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Comment by Guillaume86 | Hacker News Reader

They should release a Google Earth VR style app. There's a lot fewer places modeled in detail compared to Google Earth (sadly, my region in Belgium is an example) but having animated sea/weather/traffic etc would probably be spectacular.

Side note: try Google Earth VR if you can, it is not possible to explain how great it is with words, it's the killer VR app for non-gamers IMO.

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When I first got my VR headset and had exhausted the usual killer apps, I popped open Google Earth VR and was kindof blown away. I managed to find one of the old neighborhoods I grew up in, popped into street view, and proceeded to literally walk down memory lane.

It was really something. Sure the quality's not that great, but what's there works well, and you get a sense of presence with the headset that is considerably more convincing than viewing the same scenes on a flat monitor.

Same. I spent hours as a ghost gliding around a frozen world. Then I suddenly had to throw the headset off and lie flat on the floor and take deep breaths and try not to throw up. Took an hour for the nausea to go away. That was it for Google Earth VR, unfortunately.

I find it endlessly interesting that some people have your experience, and some people do not.

I've never gotten motion sickness, ever. VR also has never given me sickness. A slight fatigue at most.

I get a light version of it sometimes, though it depends on the game. One thing I learned to not skip is the IPD adjustment on the headset; it needs to be pretty close in order for the difference in perspective to fade into the background for me. My SteamVR config likes to reset it from time to time, and I can tell instantly when it's wrong; it's like looking through a fisheye lens, but not as pronounced.

For me, any game where the camera moves independent of my headset can trigger nausea. Blade and Sorcery's jump implementation is really bad about it; anything that lets me "fall" when I'm not expecting it. That at least makes sense; if I suddenly fell in real life I'd freak out too. Of all things, the non-teleportation option in Minecraft's popular VR mod, Vivecraft, trigger motion sickness most consistently. But I can teleport around Skyrim VR for literally hours and be totally fine. I get the feeling that with a bit of practice, I could build up a tolerance to it, but it's definitely a persistent danger. It's got to be frustrating for developers, since it seems like there's such a wide range of individual variance in sensitivity. If I get around to making a VR experience, I'll stick to teleportation simply because that's what I personally find to be "safe" and comfortable.

I can't go on any revolving fairground attraction or use VR for more than a few seconds or I get nauseous and generally feel unwell and disorientated.

This feeling can last days in extreme cases (more from an intense fairground ride than VR - never taken VR use to that extreme!)

I mean, you’re wearing a VR headset for hours without a break and expect no ill effects? Doesn’t seem fair to blame the equipment, you’d probably get sick from watching a roller coaster or flyover video on a flat screen for hours on end.

I can play Elite Dangerous in the space ship for nine hours straight with no ill effects, but 30 minutes in a rover in the game destroys me for days. It depends on the setting.

With confort mode on I'm fine, confort mode off is still a gamble.

Yes it's really something you have to try to understand. My dream VR app would be a Google/MS cooperation to bring together the best of Google Earth VR and MS Flight Sim rendering in a single package :).

Me too except I would like GTA or some other driving sim on real streets so I could learn my town better. Would be sooo useful for Boston.

What stops you from actually driving around the same path?

I made a game using Mapbox GL to have a 3D plane that drops you somewhere in the world, and you have to get home before fuel runs out. No compasses. It’s very much V0 and there’s only one level for now. It’s just a normal map for now, but I think it could be replaced for a map with better features.

https://www.heyraviteja.com/goingbackhome/

That was brilliant - I don't know the US that well it seems. Ended up on the wrong coast and ran out of fuel. Keep hacking - its got something brilliant at its core :-)

Thanks for the words of encouragement!

Is it possible to get a destination that's impossible to reach with the given fuel?

The game started me roughly over Washington DC and told me I had to get to Dallas, and I barely made it past Nashville (which is almost a straight line) before running out of fuel.

It’s really just a two minute timer. So hopefully it’s enough time. In the future, it’d be cool to make that calculation.

That was a lot of fun! I was very bad at it. The map was slow to load for me, but I think the fuel continuously ran out even when the game was stopped to load? I'm not sure if I would have made it even if I was on the right track

Glad to hear you had fun! Yeah, I’m loading the mapbox stuff as it goes. There didn’t seem to be a good way to preload all the tiles. Thanks for calling out the bugs. I’ll take a look

That was surprisingly fun, I got it after 3 or 4 tries. Keep hacking on it!

Thanks! I’ll keep working on it ;)

Turning is really frustrating it is way to sensetive to make small adjustments. I would suggest 'turn while holding left' rather than 'increase left turn rate while holding left'

I’ve heard mixed feedback on the turning. I think I was caught between 360 rotations vs larger circular rotations. Maybe this will have to be a setting, or I can introduce a rudder.

pretty cool idea. Bugs I found: the airplane is stopping in mid air, the steering is too sensitive, should be much much slower so it feels like a big airplane not small toy

That was great fun, thanks for sharing.

