Best and Worst aircraft in VR

[TAIPAN_]

This is purely subjective, but I'm curious what everyone's favourite and least favourite aircraft in IL2 BOS & FC are for VR?

 

For me I like the type of aircraft that gives a good sense of scale, the controls are easy to line up with my real controls after adjusting my center position, as well as a nice immersive feel that is hard to describe.

 

Also the gunsight seems to be a BIG factor in whether I enjoy it in VR, some planes that have an unreachable gunsight that is too hard to lean to (eg the Breguet and DFW) or a gunsight in your face that can make you feel a little cross-eyed. Planes that have a slightly offset to the right gunsight like a lot of the German/Axis aircraft seem more fun. 

 

I'd say my favourites would be:

• Fokker Dr1 & Sopwith Triplane, the rudder based flying for these is awesome in VR
• Pfalz D.XII
• Bristol Fighter
• LA-5FN
• P-40, I love looking over that hotrod nose
• Spitfires especially the newer models, it's great looking out over the iconic wing
• Mosquito, one of the few large twins that have a joystick instead of a Yoke. Nice gunsight for leaning to the right into.
• Ju87 (after fixing the head position) - who doesn't like dive bombing in VR?
• Bf109s and FW190s - great gunsight for VR if you sit in the center, and the cockpit frame doesn't bother like it does on a monitor

 

Least favourite would be:

• N28
• Airco DH4 massive cockpit
• Breguet annoying hard to reach sight
• DFW  annoying hard to reach sight
• Anything with a Yoke, and the big civ aircraft and bombers get less out of VR because using the bombsights and cruising around on auto-level is not as fun as throwing around something more agile

 

Edited September 21, 2023 by TAIPAN_

[JG1_Greif]

Agreed on the German fighters, who don't have those sexy P-51 bubble canopies. VR makes looking around the frame so easy and intuitive, I am virtually (heh) never hindered by them at all. Funny thing is that in some British planes, the boost is somewhere in the upper right hand corner of the dashboard (Typhoon), behind some reinforcement bar which makes it so hard to spot that even the flexibility that VR gives is hardly compensating for the awkward placement. The Mosquito in VR gets some bonus points for character, but the co-pilot in your face experience is... an acquired taste. The P-51 has one of the most beautiful bubble canopies in the game, which makes it also very pleasant to fly in VR.

 

About FC, I rarely fly WW1 (so little time to fly everything), but I love flying them in VR. The fact that you can just look over the rim of your cockpit and look straight down while doing the same IRL as if your sitting in a bath tub is just such a great and immersive experience. Flying a WW1 crate with a good view low over the rivers between the mountains on the Eastern side of the Kuban map is just so pleasurable, it's one of the things I tend to put on when I want to show how great flying in VR is to curious guests.

[TAIPAN_]

Typhoon (and Tempest) are two I want to get time for as well at some stage. I've been flying the I-16 today and have a similar experience looking at the top level of gauges to what you're saying about the boost lever. I wish IL-2 would have discrete control bindings so we could bind a 2-way switch or hat for boost on vs off, then we wouldn't have to look to know what our last toggle did. 

 

The Mossie I moved my seat position left, so it's in the middle of the virtual seat you can see below and that puts the copilot a bit further away, I'm yet to get any decent time in it though. Too many planes, not enough time!

I'll try to get back to the P51 again too thanks for the suggestion, there's an updated campaign for it that looks good I want to complete.

[JG1_Greif]

1 minute ago, TAIPAN_ said:

 I wish IL-2 would have discrete control bindings so we could bind a 2-way switch or hat for boost on vs off, then we wouldn't have to look to know what our last toggle did.

 

Agreed.

 

I have my boost on (large) switch on a button box that is programmed with an Arduino. In such a set up you can add some logic in the programming to streamline the physical state of switches with their in game state.

 

To illustrate: you can have a button to indicate to the Arduino "I'have spawned in a new plane" and that sets all switch statuses in the Arduino program equal to that of a newly spawned plane in game, e.g. boost is always in an off state when starting off in a new plane. In such an example, if the boost switch is physically still in the "on" position when you start in a new plane, the Arduino program can be instructed to ignore that switches' state until it is switched off and then only react when it is switched on again. Not ideal, but you will at least never end up witch switches being reversed (on physically, but off in game and changing the switch status IRL will switch the status in game with the end result being that they are always reversed).

 

Having separate key bindings for "boost on" and "boost off", or similar for other toggles (supercharger stage anyone?) would already be a huge difference and, as far as I can see, fairly low effort to implement. One can dream...

