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Comment by sio8ohPi | Hacker News Reader

I'm using a Pico 4 with Il-2, no assists. Dials are 100% a non-issue (headset resolution has been good enough to read them easily for years). Spotting and recognition are fine.

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Is the Index that far behind? I basically bought it with IL2 as my main excuse (mostly hoping for some magic hack to repurpose lighthouse for desktop head tracking, but I never got around to adding a Vive tracker) and for me it was a clear not even close to acceptable. Tolerable for some quick "blow up some AI targets" but super far using a screen with my old webcam wannabe-trackir.

I've never used the Index so can't personally compare them. vr-compare.com shows it as having about 30% less pixel density, which is substantial; the pancake lenses of the Pico 4 also offer a large sweet spot. (The Reverb G2 is perhaps the most popular headset for Il-2, and sacrifices a little FoV for a little more pixel density than the Pico 4). The only annoyance with the Pico is that it's not really intended for PCVR, so you'll need to pay $10 for Virtual Desktop. But once set up I've found it to work well.

Trading FoV for density would certainly be the correct choice for flight sim, not much value in peripheral vision while scanning horizon or instruments.

Do you spend much time zoomed in, losing the angular 1:1 mapping of the viewport? I did that a lot with a headtracker (makes you really strive for precision, I had a custom build of freetrack with generous per-pixel hystheresis), but under the headset zooming felt more wrong than expected.

FoV is still very valuable for general situational awareness, IMO.

I spend very little time zoomed in. Mostly when trying to pick up a ground target. I agree it feels very wrong in VR.

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