VR vs TrackIR
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How much better is VR, compared to TrackIR, for BMS? TrackIR has its advantages - it’s cheap and easy to use.
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@tank2 the difference is impossible to describe in words. You have to experience it and I hope you can
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I used vr quite a bit and also used trackir since it came out.
VR is a very cool feeling, it isolates you in the world and you get to experience it all in great 3d depth. It’s awesome but requires very expensive hardware even to deliver acceptable frames. Comparing to a regular monitor, the quality you can run the game at is potatoes. It’s a hazzle taking it on and off fumbling around looking for buttons etc. Also, forget alt tab to windows for changing songs in Spotify or doing something else like taking notes
Trackir is once setup, very simple and easy. Very natural to look around and considering price, its a great addition to any simmer. Not cool or fun as vr but rather a great tool (mandatory even )
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@tank2 it depends on you, really. TrackIR and friends just works, performance is great, and it’s easy to drive systems with the mouse etc.
VR will require you to spend a bit of time getting to know all the options available to you for performance tweaking vs visuals and for you to find your happy balance between the two.
VR will also require you to work out how best to interact with the plane - mouse May no longer be the preferred option (personally I use mouse follows head and have left and right clicks bound on my hotas).
TrackIR makes it much easier to check six etc in BFM, though you can achieve similar with Vr neck safer.
VR makes you instinctively aware of your attitude and horizon via peripheral vision and the 3D / depth perception you get from it.
And the joy of just flying in VR is so much more.
So, if you’re someone who enjoys zipping along at 28k ft, popping off a couple of amraams and then maybe engaging a ground target from afar, you might prefer track ir. But if you enjoy simply flying, BFM, CAS etc, VR is pretty awesome.
Personally, once I switched a couple of years ago, I will not fly without VR in any sim. Ever.
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@tank2 TrackIR was, for me, a major innovation. Simple and easy to use, it made looking around intuitive.
VR really is another world. It has its issues, as others have said, but that first moment in VR ( after getting the %%$# thing to work) took my breath away. I sold my TrackIR within days.
I have a Quest 2, a bit blurry, but there is no way I can go back to a flat screen.
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The new generation of Headsets with either aspherical lenses (Varjo Aero / Pimax Crystal) or pancake lenses (Pico4 / Meta Quest 3 / Meta Quest Pro…) really bring clarity to the VR game.
You have 1:1 scale, 1:1 movement, depth / distance perception, and it makes flying much more immersive and actually easier in my opinion.
I couldn’t fly with a fresnel lens headset personally, but YMMV.
Regarding trackIR, I never was a fan. It brings a lot of easiness for looking somewhere, but since movements are not 1:1 it is not that easy to know where you are actually looking. -
@Flow32 said in VR vs TrackIR:
The new generation of Headsets with either aspherical lenses (Varjo Aero / Pimax Crystal) or pancake lenses (Pico4 / Meta Quest 3 / Meta Quest Pro…) really bring clarity to the VR game.
You have 1:1 scale, 1:1 movement, depth / distance perception, and it makes flying much more immersive and actually easier in my opinion.
I couldn’t fly with a fresnel lens headset personally, but YMMV.
Regarding trackIR, I never was a fan. It brings a lot of easiness for looking somewhere, but since movements are not 1:1 it is not that easy to know where you are actually looking.I only tried a Quest 2, thus Fresnel lenses headset, and came back to TrackIR pretty quickly, probably for that reason partly, and others too.
(And yes, I find VR fun, but not with BMS thus far:)
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@LorikEolmin said in VR vs TrackIR:
@Flow32 said in VR vs TrackIR:
The new generation of Headsets with either aspherical lenses (Varjo Aero / Pimax Crystal) or pancake lenses (Pico4 / Meta Quest 3 / Meta Quest Pro…) really bring clarity to the VR game.
You have 1:1 scale, 1:1 movement, depth / distance perception, and it makes flying much more immersive and actually easier in my opinion.
