Hello guys!

After another RL-break, I had some time now to think about the way my hobby should continue in the future.

The way my life is, I think there will be many unforeseeable breaks in the future, too. This makes it nearly impossible to built a home cockpit which is very complex in case of all the avionics used, like functional gauges, MFD's and so on. Since DCS is improving in the variability of the available modules more and more, I want to use it with my pit now also, which makes things even more complex at the end. BMS, DCS, EECH and FSX/FS9 in one cockpit with functional avionics is really not possible, but VR could be a solution.

I will give up with BMS, cause since 4.34 YAME, a tool for making all the stuff like gauges and MFD's easy to work with the pit and also be able to do this all over LAN via a second PC, isn't supported anymore. It also doesn't really look like this will ever be again the case. It's more than a year now since the release of 4.34 and YAME isn't really made compatible since than. There is a work arround with a parallel install of 4.33, but this is very clunky and not fully compatible.

Also the "fake" moduls of BMS, fighters like the F-15, the F/A-18, the AV-8B and the A-10 aren't getting any love or upgrades since 4.34. Mostly they are more worse as in 4.33, cause new bugs appeared, which aren't corrected since over a year. The focus is getting totally back to F-16 only with this release. I like the F-16 too, but it was never my favorite and only fighterjet I wanted to fly. I never had made such a complex work like a home cockpit to only fly one type of an aircraft, even if this one is then hyper realistic. If the other flyables getting more love one day, I will maybe come back to BMS and try to use it with VorpX in VR, or the next version of BMS already supports VR, who knows?

In case of fully functional home cockpits only a few simulator can do this. BMS, FSX/FS9/P3D and Xplane are the only ones you really can do this with the use of additional soft- and hardware. DCS is also possible but in a totally complicated way with use of LUA-scripts and other complex things like editing Helios templates and much more. Still a bunch of work for only one module, but with changing modules its a pain in the neck.

But DCS gives now fully VR support and also has the possibility to fly attack helicopters, which makes it regardless cleary the best choice for my renewed project at the moment. New modules like the OH-58D are in production and an Apache is also rumored. My totally favorit the AH-1F will also see the light of day, maybe after the MI-24 is finished. So I'm reworking my pit for use with VR now. This makes it much easier to finish, cause no more need of working gauges and MFD's is needed. You have the whole exact fully cockpit of every aircraft just arround you. Only thing I still need is a way to control the inputs like all the switches and knobs in the virtual cockpit.

Unfortunately the only modules which support a fully interactable cockpit in VR at the moment, are the HiFidelity modules of DCS. Neither the FC3-modules of DCS nor any other flightsimulator (maybe Aerofly FS2 and X-Plane are other exceptions here - but I don't use them) at the moment has the ability to be fully controlled in VR only. Even if you could get running most of the old simulators fine in VR with the use of such things like FlyInside or VorpX, there remains still the problem of the controls. So you still need the keyboard to control things in the cockpit. Not a really clever solution, if you couldn't read it.

But switches and knobs in the pit I could find blind after a while and I have the possibility to map complex macros to them. So I will use only the inputs of my homepit in conjunction with VR in future. This makes it compatible to a wide range of simulations without the need of complex output avionics, and give even older simulations an aspect of reality they never had before.

Cause I don't want to lose EECH-Allmods as I still love it so much, I wanted to ask if anybody had tried to run it in VR with VorpX or something similar. I have no possibility to do it by myself at the moment and I also couldn't find any confirmed attempts that it is possible on the web or in youtube.

Hey nice to have you back. I hope everything's ok in RL. After your last update, it sounded like there were some things going on.

I've just got back into simming properly. Although I've modded EECH on and off for years, I've never really played sims that much. But I recently got a new gaming laptop, so I can now run modern games and sims at decent frame rates.

I've been mostly playing IL-2 Sturmovik though, and I ported my Elite Dangerous profile from PS4 to PC and playing that too. I tried BMS, and I liked it for a bit, but it's way too complicated for my liking, and there are so many controls to remember even just to take off. I like the look of Xplane, and DCS, but the price of extra planes puts me off for now. I just got a Thrustmaster T16000 flight stick to use, and it's great. So if I get into it more, then I might get more modules.

I've never considered VR for flight sims though. I suppose it would give the ultimate immersive experience, but probably also make you feel sick I can't remember if anyone on EECH said they used it. Though I think some people have asked about it in the past.

I think the closest I'll get is using Track IR, or Open track. I'm not sure how well they work on a laptop though. I think Open track looks like the best option, as I already have a PS3 Eye camera to modify, and I can get the IR clip to go with it.

Hi messyhead.

Yes RL was a lot of trouble the last few months, but now things calmed down a bit.

I 'm again started the work at my pit and for the first time now made the decision that its more urgent to get it finished in an accessible way, as to hold on things you really wanted but you never will achieve in that way.

This is the reason I had choosen to go the VR way now. Sadly not many simulators at the moment do really support VR in a way that it's possible to control the whole "virtual cockpit" without the use of a mouse or much more important without a keyboard. Only the high end modules of DCS are really fully controllable with just the use of a HOTAS and the VR-Headset alone. Even the new MSFS2020 does not support VR at release and its not really sure if this will be the case in future.

If more simulators are able to be fully controlled via VR in the future, there is no need to built a fullsize pit anymore, but it doesn't look like this. I have the assumption that VR will fall through the same way like 3D stereo did it many years ago. In this case I still have to built a pit, if I want to stay with this hobby in a relatively realistic way.

VR alone would be much, much easier to achieve. Finishing the homepit is still a lot of work I'm not sure if I'm able to do so or if I even have the mood for it, considering my health.

It's nothing dramatically here, but making works in a ducked condition, which is often the case if I'm working at the pit, does really hurt. So I must say I really do often look for a reason to delay the work at the pit to another time. This way I will really never finish it.