The rings are there to protect you from banging your fingers into real things while you use them. Your hands grab the base positioned as shown; thumbs control the three buttons and stick, index fingers operate a trigger-like button just barely visible underneath, middle fingesr can squeeze the button on the sides. Very ergonomic.
Not shown are the two wrist straps that are attached to the base…so let me find another pic…
OK, so you see the wrist straps and how the hand controllers fit in one’s hands.
I am still working my way through DCS so take this as a work in progress. In flight, I no longer use the mouse and rareIy use the keyboard. I keep my right hand controller strapped to my wrist. It just hangs there out of the way when I am using the flight stick. When I need to push buttons in the cockpit with my right hand (e.g. Mig-21 radar controls, instrument lights, etc) I just grab the controller. I’ve kind of gotten to use a little twist-flip of my hand that pops the controller up and I catch it. I press buttons and then drop it again. It seems pretty natural by now.
The left hand controller would get caught up / bang into the throttle assembly so I just put it down next to the throttle (on a small table). In just grab it when I need it. Again, it is becoming natural.
This is much easier than using the mouse. The main reason is that you can see your virtual hands (black leather flight gloves) and reaching for them with your real hands is easy. You can’t see you mouse position.
I am considering going without the HOTAS throttle and “cutting the cord” on that side - using just the hand controller for all throttle and left side controls (flaps, landing gear, etc.). Right now my accuracy is not 100%, especially on the smaller switches so I have mapped certain things to hardware. SWe’ll see if my accuracy gets better with practice.
I’d say anything you can sip through a straw…you will likely spill sipped and chugged beverages all over the head set and that would be alcohol abuse.
That does limit the choice of beverages a bit as beer tastes rubbish through a straw!
How do I know? A friend of mine had his 40th birthday a few years back - he is a massive geek so everyone showed up with costumes ranging from GoT to Star Wars etc.
I borrowed a papier-mâché Death Star costume from someone for the occasion. It was basically a giant hollow sphere with a whole in the bottom to fit your upper body through and another smaller hole at the top for your head to poke out. It looked glorious and was obviously stitched together with a lot of love.
The problem? No arm holes. The only way I could drink was to hold a beer bottle inside the costume and fit a straw through the neck hole. A nice hoppy APA through a straw? Blergh…
Woohoo!
Amazon just sent me an email telling me the Rift S is on it’s way and should arrive here on friday!
That’s good news as the ordering page only had a kinda vague info, saying between Aug. 27th and Sept. 9th.
Ok, my wife and I kinda destroyed my Oculus mountain home.
Kinda nice though.
First impressions: that was easy and the tutorials were fun. The headset fits on my head nicely, same for my wife although she has glasses. Everything smooth so far except that I sweat a lot. I activated a fan to cool down a bit.
Installing SteamVR now, and I will try some apps like Google Earth VR, Mission:ISS and then try Space Engine and some sims in the next few days.
Hopefully not a bad omen. I must agree with @schurem that the acid test is DCS.
When you do get it going, I recommend you try the following. Get a nice, nimble fighter airborne and in level flight. turn your head 90º so that you are looking out the side of the canopy and then do a few snap rolls. If you don’t puke right away, you should be fine.
BTW, this is what the Apollo astronauts used to do in T-38s just before they went into space…except they did a lot of them. It desensitizes the inner ear.
Played a free game called “Aircar” on Steam for a bit.
Nice flying experience but I had to stop after 15 minutes or so.
I noticed that certain movements are making me queasy a bit faster than others, which makes me fear trying helicopters in DCSW.
Will have to build up that resistance I guess.
Edit: flying straight and not turning too quickly in any axis seems to work OK.
I just made my first takeoff, flight and landing in DCSW with VR, using the TF-51 (the only other plane I have the controls set up for is the Huey).
Worked nicely, except a bit low frame rate when flying very low.
But that’s not surprising as I have everything set to high still. Haven’t made any VR adjustments yet.
However… the mouse doesn’t work and I cannot click some stuff in the cockpit, especially the flaps handle.
