Oculus Rift is here!

It's here It's here!

Finally:

FSX/P3D as it should be.

Oculus Rift VR headset costs $600

View Link:

https://shop.oculus.com/en-us/cart/

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/games/facebooks-oculus-rift-vr-headset-costs-dollar600-launches-in-march/ar-AAgreZZ#image=1

It appears to come with stuff that, to me at least, is useless for FSX/P3D, even if it has a proper way to interface with the sim (that's not clear to me).

From an article:

So there's (for me) unneeded expense for the purchase and why should I store (or even buy) something I'll never use.

That being said, if there's a reasonable way to interface it with P3D, it'll be very interesting, indeed.

It appears to come with stuff that, to me at least, is useless for FSX/P3D, even if it has a proper way to interface with the sim (that's not clear to me).

 

From an article:

Anyone buying an Oculus Rift in 2016 gets two games free with the headset: a dogfighting space combat game named "EVE Valkyrie" and a platformer named "Lucky's Tale."

 

You'll also get an Xbox One gamepad in the box, as Oculus struck a deal with Microsoft so that every headset comes with a gamepad. There are also motion controllers, dubbed "Oculus Touch," which will arrive at some point in the second half of 2016.

 

So there's (for me) unneeded expense for the purchase and why should I store (or even buy) something I'll never use.

 

That being said, if there's a reasonable way to interface it with P3D, it'll be very interesting, indeed.

You to read this post:

https://flyawaysimulation.com/news/4753/

FSX and P3D will work with Oculus, the games that come with it are extra not the system, like your computer it has items you would never use and preinstalled games.

Respectfully:

David.

YouTube Channel “David Robles FSX”

OK -- so there's a way to interface it. That means it's worth looking at for the future, but $600 is a bit steep. Chances are the prices for it, or something like it, will come down to more reasonable levels.

Thanks, David.

Guys, I've been flying in VR with the Oculus development kit 2 and it's amazing. You really can't convey how the experience is. It's something you just have to try for yourself to understand. When you fly in VR your brain gets tricked into thinking you really are in the airplane. Everything is in 3D just as in real life, the depth perception is there, you can judge wingtip distance from other planes, you can look all around as easy as in real life, judge glides, and everything you would do in a real airplane.

And yep, the CV1 is $599 but for a number of reasons, Oculus has chosen to not compromise on anything. It's the best virtual reality you can experience (but there is also the Vive). And it does come with a couple of other games/sims and an Xbox game pad. At least according to the guy that invented it, the game pad costs them very little due to a partnership with Microsoft on the Xbox. They are also selling the CV1 at a loss and subsidizing it at approximately $100 each to build the VR population. But orders at the time I write this now won't ship until June. Just to get you an idea of the reaction to the Rift, some scalpers who preordered right away and got March delivery commitments have been selling their Rifts for up to $1500 on eBay. Not just asking but actually selling. But the Touch controllers are not included with the Rift. You can't even buy those until the second half of the year sometime. You don't pay for those now and don't need to buy them if you don't want to.

The HTC Vive will go on sale in February and it's also a virtual reality head mount display just like the Rift but it does come with the extra controllers. We don't know price on Vive yet but think it will be in the $800-1000 range. It's a lot of money. But Vive also comes with a camera mounted in the HMD that lets you see the outside world when you want to and blocks it when you don't. It makes it easy to see keyboards, controls, joysticks, etc, whenever needed.

I haven't tried the Vive or the consumer version Rift but everyone who has says they are way better than the DK2 I have been using. I don't know if I'll end up going Vive or Rift but am leaning Vive for the pass through camera. I've preordered the Rift and will preorder the Vive too. These are brand new devices going on the market and we don't yet know which one is truly best. Probably they will both be excellent and it's just picking which one best suits you personally.

