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It’s basically VR2 with the crashes and chaos fixed. The plugin system in VR2 had a bug that seems to have caused plugins to go completely crazy and cause weird rendering settings changes.  This should be fixed in VR3, but check your settings to make sure they match what you expect.

VR3 also fixes the sim not starting on older Linux installations.

EDIT: VR3 is now available as a Steam public beta too.

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

126 comments on “X-Plane 11.20 VR3 Is Live”

  1. hello…!!! first thanks for the effort
    i have a big problem with fps, with vr1 beta with rendering opiton medium to high i had around 90 frames in not VR mode, and steady 45 in vr, now with vr3 and ALL rendering setting to the lowest value and sky clear i have maximum 70 frames in not vr and 20 in vr.
    what it coul be ?
    thank you

    1. Maybe “Sky clear” is the performance problem. Try to set visibility lower and it will improve.
      The visibility setting has more influence than the sliders in graphics settings.
      I need to set visibility to 10km to play VR.

    1. Looks like Anisotropic Filtering has been disabled or decreased. I don’t think there’s a specific setting for that in X-Plane (Maybe “Visual Effects”), but check in your NVidia or ATI control panel.

  4. Impressive reality. Bravo for the work done. I’m shooting between 50 and 60 Fps
    I translate all your update as I post on xplane.fr. More than 5800 people have read the translations. Again thank you

      1. Any update on the Steam version. Want to get off of VR1 and fly some of those planes, I could not before.

  6. And have you impelemented any end2end or integreation test to avoid the same problems in the future? 🙂

    1. Meister, this is an Alpha-Version, that‘s often mentioned by LR, and you and we are the end2end test!

      That‘s our common job with Ben, Chris, you, me and all other Alpha-/Beta-X-Plane-Users.

      1. No-no-no.
        In software development, if you face a problem, you should write some automatic test to avoid the same problem again.
        Without this, you cannot create a CD system.

          1. I think hes talking about software development in the “perfect world”, which to my knowledge only exists in places where you have overstaffing of 3 devs per problem and no clients bitching 25/8/366…..

            welcome to the !(Perfect World), bud !!

            but still why no native oculus support… 🙂 🙂 🙂 kidding!

          4. Automatic testing is not always feasible, or convenient. For example, any bugs that end up in artifacts on screen are typically hard if not impossible to automate, because the test agent shall be aware of what output is “good” and what is “artifact”. I agree with Scott, automated testing is not a device that you plug in and “it just works”. The application under test shall be specifically developed with automated testing in mind. Automated testing is a software development on its own, so it may have its own bugs. Not all projects are compatible with an automated testing approach. In many scenarios, open beta (which is what is actually done with X-Plane) is the only viable solution.

  7. Hello. Thank you for the plugin fix.
    I have fps problems using hdr+ssao. 7 fps. But with same settings except of changing hdr+ssao to only hdr I got my 45 fps back

    1. If you turn off VR and run in a window of the smallest size do you still have this? If so, please report a bug…SSAO costs more but it should only break the bank if you’ve just got way too much surface.

  8. Hi !

    The problems with XPUIPC and the lost autogen / roads were gone with vr3 !
    Thx !!!

    Just for info : still have judders with the Oculus CV1.

    1. Did you try toggling ASW on and off whilst sitting in a plane using the OculusDebugTool ? Worth a try.

      1. better bet try this , set oculus app to compatibility run as admin, that way it wont start when steam starts (beware, you loose the guardian system if oculus home is not running), download and install oculustraytool, in there you can set the asw permanently, set it to auto run as a service so it doesn’t keep pestering for admin access.

        i have low on visual effects and medium on everything else and it doesn’t judder, i also am using hdmesh v4 scenery for the area (north eastern spain, south western france.

        also ensure that the judder is not from tracking problems, i have my sensors focused inward to my seating area not as oculus recommend (as i hacve a small space and dont do room scale in the sim room.

        im running an i5 7600k @ 4.8ghz and an evga 1070 sc at stock speed.

        i used to judder like crazy until i configured my area and setup as above

      2. asw must be set before the application enters vr mode, in the case of xplane as it goes in 2 stages (menu then in plane) you should set it when your in the menu for it to affect the inplane part, but i would seriously recommend the steps above, they worked wonders for me and i don’t have a killer rig.

        also ensure that you have the latest gameready drivers and that they are set to max performance plus you set a special override for xplane that threaded optimisation is off, not auto, threadded optimisation on causes a big performance hit in xplane as io believe that teh engine the devs are using is proprietrty and does its own threading whcih conflicts with nvidias threadding optimisations.

        i am assuming that you are using an nvidia card… btw…

        1. Thx guys for your answers !

          I tried all suggestions before your posts but nothing helped. I think I just have to wait some time for solutions….