I couldn’t fly with a fresnel lens headset personally, but YMMV.
Regarding trackIR, I never was a fan. It brings a lot of easiness for looking somewhere, but since movements are not 1:1 it is not that easy to know where you are actually looking.I only tried a Quest 2, thus Fresnel lenses headset, and came back to TrackIR pretty quickly, probably for that reason partly, and others too.
(And yes, I find VR fun, but not with BMS thus far:)
Same,
IMHO,VR is not ready yet for flying combat simulators,
Its Glitchy, sometimes the rendering time is bumpy and annoying , and the sweetspot of the headset is really small , that without talking about the lack of general clarity and the feeling of low resolution. Screen does not having those kind of problems.
Tried Reverb G2 V2 on both RX7900XTX and RTX3090 and Quest 1 on RTX2080ti -
@vAiCon said in VR vs TrackIR:
Same,
IMHO,VR is not ready yet for flying combat simulators,
Its Glitchy, sometimes the rendering time is bumpy and annoying , and the sweetspot of the headset is really small , that without talking about the lack of general clarity and the feeling of low resolution. Screen does not having those kind of problems.
Tried Reverb G2 V2 on both RX7900XTX and RTX3090 and Quest 1 on RTX2080tiI would have agreed with you with all the HMDs I have tried in the past : Rift CV1 / Rift S / Valve Index / Pimax 5k+
The tiny sweetspot of the fresnel lenses is really bad, the god rays, and the unreadable instrument clusters.
This is changing though. I bought a used Varjo Aero, and it is simply amazing. The clarity is the entire FOV, and everything is perfectly readable, even the tiniest text. Performance is quite good, everything is fluid. Of course, this is not for every budget, and it might still be some time before that type of resolution and lens design comes into more affordable headsets, the Pimax Crystal being a good first step.
There are of course downsides, like being really warm on your face, having a hard time to see the keyboard and write stuff down, but it is doable, and as always, it is a matter of concessions.
Nothing is perfect, but I’m quite happy with what I have right now. -
@Flow32 said in VR vs TrackIR:
@vAiCon said in VR vs TrackIR:
Same,
IMHO,VR is not ready yet for flying combat simulators,
Its Glitchy, sometimes the rendering time is bumpy and annoying , and the sweetspot of the headset is really small , that without talking about the lack of general clarity and the feeling of low resolution. Screen does not having those kind of problems.
Tried Reverb G2 V2 on both RX7900XTX and RTX3090 and Quest 1 on RTX2080tiI would have agreed with you with all the HMDs I have tried in the past : Rift CV1 / Rift S / Valve Index / Pimax 5k+
The tiny sweetspot of the fresnel lenses is really bad, the god rays, and the unreadable instrument clusters.
This is changing though. I bought a used Varjo Aero, and it is simply amazing. The clarity is the entire FOV, and everything is perfectly readable, even the tiniest text. Performance is quite good, everything is fluid. Of course, this is not for every budget, and it might still be some time before that type of resolution and lens design comes into more affordable headsets, the Pimax Crystal being a good first step.
There are of course downsides, like being really warm on your face, having a hard time to see the keyboard and write stuff down, but it is doable, and as always, it is a matter of concessions.
Nothing is perfect, but I’m quite happy with what I have right now.i hope the prices would eventually drop below 1000$ for simulators designed VR sets
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@vAiCon
Also from what I’ve read Pico4, while sacrifices tiny bit of clarity of G2 sweetspot for much cleaner picture in general. Might be worth trying out.
It is considered good deal for its affordable (for VR headset) price. -
Have owned two VR headsets and sold them both - prefer TrackIR myself for various reasons. Yes you do need to force yourself to be come good with TrackIR it even after owning a while.
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@tank2 track ir is simple to setup and easier on your system. I prefer VR now. with that being said vr is one hell of a rabbit hole and it will spoil you. I have a hard time playing any other way now. BMS is decently easy to run in vr. If you decide to take the plunge in Vr I highly suggest looking on ebay for a second hand reverb g2 or a Quest 2. The reverb will have better clarity while the quest 2 will have better tracking.