And both of them need a pretty powerful computer to run properly. People are gearing up with Nvidia GTX 980 Ti cards on i7 4790 systems for best performance though lesser systems work too. You just can't load up too much extra scenery, weather, etc. Oculus has a recommended system spec but it's probably a bit weak for simulation demands.

All up, these HMDs and the computer to run them, if you don't already have a strong enough system, will run you in the $2000+ range. You don't need as much power for the other VR experiences, but flight simming with P3D and FSX (and also Digital Combat Simulator) is demanding if you really want to get lost in it.

But let me assure you it is worth it. Every penny. Again, until you try it for yourself it's impossible to explain he feeling, but in VR, you really do feel like you are in the plane. Whatever planes you have in your stable. You aren't looking at a window into a 2D world. You are sitting in the damn airplane. Add a seat shaker / bass transducer to your chair and you feel the bumps, engine, rumble, whatever. It's visceral. You are there and you are flying. Get too close to the ground, other planes, obstacles, whatever, and the fear comes in.

But no way I can convince you how real the experiences feel. You just need to try it to really get it. Triples monitor setups are really cool, but they are still flat. I've flown in actual military sims - F-16, Huey Cobra, T-37, and T-38. Full motion on the Cobra and T-38. The real deals. And they all had 2D projection. Hemispherical and faceted displays but real cockpits. And I can say 100% that flying FSX and P3D now in VR feels more real. Sitting in my own den at home I feel more like I am flying than in any of those.

It's a big investment but I probably have more than what I spent preordering the CV1 in scenery and airplanes. It's way less than a 6 DOF rig though there is one guy occasionally on the FlyInside boards that does both and says it's phenomenal. I can't even imagine. Actually I can. You might as well be in a real plane. But VR itself gets you so very close.

Just a heads up. Virtual reality changes flight and driving sims completely. You make that transition into the sim. Not just watching it on a monitor. You go into it. And your brain believes it. When you try it you'll see.

I will confirm everything Robert said. If you're a half serious simmer, this changes the environment like nothing else. I've been flying with the DK2 since September after flying on triple 24" monitors since 2012. I recently disconnected one of the monitors and have not flown on a monitor since the install of the Rift.

Simply amazing, there isn't any other way to describe it.

I've got a 3570k which hopefully is up to the task, and in have a 980ti enroute to replace the 7970 card. Ordered the rift in the first three minutes so I am expecting a March delivery. Can't wait!!

I got some questions on this stuff so thought I'd post them here since others may benefit. Or not. But hopefully... ;-)

Q: Does it really feel more realistic than the other simulators?

A: The full cockpit sims are definitely more realistic for learning all the dials, gauges, switches and stuff, at least to some extent. And they definitely are cool. But when you take off, the perspective of the ground just changes. You don't get the feeling of actual flight with seeing the ground really drop away. In VR you do. I guess the biggest difference is just the 3D stereo effect and then how your brain is tricked. In VR, everything you see is the synthetic world and your brain just isn't prepared to not accept what it sees as reality. It's very odd but VR tricks the brain and your brain doesn't seem to be in on the joke. So it accepts what it sees as where you are.

What's even more weird is how your brain then fills in missing information and hides information that doesn't agree with what it sees. There are people researching this pretty heavily and it's something like how optical illusions work. Stuff your brain isn't used to dealing with is rationalized in various ways. So in VR, when you see the 3D cockpit in full stereo with the world outside the windows, even though you know it isn't real, your brain is convinced it is and then smooths over the rough spots to make it even more real. When driving or flying, you start to actually feel the motions. It's hard to describe. But this all also depends on how real the visuals are to the brain. There are things that break the immersion like judder and stutter if your computer can't keep up and all it takes is something like that to let the brain start trying to see why things aren't quite making sense and out you come. That's what the VR guys are referring to when they say "breaking immersion".

