Flight Simulators (Oculus Rift)

[ftarnogol]

I haven't seen any flightsim specific threads.

Do you know of any flight simulators that may support the Rift?

Flightgear has a very big community and comes in PC/Mac flavor. I've read in FG forums that some devs have bought OR to test integration.

[MSat]

Headtracking may prove slightly tricky with the unit that will be built into the rift. Maybe this can be resolved by also doing some rudimentary positioning using a webcam?

[brantlew]

Yeah, I'm surprised the flight guys are not all over this but there is surprisingly little noise.

[ftarnogol]

Headtracking may prove slightly tricky with the unit that will be built into the rift. Maybe this can be resolved by also doing some rudimentary positioning using a webcam?

You mean because of the limited DoF of the dev rift?

[Namielus]

the dev kit now has 9DOF, so that should go a long way. But for flight sims TrackIR is well established, so you could always use that.
In a cockpit you wont be turning away from the trackir so its not such an issue in that case.

However, I think that the announced 9dof chip is going to be good enough to control the cockpit view since you are just pivoting around your hips so to speak when you sit down.
Cant the 9DOF track head tilting, leaning side to side+forward etc pretty well?

[MSat]

Headtracking may prove slightly tricky with the unit that will be built into the rift. Maybe this can be resolved by also doing some rudimentary positioning using a webcam?

You mean because of the limited DoF of the dev rift?

Well, I can't say for certain as we don't know the tracker specifications just yet, but I would attribute it to the lack of translational accuracy, and therefore induced drift.

[2EyeGuy]

It's not 9DOF, there's no such thing (unless you include hand tracking). The Rift will have 3-axis gyros (measuring rotation SPEED), accelerometers (measuring orientation except yaw, and maybe acceleration), and magnetometers (measuring orientation except around magnetic north). And they will update at very high rate. But it won't measure head position.

There are space flight simulators that will be supporting the Rift, which I prefer to atmospheric flight, but I haven't heard about any normal flight simulators.

Flight Gear is open source, so we don't have to worry about what the "devs" do. We can add Rift support ourselves. The same with any other open source games we can find.

[Namielus]

Its not _actually_ 9dof thats just what people tend to call it and Im not going to get into a discussion about that as I understand what you are saying

quote from palmertech (although it is directly answering a question whether its 6dof or "9dof")

9DOF. That is one of the reasons we had to switch away from the Hillcrest. They were great people to work with, but we needed 9DOF as soon as possible, and our roadmaps ended up not aligning.

PalmerTech mentioned using those terms to avoid people complaining that its "Only 3dof" etc, when seeing other trackers that use this term.

[Owen]

Its a valid interpretation, which is commonly used in robotics. Even if some of them are technically redundant, the measurements occur on 9 different axis.

[2EyeGuy]

No, the measurements occur on the same three axes, as you know perfectly well.

This isn't rocket science... OK, actually it is rocket science... but this isn't brain surgery, so it shouldn't be so hard for people to grasp the simple concept of what Degree Of Freedom means.

People complain about it being "only 3DOF" because it IS only 3DOF, and people know VR is supposed to be 6DOF for full immersion and not feeling sick. It's not just because other products are lying too and customers are comparing numbers.

Would you say a Razer Hydra controller is 3DOF because it only has magnetometers and no gyros or accelerometers?

[mahler]

Back to topic - Flight Simulators

There have been multiple comments from people saying how much they are looking forward to specific Flight Simulators supporting the Oculus Rift, but nothing conclusive.

I found these threads on other forums.

X-Plane: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=60805

Rise Of Flight: http://riseofflight.com/forum/viewtopic ... 49&t=31769

Digital Combat Simulator: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=92556

Flightsim.com: http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthrea ... a-big-deal

MS FSX Forum @ AVSIM.net: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/381607-ocu ... e-support/

OculusRift.com: http://www.oculusrift.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1020

[bobv5]

I think the resolution will be too low for flight sims. All those gagues will need a lot of pixels to be readable at such high FOV. I'm hoping the dev kit will still have the changeable front panels Palmer talked about, so that I can try to use the Rift in mono at higher res.

[mahler]

I think the resolution will be too low for flight sims. [...]

