VR Flight Simulator

19 May 2019 VR Flight Simulator

I put together a quick and dirty VR flight simulator. I used the following components: Joule Performance eSports Ti which has a Nvidia RTX 2080 TI, a Playseat Air Force seat, Oculus Rift VR googles, Thrustmaster – Hotas Warthog throttle and stick, Thrustmaster TPR rudder, little wifi dongle, keyboard, and a mouse. I use DCS World with the P-51 and the Christen Eagle II. The main goal is to practice rudder skills. There is a bit of a curve to get this working – it was not plug and play, but with a bit of time and googling, I got it to work.

It’s working quite well. I feel much more comfortable with the rudder, and am also practicing engine out response – basically training myself to immediately push the nose down, unload the wing, and land somewhere without stalling.

Also, a bit of fast, low-level flying is a good time. I’ve set up a strong crosswind with one of the “missions”, but I don’t really feel a huge difference in the handling. Not sure if the model is really that mature to allow realistic practice of tailwheel landings with a crosswind, but in any case, I’m getting more rudder practice which is what I wanted. There is no doubt that a lot of the flying experience in the simulator will translate to real flying, but also no way it will replace actual flight time.

I tested x-plane but the ground handling was really bad. I see that they now have an RV-8 but I have not yet tested it to see if the ground handling is better.

Update: 2022-08-20

A long overdue update – I found that using this sim to train my feet to be a better tailwheel pilot worked very well. While it did cost a lot of money, it was far cheaper (obviously) than equivalent time in a real aircraft. I highly recommend this as a tailwheel training device.