[Gunfreak]

I love flying ww1 in vr, but I find the low quality textures on the wings very bad for immersion. They look like the walls on old 90s FPS like doom or Duke nukem.

[TAIPAN_]

11 hours ago, JG1_Greif said:

 

Agreed.

 

I have my boost on (large) switch on a button box that is programmed with an Arduino. In such a set up you can add some logic in the programming to streamline the physical state of switches with their in game state.

 

To illustrate: you can have a button to indicate to the Arduino "I'have spawned in a new plane" and that sets all switch statuses in the Arduino program equal to that of a newly spawned plane in game, e.g. boost is always in an off state when starting off in a new plane. In such an example, if the boost switch is physically still in the "on" position when you start in a new plane, the Arduino program can be instructed to ignore that switches' state until it is switched off and then only react when it is switched on again. Not ideal, but you will at least never end up witch switches being reversed (on physically, but off in game and changing the switch status IRL will switch the status in game with the end result being that they are always reversed).

 

Having separate key bindings for "boost on" and "boost off", or similar for other toggles (supercharger stage anyone?) would already be a huge difference and, as far as I can see, fairly low effort to implement. One can dream...

 

I like that idea. I'm used to working around what the sim offers, eg in DCS it lets you add your own control bindings - as long as there exists a mouse click for something you can find the lua code and add a binding to the controls file so I end up with everything I need.

 

For IL2 though I use Joystick Gremlin and Voiceattack for my bindings, so far I don't know any way to store variables and states for multiple buttons.

I CAN set a button to only fire on every second press, but that would require me to come out of VR and reset the activation of the profile every time I spawn in a new aircraft.

 

For now I disable the radio text, the compass/instruments, but I keep the technochat HUD on if it's a plane I'm not familiar with. If all the controls are easily visible then I turn the whole HUD off. Thankfully the technochat is far enough to the right it's less visible than the other text was, the radio was the worst. I've got the english voice on now

3 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

I love flying ww1 in vr, but I find the low quality textures on the wings very bad for immersion. They look like the walls on old 90s FPS like doom or Duke nukem.

That's funny I never noticed it - is it only for flying circus? Not on the WW2 planes?

 

Now I'll probably be looking for it!!

[Gunfreak]

15 hours ago, TAIPAN_ said:

 

I like that idea. I'm used to working around what the sim offers, eg in DCS it lets you add your own control bindings - as long as there exists a mouse click for something you can find the lua code and add a binding to the controls file so I end up with everything I need.

 

For IL2 though I use Joystick Gremlin and Voiceattack for my bindings, so far I don't know any way to store variables and states for multiple buttons.

I CAN set a button to only fire on every second press, but that would require me to come out of VR and reset the activation of the profile every time I spawn in a new aircraft.

 

For now I disable the radio text, the compass/instruments, but I keep the technochat HUD on if it's a plane I'm not familiar with. If all the controls are easily visible then I turn the whole HUD off. Thankfully the technochat is far enough to the right it's less visible than the other text was, the radio was the worst. I've got the english voice on now

That's funny I never noticed it - is it only for flying circus? Not on the WW2 planes?

 

Now I'll probably be looking for it!!

Yes the WW1 planes, if you look at the upper wing around the cockpit, it doesn't look good. The ww2 planes look fine 

 

Edit(damn auto correct doesn't think WW1 exists, so changed it to ww2. )

Edited September 22, 2023 by Gunfreak

[kestrel79]

I prefer the German planes in VR, I really like their gauge layouts. Plus with everything automated you can just focus on flying and not overheating the engine, I can fly safer with the HUD turned off easier with the German planes.

 

The me-110 is fun too, really cool cockpit to look around and lean in, see the gunner seat. Bombers look amazing in VR as well. Seeing the copilots and gunners at their stations actual size and to scale is way cooler than 2D on a monitor.

Edited September 25, 2023 by kestrel79

[Charlo-VRde]

My dear hope is that someday the VR head movement limitations in the JU-88’s are loosened so as to allow more natural and reasonable range of movement.

[TAIPAN_]

13 hours ago, Charlo-VR said:

My dear hope is that someday the VR head movement limitations in the JU-88’s are loosened so as to allow more natural and reasonable range of movement.

I've got the head restriction turned off, less chance of nausea because it feels like the whole view shifts if you hit the edge.

 

It's consistent with DCS as well where there are no restrictions even in multiplayer, though I know some IL2 servers can place restrictions that override this.