One of the problems with flight sims has always been the situational awareness-- it lacks. There's a new product about to be released for computer gamers called the Occulus Rift, which is a virtual reality headset that gives the user total immersion into the computer generated world-- no peripheral access to the outside world. One of the obvious applications for this technology is flight simulators.

I use X-Plane because I use a Mac. Apparently this guy is developing a plugin for the device: http://runway12.com/projects/XPlaneOculus/

Watch the video, it's kinda cool. Turning your head side to side actually looks out the window.

There's nothing like the real thing, but this is a lot cheaper, and great for IFR training.

Looks pretty cool. What are the chances they could merge the two views into one? Kind of weird looking at two panels, etc.

Darinh wrote:Looks pretty cool. What are the chances they could merge the two views into one? Kind of weird looking at two panels, etc.

Darin, from the user's perspective it looks like one view. What they show on the screen is just a monitor of what the user is seeing inside the headset, which appears like stereo vision. Inside the headset , it's more like looking trough binoculars. Or so I have read.

Or so I have read.

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S7Paco wrote:

Or so I have read.

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The bigger the waistband, the deeper the quicksand.

The two screens allow for 3d images - one image for each eye. Can't wait for my flight sim fanatic buddy to buy one some can give it a whirl.

Chris

Cool. They look very intriguing!
About 10 plus yrs ago they had "TV glasses" (whatever they were called) that were similar for the BIG screen effect when watching TV or movies on the internal mini screens. They were obviously not near this sophisticated, but i think the viewing aspect might be about the same?
Not everyone could tolerate the early ones (headaches, etc), and it seemed that after while (before a long movie was over) they would cause eye discomfort in a fair percentage of the users.
I'm hopeful that these issues have been solved-this technology would be great for both gamers and computer pilots....

Hoping....
lc