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@Xeno Not available in my country,
but the issue is not only the clarity, but the performance of the VR compare to normal monitors, i have experienced super weird jittering and lags in multiple simulators, therefore it seems like the hardware is not efficient enough to handle it -
I really don’t get the “unreadable gauges/cockpits” comments for fresnel lenses. I do agree that the sweet spot is tiny and that you have to move your face more than you would in real life, but I am only on a rift s and have no problems reading anything in BMS, DCS, Il2 or MSFS. BMS is probably the smudgiest on the MFDs (though ironically with the clearest HUD between BMS and DCS Viper), but quite readable. In DCS, reading the map mfd in harrier or a10 is easy without zooming or leaning in.
Rift S + 1080ti. I run oculus at 1.8x super sampling, BMS at 1.0 with tweaked world scale. The other sims I use OpenXR + CAS which is probably why they appear that bit sharper.
The only time I get issues is smoke - in BMS, looking at a target through the TGP whilst one next to it is smoking is an fps killer, even worse if you can see it in the hud too. Jittering otherwise is just not a thing.
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Talking with a friend last night, he made a comment that I believe is quite on point : with TrackIR you pilot your view, so you have to think about what movement you have to do to achieve a certain angle / viewpoint. With VR you don’t do that, you just look where you want to look.
It makes finding a contact / bandit much easier when you loose sight, because you go quite naturally to where you last saw him.
Just my 2 cents -
@b0bl00i said in VR vs TrackIR:
I used vr quite a bit and also used trackir since it came out.
It’s a hazzle taking it on and off fumbling around looking for buttons etc. Also, forget alt tab to windows for changing songs in Spotify or doing something else like taking notes
Hopefully VR controller support will arrive soon which should make startup & cockpit interaction a bit easier.
You can use SteamVR’s desktop feature and assign spotify its own window, so if you absolutely have to change a song mid-flight, it’d shouldn’t be too difficult to open the spotify desktop window in vr, change song and close the desktop.
Taking (and referring to) notes is a pain but I think mostly alleviated with OpenKneeboard and a tablet. My handwriting is now my biggest issue with notes
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My brother gave me his Oculus2 last year so I will chip in and be honest.
The grafix in BMS are simply inadequate for VR. Maybe when the new engine comes we can see. But at present there is no suspension of disbelief.
In contrast, in DCS World beta with my Hornet, VR is an immersive game changer.
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@tank2 said in VR vs TrackIR:
How much better is VR, compared to TrackIR, for BMS? TrackIR has its advantages - it’s cheap and easy to use.
No comparison.
A good VR setup is so much better than a good TIR setup. But yes you will pay dearly for that good VR setup compared with TIR, and you might be prone to motion sickness which can be more acute with VR.Pico 4 is an exceptional headset for BMS (I get 90fps in most situations), and dogfighting has to be experienced to be believed! Buttery smooth, total immersion and easy to read gauges! But you need the appropriate hardware and setup Wifi etc. While the Pico is cheap, the hardware to run it for sims is expensive.
(I’ve done a video Pico setup on my channel which might find useful, as it outlines the usability).
There’s no comparison with the quest (2) and the Pico (4), Pico is far superior for sims. But I guess there’s few comments on the Pico since its not available in the US AFAIK.
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@Fish44 said in VR vs TrackIR:
There’s no comparison with the quest and the Pico, Pico is far superior for sims.
With the Quest 2 I would agree.
The Quest Pro is something else with the Pancake lenses and screens that move with the IPD setting, making a much better usage of the resolution. The Quest 3 should be on Pico 4 image quality levels or better.
I really believe it comes down to what type of lenses are used. Having clarity over the whole FOV is game changing in my opinion.For the rest, I’m with you. The immersion is awesome.