I know it all sounds kind of mystical but I don't know a better way to describe it. About all I can say is it is something you have to experience for all this to make sense. It is weird but you do feel like you are in the plane. It's like a vacation of sorts. ;-)

There is an online magazing called RoadtoVR and they recently posted an article about how Audi is partnering with both Oculus and HTC to use VR to demo cars (http://www.roadtovr.com/audi-virtual-reality-car-showroom-htc-vive-pre-oculus-rift-cv1/). I think the Audi dealerships are going to get hit hard by people wanting to see what this VR stuff is all about, but check the video mid page or so and you'll see how cool of an idea they have. I'm sure it's to generate traffic to their showrooms and I can guarantee it will do that. And probably sell a lot of cars. But that is going to be a way to try out VR on a really good computer system. Actually a really really good computer system. I saw one post where someone was saying the computers being used are equipped with Nvidia Quadro 6000s - about a $4000 video card. Maybe even higher.

Q: If I had the money to spend I'd definitely like to give VR a try, no doubt, but I just sort of imagine it's a bit cumbersome to interact with things in the cockpit with VR? Having to grab around for a keyboard/mouse? Or even joystick/yoke/throttle if you don't know everything by touch.

A: About interacting with the cockpit, keyboard and mouse, it does have its issues. And I'm farsighted and need glasses to see up close. That makes it even harder since I have to lift up the DK2 and put on glasses to mess with the keyboard, take them off and pull the DK2 back down to go back to flying. What I do is have the most common stuff mapped to joystick buttons and just use the mouse to click on things in the cockpit. On the DK2, there is the added issue of the resolution not being super great (but very serviceable) so I have to learn some controls to know if I am moving a lever to carb heat or regular air, etc. On the plus side, the consumer units out very soon are slightly higher resolution. Not hugely higher, but they are higher, but along with that, they have optics that use more of the screen that you do have which is another bonus. I'm really curious what the overall effect will be but it will be an improvement. Hopefully just enough.

One other thing about in the cockpit and resolution - It's Dan Church's FlyInside plugin for both FSX and P3D that makes this all possible. He has a Preview and Pro version. Preview is free and Pro costs. But Pro lets you zoom in on things as well to get past the resolution issue. I haven't found text I can't read using the Pro version. But for some reason I lose too much performance with Pro for the level of detail I like to have in the sims so I usually just run with the Preview version.

And more on interacting with keyboard, mouse, etc, HTC has announced and shown their on-board camera for pass-though video. It looks out from the HMD so when activated, you can see things like your keyboard, joystick, mouse, etc. It also lets you see people and pets, chairs, obstacles, and so on. HTC is aiming to include room scale experiences with possibly even an emphasis. Vive will also do standing and sitting just fine. Room scale is not a requirement. Similarly, Oculus has been aiming more at sitting and standing experiences but it will also do room scale. It's just the emphasis but as far as we know only the HTC Vive has the camera that looks outside. It's apparently not straight up video though. The room gets brought into VR as kind of an edge detected scene. Norman Chan at Tested did a great review at CES and shows what the auxiliary video looks like:

But the thing about a passthrough camera image is since these HMDs are set up to where your eyes are focused at a distance, that passthrough video is too. I'll be able to see up close as well as far away without having to lift up the HMD. To turn the video on and off it's just a button (hopefully I can simply assign it to a button on my joystick). Even if it is just edge detected, the people who have seen it at CES say they would look at their CES badges and be able to read them. Seeing a keyboard should be a piece of cake.

Q: Also how is it for extended periods of use? Like flights greater than 30 mins to an hour?

A: As for extended use, I have checked the time thinking that I've been in the sim for not long at all only to discover I've been in for hours. Probably the longest I've gone is around 5-6 hours. I got a talking to by my wife over that one. ;-) But this is with the DK2. It's relatively heavy and bulky, and some people report neck and eye strain over extended periods. I'm OK with it even though if you check the videos I've posted, I'm looking all over the place. The consumer versions are supposed to be much lighter and much more comfortable. The Rift may win on this one since instead of a plastic shell, they are going with fabric over a skeleton. Much much lighter and also better for heat transfer and minimizing fogging. Oculus hasn't posted any numbers on weight but those who have tried it say you forget you are wearing it and it's definitely lighter than DK2. Vive still looks to have a plastic shell so likely will weigh more but both also have a much better head strap that helps the weight distribution. But I haven't seen either for myself so everything about them is second hand info or going by what the companies have themselves said or others have said in reviews.