    1. Same, mouse cursor is activating stuff no where near to where the actual cursor on my screen is

  10. getting there STILL pegged at 45 FPS no matter how low set stuff which is silly really you guys need to ditch the frame limiting on your end and let the rift SDK do its thing

    oh PLEASE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE FACT THAT HAVING WAVE FFT ON almost halves the frame rate… really i dont know whats its doing but the effect is no where near worth the frame rate impact it has more so when flying IN MIDWEST WITH NO WATER AROUND that turn it off nearly doubles the frame rate

  11. OH and can we get more control of AA options for VR FXAA really should be its own ON/OFF check box apart from the rest of the AA options like EVERY OTHER GAME IN THE WORLD would be really nice to have 2x SSAA with OUT FXAA

  13. I filed a bug, but is there a way around the program crashing on startup? I suspect it’s because FlyInside is installed on my computer, but I don’t want to uninstall that program.

    1. As we said in the VR2 announcement…FlyInside crashes with 11.20 VR2/3. You should either uninstall it or install a second copy of X-Plane for VR2/3.

  14. Great work guys!

    I’m having a problem in which only the left eye of my headset actually renders the images, ie. the menu Hangar, and the other side just gives me a solid blue color. Any ideas what might be going on? I removed all plugins and am running the Steam VR3 beta.

    1. Having the same issue. Tried to work it out with adjusting 8 hours today… thanks for your post! Now I know it’s the vr3 version.

  15. Hey Ben, thank you for mouse support.
    VR really brings Xplane to life, it is amazing.
    Other than bugs the main issue is performance – will there be any optimisations specifically for VR and do you see decent gains in any optimisations?
    Also do you think there will be big gains with Vulkan, as in 50%+ or is that way too optimistic?

    1. Perf: don’t get your hopes up. Like, we’re constantly working on perf and we’re constantly putting small improvements (5% here, 5% there) into the sim, and over a long time it adds up. But if you want to run with all the autogen at 90 fps and you’re running with all the autogen at 30 fps, it’s not going to happen.

      1. Okay thanks, I have 1080Ti, 32 Gig Ram etc and still have to make a lot of compromises on eye candy just to get anywhere near 45FPS in VR so was hoping for a magic bullet and that Vulkan might be it. 🙂
        Thank you for all your hard work and bringing VR to Xplane.

  16. I was running Vr1 on stream with no problem! Now i wont even last 10 sec before crash its unplayable ! What can i do ?

  17. I was eager to try vr3 since, even if I’ve got the touch controllers, I’ve always found the touch input method too “arcade” for a simulator. Now that vr3 is finally out on steam, what can I say?

    Well, a total disappointment! Yes, now I can use my hotas and mouse; the menu navigation, once set a “center view” hotas binding, is easy and well done, but… the mouse must be used to fly and here we are far from perfect.

    I’ve tested a simple free flight with C172. What I’ve noticed is that the mouse cursor is too bulky and, the most important, the hotpoint areas are way too imprecise and difficult to be found. Moreover, the yoke is clickable, so activating and deactivating the switches under the joke is almost impossible. Yes, you can click the “hide joke” feature, but this takes away a lot from the sense of presence. With a mouse feature implemented in such way maybe using touch controllers is better.

    Now some general thoughts about this situation: I suppose LR developers have never played DCS A-10C, or any other DCS clickable module. In DCS the mouse feature is way better implemented: 1) this is not a bulky omnipresent arrow but a discrete blue cross that disappears after a few seconds if you drop the mouse; 2) the way the cursor moves in 3d environment is so well implemented that you do not even realize you are moving a mouse cross in a 3d space: you always know where your mouse is pointing and what switch you are activating, a feature that is fundamental when you interact with complex (sometimes overwhelming) avionics during fast battlefield operations. In XP11 the size of the arrow changes to show you if you are on a closer or farther floor, this maybe should help you to locate the clickable hotpoints, but nevertheless manage to do this is a lot more difficult and imprecise than in DCS; 3) I think it would be fundamental to have an option to deactivate joke clikability for people using hotas and mouse (in DCS stick and throttle are not clickable, but the different switches on them moves when you click your binded hotas buttons); now the only possible solution using mouse is to hide joke; 4) if you use touch controllers it is easy to grab your tablet and magnetize it on the right joke; using mouse this is impossible because cursor movement lacks in depth and if you grab the tablet with the arrow you can move it only right-left-up-down but not on the third axis.

    I understand LR maybe wants to push touch controllers interactions, but in this situation I can not enjoy general aviation flight the same way in which I enjoy modern air combat with DCS. I’m sorry but we’re not here. This is a beta preview so I hope something could be done to improve this current situation.

  18. Huge thanks developers! For me, Steam user, Rift, older i7 cpu, 1080Ti, following asw recommendations etc. the sim is now running much more smoothly, judder almost gone, everything works, fantastic experience. Awesome job.