A lot of fun! keep going

Thanks! I’ll keep on it.

They already did, it's called Outings: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/outings/9pc50k3qbh0x?activ...

Sadly it does not have animations.

They also released an SDK, so there are a few other interpretations floating around the Microsoft Store.

I meant the FlightSim team not microsoft in general, pretty much the whole point compared to GE VR would be to benefit from the advances they made in the visuals department, dynamic weather/water/traffic is a big chunk of it.

About Outings, I should not judge by its cover but it doesn't look very impressive and seems to be AR oriented (mixed reality headset or hololens required).

Are you aware of GeoFS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoFS

Fun fact: Google Maps on any smartphone will show a VR-ish interface if you go into street view and tap the compass icon.

That’s the AR (augmented reality) interface. I’ve tried their AR walking directions[1] and it’s very good.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20776247/google-maps-live-...

That's cool. Any idea if MS flight simulator supports VR? That be amazing

Not 2020, no. But it is in their plans. I can't speak for FSX.

Wait what? A flight sim without VR? I hadn't even considered the possibility. That's kind of a bummer.

While there are flight simmers who use VR, somewhat counter intuitively it's not really a good match. Also, it's a tiny market from a $$$ standpoint.

In a flight sim you have lots of dials in the cockpit you need to look at, and long viewing distances outside the window. None of the VR headsets I've tried have had good enough resolution to have a clear view on the cockpit instruments. The combination of cockpit very near and long viewing distances is also a bad recipe for motion sickness.

And then there's the controls. With a VR headset you can't see your hands or your controllers. With a hands on throttle and stick controller (HOTAS) you can fly around just fine, but when you need to toggle flaps or landing gear or navigation instruments, it's difficult to find the right button for that with a headset on.

So VR is ok for casual flying around, maybe even some dogfighting or aerobatics with simplified aircraft models. But once you need to deal with aircraft systems or navigation instruments, you're better off with triple screens and/or head tracking.

I’m curious: in racing sims, in a three-monitor setup, the side view is extremely skewed due to perspective. They are there just to provide a sense of space and peripheral vision, but you’re supposed to look to the center monitor the majority of the time.

Is that not the case for flight sim setups? I can’t imagine looking at a horribly stretched image on a side window to be a nice experience.

While I've never set things up that detailed for myself, I'm aware of many multi-screen flight sim setups. The general effect aimed for is that each screen shows the accurate perspective that you would see if you turned your head in that direction from the cockpit seat you're 'sitting in'.

Edge of screen mappings can be a little tricky but the higher level rendering engines can make near seamless transitions.

Military and commercial simulators try for displays that absolutely minimize visual artifact distractions so the experience is as close to sitting in the seat as possible.

> None of the VR headsets I've tried have had good enough resolution to have a clear view on the cockpit instruments.

Have you tried the Index? It used to be bad on the Vive, but Xplane with the Valve Index finally made it possible for me to see the instruments without squinting.

It sounds like you're expecting VR to make a difference to the landscape or such. If you're in a flying plane, everything outside the plane is so far away that you don't get any depth information from stereoscopy. VR could be nice for the cockpit and takeoff/landing, but it doesn't seem essential.

But it does make a difference.

There's more to immersion than stereoscopy. All the different elements of VR (3DOF tracking, positional tracking, 360 imaging, hand/controller tracking, stereoscopy) work together to flip a switch in your brain that tells it that you are in something rather than merely looking at something.

Even simply covering the entirely of your 360 range of view is enormous on it's own for flight sims. Think of the $$$ that sim enthusiasts spend on multi-monitor setups.

VR makes a big difference if you don't have one of these crazy multi-screen setups. It is not about depth perception, more like just being able to look at your sides naturally.

A lot of people use TrackIR[0] to "look around" when playing cockpit games on a single monitor.

It tracks your actual head motion and exaggerates it (this can be tuned to your liking).

0: https://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/trackir5/

It's a great little peripheral, and much more affordable than VR or a multi-monitor setup.

The advantage is in being able to move your head to see more than what is directly head of you.

Maybe they could do something like how in Elite Dangerous you hold middle mouse button(? can't remember exactly what the control is) to freelook, but that's not as good as being able to control your PoV directly by moving your head.

I can fly a VFR pattern perfectly when using a headset. It's a huge PITA to do trying to look around while twiddling with hat switches.

For more context, the head of the FS 2020 program has said it's "very high" on their priority list. So while they won't block launch for it, it sounds like they aim to introduce it not too long afterward.

What headset are you using?

Oculus Quest and the VirtualDesktop application to play PC games via Wifi streaming (need a VR ready pc and a good ac router for that part).

Google?

Yuck.

I'd rather use my imagination.

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