Today I learnt that the Su-25T in DCS actually has working VR hand controller bindings. Just like XP11, you can grab the stick and throttle and fly badly. Cool. Not terribly practical as yet, as you’ll need some buttons bound to do more stuff, but for a free flight it was fun. Enabled ‘VR Controllers’ in Options / VR and use the grip button to um, grip.
I guess because it is an older non-clicky pit, that was made possible. Like @smokinhole wrote in his excellent article, perhaps a glimpse at a DCS future with cut cords?
Can you give us a look at the clicky pit effects? I’ve always felt that once waldo gloves become a real thing (which I suspect the Capto Glove is), we’d see a pretty remarkable evolution over the wands/hand controllers in VR.
Sure. It is pretty clumsy, in that I think the right hand often seems to just act as the ‘click’ meaning some juggling is going on. A big ol gloved finger feels pretty imprecise too, and some of the gestures for turning stuff I either just don’t know yet or aren’t in there.
These imgur videos compress to about 10% of the resolution, but at least give a quick/cheap way to show how it generally looks (I have no idea where the camera is pointing when I do these, so tend just to look down a lot):
See, for someone like me that has a lot of applications, the largest of which is communication. Yes, I know all the “I know sign language” and middle finger jokes, but picture this: human RIO + Jester/Chester camera + fully animated hands = communication without needing to hear. Or even better, an on the fly sign to speak/chat converter.
One thing I really underestimated with the controller side is that once you have that sort of tracking it really increases the feeling of ‘being there’. Like not just a bit, a huge amount.
For sit down VR perhaps less so perhaps, but for room-scale VR it’s surprisingly simple to fool the brain and slip into that feeling of VR presence. It’s actually a bit jarring coming out quickly. The holodeck sort of stuff isn’t about pure pixels but lots of tricks that add up to something really interesting.
Ah, no thanks to VR stick and rudder in a Mustang. Pretty much would be like having VR sex. I might be old school, but there are some things that one needs to get their paws on.
Can’t wait to try it out! But I am up to my eyeballs atm. It makes sense though. (Well of course I would say that). But I mean it makes sense in that they are targeting that alternate product (I forgot the name) towards a less equipped market. If you can enjoy the sim at some level with no further investment, that is a benefit to the customer that costs nearly nothing for the developer.