  19. Hey Ben. Great job with VR3. The regression bugs in VR2 mostly look to have been fixed. There are still a few pain points I feel though, vs VR1/in general. These are my observations/thoughts/gripes:

    1. The Rift touch controller buttons, triggers etc assignments in VR1 were very nice and all made sense IMO. Since VR2, it seems they’ve all been set to ‘None’ by default. So the controllers do nothing on startup and everything needs to be (re)assigned. I assume this is part and parcel of the user now being able to freely assign them? Trying to set them all back to what they were is very painful because firstly I don’t know what the corresponding labels are in the dropdown (to get all the assignments back exactly the way they were) and secondly…

    2. …the touch controllers only appear in the Hardware dropdown when in VR mode. Since the text resolution is significantly poorer in VR vs non-VR, it only compounds #1 in trying to get everything re-assigned. I find myself staring ‘upwards’ at the board in the hanger (coupled with the low-res text) struggling to apply assignments. You used to be able to press ‘A’ or ‘B’ (I can’t remember which) on the right controller to reposition the board nicely in front of you. So it’s a bit of a catch 22 :). It would be so much better if it were possible to do the controller assignments in non-VR mode. Ideally though, I would have left the assignments untouched and allow users to amend the defaults if they wish.

    3. In VR1, the virtual Rift touch controllers in VR were consistently reversed. I.e. you hold up the left one (that has buttons ‘X’ and ‘Y’) but what you see is the right one (that has buttons ‘A’ and ‘B’) and vice versa. This was actually fixed in VR2. But now they are reversed again in VR3! [EDIT: I’ve just seen this is already logged under XPD-8935 :)]

    4. I find using the mouse in VR in the cockpit is pretty much impossible. Taking the FF A320 plugin for example (which is not VR ready): a) there’s still this issue of two cursors being visible, one is the small correct one in the distance, the other is a huge twitching one in your face (actually both of them twitch in sync) which is very annoying/headache inducing. Secondly, the cursor sinks into the overhead panel, which means you can’t click most things – looks like this sinking part is logged under XPD-8941 though.

    5. When in VR mode in VR3 with mouse enabled, clicking the ‘Disable VR Headset’ button still does nothing. I thought this was fixed by XPD-8945? When I’ve been unsuccessful in trying to re-assign the touch controller buttons and triggers and then unable to click this button, I find myself no option on several occasions but having to kill X-Plane from task manager and then fire back up again and go back to square one.

    Really loving X-Plane 11 though, and VR is whole new world of fun. Also the way you guys are really listening and engaging with us during this beta phase is awesome. Keep up the great work!

  20. I’m happy, vr3 runs fine for me.. thrustmaster t160000m, saitek pro pedals, 1070 gtx and an i5 7600k

    only thing that has stopped working is the fly with lua plugin that i use to dynamically modify the detail level to keep the framerate up, investigating….

    investigated..

    commented the offending lines in the lua ini scripts, looks like its related to the thumbsicks of the rift touch controllers missing a property that normal joystick s have

  21. Scott, I have i76700k and 1070 so more or less your rig but, other than what I’ve already written about mouse problems (I use t.16000m flight pack with throttle and pedals and I’d like to use mouse to interact with cockpit; of course I could set hundreds of voice commands with voiceattack and avoid the mouse problem, as someone suggested, but the cockpit are clickable for a reason, I think), I see very bad performances overall. This is called “beta” but is only a VR “preview”, something to test VR and let you have some casual fun. If you want to have a serious flight in VR, XP11 is not yet ready.

    1. @nessuno0505, I don’t have VR equipement but I guess it will be ready once it enters the beta stage. The whole point of a preview is to give customers a taste of the product before it’s ready. If I had VR, I would rather have a preview than nothing.

  22. i found you need to disable the vr mouse to be able to click the disable vr button, or turn off vr hardware in the menus, a good idea could be to define a panic button as well.

    i have no problem using the touch controllers for the manipulation of the panels.

    I get the biggest hit when i turn on visual effects, i fly with them at minimum, biggest improvement jump occurred for me when i turned off threaded optimisation in the nvidia control panel, i think it is automatically set to off as soon as you create the custom profile for x plane.

    the flywithlua automatic detail plugin that i’m using also helps a lot when things get cluttered by cutting the draw distance of objects when things start to bog down.

    also, found another sizeable boost when i stopped oculus home from starting up by marking it as compatibility/ start as administrator.. but be warned as this turns off the guardian system (which might explain part of the speed boost as there is no constant calculation or rendering being performed to check proximity of the guardian boundaries etc.

    i think it would be better though if the representation of the touch controllers were correct and not these xfr things, the button placement is wrong and they don’t match size for size, aerofly fs2 is guilty of this as well, i see vive wands when i’m using rift grips, maybe give us a choice of hand controller model if your not able to detect the correct type, as far as i’m aware the different models come with most sdks.

    i found that to read the text easier in the menu i could use the “zoom” button, also found it a godsend for reading the compass in the stinson.

    not a big fan of commercial airliners or multiengine craft, prefer smaller single prop craft and normally fly by VFR rules as opposed to IFR so i stay away from the larger airports, sabadell (LELL) is about the biggest airport i fly to/from also like the smaller pyrenean aerodromes, maybe the lack of urban areas is helping to keep my framerates under control

  23. I forgot, one more thing that helped with my framerates, i used to have Xplane on my HDD, i made space and moved it to my SDD, seamed to help a little with the occasional stutter while loading new textures in flight

  24. I’ve seen some people complaining about the mouse cursor not getting out of the way. I haven’t tested VR, I’m still waiting for a good HMD to come into the market, but this is what I’m expecting for the mouse (as it is in other sims).

