Why You Should Try VR Flight Simulation

Have you ever looked to sky as a beautiful Cessna 172 flew overhead and sighed, because you know that getting your pilot’s licence is just not possible.  Maybe you had your licence but you ended up having a medical issue, or spending around $10,000 is just not  a possibility.  Maybe you have the money, but you are so busy, that giving up hours and hours to go train is not going to happen. Are you afraid of flight?

Whatever the reason is, you cannot give up on flying all together. You can’t afford not to be involved in flight. It is such an amazing feeling of freedom. It gives you such a great feeling of accomplishment to take flight.

For me, my problem was time.

When I began to look into flying, I soon started to realise that it was going to take some serious time to get a pilots licence and a lot of money. I started out by doing my ground school, which was difficult, however I was able to make enough time to attend a twice a week class.

Once I finished the ground school, life became busy again and I wasn’t able to get into the air to do consistent flights.  It was a challenge to get my flights done. It seemed that on the days I was available to do a flight, was the day that the visibility would be horrible. The next day the visibility was great, but you had to lean into the wind to walk. The weather and my schedule were really not working together, and this was holding me back from being consistent. How could I fly when I had to balance a tight schedule and an ever changing weather system. It seemed impossible to fly consistently.

Could VR Flight Help?

This is when I started to brainstorm. I said to myself, there has to be a way to solve this problem. It hit me! My flight simulation. I hadn’t been flying my flight simulator for awhile and thought this must be the way to help keep me consistent. If I practice flight training on my flight simulator, then I will be able to keep up my skills between my real flights.

I fired up my flight simulator and began to practice some of my flight manoeuvres. At this time, I had a proper Yoke with a throttle, a trim wheel and some rudder pedals. Even with the proper controls I was a bit disappointed with my flight. Most of my links above and below are links to Amazon. I am an affiliate for Amazon, which means that I do make a small commission if you purchase through my links. This just helps me to keep producing great content.  Won’t affect your purchase or price in any way.

I started to analyse what I was missing. Could it be that a flight simulator can’t give you that feeling of flight? I did some research online and found that most people said that flight simulation is great but it won’t give you a realistic feeling of flight.

After this, I decided to again see if I could remain consistent with my flight training in a real plane, however things happened and I again slid into an inconsistent pattern of training. It was at this time, that I spoke to a good friend of mine, and he had just bought an Oculus Rift. He was flying a space flight simulator. As he ranted and raved about how great the Oculus Rift was and how amazing his flights were, the wheels began to spin in my head. I now knew how I was going to get that last bit of realism.

During his conversation, he had told me that wearing the Oculus makes it feel like you are moving. He explained that you can turn your head and see all around you, as if you were actually flying the space shuttle.

At the time, I was not interested in space travel, however I was very interested in what the Oculus Rift could do for me.

I went back to my computer and began to research the cost of the Oculus, what I would need, and how to set it up.

The Purchase of the Oculus Rift

I ended up buying the Oculus Rift from Amazon, shortly after the realisation of how amazing VR would make my flying. For me it was easy to justify the purchase, as I wanted to be consistent with my flight training, and this was what I needed to be consistent. The weather was always great and it was always daytime.  Of course, every once in awhile I change the weather and fly into an extremely dangerous thunderstorm… The point is, I could fly whenever and wherever I wanted. In fact, I even set my plane to start in the exact same location I start when I fly with my real plane. I then try to replicate my exact flight from my lessons.

After more and more flights, I had to show someone else. A few of my family members tried the Oculus with X-Plane and they were amazed. My father, who is also getting his pilots licence, tried the flight simulator and was immediately in love with the system. He was amazed at how realistic it felt.

Now, you can start to understand why I started a website about flying in Virtual Reality. It really is the one thing that takes a computer program and makes it an experience. If you are learning to fly, you can’t fly due to medical issues, or maybe you just love flight, well you need to try this.

How do you get started?

Ok, so I don’t want to leave you hanging if you are as excited about this as I am. If you want to get involved, you can easily get an Oculus Rift off Amazon. You will also need X-Plane 11 or the flight simulator of choice. Make sure the flight sim you pick can run with VR. X-Plane 11 can run with VR, and just recently added their own VR so that you don’t need any 3rd party software.  Another flight sim that can run VR is called Aerofly FS 2. Both have there pros and cons. Take a look at my comparison post for those two.

I know you are thinking that VR flight might cost too much money, but you have to think about how much it will cost you to not get involved in VR flight. If you are a student pilot, this could cost you more in the long run because you will spend the money on extra flight hours. Imagine how well prepared you will be if you could practice everyday.  It will not take long for that to add up.

If you can’t fly because it costs too much, you don’t have enough time, you have medical problems, or you think you are too old, then flight simulation is definitely for you.

For me, it was well worth the investment. Here are the links to the different items I use for flying and below that are some of my other posts that will help you get started. I want to let you know, that I only promote stuff that I truly believe in, as you can see by what I wrote above. When you use my links below, I do get a small commission if you make a purchase. Using my links will not cost you anything and will not affect the price or purchase.

Please feel free to use my link or go to Amazon.com and search for the item that way. I am just happy to share my passion with you.

Oculus Rift

X-Plane 11

Yoke

rudder pedals

Here are a few resources of mine to help get you started.

Rod Machado’s Books and Training for the Flight Sim Pilot who wants real flight training from a real pilot with 10,000 flight hours

Top 5 things you need for VR Flight

X-Plane 11 VS Aerofly FS 2

Do you need the absolute best VR flight computer?

Virtual Reality Flight System Requirements