The only problem I see is that all the VR makers agree that unless you are hitting 90FPS you will cause motion sickness. Not only that but it's rumoured that Sony might be requiring 120fps to gain certification for it's PS VR.

So much so that a lot of the games Sony is behind seem to be really old ones with slightly improved texture qualities but very crude geometries...pretty much PlayStation 2 era games running on the PS4 + the external processor.

Either way I'll definitely be going with the PlayStation VR. I seriously don't think modern games will work all that well, and without curation and certification the free for all of Oculus is going to crash and burn anyways.

The resolution in the DK2 is 960x1080 per eye, and with that resolution it is tough but not impossible to read the gauges. The Dk2 also has a significant screen door effect which has been greatly reduced as well as the increase in resolution with the CV1. I fly the VRS Superbug quite a bit, and can tell you that reading the HUD is no problem with the Dk2. Reading the smaller details on the HSI does require a bit of a lean in, but it's so natural you don't really notice.

I remember when VC's became the big thing back in FS9, they were hard to read so everyone always swore by the 2D panels and there were many on these boards that maintained VC's were a phase and 2Ds would be here to stay. Virtual reality is here!

With regards to the FPS, flyinside uses a method called asynchronous time warp to manufacture 75FPs to the DK2, and now will be 90 to the CV1 while the sim may only be producing 15-40 FPS. Considering how long I've been flying FSX, some days I am shocked how well it's transferred to 2016 technology.

Anyone that hasn't tried the rift doesn't know what they're missing. It may not be for everyone, but I can't imagine going back to monitors.

The improvement of VCs you speak of was measured in years. Anyone that wanted to/wants to run a Microsoft Flight Sim has always had to buy top of the line stuff, or compromise their visual experience.

After flying with a development version of the first effective virtual reality headset, my opinion is I'd rather not compromise. VR in FSX/P3D is just simply too amazing. Im glad to be in a financial position that I don't have to compromise. Besides, it was the same price as my triple monitors that have now become redundant.

Tony is right and asynchronous timewarp is the ticket. In fact, anyone flying multiplayer has to lock FSX frames at 30 fps or else the planes jump around for some reason. But Dan's software converts those 30 fps from FSX into 75 fps for display in VR and it works a treat.

And even though the per eye resolution isn't 4K yet, you would be surprised how well it all works - screen door and low res of the DK2. But CV1 and Vive both have higher resolution than DK2 and all you do is lean closer and things get bigger, defined with more pixels, sharper, and easier to read. But you also have the equivalent of a full spherical screen all around you just by turning your head. I gave away my TrackIR after I tried flight in VR. Also, since the view hats aren't needed any more, it's easy to assign one of the axes to zoom and then nothing is too small.

I haven't tried it but the 90 hz refresh of the new HMDs also helps resolution. People can web search for more info, but at a 90 hz refresh, microtremors in the eyes and head add a resolution boost. It's how your eyes effectively increase their resolution naturally. At the 75 hz of the DK2, your eyes resample the same information so no boost. But at a 90 hz refresh, the microtremors boost the effective resolution you see in the CV1 and Vive. I can't wait to try it for myself and see but people say it works.

But there is no denying VR is expensive but it's not really much more than a triples setup. And you do need a beefy computer. Like Tony, I am grateful I can just buy this stuff because the effect is so dramatic there is now no way I'll ever fly or drive in sims on regular monitors again. Everyone who has voiced an opinion on the FlyInside boards has said the same thing. It's just that big of a deal.