    If you don’t touch the mouse for a while, the cursor should disappear. If I’m flying VFR with a Cessna and I only use the mouse to switch some frequencies every now and then, I’m definitely not interested in having the mouse cursor in front of me the rest of the flight.

    Hope this is helpful. Thanks!

  25. x-plane 11.20vr3 stopped works. Its lauching about 3-5sec and after stop working. Played via SteamVR and Oculus

  26. Are there any settings to smooth out the framerate? Right now it’s very jumpy. So overall it’s smooth, but every 1/4 to 1/2 second there’s a little jump like it had to skip several frames.

    ASW is turned off in the Oculus Debug. Should I turn it on?

    1. ASW should be off for now. It is very sneaky and switches back to Auto every time VR is started and stopped in X-Plane (as far as I can tell).
      I used the debug tool on the fly, checking the status when I first enter the cockpit in VR.
      Best and quickest method is the keyboard command – Right Ctrl + Numpad 1.
      This is a global Oculus command to control ASW modes, Right Ctrl + Numpad 2,3,4 have other ASW functions also.
      I use “voice attack” and set a profile up to do this for me using a speech command, so completely hands off mouse and KB amd I can stay in VR.
      Thanks

      1. yeah this isnt an option imo LR should working with the Oculus SDK not doing thing that require turning stuff off they really need to just have native support of Rift 2.0

  27. Thank you for working so hard to make VR available!
    It would be great to have a 2d menu on the 2d monitor (and not the mirror image of the VR view), so we can use this to change settings quickly. (Like the Control Panel on the iPad).
    It would also be nice to have a dialog box on startup asking if you want to start VR or not. (or always have it start in 2d). Currently it always starts in the state you last exited. Maybe even with separate Graphic Settings loaded automatically.

    Cheers,
    André

  28. Hi!, First off, I think the VR in Xplane is really good, one of the best vr experiences ever. Do you have any plans on being able to view images on the xpad. It would be very helpful to get like a checklist or something so I dont keep having to take off the headset. Thanks!

  29. Observations of VR3:

    – Cannot disable VR headset when VR mouse is enabled
    – Aircraft seems to stutter back and forth ever so slightly which I haven’t noticed before
    – Controllers are a NIGHTMARE to configure with the addition of profiles. Here’s how to configure just one VR controller for EACH aircraft:

    1. Disable Steam VR because the controller won’t click on anything (as nothing is assigned)
    2. Enable the VR mouse( because X-Plane won’t pick up the controllers when VR is disabled)
    3. Re-enable VR
    4. Use the virtual mouse to re-configure all axes and buttons to what they should be
    5. Calibrate axes… A pain if they are already assigned (as you will jump around the hanger)
    6. Repeat for all aircraft

    … Which is really annoying. Nonetheless, I always appreciate your hard work LR. We’ll get it right!

    P.S. I’ll also be reporting bugs too. These were just observations

  31. Hi Ben. I have a question about scenery LODs. I’m aware that if we don’t assign any LOD in our scenery OBJs, X-Plane automatically calculates and assigns LODs to scenery objects at runtime. My question is: Does X-Plane generate one LOD for the entire OBJ, or does it generate separate LODs for each individual TRIS command inside the OBJ? It would also be useful to know how X-Plane calculates the distances/levels for the LOD.

    Also, we assign LODs by distance from the camera but how does the camera zoom come in to play? We can make an object appear to be closer to us by zooming in on it while staying at the same distance from it. Does the LOD system take that into account?

    1. Auto-LOD is calculated for the entire object.

      When you zoom, there’s a heuristic that boosts LOD but not in a linear manner — it’s designed to compromise between giving you more detail and not murdering fps.

  32. This is just brillant. I absolutely love it.
    I know it’s too much to ask, but are you planning move to Vulcan ? Like, anytime this year ? or no chance and maybe never ?

      1. Thanks Ben. I think this is probably the most critical aspect of the program right now. I don’t know how much it will help, but, from what I have studied, it is the right move. Everything else, despite the “I wants” can pretty well sit on the sidelines until this is done in my estimation.

