The History of Microsoft Flight Simulator

Will it bring its own surgical linen, or is there some DARPA-funded cutting-edge laundry detergent research for after the procedure?

As a young kid in 1982 I thought those graphics were stunning, at least compared to text based games I'd been playing.

For the future I personally think it really depends on if mainstream AR/VR will get traction or not, and there are so many challenges for that. Flight sims (and combat, driving games etc) are a great but very small niche of whales that benefits from the tech, but it needs a bigger consumer base than that to push it forward. AR is a better bet I think, and I could picture flight sim's using that well. I currently use either a VR controller in a 3D space or a mouse to flick switches in the virtual cockpit, but mixing real-world and the sim would take it up a notch - especially if haptic.

Graphically VR is still pretty awkward for this sort of thing, as even though 3164x3096 per eye the clarity struggles for real-world simulation like this (lots of detail in a cockpit). We need variable focus depth, higher refresh rates and better (non-fresnel) lenses tech. Meta/Apple/Valve hint at it, and Varjo has some good new things, but it's a race condition between having a monster PC to drive it = niche market vs stand-alone AR/VR for consumer adoption. I guess streaming the entire experience from the cloud via high bandwidth and stand-alone is really the only way this is going to go.

I'll post back in 40 years to see if I was close. ;)

It's a very compelling experience. It's kind of mind blowing to take your F-16 and casually glance at real world scenery outside your cockpit. The most immersive controls are hardware HOTAS/Yoke controllers, IMO. It runs fine for me on an RTX2080 and a Vive Pro.

Recommending VR gaming to someone is hard, it's like saying 'Go on this rollercoaster, you'll love it!' which a good chunk of people will just not enjoy it. There are moments of brilliance and kludgy pits of annoyance. I personally love it. I'm sat here with pretty much every headset made in the last 7 years, so I'm probably not a neutral person to ask. Try it first if you can. If you like it then going back to 2D is sort of hard.

For a PC, yep for flight/driving sims the bigger the monster the better. I use a Nvidia 3080Ti and an i9 overclocked cooled water to an inch of its life and I still struggle with framerate. There is always a bigger fish to buy next year though.

The again, it's cheaper than other hobbies like boats or flying for real (airliners at least) so like anything it's really the value you get out of it.

I would say that yes, it is. Sure, you can fire up MSFS 2020 and look around with the mouse and go, 'yep, looks like a plane'. But switch to VR and it's "omg, that's a plane! Also, I had no idea the cockpit was so tiny!" You actually get an idea of the scale of the plane you are flying in. You get better distance perception too, as you would expect.

Once the initial shock passes, you are done looking around and you decide to actually fly, you'll notice a major difference: you will spend more time looking out of the cockpit. Just like you would expect in a real aircraft flying under VFR. Because it's easy, and natural to do. Generally people spend too much time looking at instruments when flight simming. Because as gorgeous as the MSFS scenery is, it's still 2D. That changes a lot when you can look out. And no, TrackIR is not a good substitute. It does help, but it all feels 'fake'.

The thing is, specially with the current VR generation, that looking at cockpit instruments is actually a hassle (even more so for glass cockpits). The resolution is good enough for scenery but not as good if you want to read fine print. Of course you can move your head and 'look closer' at them just like if you had bad eyesight. It's totally doable, but can be tiring.

Bottom line. I would say it's very worth it specially if you fly GA aircraft (big tubes doing standard procedures at 30000ft are ok too, but stereoscopic volumetric clouds can only hold one's interest for so long). If we had higher resolution, I would say "absolutely, get one yesterday". As it is, there's a good chance you'll like it, and you can do it with even a first generation Rift, or a Quest.

As for GPUs. I could run on a RX580 by turning down a bunch of settings. You need to keep the framerate up. I would not recommend going that low end - even more now that GPU prices are coming down – as I would still get nasty frame skips from time to time. But hey, it worked. I got a AMD 5700XT and it runs perfectly fine now.