And the horsepower required thing will get better too. This gen doesn't have it but next gen should get foveated rendering. With that, the HMD watches where you are looking and renders that at full resolution and everything else at lower. It really reduces the overhead. Dan is also going to add GPU per eye where two lesser GPUs can be used instead of one fast and expensive one. Support is working its way through the SDK and drivers and he said it's something he will be working on. GPU per eye and foveated rendering are the roadmap that allows the use of higher res displays and that will blow away any resolution concerns when it's all available. So it is coming. Just not here yet.

We are soon past the DK2 but even with just the DK2, VR blows monitors away.

No need to be hostile. (Refers to alaskancrab's message which was removed).

You don't think so what? That foveated rendering isn't real? Here is a demo: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2HS2p2BmVsk

Don't believe the per eye GPU rendering? Just go to AMD's and Nvidia's websites and look up LiquidVR and GameworksVR, respectively.

If you are thinking the 970 recommendation is a really powerful card, it's powerful but not that powerful. I run an overclocked 980 but will be going Pascal as soon as they are available. The 970 recommendation, if anything, is a little low. Oculus is curating their online store to make sure that everything on it will hit 90 fps on their recommended spec - which includes a 970. But there are other games/sims that need the 980 that Oculus will be excluding from their store.

FlyInside with FSX or P3D is very demanding. FlyInside is a plugin and obviously not baked in in the most efficient way. But these other technologies that can lower the hit - and I was referring to something like 970s in parallel, not 700 or 600 series cards as those are too weak and missing hardware features - are very real, aren't BS, and aren't imaginary.

Look, you don't have to believe me but you are almost calling me a liar here and I resent that. I have been open that this isn't cheap. It's a little spendy and even out of reach for some depending on finances. But this is all very real and is about to finally go mainstream. And it totally changes the sim world. Deny it all you want but you are only denying yourself the most amazing flight simulation you can have.

Audi is getting ready to put both Vive and Rift units in dealerships as a way to demo their high end cars. People will be able to see for themselves what VR is like and the Audi demo is pretty amazing. In the demo you can just push your head into the car to see the insides of the engine, the body and suspension parts, etc. It's the coolest cutaway experience I've ever seen. This should be available in a few months so when it is, go to an Audi dealer, try it out for yourself, and then tell them it's all BS.

foveated rendering

If that is what it sounds like, you don't need a HMD to do it. Something like the Tobii EyeX and a 4K (or 8K, or 16K) TV will be a much more practical option and more versatile too. Personally, for a general flight sim I think that's the way it will go. No doubt it will be useful in a Rift too, but at the moment the Rift's resolution is lamentable. You mention that it's 'not yet 4K' - it's not even 1080p as far as I can tell (1080x1200 is what it says on the Rift web site). Even if all else was equal, how long is it before we will see an affordable 4K panel on the scale of a Rift?

@alaska - At 75 fps update rate (and sometimes below), with the DK2 as VR is now, it's now most likely to cause people the nausea effects. But there is a curious thing that I don't know the full answer to going on. Few people get sick in VR in "cockpit sims". People think it has to do with the cockpit itself providing a frame of reference and the world moves around that. You head moves around in that frame but that doesn't seem to matter. The cockpit frame seems to ground the experience and the airplane motions aren't so much interpreted as your motions for some reason. But I'm only trying to explain my own reactions. I don't get sick at all in cockpit sims. The effect may make it to where people who do get sick bouncing around in light planes don't have near the reaction in sims.

Where far more people get sick are in the "Doom" style games/experiences where you drive around with a mouse and your movement is very much disconnected from what your body feels. That seems to get to people really fast and far more frequently.

Another factor is when people try to run VR on computers that can't keep up. If you can't reliably hit 75 fps in VR, and if you get occasional pauses and judder, it can be an unpleasant experience. That's why I say the Oculus recommended spec probably isn't powerful enough for flight and driving simulations. They are just very demanding and frame rates are the key. You have to keep them up. But when you do, the issue collapses to the kind of sim you are trying to run. First person shooters and that style of navigation and you may get sick. Cockpit sims and you probably won't.

