Wife approval factor -999
I recently bought a flight simulator seat for my VR rig. I have been thinking about buying one for many years, but I couldn't really justify the expense due to the exceptionally narrow use case and all the downsides that comes with such a product. Nevertheless, once this thing is properly installed with a throttle, rudder pedals and a flight stick, the experience is mind-blowing. This is what VR was made for. The immersion got a huge boost, primarily because all of control surfaces are exactly where they should be in physical space, and I can now finally calibrate my head position to be exactly in the pilot’s seat.
The feeling of igniting the afterburner on takeoff from Umeå Airport for a scenic tour over Holmön and my own house and yard – which is properly included with satellite photos – cannot be compared to any other gaming experience I have had. This is on another level. I often find myself looking in close on all the switches and buttons in the cockpit – most of them are clickable. Combined with the depth from true stereoscopic vision, I don’t think I can ever go back to a flat screen again after this.
However, there is also a very real risk that I might have opened Pandoras box. There is no end to how expensive a simulator hobby can become. My favourite was a guy who had created a replica of a Boeing 737 cockpit in his home. With an actual airplane door and every single piece of kit looked authentic. I realize that if you want to go all in on the flight simulator thing, then you will obviously need to push a lot of physical buttons and controls. This requires your eyes. And this is probably the greatest challenge with VR. You cannot see the outside, real world, which obviously gets very complicated very quickly if you don’t know exactly what you are doing. Like me. But I think that sacrifice is worth it any day of the week, at least for my usage scenario. Scenic tours over cities and places I want to see or re-visit.
If you ever consider buying one of these simulator chairs with controls and stuff, do remember that they require space. A lot of it. And they are heavy and cumbersome. Even though mine – Next Level Racing flight simulator lite - is supposed to be a somewhat more portable solution. I don’t see myself folding it away anytime soon. Any hobby that you want to engage in while simultaneously being a parent requires almost zero startup time. Everything must be hooked up and ready to go without issues. That is the crucial factor and I know this from more than a decade of practising musical instruments daily. You can not put away your equipment and take it out again for every session. There is no time and energy for such things. Otherwise, you will kill your new habit almost instantly.
My goal with this vacation will be to clock in some virtual flight hours. And perhaps bring my boys with me. My youngest son tried out flying JAS 39 Gripen today and he had a ton of fun in VR. What I found most fascinating was thinking about what kind of computer games I played myself when I was 2-3 years old? The answer is nothing. My first gaming memory was Super Mario Bros on a NES and that was a system we rented over the weekend. I must have been four years old. There was only 60 years between the first human flight and putting a man on the moon. In gaming, it is the same thing. A couple of decades later after Super Mario Bros 1, I have a personal flight simulator. That is some seriously impressive progress right there. I also remember my first experience in VR on some fair I went to in the 1990s if I recall correctly. It was a system with two small CRT monitors strapped to each eye. That has also come a long way since.
The next thing with simulators might be mixed reality. Crazies like yours truly can then construct the cockpit or car frame as real as possible, and then the mixed reality headset can display the physical stuff “for real” while rendering the simulation above the edges of the cockpit or car.