VTOL VR

In the years and months leading up to the time when an Oculus Rift finally went on sale at a price that I could more or less afford, I spent a lot of time imagining which of my VR-capable 2D games would be the most improved with the level of immersion provided by a VR headset. In the event, Project CARS won the honor of being the game in which my performance was the most enhanced by the vastly improved situational awareness. But it was Aerofly FS 2 that had the most to gain in sheer visceral experience. For a month it reigned supreme as the most glowing example of why VR is here to stay. Sure, the graphics resolution in VR is weak compared to the 2D view, and the lack of a feeding tube means I have to return to the "real world" periodically, but the level to which realism is raised is simply amazing. I had to map the handful of switches and such to my HOTAS since the keyboard is rendered nearly useless, but that was a fair enough trade off. I figured that this was as good as VR flight sims would be until the next gen VR systems came out and prices eventually dropped to a palatable level. A bigger market and a better, more affordable VR system would surely bring a lot more developers into the fold, right?

I was wrong. I thought I would have to wait for the next-gen Oculus Rift or equivalent to get a native VR flight sim with any level of realism and complexity. The fact is, I hadn’t counted on something like VTOL VR, developed by Boundless Dynamics. Although it has been available for months, I simply hadn’t heard of it. YouTube brought it to my attention. VTOL VR is what I call a “pure-VR” game, in that it was purposely designed for VR, rather than having had it shoehorned in, as it was with Aerofly. And, as expected, that is readily apparent at first glance. It looks like a cartoon representation of a double sized jet. If you were to compare VTOL VR to DCS, Aerofly FS 2, or any other modern flight sim, you would be aghast at the clunky graphics.

That said, with the VR hardware resolution being what it is today, big and clunky is what’s required in order to make labels and switches and all that kind of minutiae legible. We’re just going to have to live with that for awhile. That, and having to break for meals now and then, hence my desire for a feeding tube. So yes, DCS and the others are beautiful, and there are tons of switches, buttons, knobs, and handles to move, but you had better memorize the location and function of each and every one of them because the labels are nigh impossible to see in VR. And with DCS, at least in my case, the frame rate is deplorable even with my fairly beefy nVidia 1060 GPU. VTOL VR is a horse of a different color. The cockpit is as wide as that of a Mack truck, the switches are the size of an ear of that cute little baby corn in Chinese food, and the fonts are of a suitable size for a senior’s menu at Cracker Barrel.

And…it’s wonderful.

Why? How can such a comparatively crude rendering draw such high praise? Well, it’s the immersion. Rather than having to struggle against fuzzy and illegible controls located in difficult-to-reach areas in order to operate the airplane systems, which often has to be done quickly and accurately, it’s all right there in easy sight and reach. All of the markings are easily read, the switches are big enough that they are easy to operate, and there is no requirement for an expensive HOTAS system to manage the flight controls and any switches. Not to mention the effort that goes into not only mapping mapping all of those functions to the HOTAS, but also remembering where you put them all. DCS, for example, has dozens of switches and whatnot that need to be manipulated on pretty much every flight. And even with the HOTAS, you not only have to remember where each switch is, you also have to find it by touch. Just as with the keyboard, the VR headset renders them useless for any more than a half dozen functions.

But, you say, all of that complex stuff you have in DCS is all well and good, but of what use would it be in an ultra simplified arcade-ish flight sim?

I’m glad I asked that, because I have a ready answer: none. No meaningful use at all. Fortunately, VTOL VR actually has quite a bit of depth to it. More than I had expected, in fact. In an attempt to convey some of that depth, I will walk you through a typical flight.

First, though, I should mention that VTOL is an acronym for vertical take-off and landing. Like a Harrier jet. Or, I suppose, just about any helicopter, with the difference being how fast a VTOL plane can go in level flight—much, much faster. And just like a Harrier, the plane modeled in VTOL VR makes a tremendous amount of noise when flying in vertical mode.

I should also mention that in its current state, VTOL VR is being sold as an Early Access title, so other than a few tutorials and a couple of missions, you’re pretty much on your own for discovering some of the more esoteric features of the modeled aircraft. With that in mind, our ride along will be in a training mission wherein there are targets to be shot at or bombed, but they don’t shoot back. Being as I don’t especially like a fair fight, that’s just fine with me. If I wanted to be killed a dozen times a minute, I would stick to Dead & Buried.

