I have searched this topic in the past and everything I have found appears like there is no real traction or the technical challenges are too significant.....but....Are there any plans to have Falcon (BMS) be compatible with VR? I have really been enjoying VR in my other flight sims immensely and would love to get involved with Falcon again. I do not see myself investing the time if VR isn't going to be an option...I am enjoying VR that much. I have seen a couple videos of VR being used in a 2D approach, but I don't see that as being a desirable solution. Any insight is appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Brett

Not that I know of, and the BMS team doesn't seem to have any plans either.

Maybe in 3-4 years (falconeers will get the joke), but don't expect anything in the near future in regards to VR.

If VR is "it" for you, DCS is probably better suited for your needs. Too bad they don't have a Dynamic Campaign, or I would even consider buying their unfinished works.

I for one have no interest ATM in VR. In several years maybe, but I have bought enough 1st gen hardware in my time to know you're better off waiting for the 2nd or even 3rd gen stuff to make it to the market before you get a top notch product.

Best of luck to you, whatever you decide.

There are some workarounds, but true VR, no.

Thanks guys....I appreciate the heads up either way. Yes I got the joke. I actually cut my teeth on Falcon AT way back in the day and use DCS a good bit now. I have been using my vive exclusively for about a year and a half and am just really enjoying it despite it being 1st generation. I have found DCS to be decent and enjoy it despite some of the flaws. I will say I am disappointed that there doesn't appear to be any plans for VR in BMS but I understand and respect the hard work that has gone into it. Best wishes across the board :-)

I'd certainly be a lot more interested in BMS if it had VR support right now, but it's just hard to go back to "flat" simming at this point. Cockpits were made for VR, plain and simple, and the tracking is so much better than TrackIR it's ridiculous.

That said, I understand why they can't just throw it into BMS. Falcon 4.0, even in its current overhauled state, is still running on an engine that is downright ancient by today's standards, not really built with modern graphics APIs in mind, and there's a very real possibility that simple things like clicking on cockpits will just not function correctly with a stereo 3D viewpoint, sorta like trying to use the mouse on the Elite: Dangerous galaxy map. That whole map, last time I played it, was rendered at entirely the wrong depth, way too close to my face, and it's jarring because of how well the rest of the game works in VR.

See, it's also not just a matter of technical reworking under the hood to bring it up to modern Direct3D11/12 standards as opposed to ancient D3D7 or D3D9; VR carries its own set of UI best practices, ones that Falcon BMS in its current state will most certainly not fulfill as long as the current menu system demanding an exclusive 1024x768 fullscreen mode is in place. Then there's all the radio captions and menus off to the side of the screen; that placement works fine on a monitor, but try that in a VR eye buffer and you'll find that you can't actually see it in the headset at all, because most of the periphery goes unseen in practice. That's why any VR screenshot showing the whole outlined eye buffer tends to have the HUD closer toward the center; that's actually closer to the edge of the viewer's FOV in the actual HMD.

These are just a few of the potential issues you can run into while trying to retrofit modern VR support into an old engine, and let's not forget that 6DoF head-tracking is mandatory at all times, no exceptions, lest you break immersion. That includes menus. On top of that, frame drops below 90 FPS are extremely jarring with VR taking up most of your natural FOV, which is why Timewarp/Spacewarp/Reprojection/etc. exist; they're frame interpolation techniques that fill in for brief framedrops based on user head movement, which while not perfect (it is interpolation, after all), help immensely with viewer comfort.

The ideal solution would be, quite frankly, to create a new, next-generation Falcon from the ground up, designed with VR, modern CPUs, GPUs and OSes in mind, but that kind of undertaking would require quite the dev team to get together and hack away at it. BMS is a volunteer effort, as I understand - people working to improve it in their spare time because they want to, not because they're getting paid to.

What I do know for certain is that no one knows what is in development despite what has been said.

BMS have standards to ensure it runs on lower spec machines - and a lot of the users might not even own a VR capable card for god knows how many years.....by then VR headsets might have a usable resolution

Starting for the ground up doesn't seem realistic to me and don't think that has ever happened. ED might have had to rewrite modules and parts of the code over the years but was still an iteration of the original AFAIK (Same with Thirdwire) - these programs are way too big to even contemplate starting again you would imagine.

Well, while VR may be cool, I still can't imagine doing cockpit work with a VR headset on, not unless you're sitting in a replica pit and can actually physically touch what you're seeing in the VR world.

AFAIK, BMS isn't developing for VR and there have been offers to buy the devs a headset or two if it'll help them or get them to develop into VR. From what I remember, there were no takers.