Ah…you have to love PC gaming. Donned my Reverb G2 this morning and fired up X-Plane intending to take a little run around the patch for some testing. Put on the headset, fired up X-Plane, switched to VR within X-Plane…and all I saw was the Steam VR “X-Plane Loading” in the headset…while VR was showing on my 2D monitor.
Hmmm…well, that ain’t right. Sigh. Spend 30 minutes trying to fix it on my end - going through various boot-up steps (X-Plane, WMR, SteamVR…all possible combos between). No luck. A quick X-Plane.ORG search (should have done that first) reveals that at least as of December, SteamVR BETA is not compatible with X-Plane VR (not sure if that is just with the Reverb, or all X-Plane VR).
So - uncheck the SteamVR Beta box in Steam…and success. Launched into X-Plane VR.
Then - my virtual controllers are not really working. The laser pointer is ON, but none of the buttons are working. Spend another 30 minutes dorking around with controller settings within X-Plane - trying default, trying to map stuff…still no joy.
BACK to the .ORG. This is another known problem with G1/G2 users…that the WMR controllers are not being recognized by X-Plane (this has happened before). This video saves the day - it is great…but unnecessarily long…so you can skip through it to the pertinent points. Mostly it is:
Turn OFF SteamVR Home in the SteamVR menu so that you don’t launch into the SteamVR House
Go to your Mixed Reality Cliffhouse and use the Desktop mode from there
Click and hold your controller trigger on the X-Plane shortcut icon until a menu pops up
Click on OPEN in the little menu that opens up
X-Plane will then launch you into VR without you having to tell it to be in VR, and when you arrive in VR, your controllers should be working (in that you can click on items using the laser pointer).
Hopefully this saves some people some troubleshooting steps…
I did…! And it was wonderful as always. VR is always amazing to me despite the technical hurdles. And it was mostly my fault for not keeping up with the latest interactions between X-Plane, WMR, and SteamVR. One could point and say “it should be easier than this”…but it is also nice to see that bugs are being introduced because all three parties are working on making their platforms better.
I hve this device (Reverb G2) from 4 days ago. I am tryin to run X-Plane as your video, but when I put the laser over a desktop icon, not iluminated, not select, and then I can’t do any action over the x-plane icon.
I don’t have the Reverb. But the first thing you must do in X-Plane is click the little settings icon on the top right and click VR. Then enable VR (top left). Good luck! And Welcome!
I’ve had to struggle to get that dropdown menu to open while in the VR desktop mode…there is a certain length of time to hold down the button before it turns into a dropdown menu…and it is kinda hard to get it exactly right.
In your video I know how the icons light up when the laser pointer passes over it, but it doesn’t happen to me, although I point the laser pointer at the icon, it doesn’t light up. I think that’s why I can’t get there to be any action, even if I press any buttons.
It is being very difficult and tedious to be able to make the X-Plane work with the HP Reverb G2.
Thanks a lot for your help to smokinhole and BeachAV8R.