The first few moments of the mission were a little disorienting; I was placed in the cockpit of a cold and dark airplane, but oddly enough the airplane was rising. Once the view became clearer, I realized that myself and the airplane were being raised by an elevator, with the eventual destination being the deck of an aircraft carrier. Realistic, that.

Once on deck, I began the process of lighting up the airplane. Battery switch: ON. APU: ON. Left engine: ON. Right engine: ON. HUD power: ON. With both engines spooled up, APU: OFF. Then it was time to turn on the three central displays, each of which was powered up with a twist knob, something that I had thought to be impossible in the current state of VR development.

Once powered on, I used the menu items attached to the soft buttons located on the perimeter of the screens. I set my left screen to the moving-map NAV mode and pressed the button that would set my objective as a waypoint. I set the middle screen to display the video output of the targeting system. The third screen was set to the armaments page to ensure that all of my weapons were armed. I then turned on the Master Arm switch—I now had live weapons at my disposal. All of this happened with a nice haptic feedback feeling from the switches. In fact, pretty much every control of necessity had a nice haptic touch to let you know you had grasp of it and weren't just flailing your hands around in space fruitlessly. While that flailing remains entertaining to anyone watching you, it’s wasted time in a fighter jet.

Back to our flight. At this point I had a decision to make: I could lift off vertically and face the challenge of transitioning from a hover to full forward motion, or taxi over to the carrier’s catapults for a normal carrier launch. I opted for the latter. This was the first time that I interacted with the throttle and flight stick during our flight, and I’m afraid I need to digress from our narrative again to say a few words about the controls.

They are unique.

Okay, that’s too few words, so… rather than using a physical HOTAS, VTOL VR expands “virtual” to include the flight controls. For me, that meant I would be using the Rift’s Touch controllers. The flight stick modeled in the plane is similar to the flight stick in an F-16 in that it isn't in the conventional position between the pilot's legs. Instead, it is located on the right side of the pilot’s seat. When you rest your right arm on an armrest in the real world, the controller falls right into your hand. If it doesn’t, there are some buttons that can be used to customize its position. To use it, all you have to do is grip it with the normal way of doing that with a Touch controller. Once you have grabbed onto the stick, you twist your wrist back to climb, forward to dive, and left or right for yaw. The throttle is on the left side of the seat, but is not like the normal fore-and-aft throttle motion armchair warriors and actual pilots are used to. Instead, it has an up-and-down motion, very much like the collective control in a helicopter. As such, it feels perfectly normal in vertical flight but somewhat awkward in horizontal flight. I still haven’t gotten entirely comfortable with it; many of my crashes were the result of the non-intuitive throttle motion. Time and experience will surely solve that, though.

So, having decided on a catapult launch, I released the parking brake with a switch on the right console, swiveled the jets from vertical to horizontal with the thumb stick on my left Touch controller, and steered by twisting the flight stick around its vertical axis. I also had to remember to flip the switch that drops the catapult latch down onto the deck so the launch end of the catapult would catch it. Once locked to the catapult, I advanced the throttle to full afterburner and let go of the throttle control so I would have my left hand free to clean up the airplane as we cleared the ship’s deck. After a few moments, the catapult launched me and I immediately used my untethered left hand to raise the flaps and landing gear, using a pair of levers on the lower left side of the panel. Letting go of the throttle in order to be ready to do other things works fine, but you don’t want to let go of the flight stick—it won’t stay where you left it like the throttle does. I do believe there is a button on the Touch controller to make it hold the most recent position, but I never really felt the need to use it, nor could I find it; my left hand was able to do almost all of the in-flight cockpit tasks. Failing that, there is an autopilot.

As I settled into the climb, I started configuring my weapons. For this flight I had selected a collection of disparate weaponry: the Hydra-70 unguided rockets, the GAU-8 machine gun, the CAGM-6 multi-rocket air-to-ground missile(s) (fire once and it launches six individual rockets which then attempt to find and destroy up to six separate ground targets), an AGM-114 Maverick guided missile, and one AIM-9 Sidewinder infrared air-to-air missile.

My first target was a collection of four or five ground vehicles, so I selected the CAGM-6 missile(s). As I approached the targets, I was able to pick them out of the ground clutter as the HUD bracketed them with orange/red braces. I used my right thumbstick to drive the targeting reticle down to one of the targets and the system locked on. There is also a head tracking system for targeting, but in my early attempts to use it I ended up feeling disoriented. One lock-on was enough for the six-pack of missiles. I wiped out all of the targets with one shot.

