Comment by MomsAVoxell

Something to keep in mind that a lot of simmers (DCS specifically) don't get when they want to jump into VR:

Once you hit the advanced 3rd Gen or any 4th Gen fighter or attack aircraft (essentially anything where you go "heads down" for any significant portion of the aircrafts mission profile) VR becomes more of a liability than an asset.

For those aircraft being a pilot is secondary to being a systems operator.

Think of an F-14; you have the front seat who would want to be in VR because they fly the aircraft, but the RIO would NOT want to be because they have very little need to be, especially since it makes interfacing with their mission systems so much harder. AH-64's are the same split.

Now if you are the sole person in the aircraft and need to do both missions being able to operate the systems fluently and smoothly via dedicated interfaces FAR exceeds any benefit from being in VR.

I've done it all, and I far prefer flying in VR. But for accomplishing complex mission profiles multiscreen with each being an MFD and a rich control set far beat that immersion.

Perhaps the best mix is using a curved UW and trackir plus dedicated MFD screens. Once you get that setup its amazing for that advanced capability set.

All of this assumes you want to use the full capability set of an airframe, or use an attack profile at all. If all you want is to use them for A2A, then VR is wonderful as long as you have a full HOTAS set, understand the preset modes on everything, and memorize the controls and alternate control schemes properly for BVR to close in conversion, countermeasures, etc.

For DCS only, I wonder how this slots between a Q3 and a bigscreen beyond. The beyond with no controllers is probably about the same price all in as the 1TB, but would be better screens and lighter. If you dont care about the standalone stuff it might be another good option. The frame does bring more versatility, but at the cost of battery/weight. Wireless VR in sims is unbeatable in terms of immersion though.

If you enjoy DCS give VTOLVR a shot as well. Fantastic fun.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/667970/VTOL_VR/

I bought an HP Reverb G2 for DCS about 5 years ago and it worked great. When Windows started deprecating the Mixed Reality services random things started breaking, though.

I used a Rift for DCS and it was amazing graphically. Hard to go back to playing on a screen and using a HOTAS hat to capture your view (or head tracker).

But you better have your HOTAS controls memorized because it's a pain not having visibility of them.