The 90 Hz refresh rate on the consumer versions also seems to help with the nausea issues. The only person I have heard of getting nauseus in any of the 90 fps consumer versions was a reporter from the BBC at the Oculus CES booth where there was some kind of issue with the controller that she was using that reversed her controls and the effect. She got very nauseous to the point that she couldn't even take a cab ride back to her hotel.

I'm not saying nobody will get sick in flight sims, but it doesn't seem to be an issue. The DK2 now would be the worst offender due to the lower frame rates and in cockpit sims it just really isn't. For most people, again, as long as the computer is good enough, it's a non-issue.

@alaska - At 75 fps update rate (and sometimes below), with the DK2 as VR is now, it's now most likely to cause people the nausea effects. But there is a curious thing that I don't know the full answer to going on. Few people get sick in VR in "cockpit sims". People think it has to do with the cockpit itself providing a frame of reference and the world moves around that. You head moves around in that frame but that doesn't seem to matter. The cockpit frame seems to ground the experience and the airplane motions aren't so much interpreted as your motions for some reason. But I'm only trying to explain my own reactions. I don't get sick at all in cockpit sims. The effect may make it to where people who do get sick bouncing around in light planes don't have near the reaction in sims.

 

Where far more people get sick are in the "Doom" style games/experiences where you drive around with a mouse and your movement is very much disconnected from what your body feels. That seems to get to people really fast and far more frequently.

 

Another factor is when people try to run VR on computers that can't keep up. If you can't reliably hit 75 fps in VR, and if you get occasional pauses and judder, it can be an unpleasant experience. That's why I say the Oculus recommended spec probably isn't powerful enough for flight and driving simulations. They are just very demanding and frame rates are the key. You have to keep them up. But when you do, the issue collapses to the kind of sim you are trying to run. First person shooters and that style of navigation and you may get sick. Cockpit sims and you probably won't.

 

The 90 Hz refresh rate on the consumer versions also seems to help with the nausea issues. The only person I have heard of getting nauseus in any of the 90 fps consumer versions was a reporter from the BBC at the Oculus CES booth where there was some kind of issue with the controller that she was using that reversed her controls and the effect. She got very nauseous to the point that she couldn't even take a cab ride back to her hotel.

 

I'm not saying nobody will get sick in flight sims, but it doesn't seem to be an issue. The DK2 now would be the worst offender due to the lower frame rates and in cockpit sims it just really isn't. For most people, again, as long as the computer is good enough, it's a non-issue.

That's fine you might not get motion sickness. But in all honesty I don't recommend anyone dropping $600 without demoing it for themselves. And unfortunately the biggest failing of FSX is the addons people use. I'm sure if you stuck with the default scenery and default aircraft you won't have any trouble. But there are plenty of aircraft people regularly use who have very poor refresh rates especially in the cockpit. For me I'll stick to the flight sim's Sony is providing...

If healthy 18 year olds are getting sick on VR, I doubt it's an issue you can ignore as much as the manufacturers would like you to.

@Mark Hurst - Check that video link I included. They explain it very well and show the different resolution regions.

But foveated rendering works both ways - it allows the use of higher resolution panels when they become available, but even with the relatively low resolution of the DK2 and CV1/Vive, it is worth doing because it lowers the GPU requirements. Even with the lower resolution, GPU requirements are still very high because of the frame rates and that each scene gets rendered twice. As I noted before, I view the 970 as kind of low tier for flight sim as it is today. But foveated rendering can help that situation by cutting GPU requirements.

