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| Image: Microsoft |
You can now play Microsoft’s Flight Simulator in VR
- Tech Backbone
Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been about making you feel like a pilot, but in VR, before today, you have never been able to touch it. Asobo Studio has introduced support for OpenXR-compatible headsets, including Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Valve Map, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift and Oculus Search, with today's free update.
Before, it would take a lot of screen displays and some carpentry skills if you were to feel like you were actually in an aircraft while playing Flight Simulator. Even then, what you could do was make the world appear like the cockpit of a single aeroplane type. All you'll need now is a VR headset, yeah, and a strong device to run it at a resolution that's passable from your eyes to screens an inch apart. An i5-8400 or Ryzen 5 1500X coupled with a GTX 1080 were listed as the minimum specs when Microsoft ran a beta test of the feature.
The update also offers the environment a winter makeover, introducing snow and ice to the real-time weather simulation of the game's range of weather environments. The game will now "add real-time snow and true-to-life ice coverage to the whole planet," according to a blog post by the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
If you are interested in checking out VR, Ctrl+Tab is the default keyboard shortcut to allow it. If you use custom keyboard mapping, you'll need to search the settings where the new VR tab will appear. On the Flight Simulator forum, there's a complete FAQ for VR mode.