      2. That’s good, because MOST X-Plane “non-Commercial users” – long-time ones anyway- have followed “Austin’s advice” in the past and have run with “upper mid-range “video card purchases. eg. AMD RX 480s or Nvidia 1060s were purchased in the not too distant past at “reasonable” prices ( especially for “retirees or folks with young families” ) . Current pricing, thanks to Cryptominers, for “higher end cards than that” seems to be running at least $1,000 per – if you can even get delivery on them – and if VR is to be used another “minimum” of $600. The REST of components in most existing rigs – from your statistical reports – probably don’t add up to even 2/3’ds of that.
        – Might be reasonable “upgrade expenses for some” but probably not if you also have to tack on fees for “divorce lawyers and settlements” – or “getting-even” purchases by spouses.
        – I do realize that MOST of Laminar’s “profitable income” comes from the “Commercial License holders” whose businesses can easily justify upgrade costs for ” visual reality/immersion “( which they can pass-thru to their Customers). So, this may be an unrealistic goal for MOST X-Plane 11 users. – But the obvious excitement of and benefits from VR and the increasingly necessary high-end video-cards to keep “the average user” from just feeling “left out” of the equation may lead to more disappointment with X-plane 11 in spite of it’s obvious promise.
        – Crypto isn’t going away any time soon and BOTH Nvidia and AMD are responsible To Their Stockholders and to “industry analysts” for sales and profit numbers MORE than in # of sales to the General Public ( and have significant “production constraints” on the production of such high-end cards as well ).
        – IF there could be an ONGOING ( updated as improvements are stabilized ) “published set of recommendations” for such “affordable solutions” – ( settings and “reasonable anticipated graphical results” that are focused on 30-35 fps as the target ) – I’d think that disappointment for most users could be kept to a “realistic minimum” rather than the single direction which it seems to be going toward NOW.
        – Thanks for all your hard work and the good results you have produced for those who can afford the hardware improvements. The eventual promise as you move away from OpenGL will be good for performance from many angles for ALL X-Plane lovers.

        1. First, I want to point out that the statement:

          ‘–I do realize that MOST of Laminar’s “profitable income” comes from the “Commercial License holders”’

          is incorrect, and the fact that I have approved the blog comment does _not_ imply that the commenter’s speculation about LR’s business model is correct. I don’t think Laminar Research has ever posted a break-down of revenue or profit by market sector, and as a privately held company, we don’t have any plans to do so.

          What I can say is that our decision to pursue Vulkan is being made because it addresses _multiple_ market segments:
          – The professional market does need the deterministic non-stuttery graphics delivery we hope to get from Vulkan, but
          – The consumer market also wants this, and also wants higher framerates, multicore utilization and better use of their hardware.
          – The VR market raises the bar for what “good FPS” are, but we were hearing “why not 60” from _all_ corners of our markets.

          Regarding crypto-mania and the unfortunate spike in GPU prices: we are not at this time planning to change our mix of hardware utilization to favor the CPU more and GPU less because of the recent spike in mid-high GPU prices, which I do not think is a permanent change to the gaming ecosystem. (It IS temporarily quite annoying!!)

  33. Amazing Ben, I turn around to deal with real life for a few weeks and bam! X-plane VR!
    Congratulations to the whole team.

    I have a quick question does X-plane support streaming the screen to a smartphone device? I’m thinking as a cheap alternative to htc vive oculus etc.
    trinus comes to mind https://www.trinusvirtualreality.com

    Apologies if it’s a silly question, I admittedly haven’t looked much into this as of yet.
    Best
    Luca

    1. We don’t support that; some people are using unofficial SteamVR drivers to Wifi the screen to GearVR…I’m told it works, but if it doesn’t, my fingers are in my ears. 🙂

      1. That’s fair Ben, since it’s not supported way to use VR.
        This makes me think about the things (issues or bugs) users of not supported methods do see and if they appear in supported HMDs. Is there a way to make X-Plane run in VR without having a Supported HMD for testing purposes and not using 3rd party SteamVR drivers that can achieve this.
        For example I use Riftcat VRidge, it works ok in my setup, but I have a issue that I didn’t report after thinking that VRidge might be the problem, enabling VR mouse drop 10 FPS in my setup. Should I report what I see even un-supported methods, or should I keep away from the report page? 😀

        Sorry about my English. 🙂

    1. That is odd given fps in VR is capped at 45fps and I get nothing like 60fps with high settings and 1080Ti anyway.

  35. Very nice update, thanks for fixing the CH Pro rudder bug! I still have a small problem with the Touch controllers, they sometimes power down when I do not move them enough (for example during hands on throttle while on approach) it has been there since VR1, but I always thought it would be an Oculus setting. I’ve looked for it, but could not find it. Are other people having the same issue? Is this something you guys can control through an API?

    Furthermore I’m under the impression that FMOD sounds have quite an impact on framerate at the moment. It really seems that they go down by quite a bit when announcements from the ZIBO 737 mod (with soundpack) are playing. I can’t prove it though. If this is the case though, is the FMOD sound system running on the same core that is also used by the rendering engine? Then would it be possible, and improve things, when the sound engine is moved to another core??

