Awesome! Thanks Chris, I’ll have to give it a try when I get home from training.
Chris, are you controlling with your HOTAS or the VR gamepads?
I’m using my Touch Controllers. There is now an option to use hardware rudders only, and I’d probably use that but my desk play area doesn’t work well with VR and where my rudder pedals are. There is a pretty darn nifty feature in VTOL VR that helps you get your controls centered. You push a red button on the virtual armrest near where the controls are and the controller auto adjusts as you move your hand to where you want “neutral” to be. Then you let go, and hit the button again. The same is true for the throttle, it has buttons that allow you to raise and lower the “collective” and even extend and retract its length. Where this works great is if you hit those buttons and then rest your arms on your chair so that your wrists are hanging over the front edge of your armrest, that will be a natural and easy “center” position that you can easily return to and it keeps the controls pretty well centered up. The rudder is always a bit finicky though…I’d like to be able to put a dead zone in it. But there is an on-screen indicator on the HUD to show you if you are “uncoordinated”…so that helps.
I’ll try to post up a video in a bit that shows it working if you haven’t already seen the auto adjustment thing…
1 Like
Here’s a quick video of me adjusting my controls so that when I rest my forearms on my seat armrests they are at the low point for the collective and “neutral” for the right/stick hand. This allows me to move my hands around the cockpit, but then just putting my arms back in the same place on my armrests returns me to the preset position.
And I don’t know what is going on with the tearing at the sides of my capture. I’m attempting to use OBS Studio with Oculus Mirror because it shows a slightly wider field of view than just the Oculus game window…but something funky is going on where it can’t keep up with the framerate or something. Probably sending and receiving too much data to my hard drive…
1 Like
Not sure, but had you seen Jabbers VR streaming/recording tips here (I put the timestamp to 12:06 if it doesn’t work)?
I’ve actually used OBS in VR but for another typical bizarre and frogish use. Sigh, almost embarrassed to say this as it’s off-topic and it’s so incredibly hacky, but whatever… 
Goal: I wanted to use X-Plane X-Life in VR.
Steps:
-
Set up OBS to sample a screen portion rectangle of where the ATC comms window appears on X-Life in the X-Plane 11 VR view mirror.
-
Resize the OBS window to just show what it would record, i.e. make it a long rectangle, turn off the other OBS panels inside the app. I used two monitors, with X-Plane on the left one and OBS on the right.
-
Use Oculus Core 2, i.e. once in VR press the ‘Oculus button’ to see your home. Choose ‘desktop view’ (in my case Monitor 2, that is showing OBS) and view Monitor 2.
-
Grab the shown OBS window from Monitor 2 desktop and move/resize it, so in VR it’s in your view and readable, but on your right hip, i.e. not in the way of your main view out the front of the cockpit. Make sure you ‘pin’ the window, so that when you press the ‘Oculus Home’ button again the pinned window stays up in your VR view.
-
Map up keyboard shortcuts for the tab selection and transmit choices in X-Life. It has keyboard shortcuts already, so you can set a HOTAS hat to press ‘Alt+1’ when pushed forward etc.
So that allows me use X-Life in VR, using OBS not to record anything but just to sample a bit of the screen and provide a dockable window so that Oculus Home can composite in my VR space.
I did say it was frogish, right? 
4 Likes
Ah…I’ll check that out and see what settings he is using.
Oh dear…you mean I can watch the Tour de France in a window in VR while I’m playing…!?
Great little work-around you used! Hmm…gets me thinking. I need a webcam mounted to the front of my Rift that streams to my desktop. Use your little trick to pull it into the Rift and I have a mini front facing camera. LOL…
Yep, as long as OBS can see it then you can grab it and see it in VR using the Oculus Home 2 pinned window feature. I sometimes do it for checklists/PDFs etc. (not even using OBS, just grab your PDF or browser window) Anything shown on your desktop can be ‘grabbed’ and it’s fun to play around with. The touch controllers make it easy to move things bigger/smaller when positioning too.
It actually has very little impact on performance as well, as the view compositor is deep in the Oculus driver stack and the window is being rendered somewhere anyway.
1 Like
1 Like
Very neat stuff Chris. Thanks.