From my limited experience I think the aircraft mod has to include VR capability. For instance, in the Hip I think every button, lever and switch works. No so in the Gazelle. I’ve mostly flow the Mig-21 and Viggen and again every thing works. That said, I have stopped using the mouse and only use the hand controllers.
You should se a pair of hands in leather gloves. Pointing the index finger shoots a green “laser” which you aim at a control and then pull the middle finger button on the controller. That is your basic, left mouse button function. For 3 way switches or other things that you need the right button, rotate your wrist to the right (for the right controller, I think the left controller is a left rotate) until the. laser turns blue/purple and then “click” with your middle finger.
Also, for many simple buttons you only have to point your index finger and “push” the button–bring your virtual finger into virtual contact with the button . This works great for the Mig-21 radar interferences controls and for the dozens of overhead Hip switches.
IMHO this whole controller use was extremely uncomfortable, frustrating, ungainly, bothersome, etc. when I first started it. But after a couple of hours, it became second nature.
Being right handed, I normally keep the right controller attached to my wrist so I can grab it quickly if I need it. The left hand controller I set down near the throttle/collective.
That’s the weird thing.
I know that lever is clickable. I can click other levers with the hand controllers and they work just fine.
This one I can click with the blue or green lasers as often as I want and it doesn’t move.
Can anyone of y’all check out the TF-51 to see if that is a bug? The flap handle is yellow and located on the lower left side.
My problem with the mouse is that the cursor doesn’t turn up at all (except in the menus) although I activated the mouse in the VR settings.
Edit:
In other news: I flew the Huey a bit. Very cool.
Hovering is easier in VR.
There is a key to switch between active mouse cursor, or a dot that follows your view I believe. Can’t remember exactly what it is, but try looking for mouse curser or some such in the controls options.
Ok I think I figured it out.
It seems that I have to deactivate the hand controllers to get a mouse cursor. That’s a pity, I’d like to be able to use both if I want to.
About the other thing: it seems I have to activate the laser, use it like clicking at a button but then use the analog stick on the hand controller, then I can use it.
What’s a tad annoying is that once I reach the ‘up’ position the lever jumps completely down, and vice versa.
Another few hours of setting up and testing today.
Not happy with the controllers. Clicking stuff just doesn’t work consistently and I don’t know why.
I point the laser and the tooltip appears, I click and hold a button (seat adjustment in the C101CC in that case) and the button is released although I hold it. I click again and nothing happens, I click and it works for a second then it doesn’t again. Really weird.
I switched back to mouse for now.
I did a few flights in the C101, including a combat mission, with mixed results.
If I just fly around it is OK for 20+ minutes, but 5 minutes of combat make me nauseous and I have to quit and wait an hour to feel normal again.
Also: FC3 planes suck in VR. So many functions that you need and cannot click, it is annoying.
I set up VoiceAttack and it mitigates some of the issues, but I still have a lot of adjustments to make until I can really enjoy VR.
You need to acclimatise. Get your VR legs so to say. So pattern work. Get good at that. Get good at slinging LGB’s. Then ease yourself into headier stuff. Slowly.
I flew a lot of A-10C early on when I started out in VR. It is a big slow lumbering beast that often just moseys along and rarely ever do you really need to throw it around the sky. But it does have a great view. And you get to get a taste of how much fun gunnery is in VR.
Stereoscopy will make you a monster marksman compared to what you did on the screen. In Il-2, I often just explode the jerries in very high deflection snapshots. I could never pull that off when I flew in 2D. But the awesome spatial awareness you get from stereo vision and proprioception (your neck muscles telling your brain how much they move to keep the bandit in sight) just makes it much easier.
So there’s a good reason to carefully teach your inner ear to pipe the F down and not worry about your butt sitting at a steady 1G while your brain is swoopin’ and swirlin’ like a murderous swift on meth. BFM and VR are just perfect.
Yeah I think the slower planes like the C-101 and the A-10C should be perfect. I will do that.
And yeah in the bit of aerobatics and fighting I did in the Mustang and the C-101 I noticed that flying precise maneuvers and gunnery are indeed easier because you can judge distances better.
Edit:
I guess I just have to fly more like @Troll and less like @smokinhole. At least for a while.
