While there are flight simmers who use VR, somewhat counter intuitively it's not really a good match. Also, it's a tiny market from a $$$ standpoint.
In a flight sim you have lots of dials in the cockpit you need to look at, and long viewing distances outside the window. None of the VR headsets I've tried have had good enough resolution to have a clear view on the cockpit instruments. The combination of cockpit very near and long viewing distances is also a bad recipe for motion sickness.
And then there's the controls. With a VR headset you can't see your hands or your controllers. With a hands on throttle and stick controller (HOTAS) you can fly around just fine, but when you need to toggle flaps or landing gear or navigation instruments, it's difficult to find the right button for that with a headset on.
So VR is ok for casual flying around, maybe even some dogfighting or aerobatics with simplified aircraft models. But once you need to deal with aircraft systems or navigation instruments, you're better off with triple screens and/or head tracking.
I’m curious: in racing sims, in a three-monitor setup, the side view is extremely skewed due to perspective. They are there just to provide a sense of space and peripheral vision, but you’re supposed to look to the center monitor the majority of the time.
Is that not the case for flight sim setups? I can’t imagine looking at a horribly stretched image on a side window to be a nice experience.
While I've never set things up that detailed for myself, I'm aware of many multi-screen flight sim setups. The general effect aimed for is that each screen shows the accurate perspective that you would see if you turned your head in that direction from the cockpit seat you're 'sitting in'.
Edge of screen mappings can be a little tricky but the higher level rendering engines can make near seamless transitions.
Military and commercial simulators try for displays that absolutely minimize visual artifact distractions so the experience is as close to sitting in the seat as possible.
> None of the VR headsets I've tried have had good enough resolution to have a clear view on the cockpit instruments.
Have you tried the Index? It used to be bad on the Vive, but Xplane with the Valve Index finally made it possible for me to see the instruments without squinting.
In a flight sim you have lots of dials in the cockpit you need to look at, and long viewing distances outside the window. None of the VR headsets I've tried have had good enough resolution to have a clear view on the cockpit instruments. The combination of cockpit very near and long viewing distances is also a bad recipe for motion sickness.
And then there's the controls. With a VR headset you can't see your hands or your controllers. With a hands on throttle and stick controller (HOTAS) you can fly around just fine, but when you need to toggle flaps or landing gear or navigation instruments, it's difficult to find the right button for that with a headset on.
So VR is ok for casual flying around, maybe even some dogfighting or aerobatics with simplified aircraft models. But once you need to deal with aircraft systems or navigation instruments, you're better off with triple screens and/or head tracking.