Hi Tony, hi guys,
after my first two circuits in the Q400, here are my impressions so far, starting with the negative ones:
Rift:
The somewhat older graphics card is not a problem at all, frame rates were good (i.e. 90 and constant) with the second highest resolution (forgot what it was) and I could set the virtual desktop popouts to 25 fps without problems. Two things were rather noticable: the low resolution is apparent, I could make out single pixels. Reading displays is not possible without popping them out on moving them in front of the yoke. Might be connected to me wearing glasses, so some tweaking might improve that. Also, I get a lot of godrays in the dark cockpit (night flight) from the white pdf checklist, which is quite distracting.
FlyInside:
Two things could use improvement: first, the mouse: I do not like the fact that it moves with my view, because that means I have to hold my head very still to use the mouse wheel to dial in altitudes and such. In connection with the resolution problems from above, I found myself holding my head very awkwardly to see both the PFD (with the altitude setting) and the knob on the FGCP, and I would often lose the knob under the mouse and have to look back and forth. Quite frustrating if you are in a hurry to change the altitude. What is even worse is that if the mouse moves over a virtual desktop window, the mouse stops moving with the view. So what would happen is that I would look around and my mouse would get trapped in a popout somewhere and I would end up having to look for it and ultimately recenter it because I could not find it in time. Again, very frustrating under pressure. As a feature suggestion, I would propose an option which decouples the mouse from the view. If that is not possible, I would suggest moving the mouse with the view also in the virtual desktop windows. If that is also not possible, bad luck for me
The second thing are the virtual desktop in-cockpit windows: I had quite a hard time setting up a layout where I could see checklists and charts without them being in the way. However, they seem to have a mind of their own sometimes and move around after a trip to the menu. Also, I noticed a lot of flashing of windows below the windows being displayed, which was quite distracting.
That being said, flying with the Rift and FlyInside was incredible! It was so great having the depth, especially because of the contrast between the tiny Q400 cockpit and the wide open view out the window. And looking back around to look at the wing and these giant propellers (I never realized how big they were!), turning on the wing inspection light and see it light up in the dark, absolutely awesome. Thank you so much for creating FlyInside and making this possible!
The quirks will take some getting used to, but as I am usually flying shared cockpit, its probably not showstopping. I am predicting many Rift-enabled flights
Cheers,
eDude