    I can’t stress enough how wonderfull X-Plane 11 is in VR. I’m flying a lot around my favorite holiday spot (Gran Canaria), so I got the SpainUHD ZL17 scenery, got a very nice GCLP scenery and installed FSEnhancer. Then I tweaked the light settings so they are more realistic to the human eye (instead of a photo camera with a long exposure time). With some of the tweaks found around the internet and the great 3jFPS-Wizard I can actually get decent framerates on some of the higher settings (so there is still a LOT to win on the outside of the rendering engine).

    Now a night approach to the airfield is SO realistic, I still really can’t believe this is already possible at the moment! So thanks a lot for making this possible!

    Two things left. One; would it be possible to render lights in the far distance, you can now see them pop up which breaks the illusion a bit. Maybe it is possible to prerender a lightmap or something like that?

    Two; The minimal reflection setting generates a texturemap of the interior every once in a while, but it takes a bit too long. The next setting generates texturemaps in near-realtime, which is a bit too much. Can there be a setting, or can the minimal setting be modified, so that the texturemaps are generated every 10 seconds or so? This is important for night flying, because in the C172 for example you can see the interior reflections from the xPad and the lit cabin way too much. I now throw the xPad away, turn off the interior lights, set the reflection setting to a bit higher and then turn it back to overcome this problem.

    1. FMOD _can_ use significant CPU sources, but it is _not_ on the main rendering thread; if FMOD sound is hurting fps, that implies optimization problems in the FMOD creation?

      In particular, there is real overhead for leaving an event ‘playing’ that doesn’t have sound..this is why the .snd file lists conditions to start and stop sound events. We first considered starting EVERY sound event and letting ALL of the logic be in FMOD – you can use a parameter track or volume automation logic to start and stop things. When we saw the CPU overhead, we decided real start and stop conditions are needed.

      I don’t know what’s up with touch controllers shutting down – for me it seems to happen when the battery gets low.

      We have a possible improvement for far texture lights but that’ll be after 11.20.

  36. How come I cant use my custom views that are binded in the num pad to work in VR. They only work in 2D. Any thoughts on how to fix this?

    1. If a custom view is based on the 3-d cockpit, they don’t work in VR because VR takes over the pilot’s head position. We have not yet added recall of teleport positions, but it is something we intend to look at some day.

      1. Thanks for the reply. But, what about wing views? I cant seem to bind them. I can only bind views if I press Shift 8 and then bind a view. However, there is no other way for me to get a passenger view side. I hope I am making sense here. My english is not so good.
        Thanks

      2. Hi Ben,
        It would be very useful to have recorded positions AND angle in the VR space. Just a use case: I have a Brunner yoke, and I’d like to match the positions of the real yoke to the virtual one. I can do this now approximately by adjusting with the pan left/right/fwd/back commands, but I didn’t find a command/dataref to tune the angle precisely.
        Thanks for the convincing advances in VR !

  37. Hi,

    Everything was working nice in VR1. But since update to VR3, I’m unable to enable VR Hardware. I’m always getting:

    SteamVR was unable to initialize:
    Interface Not Found(105)
    Error code 105 (VRInitError_Init_interfaceNotFound)

    This error occurs even if the SteamVR is green and can track the headset.
    I’m unable to use VR completely.
    Please help me

    2. Solved myself by reinstalling SteamVR.
      The failing steamVR was from december 2017.
      Thanks

  38. Using Vr3 (Without a VR headset as I don’t have one) My 737 randomly had no click zones and was way of sync; I go and press the auto throttle and it will turn a fuel pump off, The click zones just literally scrambled themselves ?

  39. VR4 Suggestions:
    1. VR Zoom Toggle Command. Allow users to zoom in on a part of the panel, and then to do something else, then to toggle back to a normal view. Useful for using an FMS.
    2. Mouse Cursor Toggle Command. Restore lost frame rate by being able to enable and disable the mouse dynamically.
    3. Scale the mouse cursor relative to the view, not the proximity it has on whatever 3D object it’s painting on. May be useful to have user configurable small, medium and large mouse cursors.

    If you would prefer suggestions go via the bug reporter, please let us know. 😉

    1. Hi Steve,

      1 and 2 already shipped in VR3. We consider toggling the mouse cursor to be a usability feature; the loss of FPS with the 3-d mouse is a bug – if you see it, you should file it.

      1. Thanks, Ben!

        I found #2, but if code to “toggle” VR Zoom is present, it hasn’t been exposed in the interface just yet. VR Zoom is currently only momentary, meaning that to work at the FMS, for example, one would have to hold that momentary button all the while they were making entries on the CDU.

  40. Hey guys, I’ve seen somewhere someone reporting that the mouse cursor was offset somehow. This happened to me as well *not on VR*. It was quite difficult to finish the flight but somehow I survived. The problem is that it happened midflight and I have no idea how to reproduce it.

    I’ve filed a report, I hope guys can figure out what the problem is. I have filed a bug report.

    Thank you.

