Oculus in the sim

[toprob]

Had my first Oculus Rift experience this week, very interesting too. I've never been a real fan of the idea, simply because I kind of grew out of playing computer games in my early 50s... And although there are a lot of uses for the Oculus, no doubt most applications will be games.

It also didn't seem to make much sense in the sim if you can't see the real controls, and I've joked that it makes it difficult to find your beer. But I've discovered that this isn't always a limitation (the control visibility, not the beer problem,) and the sim I used it on is the perfect example of this -- both hands always on the controls, so no need to 'find' anything, and your hands modeled in the sim, so when you look down, your hands are where they should be, albeit without the veins and hairy bits...

First impression was: it's a big world in the Oculus. I'm used to looking at the world by focusing on a 23" monitor, so although I try and make it as realistic as possible, the scale is always off -- a tiny little world on the screen. But with VR, you look off into the distance, and everything becomes full-sized. And there are no seams, you can turn your head as far as you can without running out of angle of view.

The resolution seemed to be limited, it's hard to explain the effect of this, but it made the world 'grainy'. It took about a minute to stop noticing this, though, once I got used to the experience. It's kind of like the grainy effect of fog when you can see the tiny drops of moisture in the air.

As I said, I don't think this would work as well in a normal aircraft simulator, which this wasn't, but for some applications it would be the perfect way to view.

Although I've concentrated on the Oculus, this wasn't the main thing which blew me away in this sim, but it's the only bit I can talk about. All I can say is Oculus + Prepar3D + a suitable full-motion simulator is the most fun I've had this decade.

[NZ255]

I'm definitely in line for the consumer oculus. I fly commercial so can manage all the controls with the mouse. Although it might be a bit odd doing this when the instinct is to reach up and flick the switch.