ESSENTIAL VR in 2022 | Hardware & Headsets & more | Flight Simulation | Part 1 - an introduction

technology changes and things march forward if you're into flight simulation in fact simulation of any kind you've definitely heard about virtual reality and vr headsets and so on if you'd like to know more about vr so you can make an informed decision whether or not it's for you this is the first in a planned series of videos designed to walk you through the whole process and all the factors that need considering without getting bogged down in too much technical detail buzzwords and jargon and so on i've been involved in flight simulation and vr for many many years one of the early adopters and in these videos i can share my experiences with you welcome to the simhanger channel my name's mark thanks for watching and let's get started the technology behind virtual reality is now more affordable and more practical than it's ever been before you no longer need a science degree just to connect everything up and the neck breakers of yesteryear in terms of headsets thankfully are a thing of the past headsets are now far more comfortable and wearable than they've ever been and there's another good reason why this might be the time to jump into vr the release of microsoft flight simulator has opened up the whole world with an amazing amount of detail added to cities mountainous regions right down to buildings at your local airport for the first time ever i think it would be fair and true to say we can now explore the world from our armchair ever wanted to visit the panama canal denmark maybe or the plains of kansas well now it's possible and in vr it opens up the world in three dimensions microsoft flight simulator is driving a growth in vr not only from an aviation and training point of view but also for the pure pleasure and spectacle of it all navigraft a company known for the supply of charts and maps to the flight sim community do an annual survey in 2021 their survey recorded a 25 increase in vr usage to 15 percent of users within flight simulation principally there's three different ways we can view our programs first and most common of course in 2d and just look at it on our monitors or tvs and use our mouse controller or other peripheral device to look around the other option and the next step in improving the immersion is to use a head tracking device such as the excellent track ir as you move your head so your view on screen changes and the tracking technology is such you get full six degrees of freedom wanna look out the window just turn your head and have a look virtual reality takes this concept further by placing you in the middle of a 3d world giving the impression that you're really sitting right in the pilot seat of an aircraft allowing you to look around in 3d and interact with the various switches instruments and dials and so on it's this level of immersion that is unique to vr enhancing your sense of depth perception and really being there the technology behind virtual reality is not new vr works on the principle of stereoscopic views in essence it takes one image and projects that image to each eye separately but each image is slightly offset from the other your brain interprets these two images as one image but in 3d and then it adds another element tracking and it not only tracks your head movement but your position in the 3d world as we venture into the world of vr there are two important aspects to consider vr headset and hardware required as the hardware requirements to some degree are dictated to by whatever vr headset we're going to use it makes a whole lot of sense to look at the headsets first at this point i think it's important to note that this video contains my personal recommendations and suggestions other opinions may vary when selecting a vr headset these are the following major considerations to take into account the resolution of the image that the vr headset projects generally speaking the higher the resolution the better but also the more work your graphics card and cpu have to do field of view what is the width and height of the view that you can see in the vr headset compared to normal human vision the average for headsets tend to be 110 to 114 degrees with the valve index offering a little more and the pimax headsets being the king of fov with the widest field of view the overall cost of the headset to get you up and running of course is a significant consideration for most of us the tracking method being used to position you in your 3d world is it inside out tracking so the cameras on the vr headset position you or does it require base stations for external tracking which generally is more accurate and recommended if you're doing a lot of movement whilst in vr for flight simulation where we're normally set well inside out tracking is quite acceptable and the last but very important one on my list is the comfort of the headset overall is it comfortable to wear for extended periods of time and does it accommodate people who wear glasses there are of course other considerations such as color reproduction does it come with hand controllers but in this video we're just concentrating on the main factors there is a wide and growing selection of vr headsets in the market at this time i can't cover them all obviously but here are five of the more common or more popular headsets used for flight simulation at the moment and bearing in mind we're talking about people's first venture into vr we'll go through a process of elimination first up is a fairly new entrance to the vr market the farjo aero in terms of clarity and resolution it is the best headset by far but if you're starting from scratch it's going to cost you two thousand two thousand four hundred pounds so on the basis of cost goodbye virgil aero next up is the valve index it offers a wider field of view than most has great sound and is fairly comfortable if not a little bit on the heavy side unfortunately its resolution is lagging behind other headsets at this time when paired with controllers and base stations it's expensive the pymax akx offers the widest field of view of any headset on the market to do that it has to chew through more pixels than most other headsets but nonetheless it's a good performer but it is considerably more expensive than the remaining competition but his biggest drawback is its weight this headset is front heavy and there are some comfort implications because of that the oculosaur meta quest 2 is the cheapest headset in this lineup with prices starting from as low as 299 us representing great value for money and also the only headset in this roundup which is a standalone device meaning it can run some applications or games without being attached to a pc but in this instance not flight simulation to run flight simulation you would need a link cable and probably the elite strap raising the overall cost and at this time you do need a facebook account in order