  41. Hi guys.
    Slowly getting used to flying in VR and developing my liking as to what controls I use. For yoke and throttle it will stay Hardware. Using a virtual yoke is nothing for me. Thought the introduction of a real working virtual yoke would be great, but its aweful for me. My flying with it is aweful, and the sickbag usage of my passengers rather high then. There I have to say that your joystick type yoke ist the best of the virtual ones, even if I didn’t like it that much at the start. But heck, that’s what the preview is for. Trying out ideas and finding out what the users think of them. Some may like the real action virtual yoke style and some the joystick type. Mouse and hardware, and occasionally the vive controllers work best for me. But you still have a way to go in terms of bugs and stange behavior. Why can’t I use the mouse normaly on the Monitor while in VR? World traffic 3 gave me some warnings and question windows, that I was unable to click away, or answer. Only with muuuuuuuuuuuch patience, was I able to find spots were I could somewhat click on the displayed windows to do something with them. Drove me nuts. It would also be great if I could use the normal steam button on my Vive to call up the desktop, so that I could maybe read a checklist, or consult some airport maps (hint: make a button that throws you temporally out of xplane, and onto the desktop – would save the work of bringing windows into the sim). Made a small flight in your Cessna 172 this afternoon, from a small GA airport, to another small GA airport in germany, flying along the Rhein river, past frankfurt-Main (EDDF) airport. The Cessna engine was humming merrily along, the hazy Sun shone though the fantastically realistic windows (noticed they were a bit dirty at the edges 🙂 ), the Sun glistening of the Rheins water and I was letting the Autopilot do its job. I felt warm in the heart, happy and realised how great it is to be a pilot, even if only in a simulation. Albeit a very good and fantastic one. Somehow I even felt the warming sun, and enjoyed the scenery out of the cockpit windows. Even without any Ortho or world2xp, the xplane scenery is very believable, and once when I got somewhat lost in a VFR flight, I just called up google maps, and orientated myself using that. Shows the quality that your scenery has reached. The feeling in that flight this afternoon was a feeling that is impossible to describe to anyone. They have to experience it themselves (it also helps if they are a bit plane crazy as I am 🙂 ). VR is deffinately the way to fly (never realised how cramped a Cessna cockpit is – I normaly fly the big boys like a 737). Just have to say again my thanks for bringing out this wonderful experience. Hoping for the Vive pro this year, to get an even more sharper view.
    Small wish that I would have as a feature is a kind of landing evaluation like in the landing speed plugin, but as a built in part of xplane. Maybe like the FPS counter that allready exists (does that work in VR?). I have the landing speed plugin, but it only works in 2D and not in VR. Some of my landings in the past days were a bit “hard” :-), so it would be nice to know if my planes landing gear is still good condition…. Keep up your fabulous work, and give us more of these magic moments!

  42. Feature Request:

    When the File Flight Plan ATC window is selected in VR, can it launch its own virtual keyboard so that route info may be entered using touch controllers?

  43. Maybe a shortcut to get the mouse enable/disable for vr would help me , or is there a way i didnt find yet

  44. When is somebody going to look into my haptic feedback issues? (I don’t get any).
    Created a bug report and all Jennifer says is “I can’t reproduce it”.

    Since then I ‘m just feeling being shut down and ignored!

    I had Oculus Support looking into it and they are also saying it must be within the xplane interface. Besides that my haptic feedback works perfectly fine in any other vr game.

  45. mouse pointer too big can not maneuver the ATL button on the g1000.
    why VR1 functions no longer appear with VR3?
    thadjusting the Vr handles with the mouse occasionally the xplane to stop.
    Setting a little difficult to understand.
    laser beam only hooks the tablet and difficulties to transcribe the values ​​on the G1000 of all airplane

  46. quick thought, wouldn’t it be a great idea to display just the 2d or fixed view 3d cockpit (no world rendering) on the default monitor so you can easier set vor, heading, etc. and manipulate dials etc.etc, just slip the hmd up a little to see the screen and interact using the mouse on the 2d panel instead of the mouse following the hmd tracking?

    that way you have the immersion of vr but the clarity of a monitor for fine detail when needed, mouse cursor position over 2d dash could optionally be projected in 3d cockpit as well..

      2. the “zoom” is almost sickening and only really good for looking at the compass, and trying to use the manipulator knobs for dial adjustment is near impossible when zoomed due to over sensitivity, trying to latch the manipulator on an adjuster and read the current value while adjusting is hard enough, and harder when the panel is moving in relation to the hmd ( maybe cinema verte mode is amplifying this specific issue probably auto cancelling cinema verte while zoomed could be the solution), let alone reading the values as your changing them with the current headset resolutions even when zoomed.

        not to mention if your playing on a desk using a tpm device, joystick and pedals etc. and you don’t have the luxury of being able to “reach under the desk” to manipulate some of the ui components, so yeah i suppose your right.. there is a grave usability flaw in the vr implementation if you want the accuracy of physical controls coupled with the need to set dials etc,

        maybe don’t trap the vr mouse inside the hmd viewport, i can see it hitting the side of the viewport then being dragged along and when i look a back the other way it ends up in the middle of the view.

        another not too costly idea could be render a 3rd view on the monitor, movable with a joystick pov hat independent of the hmd, that way you could take off the headset on long flights for a rest without having to pause the flight (kills 2 birds with one stone…)

        the 2d panel on the monitor idea seamed to me like logical middle ground on the issue of hmd immersion and fine grain settings couple with rendering overheads

  47. Is there any way to make micro adjustments to your position on the flight deck. I find sometimes I’m too far back and using the jump facility end up on the roof or on the tarmac?