There were also some ground troops in the town, so some injudicious shooting with the GAU-8 took them out, right along with any innocent bystanders that may have been there. The GAU-8 is pretty accurate, but targeting small specks in a crowded downtown environment doesn’t lend itself to faultless execution. At least that's going to be my story when called before a UN war crimes tribunal.

As I was pulling away from my ground attacks, my RWR radar detector did what radar detectors do: it detected radar. In this case it was sensing the targeting radar of an enemy plane. I used the B button on my Touch controller to select the Sidewinder missiles as the active weapon and turned to give chase. I couldn’t quite get the target steady enough for the missile to lock on, so I went to the weapons display screen and selected the Config option for the AIM-9 missiles. So, that unexpected depth that I mentioned? Here it is: there are three tracking modes for the IR missile aiming. I selected the mode that causes the search reticle to spin around the center point of the screen to widen the search zone, as opposed to the previous one that just sat there ineffectively looking at a tiny smidgen of sky. With that change, the missile locked on and I fired. Sadly, all of that effort was expended just to see my only missile explode after catching a countermeasure flare from the other plane. Not to worry; the GAU-8 works just fine in air-to-air mode too. As he soon found out. Splash one bandit!

I was running low on fuel and ammo, so I decided to climb a bit higher and and at least address the impending fuel emergency by getting filled up from the orbiting tanker. Sadly, I don’t possess the flying skills to fly close formation with the underside of a big jet, and I was rapidly running out of fuel while trying. I decided I might as well head back to the carrier where I could also get replacement ammo for the weapons in addition to a full tank of gas. Yet another ignominious retreat in the face of routine operations. It's kind of my hallmark in any kind of fighting game.

As just about anyone can tell, landings are one of the trickiest parts of flying. Landing on an aircraft carrier is the normal flying level of difficulty times a thousand. Contrary to the takeoff, where a vertical takeoff is more stressful than a catapult launch, a vertical landing is actually easier than a normal carrier trap landing. The VTOL airplane is equipped with a carrier-landing hook for those up to the challenge, but I opted for the relative simplicity of the vertical landing. The transition from normal flight back to vertical flight isn’t notably easy, but it is easier than the other way around. I’ve found the best way to do it to be to sustain normal level flight until within range of the carrier, then drop the throttle to idle while simultaneously moving the engine nacelles to the vertical position. Even with the engines at idle, there’s enough forward momentum to counteract the loss of forward thrust by simply pulling the flight stick back enough to maintain level flight. At some point there won’t be enough forward energy to sustain altitude, so I start feeding in throttle as needed to stop the descent. Eventually it will all even out and I’ll be flying on pure vertical thrust.

It is at that point that I truly embrace 21st century capabilities and engage the hover and altitude hold modes on the autopilot. Despite their names, these modes don’t really hold the plane at a steady hover at a fixed altitude. Rather, they just make it easier (much easier—I have the bruises from trying to do it unassisted to know) to fly it somewhat like a very tame helicopter. In that mode, it was relatively simple to land on the elevator that I had departed from. Once parked on the elevator I was able to ask the ground crew to refuel the plane and reload my weapon racks. If, like me, you constantly forget to turn off the Master Arm switch and shut down the engines first, your crew chief will remind you. They’re sticklers for the rules, those Navy guys.

As an Early Access, there is still a lot to be done before VTOL VR reaches its full potential, but even at this point it is easy to see where VR is headed with regards to flight sims. It is clear that a great deal of thought went into making usable switches and providing adequate flight controls without the need for physical controls, and I would not be surprised to see these innovations becoming the standards of the future. Personally, I will likely opt to use my HOTAS when given the choice, but for those that don’t want to invest that kind of money into more hardware, the Touch control method is a very suitable substitute.

The future of flight sims is here, or at least available as Early Access, and it is spelled “VTOL VR.” That’s a bold statement, but I stand behind it. VTOL VR strikes an extremely good balance by providing a satisfyingly complex flight sim and by recognizing that current VR technology precludes the use of photorealistic environments and highly granular switchology. By focusing on playability and functionality over gratuitous high res graphics, VTOL VR proves the veracity of saying that you don’t go to market with the VR you want, you go to market with the VR you have.