Dear Pimaxians:
Pimax will host a webinar with @Flight Simulation Association to discuss how to incorporate VR into your flight sim setup. Pimax offers 8K resolution and 200° FOV, aiming to create a truly immersive experience.
The FSA is an association of enthusiasts, pilots, and industry developers that provides all kinds of resources for getting started in flight simulation.
Register free at Join FSA Today!
In this seminar, VR experts from Pimax will present an overview of VR in home simulation, including:
How VR changes the simulation experience.
Common issues with VR (motion sickness, interaction with hardware controls, etc.).
Hardware requirements.
Tips and tricks for integrating VR into simulators.
Presenters:
Martin Lammi , Pimax European Marketing Director .
VR YouTuber and a flight simulator enthusiast all the way back to the early days of Microsoft Flight Simulator 95. Martin is based in Sweden and has been working with Pimax since 2019 in media management, marketing, technical analysis, as well as software development. Over the years, his passion for Virtual Reality and flight simulation has given him a broad technical knowledge and deep insight of how VR immersion has taken advanced flight simulation to a whole new and ground-breaking level.
Robin Weng, Founder and President of Pimax.
Mr. Weng has been engaged in the research and development of virtual reality devices and software since 2005 and was one of the first VR R&D engineers in China. As one of the first domestic Chinese VR headset manufacturers, Pimax was founded in 2015 and has since set new standards for VR headset resolution. The launch of the Pimax 8K set a Kickstarter record, surpassing even the famous Oculus campaign!
Everyone who participates in the live session will receive a discount code redeemable on Pimax devices. Plus, we’ll be giving away two VR headsets: a Pimax 8KX and Pimax Crystal!
One big improvement I am waiting for is the utilization of hand tracking. Of course that requires first of all that the simulation allows for (almost) all of the knobs and levers in the cockpit to be useable, but for me - who actually owns a setup with yoke, etc. & VR and currently is being trained in real life as a single piston engine plane pilot - that would be the biggest game changer if next to using a hardware yoke & beta quadrant could dial & press in the cockpit by using my hands. Sort of what some programs allow with point ctrl as a work around.
The prob seems to be that if the instrument is too small then turning knobs (in particular) looses accuracy or function all together. Since the scale is the scale they can’t increase to a size that can be tracked without misrepresenting how the panel looks in real life.
Most of the sims were born in non VR forms. Trying to grab a knob and turn it that wasn’t designed to be grabbed by the index finger and thumb in the first place might be problematic. Can the dev fix that? Don’t know but are there enough HT units out there atm that they would bother anyway? Might just have to live with the limitations.
@vittorioromeo maybe this is something what we asked from pimax long ago? Remember the question was “how to implement no need for paralel projections in vr games”.
The (largely) absence of hand tracking in the previous years surely was the main factor for the devs to ignore this potential. But nowadays 50% of VR users are Quest users who have hand tracking at their disposal, and newer headsets with inside out tracking will likely provide such too, so this balance is about to change.
As to the implementation challenges: I believe it would be feasible if they had a sort of a double activation mode: 1) you press a button you allocated on your Yoke or bravo quadrant to activate hand tracking (because it might otherwise lead to loads of unintentional activations of buttons when you just take your had of your yoke to grab something or touch your headset), and 2) you first point at the knob/lever you intend to operate with a defined gesture (remember the finger snapping for enter in the MS Hololens) and when it shows its activated (e.g. blue glow) you then can operate it with much greater tolerances to be applied by the devs as they know you are not meaning to operate the knob next to this activated knob.
With pointCtrl I solved the operation of rotary controls in such a way that I grab the controller, but then operate it with a scroll wheel on my throttle. Goes quite well.
I probably can’t attend the live event, but there are several things that I would hope are discussed.
Be sure to consider the Pimax Motion Compensation and how it relates to devices like the YAW2. Also MSFS just took a second big step forward in Sim Update11 beta with regard to it’s support of canted displays such that performance is not sacrificed and wide FOV + performance is truly possible in MSFS now. Situational awareness is extremely important to pilots, and I haven’t seen any flying with blinders on . Also of course clarity is king when it comes to flight sims. In my opinion, only Pimax has all these things as a single sim-enthusiast level product (currently the 8KX and the reality series as it becomes available). Also there’s support from independent devs for OpenXR (PimaxXR), which ties well with MSFS. Furthermore the release of the 4090 makes so much more possible. Pimax has worked with nvidia as a partner and offers 120hz displays, which are useful in achieving comfortable experience. They should have called the company FlyMax as simply no one else offers such a combo of products and support for flight simulation. (Now if we can just get a hand tracking that works wonderfully.)
Great to see Pimax considers flight-simmers a significant part of their base!
Also a shout to Blu, Sweviver, Robin, and Pilots such as Ben Myburgh that are bringing it to us!
May well be about to change assuming what isn’t there is because of lack of users rather than technical hurdles. In the case of instruments too small for the fidelity of the HT to handle properly, the number of users won’t matter.
Yes, it’s a workaround to use an activation based engagement model, but so is teleportation or thumbstick controlled locomotion, and still it didn’t stop users from accepting it.
Love a good work around. I wasn’t suggesting that one wouldn’t find a solution to the shortcomings of the tech. Only that the tech has those shortcomings
Some will use HT and compromise a little immersion and others might use say Voice Attack or such and have even less immersion. For my part, I wouldn’t lay out $161.50 US++ for what HT can and can’t do for me but others may disagree without judgement.
@camera well, it’s the good ol‘ C172, and it’s hardly younger than I am, and I am by no means young anymore… but it‘s not that bumpy, tbh, I guess they are maintaining them well…
If I refer only to MSFS2020, the 8KX WideFOV has been unavailable for a month now.
Intense flickering occurs and everything but the background disappears.
SIMUpdate11beta has not changed that and the bug has not gotten the attention of asobo developers as there are very few people reporting the bug, less than 100.
Join us tomorrow with content creators, simmers & experts on flight sims & virtual reality in a webinar with the Flight Simulation Association. Join and bring your questions!
Register free at Join FSA Today!
. Also of course clarity is king when it comes to flight sims. In my opinion, only Pimax has all these things as a single sim-enthusiast level product (currently the 8KX and the reality series as it becomes available). Also there’s support from independent devs for OpenXR (PimaxXR), which ties well with MSFS. Furthermore the release of the 4090 makes so much more possible. Pimax has worked with nvidia as a partner and offers 120hz displays, which are useful in achieving comfortable experience. They should have called the company FlyMax as simply no one else offers such a combo of products and support for flight simulation. (Now if we can just get a hand tracking that works wonderfully.)