Always one of the favorite moves the Harrier pulls off at airshows when it pitches up and rotates the nozzles aft to climb away from a dead hover…
The VTOL variation…
Beta updated change log:
v0.0.10p5
Map Editor
- Added airbase navigation system for AI pilot taxiing
- Added landing and takeoff authorization system for AIs using airbase runways
Mission Editor
- Added command for landing AI VTOLs at a waypoint
- Switched toolbar fonts to non-dynamic to fix occasional jumbled text
- Fixed: Scenario info window showed incorrect forced fuel when opened for the first time
AI
- Allowed AI pilot to release multiple bombs when targets are clustered together
- Improved and added variation to AI pilot bombing
- Improved AI pilot collision avoidance with terrain
- Improved AI take-off traffic management on carriers
- Fixed VTOL AI issues when landing while yawing
- Fixed IR SAM launchers leading target incorrectly
Units
- Added enemy aircraft carrier
- Set up enemy ASF-33 for carrier operations
- Fixed missing fire when destroying Z20x2 (enemy AAA)
Equipment
- Made new equips available in existing missions
- Fixed CCRP Auto issue with CBU-97
AV-42C
- Switched fonts to non-dynamic
- Fixed HUD G/Mach/Alpha declutter issues
- Fixed MK-82AIR x1 name
General
- Added heat to missiles so they can be targeted by IR based counter-missile systems
- Fixed performance issues caused by ship wakes
- Fixed performance issue caused by city blocks
Look forward to reading your article Beach.
1 Like
If Beach doesn’t get a cut then he just might be the last incorruptible dude left in the country. Because I keep buying everything he gushes over. And true to form I’ve done it again. Fun game. I love the controls, even the rudder. At first I was finding it devilishly hard to not mix yaw with roll. But after an hour or so it seems that my wrist is learning. VTOL is shaping up to be very much like the sims some of us grew up with in the early nineties–sims which concentrated on gameplay. Those games compromised on fidelity because they had to. VTOL does too somewhat from the perspective of sim fidelity. But as Beach and others have said, the weapons modeling is pretty slick. One really neat little detail is how the sim applies a very subtle amount of vibration in the controller when the stick is displaced quickly. It provides a tactile feel even though you’re just twisting your fist in air. The sensors detect the subtlest of movements. I might even go way, WAY out on a limb and say that this could be the future of desktop controllers. Just have a simple stick with a centering spring but no electronics and let the sensors track displacement and twist.
4 Likes
Yes - I think you’ve tapped into that joy that I’m finding with VTOL VR. It’s incredibly immersive in, for lack of a more appropriate word, primal way. The large movements to reach controls and flip switches feel exaggerated due to the size of the cockpit, but that sort of scales nicely into making the simulated world feel bigger and more there. Hard to describe. And there are just dozens of super nice touches that you don’t really recognize until you’ve spent some time in there. The HUD information modeling and the fairly robust weapons systems logic is really incredible.
And it is really cool to see the AI slip up on your wing on a mission. Heck…I’m just having a blast doing tanking and carrier landings.
I have a lot to write about it for the review - but I want to make sure I do it justice, so it is taking a bit longer than I had anticipated.
Glad you are enjoying it. I really hope the developer sees fit to add multi-player as that would be a lot of fun with you guys.
4 Likes
I can’t wait! And I am glad it’s taking some time to do it justice. The game is groundbreaking and deserves the time you are giving it. The guy who created it obviously knows the flight sim genre well. He took complicated systems and boiled away their complexity revealing only their fundamental purposes so that anyone can understand how to use them. Believe it or not, it was your Macarena video that sold me. I am always looking for a way to feel part of the space I am playing. That was why I was so gobsmacked by ARMA as a flight sim. To walk up to a helicopter, open the door and fly made the flying more meaningful somehow.
2 Likes
Oh by the way @smokinhole - if you run out of campaign missions - you can take a look at the VTOL VR Discord channel and there are a bunch of user created missions of varying quality there (some are just demo/tech demonstrators, and some are more well thought out). If you go to the Discord channel
Once you are there - you can search within the Mission Editor channel for “has: file” within that channel and it should list all the posts that have a file attachment. I downloaded a dozen or so missions (haven’t played but a couple of them).
1 Like
Thanks Beach!
1 Like
Looks like it updated today:
v0.0.10p6
Mission Editor
_ - Fixed error when attempting to save with a path that has no points_
Units
_ - Added allied and enemy MANPADS units_
_ - Added allied main battle tank unit_
_ - Fixed broken machine gun turrets on tanks_
_ - Fixed broken rail path behavior for ground units_
_ - Fixed broken landing behavior for AI aicraft from last build_
F/A-26B
_ - Fixed weapon launch indicator light not attached to canopy frame_
AV-42C
_ - Fixed invisible text in GPS MFD page_
_ - Fixed HUD brake indicator overlapping HUD messages_
_ - Changed “Labels” light switches to “INST” (instrument)_
_ - Fixed instrument light switch tooltip_
General
_ - Added jet wash effects when over water_
_ - Added visor and NVG toggle buttons for both vehicles_
_ - Fixed errors when launching game with multiple custom missions with same ID_
_ - Custom missions with duplicate IDs will be renamed on launch_
_ - Custom missions installed incorrectly (incorrect filepath) will be repaired_
1 Like
I watched some videos and got really interested. I have learned though, as you say sir"Do I need another SIM?" Well this is a game, so there. Lol
The price is real cheap too. So, do I need to get thi on steam? Do I need hand controllers? I was about to pull the trigger but I have to ask first.
Thanks BeachAV8R
1 Like