to use this headset if you only ever occasionally jump into vr for flight sim and have other members of the family frequently using the vr headset then this may well be an option for you setup is not always the simplest or straightforward resolution is good but not the best and that leaves us with my choice as the best vr headset for flight simulation in terms of value for money resolution comfort and ease of use i recently did a review on the hp reverb g2 if you'd like to know more about this excellent headset check out that video link in the notes below the price for this headset is around about 580 pounds but hp often have it on sale and you can pick it up for under 500 pounds with its combination of features great sound and 2160 by 2160 pixels pi it's the headset of choice in my opinion turning back to the navigraft survey we can see that the reverb g2 is by some margin the most popular headset for flight sim followed by the oculus quest 2. and this brings us round to the contentious issue of what hardware is required i say contentious simply because there's such a variety of systems and components that inevitably experiences will vary but what i can do here is give you a general guide but to keep the scope of this video manageable only with current hardware we're restricting our view to the reverb g2 and according to hp's website these are the minimum specifications required in order to run that headset in summary it's saying an i7 or i5 intel processor or an amd ryzen 5. 8 gigabyte of ram and in terms of graphics capability a gtx 1080 or rx 5700 i would agree with hp that these are certainly the minimum for vr vr does require considerable more grunt than normal screen display and with the above specification it would allow vr in low to medium settings and it's unlikely to be stutter-free particularly once more complex add-ons are being used but turning our attention now to current hardware what would be some of my general guidelines and recommendations for central processing units in your computer obviously faster is better from the amd ryzen stable the 5000 series of cpu chips and in particular the 5900x is a very good performer but with the introduction of the 12th gen from intel they're currently carrying the bang for buck as well as processing crown so for that purpose i restrict my view to intel again a reminder i'm only talking current generation from series 8 upwards any mid to high range i7 or i9 would also be capable of running vr any of the above processors would be more than comfortable running virtual reality within microsoft flight simulator the k simply denotes that that cpu can be overclocked if you're looking around and you find one with an f on the end or kf it simply means there's no integrated graphics chip but unless you're using a laptop you wouldn't be using integrated graphics for flight sim new in the 12th generation and you can see it on the 12 700 and 12 900 k you'll see the number of causes split between processing cores and efficiency cores efficiency cores come into their own in multi-tasking applications if you can afford the 12900k go for that but the sweet spot in my opinion would be an i7 700 k turning now to how much on board memory you're gonna need the recommended minimum is eight gigabyte but i strongly recommend a minimum of 16 gigabyte you can push that to 32 gigabyte of memory and it will help with some caching and load times but 16 gigabyte is the sweet spot 32 if you can afford it i wouldn't go to the expense of getting more than 32 gigabyte because microsoft flight simulator just does not take advantage of it you would need to check what type of memory your motherboard supported ddr4 ddr5 currently i've got to recommend ddr4 ddr5 is new on the market but ridiculously priced often three times the price gigabyte for gigabyte to ddr4 so go ddr4 where you can memory speed is also very important you should look to get some fairly fast memory i would start at 2 800 megahertz and up to 3 200 megahertz for ddr4 just a quick side note that you'll see ddr5 offering much faster speeds but note this does not necessarily translate pro rota into faster speeds and now on to graphics cards this is almost a complete video on its own i'm only able to give a short summary here and the choice is fairly straightforward it's between nvidia and amd nvidia's 3070 the amd equivalent is roughly the rx 6800 would be my recommended starting point there's also a 3060 and an rx 6700 but i would start from here if you can amd cards come with 16 gigabyte of memory whereas the nvidia 3070 and 3070 ti comes with eight and the 3080 comes with 12 gig the rx 6800 xt is roughly equivalent to the 3070 ti but currently amd don't have anything to go up against the 3080ti or even the 3090. if you can afford it and of course if you could ever find one the sweet spot would be the rtx 3080 the rtx 3090 is considerably more expensive than the 3080 ti and offers almost no performance improvement the only reason i've selected the rtx 3080 as the sweet spot and not the amd card is simply it's more compatible with more programs and with dlss coming to microsoft flight simulator it's an obvious choice for now i'd stick to nvidia cards and finally let's address the issue of storage for microsoft flight simulator plus all the various add-ons you're bound to accumulate over time i would recommend a one terabyte hard drive speed here can have quite an impact and if your motherboard supports it i would recommend a non-volatile memory storage device an nvme on my system i've got two two terabyte sticks installed they are fairly pricey but they do have a big impact on load speeds otherwise a standard ssd or solid-state storage device is recommended if you can put your microsoft flight simulator program and add-on data onto a separate drive from your system files file management is just easier that way well we've certainly covered a lot of ground today this video is designed as an introduction to vr to give you a feel for what's involved and what the basic requirements would be don't forget to subscribe because as far as vr essentials is concerned more videos are coming and if you feel inclined give the video a like it helps the viewership for the video and the channel well there'll be no prizes for guessing that i'm a fan of vr and particularly in microsoft flight simulator and this particular flight sim is optimized to work with the hp reverb g2 another advantage flying your aircraft in virtual reality is a unique experience it's one of the biggest steps to full immersion that we've ever had for me it adds to the excitement and the challenge thank you very much for joining me today i hope you found this useful and informative look after yourself stay well i'll see you again soon bye for now you

Channel: SimHanger Flight Simulation

Views: 38,002

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Id: HhcnS4szmoE

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 12 2022