Yet, millions of people enjoyed playing like this

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e2jzkELDfU[/youtube]

[bobv5]

True. It would be possible for someone to make a flight sim specially for Rift, but I can't think of a way of using the software already available.

[brantlew]

Yet, millions of people enjoyed playing like this

Ha, ha. That was one of the very first games I saved my allowance for and purchased when I was a kid. I logged a lot of hours in that flat terrain and a lot of time smashing into the Sears tower for fun.

[marbas]

I used to have a blast playing Interceptor on the Amiga. Im not sure I would want that on the Rift due to the coarse gfx in the game.
Anyways looking forward to try flight simulators on the Rift!

[MSat]

Do modern flight sims offer any sort of zoom functionality? I suppose if the developers are going to be integrating rift support, adding such capabilities should be a cinch. Then reading gauges shouldn't be a problem at all

[TheLostBrain]

Do modern flight sims offer any sort of zoom functionality? I suppose if the developers are going to be integrating rift support, adding such capabilities should be a cinch. Then reading gauges shouldn't be a problem at all

I think this should answer that question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5-wRIa9GDg

The head-tracking approach looks much nicer than joystick control I must say.

[Lilwolf]

a friend of mine is a professional developer who writes for microsoft flight sim X and a few other versions (the pro version and I think he also sells some planes for previous versions also).

I think he should write a full driver for my rift. He said no when he missed the original kickstarter, but is up for it now that he can buy them online.

The question is, if he wrote a real driver, is there a market for the driver?

[Namielus]

yes

[bobv5]

If it works well i'm sure there will be a market. But the guys who pay for FSX addons are going to want to be able to see the gagues. I just did a quick test at 1024x768, zoomed out to approximatly Rift FOV, and they are not at all readable. If he writes these things for a living, I suggest he asks his customers.

For less serious use (flying the microlight for example), I'm sure a generic warp driver will do the job, and FSX allready supports full 6DOF head tracking.

[MSat]

Do modern flight sims offer any sort of zoom functionality? I suppose if the developers are going to be integrating rift support, adding such capabilities should be a cinch. Then reading gauges shouldn't be a problem at all

I think this should answer that question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5-wRIa9GDg

The head-tracking approach looks much nicer than joystick control I must say.

The TrackIR setup is nice, but I'm guessing that it wasn't 1:1 motion tracking in that video. Either way, I do think that a quick zoom button would be more practical than having to move up close to see the gauge. But I'm just speculating here because I have no clue how difficult they are to read.

A really cool aspect to using an HMD for flight sims is that you can emulate the fancy helmet mounted HUDs used in modern fighters.

[Hooves]

I think flight simulators and the oculus rest are a perfect combination to step off into a virtual reality system. namely because flight sims already are leading the market in tracking gameplay, so it only stands to reason to expand flight sim tracking into a 1 to 1 ratio, 3 D virtual reality experience . with the integrations like free track I doubt it will take long for the oculus software to be integrated into any fights im worth it's salt.

[2EyeGuy]

That old flight simulator video looked like 640x350. The Rift will have much bigger pixels than that game did on a 14 inch CRT. So it won't look as sharp, even though it will have the same resolution horizontally (but a lot more colours and better graphics). The resolution for the part of the view with the cockpit dashboard will be lower.

Ways of fixing that are with 6DOF head-tracking (which we won't have), some other controls for moving our head around the cockpit, a button to move us closer to the wherever we are looking, or with a zoom button.

But if we want things outside the window to look clearer, we need a zoom button, since moving your head closer to the glass wouldn't help significantly at that distance.

[Johnny-Mnemonic]

I would like to see new Aerofly FS to be Rift-ready.
It's amazing new flightsim, and it is focusing on flying skills rather than on procedures. So resolution is not so important here.

I'm flying gliders in Aerofly FS, graphics and physics are simply amazing. It is very immersive visually by itself.
Movement of air masses modelled very well, much better than in default FSX. So handling of aircraft is very realistic.

Also, engine is very fast, so all this amazing graphics can be rendered on a laptop, in FullHD with 40-60 FPS.
Many people reported that on their home PC's they don't have less than 120 FPS.
So it's perfect for Rift

Here are few screenshots:









Rest of screenshots in FullHD resolutions available here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78320478@N ... 831671951/

Screens with other aircrafts here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78320478@N ... 618139438/

P.S. Not to mention, this sim pushed me to find gliding club and do some flights IRL.

