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Flying in virtual reality comes with a few challenges to overcome. One of the biggest challenges you will face is “how do I control my plane?”
Well lucky for you, I have tried many different things and have come up with my 3 favorite solutions.
In my Podcast, I mention the Oculus Rift, a Flight Yoke and Rudder Pedals. As I am an affiliate for Amazon, I am including those links here. If you want to use them, I really appreciate it, however feel free to search for the items on Amazon if you would rather. Thanks and enjoy the podcast and post.
Yoke
Rudder Pedals
Logitech G Pro Flight Rudder Pedals
Oculus Rift
Oculus Rift + Touch Controllers
VRFW 003: Integration of Flight Controls into VR Flight or VRFlightWorld.com/iTunes
Dan: Welcome to the VR Flight Word podcast. Today we’re going to be going over three
different methods on how to set up your VR flight controls for your X-Plane 11 in virtual
reality. So stay tuned and we’ll get right to it.
So there are three different methods we’re going to use. The first one is without any
physical controls at all. This one just has your two touch controllers, your Oculus Rift
headset, or you could be using a Vive as well, and the equivalent for the controllers. And
when you set it up, you’re going to want to have it in a room that has as much space as
possible. Well, doesn’t have to be a whole lot of space, but you have to have enough
room that you’re not gonna hit anything with your arms. And you throw in a headset,
you throw X-Plane on, and now you can control your it all. You can control your
mixture, you can set everything. You can do anything with the Oculus Rift touch
controllers. You could open the door with them… anything. So this is a great method for a
really complicated cockpit. It works well for doing run ups. It works well for setting up
any kind of flight maneuver. The only thing it doesn’t work well for is flying stick and
rudder. We don’t have rudder pedals, so we’re lacking a lot of controls this way.
So the second way I would set this up is by having a Oculus Rift controller or the touch
controller in your right hand. The left hand’s actually going to be used for controlling your
yoke. So you’re going to be able to pull back your yoke. So now you have a little more of a
tactile control. You have your right hand and you can use this to manipulate your flaps,
you’re going to have to use it for your throttle, your mixture, that kind of thing. A great
method, but it’s not my favorite method.
My favorite is having more physical controls and having pretty much everything as a
physical control. Only problem with having everything as a physical control is, you’re
kinda blind. So you have to know where your controls are, so set them up in place that
you can easily grab them, and make it kind of a muscle memory thing, so you can reach
out, know exactly where to grab that throttle and pull it back. Otherwise, you’re kind of
bouncin’ around, tryin’ to find it with your hands. This is the best way I’ve found to
operate. The only problem with this method, is you won’t have everything set up on
your controls. So you need some way to manipulate different switches and those type of
things.
So what I do is I have a seat that sits beside me, and my Oculus Rift controller sits there.
I know where it is. It’s sitting on a bench beside me. I reach out, I grab it,
and now I can operate the switches, I can operate pretty much anything I could before.
And then when I’m done with it, I put it off to the right and I know exactly where to put
it. If you drop it somewhere else, you might break it. So you set it down on that table or
on that bench or that chair, whatever you have sitting beside you. And then you’re back
to flying. So this is my favorite method. So if I was going to set it up, and in fact, this is the
way I have mine set up right now. I actually have one more added piece of equipment
on there, and that is a trim wheel.
Now the trim wheel, it looks like they’re sold out on Amazon, so I don’t know what’s
happened with the Saitek trim wheels, but they’re sold out. So there might be other
ones out there, I’m gonna keep looking, see if I can find another trim wheel out there.
The one I’m actually using isn’t a trim wheel at all. It’s actually a Driving Force Logitech
steering wheel. I turn it sideways, mount it on the side of the desk. It works actually
really well. It’s a little extra sensitive. I’d rather it be a little less sensitive. Works pretty
well. You can reach out, you can adjust your trim a little bit, and release the pressure on
your yoke, and it feels pretty natural, pretty close to what flying a real plane would feel
like, other than it’s a little extra sensitive. You can actually use the pedals for it, the gas
and the brake and hook them up, and they get recognised by X-Plane, and you can set
them up as rudder pedals. So if you don’t have the money to get rudder pedals right now,
or trim wheel, this might be an option for ya. Right now I have actual rudder pedals.
And I’ll link in the description for the rudder pedals, the yoke. The trim wheels, I don’t
believe it’s even sold in Amazon anymore. As well, I’ll leave a link for the Oculus Rift
setup that I have. So if you guys want that, feel free to go through my link. It’s an
affiliate link, so I do make a little bit of commission from that every time anyone
purchases anything from Amazon after usin’ my link, I get a little commission from that.
So if you wanna just support my channel, but you don’t wanna buy any of this stuff, feel
free to just use my link and buy what you need that day. I really appreciate it, but you
don’t have to use my link at all. You can look this stuff up on Amazon. If you just type in
flight rudder pedals, or flight yoke, you’ll find ’em on Amazon right away. Oculus Rift,
same thing. You can find it on Amazon. Just type that in the search bar, and you’ll find it.
So I hope this helped, and look forward to seeing you guys in the next episode.
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you can try tb, the leap motion together with the flyinside, to control the panels with hands free and work together with physical controls.