    1. Using the touch controller and pressing the menu button.

      Then select the advanced menu > View > Move > select how you want to move.

      This worked great in vr1 but in vr2 & 3 the menu disappears so you have to go through this procedure again and again.

      Bug report has been files.

      Bill

        1. I am in VR using the Vive with two touch controllers.

          If the advanced menu did not disappear until you pressed the menu button on the touch controller again this would work like in vr1.

          Is there a reason this behavior changed from vr1?

          Thanks Bill

          1. The advanced menu follows the same rules as the REAL menu bar: it disappears each time you pick one command.

            Commands in the menu bar should be built around this principle, e.g. it’s a great place for “connect to VATSIM servers” and a terrible place for “move head up a tiny bit”.

            The move commands are in there not because we think it’s a great place to pick them, but because it provides a very quick visual cue to users (when using 2-d menus) as to what the short-cut is for the view commands.

            But…you’re totally doing this wrong. Bind something ELSE to the move commands – they’re keyboard, joystick, and controller accessible. Whatever else you have access to – use that.

            (We’re not leaving the menus open because, for the vast majotiry of menu commands, pick once and hide the menu is the reasonable behavior; leaving the menu open for move commands is the tail wagging the dog.)

  48. Hey Ben, another scenery-related question. Are there plans to release an AGP exporter any time soon? I’m aware there exists an AGP exporter for Blender 2.49 but I can’t find it anywhere. Is it publicly accessible? If not, will you make it publicly accessible, especially since it has a lot of use in scenery development?

      1. Please do!! A flawed AGP exporter is better than no AGP exporter. It could probably help us scenery designers a lot in some ways.

  49. Any idea for when we can expect the next beta-preview? The last one is quite good but there are some bugs with mouse, button-positions and for me very important “disable VR”-Button. Thanx

    1. If we get lucky, this weekend. If not, early next week. I just finished fixing my bugs today but we’re going to do some testing, so we don’t have to recut the preview the day it’s released.

  50. Good job LR! But my controllers arent doing anything, i see the button animation but it wont work, it worked in VR2.

  51. Hi ,

    Will the problem with the not able to close the pup-up screens ( WT3 and so on ) be fixed with the next update ?
    It is not possible to close them. ( with or without 3D mouse )
    I wonder if it is only me with this problem ?

  52. Thank you guys for fascinating product! Just wondering if you have any plans to implement leap motion controller native support? So that we could use cockpit with our own hands? Using touch controllers from rift works, but its far from realism to flip switches with controllers… Another thing is that Steam platform doesn’t seem like have plans to implement native leap controller support either. The OpenVR driver basically emulates vive touch controllers, which is even worse than using actual controllers. The closest implementation has been done by Fly inside, but native VR suuport feels like working better.

    1. Not at this time – we may look at it in the future. At this point I’m not sure Leap motion has everything it would need for critical mass:
      – A lot of adoption within the VR adoption.
      – A really solid technology.
      – Being enough like other technology that it’s not just a big special case.

      From our perspective, we can’t have every single input controller that gets invented mean a trip back to the drawing board for artists making planes with manipulators. So if it would take a lot more meta-data to have leap interaction than controller wand interaction, that’s a big problem..if we hang too much on the authors, 3rd parties are going to go “VR mouse only” – they get paid to make aircraft, not to add more free stuff to existing aircraft – that’s just the economics of the add-on market.

      so for example, if the leap controller needs to know the knob radius but touch controllers don’t, that’s an example of the extra ‘art tax’ for what doesn’t have a lot of adoption.

  53. I’m not sure if this has been reported yet but there is a strange bug in that my 3D mouse is flashing on and off every second and the only way I can use it is by clicking when it flashes on. If it’s off, the click doesn’t register.

    Dazzy.

  54. I missed VR2, but in VR3 I’ve got a problem with the throttle and mixture. Using physical controller axes (LeoBodnar BUO836) the throttle and mixture axes are extremely slow to respond. So far I tested with the 172, 172 REP, and B-25.

    Not sure if this could be related to a mod, since FlyWithLUA is throwing errors so my next step is going to be to try running without the mods but I thought I’d ask in the meantime if anyone else has had this problem.

    1. Before anyone says, I will make a bug report as soon as I test a little further. Here I’m just asking if anyone else has experienced this and maybe found a solution.

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