[ftarnogol]

OMFG

I just peed my pants...

@Cybereality I could worship you forever if you ever release a driver for it (and you can take all of my money)

[MSat]

With the huge distances in flight sims, is there any benefit to stereoscopy except perhaps for the cabin?

[2EyeGuy]

Well, when you are taking off and landing, I imagine the 3D would be really great. And having the cockpit feel like it's right next to you and everything else way out at infinity, would be really good too.

But ideally, if you were coding your own flight simulator, you would recognise when the outside world was practically at infinity for stereoscopy, and only render the outside world once in that case.

[Additives]

With the huge distances in flight sims, is there any benefit to stereoscopy except perhaps for the cabin?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if the stero isn't worth it, the FOV alone would be. Also a 3d cockpit at least gives the depth of Background/foreground, and the background focus on the rift is at infinity i.e. a hell of a lot further than your monitor, so I would imagine that the experience would do well, even if distant objects lacked stero 3d.

[MSat]

Good points, 2EyeGuy. It would be nice to not take the performance hit of rendering the scene twice if it's not necessary. A dynamic system like you proposed sounds like it would be a good solution.

@Additives
Stereo or not, I think HMDs would be awesome for flight simulators. I was just wondering if having to render the entire scene twice (once per eye) was really necessary. Of course, if there is a noticeable difference (though I'm guessing there isn't), then render the scene in 3D.

[Owen]

Thats a pretty good idea. For the first render pass you could set the camera near plane out to a really far distance and render without stereo, then duplicate the image to each eye. Then do another render pass in stereo with the far plane at that same distance and ignore the sky. For any game where you have a lot of stuff in the distance this could reduce draw calls by a lot.

Though some edge fix-up might be needed due to the near and far geometry not lining up perfectly. Otherwise you may get occasional popping pixels along the seam.

[EdZ]

You'd have to render the HUD at infinite focus (i.e. with the scenery), but clip it in stereo (using cockpit geometry). It's not just a hack to keep the HUDgraphics in line with the scenery, but actually how HUDs work ('floating' image is at infinite focus)!

[Randomoneh]

You'd have to render the HUD at infinite focus (i.e. with the scenery), but clip it in stereo (using cockpit geometry). It's not just a hack to keep the HUDgraphics in line with the scenery, but actually how HUDs work ('floating' image is at infinite focus)!

Isn't everything at infinite focus, just at different convergence points? No?

[EdZ]

You'd have to render the HUD at infinite focus (i.e. with the scenery), but clip it in stereo (using cockpit geometry). It's not just a hack to keep the HUDgraphics in line with the scenery, but actually how HUDs work ('floating' image is at infinite focus)!

Isn't everything at infinite focus, just at different convergence points? No?

True, but that's an optical limitation. Put another way, the HUD needs to be at infinite distance (as with the scenery) but clipped by local objects to a limited area (and a different area per eye).

[xixtoo]

Hi All, I've started writing a plugin for X-Plane to add support for the Rift. You can see it and download the latest bits from:

http://runway12.com/projects/XPlaneOculus/

Head tracking is working at a basic level, but I need to put more polish into the camera positioning code so it follows the movement and orientation changes of the plane better.

3D rendering for the rift is not currently supported. I'm using Ibex to convert the X-Plane window's image to the format needed by the rift for now. It's not a perfect solution at all, but it's good enough for initial development.

Support for rendering in stereo 3D with the correct dirstortion for the Oculus' optics is a planned area of research, but may not be possible from an X-Plane plugin. Positional headtracking using a head mounted Razer Hydra is also planned.

Things are in pretty rough shape right now. Expect things to get better and more documentation to come after a few more hours of hacking.

[Evenios]

Flight Sim X will work with VorpX i think that will be great

[xixtoo]

I just uploaded a new alpha build and youtube video. Find both on the project's website: http://runway12.com/projects/XPlaneOculus/

Bug fixes/new features:

• The camera now moves properly to match the plane while it's in motion (Issue #2.)
  A command has been added for resetting the orientation of the Rift. This can be bound to a key or button on the joystick to easily correct yaw drift while in flight.