great and performs great in FS2. I get lost in it.

    I know I went overboard by some standards, but I have a near pro-level system now and it runs like it. My experience probably doesn’t help much but a 4.5 GHz i7 with the Vive and even the Pro worked great in FS2. I had this new setup before the big Vulkan update so can’t comment on how much better it would have run. I had the new setup for flights with the Vulkan update so can’t really compare. The systems bookended the update.

    TLDR; big visual difference between Vive and Pro, fine performance with both, but overbuilt systems so may not mean much.

    Cheers!

    Is this with an Oculus or a Vive? If you are able to do this with a Vive Pro, then I have something seriously wrong with my computer or setup!

    Oldar, a few possible gotchas have to do with memory, hyperthreading, and cooling. I don’t know experience level so apologies if I shoot too low.

    Some system are built with slow memory, have the wrong number of sticks for the memory channels, or the memory isn’t clocked above stock even though it’s rated much higher. DDR4 is stock 2133 MHz and motherboards will generally clock it at that even though it can be rated above 4 GHz. Overclock generally has to be enabled to get the higher speeds. Other killers are only using one stick, or three with boards/CPUs that want 2 or 4.

    For hyperthreading it depends on the application but swapping threads on a core has overhead. If you have a thread that is maxing out a core, you probably don’t want some other thread swapping it out and porcing the hungry thread to pause. Depending on how many cores you have, it can be to advantage to turn hyperthreading off.

    The last one is cooling. Modern CPUs and GPUs will throttle if they get too hot. CPUs tend to lock in a throttle state and it takes a reboot to clear. GPUs will throttle if hot and speed back up when they cool. You can use applications like MSI Afterburner on Nvidia GPUs to monitor clock speeds but before I go fly I always set the GPU fans to max and then axit Afterburner to keep its polling from causing stutters.

    Other things that can impact performance are antivirus programs and "helpful" apps that get installed sometimes or come pre-installed on commercial bought systems. I don’t run anything that isn’t needed if I can help it.

    Hope that helps, but if not, good luck!

    I don't doubt you, but I have both the Vive and Vive pro as well, and I can get decent performance out of the Vive Pro only below a SS setting of around 1.2, and I get great performance out of the Oculuis at SS 2.0. With the Vive regular I have to reduce it to around 1.4

    What are your settings in Fs 2, both the SS and the graphics detail? What are your settings in the SteamVR setup menu for FS 2 in particular and the Vive Pro in general? I am asking this not be confrontational, far from it! I would LOVE to be able to use the Vive 100% of the time. The only thing I use the Oculus for is FS 2, and it would delight me to be able to gift it to a friend or family member.

    Please offer any help you might think would be useful.

    Bill

    In Steam I have SS set to 1.0 and only add more in other programs if I need it. The Pro generally doesn’t need much if any SS thanks to the extra resolution. I forget what it’s set to in FS2 but it won’t be more than 1.2.

    Graphics detail is maxed on all settings but one. I don’t remember which one and I’ll have to check later - Tstorms here now and late but I'll see about tomorrow eve. The one that isn’t ultra is something I thought would be mostly unimportant though. Shadow quality? I'll check.

    One thing about the Rift is they have space warp and thatdoes a great job of hiding missed frames. SteamVR has a couple of flavors of reprojection but doesn't hide performance issues as well. I’d bet you overall performance is very similar between the headsets but is better hidden by the Rift. Posted some things to check above.

    What are your full specs? Hardware, clocks, OS, etc?