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Comment by sasaf5 | Hacker News Reader

> Microsoft also announced today that VR support is coming to the PC version

VR for flight simulation makes a big difference, it's like night and day. Stalling makes you grip your seat.

There was a thing called Birdly at the SF exploratorium that was just insanely great. It was a metal frame that you strapped into with a fan in front of you and VR goggles. As you flew though the city by moving your arms, the frame tilted so you could feel the attitude and the fan sped up when your bird speed increased. I would have paid $10/minute to get more time on it.

Definitely approaching real holodeck hours, with many implications for society at large. VR already has a reputation of being "uncool" and just being a way to vicariously experience things others actually do IRL (think of the "are ya winning son" meme). Wonder if that trend will continue as the tech gets more realistic.

If you fast forward the progress 30 years you can imagine the near-perfect simulation of any experience which just has wild implications for society. If everyone's house can feel like Versailles and their food taste like lobster and their sex partner look like People's Sexiest Man/Woman alive a lot of what drives human motivation disappears.

Maybe watch the Red Dwarf episode "Better Than Life" which is more how I could see it playing out.

No way! I remember trying this out at SXSW in 2015, I never knew the name though. It was awesome.

VR gets my face out of my instruments and up looking at where I'm actually flying. It's an incredible change.

VR will make flight and driving simulators much more immersive and fun. I've been hoping for this for years (as I was a fan of Microsoft Flight Simulator).

Driving in VR is a great way to make yourself sick unless you also have a motion simulator.

This is highly dependent on the user, though it is a common problem. I've personally never had any motion sickness in VR, whether playing flight sims (including helicopters) or driving sims.

I get sick in FPS type games in VR but have no problem with driving/flight sims. Weird how the brain works.

I kind of agree. I have the same issue, although I'm not prone to motion sickness in life. My senses get ready for g-forces which are not there so my whole nerve system goes brrrrrrr. Then I need to put in mental effort to stop expecting motion and just concentrate on the visuals which ruins the experience. An hour in Digital Combat Simulator with VR is my maximum, and I usually need a recovery period for my internal gyroscopes to get in line.

I can race for hours with just a logitech wheel.

I'm interested to find out how Microsoft handles hardware controls like flight yokes so you can "see" them in VR.

Probably the same way as racing games- you can customize the view to make them line up with real life.

Any motion sickness problems? I'm thinking about getting this for when the weather sucks I can't get in a real plane, but motion sickness isn't my friend.

I play IL2 which is a WW2 combat sim in VR and have no motion sickness issues at all despite it involving quite a lot of spinning around that would make a lot of people sick IRL. Flight is one of the sweet spots for VR sickness as you have a cockpit which anchors you somewhat and for the majority of the time the rest of the scenery is actually quite far away.

No, because the plane's cockpit is in your field of view.

What VR hardware and flightsim software are you running? (I've got X-Plane 11 but no VR.)

Nothing too fancy or accurate. I use a Samsung Odyssey+ and play mostly Ultra Wings and War Thunder. It has been enough to put some life back in videogaming for me.

I wouldn't bother with X-Plane in VR; whilst it does "support" it, the frame-rates and below an acceptable level no matter what hardware you run it on.

11.50 is close to a release candidate and should help quite a lot, at least for smaller planes.

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