Posts by kenventions

    Just glancing at PE - sounds interesting. Seems like it creates a multi-player experience if another pilot calls his turn to final and you can see him in the pattern. There's always the risk of a few wreckers that won't follow the pattern / normal procedures. I remember this from online NASCAR simulation games many years ago - the race would start and you'd have one guy turn around and drive the wrong way - sorta funny but also a bummer if he managed to clip you :)

    PE is expensive though, +$20/month and only covers a limited part of the USA

    Jeff, what's the fade-out time on the VR hands? My WMR Samsung controllers are still there after 1 minute.

    No haptic feedback yet but I didn't expect it to work since Microsoft hasn't enabled it yet for SteamVR.

    The upper left return arrow on MENU pages seems to require a slower poke to consistently get it to work.

    Initially after the update my left hand finger was flipping C172 light switches 3 switches to the left from the intended switch but I rebooted my PC and it fixed that.

    My dash interface preferences to compliment standard yoke/joystick controllers are:

    1) VR haptic gloves (not available yet)

    2) Gaze-based instrument highlight + HOTAS buttons to change instruments (available)

    3) LeapMotion / non-haptic reach (available)

    4) Mouse (works in FS2 today)

    5) VR hands (works in FS2 today)

    My guess is that VR haptic gloves are a year away so unless LeapMotion is an easy thing to implement, it's probably not worth the investment.

    Jeff, will the feedback be adjustable like with other force-feedback controllers in other sims?

    If you're tight on MENU settings space, you could convert the current VR Hands setting from OFF-ON to a slider like the WIND adjustment where full-left is OFF and adjustments to the right increase the vibration level of the VR controllers.

    I'm not a software expert but I'll take a shot at explaining it. Game developers use SDKs so their software will meet the interface standards used with hardware and the hardware guys, in turn, develop drivers so their hardware also works with those same standards.

    Valve developed the "OpenVR" SDK and HTC developed a driver so their Vive would work with OpenVR-based games. WMR headsets also have an OpenVR driver so I was generalizing that Vive = OpenVR = SteamVR and WMR = OpenVR, therefore WMR = Vive/SteamVR .

    A real programmer would probably say I butchered that!

    Obviously, if Microsoft has some bugs in their WMR driver, then a WMR headset could have issues when running Aerofly that a Vive headset wouldn't encounter. I was hoping to make the point that with IPACS limited resources, they just need to make the Rift/Vive users happy because Vive's cousin (WMR) will probably be happy too.

    I was trying to say I think the Odyssey is working as well as the Vive is working with Aerofly. Any bug fixes for the Vive will also help all the WMR headset users.

    Regarding the Odyssey vs Rift comparison - I don't have a Rift. I've seen a pixels-per-degree comparison of the headsets and the numbers were:

    11 = Vive & Rift (pixels per degree)

    14 = Odyssey

    30 = needed for 1080p-like resolution in VR

    60 = human eye

    Performance-wise at a render scale factor of 1.0 for both at 90 FPS, the Vive/Rift need 234M pixels/sec versus 414M pixels/sec for the Odyssey. A standard 1080p monitor at 60 FPS needs just 126M pixels/sec but a 4K monitor at 60 FPS needs almost 500M pixels/sec.

    If you have any 4K monitors for your high-end monitor testing scenarios, adding an Odyssey would cover you for the VR high-end testing.

    With IPACS already supporting Vive & SteamVR, WMR headsets are also informally considered supported since they are SteamVR-based. I don't think IPACS has to do anything else to support them.

    The WMR controllers do have vibration motors (you'll feel 1 buzz when you turn them on and 2 buzzes when you turn them off) but Microsoft hasn't enabled them for Steam games yet - sounds like that will be soon.

    Currently, I don't think the Vive motors are working in FS2, once IPACS fixes that and Microsoft does their part, we should then have WMR controller motor feedback.

    I do think it would be useful for IPACS to own a Samsung Odyssey for the resolution vs performance data since it's the highest resolution of the 3 platforms and it's the same resolution (and probably the same display panels) that will be in the next version of the Vive = VivePro.

    Nice engineering work Andrew! I'm guessing one of the big challenges you have is the same challenge VR headsets went through - processing the data fast enough to the fool the brain that the experience is real.

    The answer for VR was 90 FPS or an 11ms update window. Does your data processing + servo motor response times happen fast enough so the g-forces stay roughly in sync with the game?

    I recently finished a roller coaster fans project (looks like you also used NL2) that uses the audio level to control the fans and it took a few Arduino coding tweaks to smooth out the signal without adding lag to the fan response time.

    Regarding the idea of marketing your seat - as I've seen in Shark Tank, people trying to start a "side business" usually don't get an investment deal because they want to see someone 150% committed to making that product a success. You'll also be competing in the chair business - gamers like comfortable chairs and we tend to spend money starting at the top of our senses (eyes/pixels, ears) and working down to things like HOTAS/Wheels + mouse/keyboard and finally niche things like Gaming chairs, ButtKickers, etc.

    I think your target market will be the same people that buy GTX1080Ti graphics cards because your chair will be a high-end chair so you may want to IM a few of those people to see what kind of chair they currently have so you know what quality/comfort level you need to achieve to meet their standards. In the end (pun intended), you would be trying to convince them to ditch their current Gaming chair!

    Just my 2 cents :)

    Two steps forward, one step back - I like the VR hands cockpit interaction but now I'm bumping into my keyboard, desk, and HOTAS stuff.

    Maybe in a year or two we'll get to use the mixed reality cameras in the Samsung Odyssey (and VivePro) to recognize my HOTAS and display an outline of them. When the next version of VR controllers become gloves, we'll want to see the HOTAS outlines.

    One key advantage of HOTAS over VR controller inputs is trimming - if I feel tension in the joystick, it reminds me to adjust the trim and that is SO realistic! That was one of the surprises of learning to fly in real life - lots and lots of trimming!

    Another advantage of HOTAS is the physical connection to the aircraft - they are 2 fixed reference points.

    Because of the obstacle problems with VR hands, I'd still like the option to select instruments with a VR centerpoint gaze (2 sec auto-highlight) then use a HOTAS up/down rocker switch to adjust that instrument.

    My guess is 95% of AF2 users have been using a joystick versus keyboard+mouse flying and almost all plan to continue flying with the joystick so the desk obstacle issue isn't going away. Once VR gloves are here, that will help because we'll no longer have to "find" them but for those instruments that conflict with an obstacle, we'll need an alternative way (gaze select) to interact with them.

    Great progress but it does feel a bit like two steps forward, one step back ... still really fun to experience this evolution in flight sims!!!

    My WMR controllers (Samsung) also have no haptic feedback but I don't think Microsoft has enabled haptic feedback yet for WMR.

    If I click the middle of the LEFT touch pad for 1 second, I do get the pop-up controller menu and the view-change options work as shown in the pop-up menu.

    I have a tough time grabbing the throttle in the Cessna 172.

    FYI - I did have to "please first delete your 'main.mcf' file located in your documents\Aerofly FS 2 folder" to get the hands to show-up in the cockpit. That may have been unnecessary if I had checked the VR settings to ensure "Show Hands" was enabled :)

    How about just having the THERMALS SLIDER adjust the thermals width, frequency, and duration all at the same time? I'm not a glider pilot but I do like to try the other Aerofly planes and it was a bit frustrating looking for thermals in the gliders.

    The MAX setting would be for Beginners with the MIN setting for Experts.