About higher res screens for VR, what we have heard on the Rift (and I don't have the quote handy to back it up so for whatever it's worth) is that Oculus at least is using a custom display panel for the CV1. (I use Rift and CV1 interchangeably) The pixels are high fill factor to minimize the screen door effect and I'm not sure but would assume they are electrically optimized for the low persistence flashing they have to do for best performance in VR. At any rate, if they are custom panels, that had to be expensive. I don't know if HTC is using the same ones for the Vive. All a guess, but I think it's hard to tell when we will see high resolution panels like 4k but the pressure will be there to make them at some point if foveated rendering and GPU per eye pan out like they are looking they will.

But foveated rendering pays off even now with the lower resolution displays because the viewing area outside of the center region of where you are looking can't be perceived in high resolution anyway. They eye is very dense with receptors near the center of your vision but the kind of receptors changes and density drops as you move out. Rendering the whole scene at high resolution is wasteful and computer power can be dedicated to other tasks instead of rendering unnecessarily.

Just calling snake oil for what it is... Good luck getting pass the motion sickness in FSX.

They warn you about it, and there's no doubt, if you jump into and spend 20 minutes ripping down the Grand Canyon in the aerosoft F-14 the first day you get the Rift, you'll get motion sickness. Like I did!

However, if you properly acclimate your body (inner ear) to using it, you will get used to it. I have been simming with it since September and I do not get any sensation of motion sickness now. Doesn't matter how aggressive I am in the sim.

If you don't like it, or can't afford it or whatever, fine. But making baseless statements without ever trying it sounds like sour grapes to me.

@alaska - I run with a lot of Orbx scenery and REX weather/textures, as well as a number of Carenado/Alabeo aircraft that do bog down my system. If I turn down autogen, boats, cars, and other scenery settings, it all still works. But that is on my particular computer.

The thing people have to remember is that frame rates are king. If you want to run VR without nausea, you really should do everything you can to hit and hold 75 fps in the DK2 and presumably 90 fps in the CV1/Vive. And a lot of the 18 year olds getting sick that you mention are trying to run on weak computers where they get stutter and judder, or playing Grand Theft Auto 5 or similar first person shooters where you do a lot of mouse navigation which is a recipe for nausea. VR does not work for all experiences. It happens to work great for flight and driving sims.

For now, and on some systems, that may mean turning down or disabling some add-on scenery and not flying certain planes. Apparently the cockpits in the detailed airliners with all the knobs and such can really impact frame rates.

VR is not perfect but the amount of industry attention it is getting is amazing. Lockheed-Martin is working to bring up native VR support and it is available in P3D now. It's not as good as Dan's plugin, but they are working on it. That right there should tell you where they think this is headed.

And as things like foveated rendering get added in and GPU per eye gets more support, people will be able to crank things back up they may have disabled or left unused.

I included a link above to the Audi demonstration video. You should watch it. I agree that anyone interested in VR should try it for themselves before dumping a lot of money into a VR rig for flight simulation. But the Audi demos are supposed to be amazing and that would be a way for people to try it when they get those setups in place in dealers.

All we are doing is giving people a heads up that it is an amazing experience and totally changes flight simulation. If you don't want to try it or do it, don't. It is obvious it isn't for everyone. Some people may get sick, but actually, of all the VR experiences I've tried, flight and driving simulations are the most mild for nausea. Most mild in that I have no issues at all. But you may want to avoid it or at least be very sure to try it before you buy it.

I am not going to keep arguing this with you, though. You keep coming at it with the determination that it is not going to work, it will fail, and it will make everyone sick. As I said, if you don't like it and don't want to try it, then just don't. I am relating my experiences. Tony related his. If you cared to look around online, you would see that pretty much everyone is very enthusiastic about VR flight simulation once they try it. Even real pilots go nuts over it. Flight instructors. Ex-military. There is a guy taking his rig to all local airshows and sets up in a hanger. The pilots go nuts. So if you don't want to give it a chance, then just don't.

And things like GearVR and Google Cardboard don't hold a candle to VR as embodied in the Rift CV1 and Vive. There is no sense in even trying to compare them.