The official recommended VR specs are a RTX 2080Ti or better. Minimum is listed as GTX1080.

I’ve not actually tried MSFS with VR but playing other flight sims with it is incredible. A never go back to flat screens experience. In particular it maps well to having physical controllers and being seated all the time.

Head tracking is quite a nice middle ground. TrackIR is the best known commercial product but you can find free alternatives with DIY hardware.

With TrackIR (or equiv) you can see your surroundings, including your flight controllers. VR sure can be nice for some sightseeing when you're just flying around, but for longer flight simulation where you need to deal with radios, navigation equipment, aircraft systems, flaps, landing gear, etc it gets difficult. You need to have all of those buttons mapped and memorized so that you can find them without seeing them. I've heard some of the newest headsets have a camera for "seeing through" but I don't know how well they're suited to flight simming.

Before you ask: yeah, the picture doesn't move when your head moves. It's kinda like controlling the in-game camera with your nose. The response is non-linear (and configurable). Looking at the instruments in the cockpit is very natural, just glance at the location on the monitor and you meet in the middle. As you look further away from the middle, the response gets more non-linear so when you look at the edge of your screen you should see about +/- 90 degrees (perfect for general aviation). Really extreme angles like looking backwards isn't really needed for general aviation but if you do dogfighting, it's possible too but you might need to compromise a little bit with the non-linearity of the response.

I play MSFS with a TrackIR 5 head tracker and a medium-large 16:9 display and I use an Xbox gaming controller (with sensitivity at -70), keyboard and mouse. I've got a set of flight controllers in a box in the attic, but setting them up on the same desk where I work is too much to bother.

> Is the VR a compelling upgrade over the 2D experience?

It's honestly hard to go back? When I tried it in DCS for the first time, it was pretty blown away. You can actually see that cockpit dials are recessed into the cockpit, you can see exactly how big the space is (smaller than it feels in 2D!) and just looking around you makes for much much more immersive experience.

There are downsides though - clicking stuff is harder. The resolution is lower. The fps usually suffers. The whole setup is finnicky with a lot of cables. It costs a lot of money.

But for flight sim enthusiasts? It's a massive experience upgrade for a still reasonable cost (considering that HP G2 headset costs about the same as quality Virpil HOTAS set).

I've flown real planes too and yes. I've never felt really like flying in a simulator and that includes a moving cockpit one I've used, until I flew in VR.

For flight simming VR is invaluable. Of course YMMV

There’s a third-party sim for air traffic control called VATSIM that lets people play as air traffic controllers for various regions with data relays from a few flight sims so they can see participating traffic and chat to them: https://www.vatsim.net/

No.

But you can use MSFS as a client to join VATSIM as a pilot, where someone else is the air traffic controller (using another client app).

Being a controller needs training, even when doing it online.

I had Flight Simulator 5 and lived in New Zealand. There were only three New Zealand airports: Auckland, Wellington, and Queenstown.

Queenstown, which is quite beautiful in real life, was about the worst case scenario for Flight Sim 5 because it's all hills and mountains. So the whole area was a bright green untextured lumpy mess. But of course I was still excited that it had airports in my country at all.

One day I was messing around in the scenery library browser and discovered that all the Flight Sim 4 scenery - with Flight Sim 4 graphics - was included too.

It's a crime, in a city where crime is not prosecuted. That Daley was allowed to stay in office, instead of a very small cell, for the remainder of his life is indicative on the state of rule of law in the United States.

I would guess rameesh31 is an XPlane user. A friendly rivalry has existed for some time.

As a MSFS pilot: Asobo does some questionable things when it comes to instruments. For example, their "Weather Radar" as existing in MSFS doesn't show precipitation (like weather radars in actual planes do), but cloud coverage and density - something completely useless to pilots. Apparently it's a limitation in Asobo's weather model.