Using vorpX for Oculus Rift with FSX

Posted on April 16, 2015 by bat

This blog post describes tests of trying to use the “vorpX” (http://vorpx.com) drivers to allow games and applications on Windows to run on the Oculus Rift to provide a 3D virtual reality experience.

Flight Simulator X (FSX) from Microsoft and recently released and updated on the Steam platform already allows for 3D via, for example, the Nvidia 3D Vision… active shutter glasses working with a 120Hz monitor and IR transmitter. vorpX should allow FSX to run with the Oculus Rift.

Setup is a bit tricky and at present (16th April 2015) I have not managed to get this working. Hence this blog post is to show the configuration while I continue to experiment and get helpful advice from the developer, Ralf Ostertag, and others in the vorpX and FSX communities.

Windows 8.1 Pro
Nvidia GeForce GTX 680
FSX for Steam and/or Boxed FSX Gold (SP2+Acceleration)
Main Monitor 1920x1080x32
Oculus Rift DK2 1920x1080x32

The Oculus Rift is set up in “Extend Desktop to HMD” display mode and Windows is set to extend the desktop onto the Rift too.

Oculus-Rift-DK2-Extended-Mode
Oculus-Rift-as-Extended-Display

The vorpX configuration utility is set to “Use system settings” so that the display can be configured in FSX itself… see below. However, I tried other modes such as “Show on Rift DK2”. vorpX is also set to run in administrator mode, as that is indicated as necessary when using the Steam version of FSX, since that also runs in administrator mode.

VorpX-Config-as-System-Settings

The FSX “Settings” -> “Customize” -> “Device” menu has two entries…

  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680.0
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680.1

The second is assumed to be the one for the Oculus Rift DK2… but I tried both anyway. I saved the configuration, but each time I go back to the device screen it always has NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680.0 selected so its unclear if this is actually being saved as a setting.

The monitor and Rift DK2 are both set to 1920x1080x32 display mode. For both devices the “Preview DirectX 10” is unticked.

FSX-Settings-Customize-Second-Device
FSX-VorpX-Free-Flight-Selection-Supercar

After selecting an aircraft and flight situation, “Fly Now” is entered. After loading the resources the “double barrel” screen is displayed and appears to be attempting to be a 3D Rift style image. It has the vorpX watermark overlay on it, and as the Rift headset is moved it appears to be head tracking. The mouse seems to jump about to where the head set is pointing.

The only problem is that the “double barrel” screen intended to show on the Rift DK2 actually shows on the main monitor…

VorpX-DX10-Warning
VorpX-FSX-Supercar-over-Knight-Inlet

I have tried full screen (alt+enter), no menu and windowed modes, and tried various window + arrow keys to “move” the display over onto the Rift extended desktop… all to no avail.

I have also tried to use the boxed version of FSX with SP2/Acceleration/Gold rather than the Steam version but that behaves identically.

Update at 20-Jul-2015… FlyInside FSX

Daniel Church has produced an early version of an improved way to use FSX with the Oculus Rift called “FlyInside FSX” and a Kickstarter campaign is raising funds to improve and test that… see http://flyinside-fsx.com.

The alpha release of FlyInside FSX as at 20th July 2015 works on my Windows 8.1/Nvidia GTX680/Rift DK2 0.6.0.0 setup…

2015-07-20-Flyinside-FSX

The FlyInside FSX splash screen to allow for settings changes can be configured to show or be hidden… and I chose the “\” (backslash) key for this purpose as that appears not to be used for standard FSX keyboard commands.

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5 Responses to Using vorpX for Oculus Rift with FSX

  1. bat says:
    June 11, 2015 at 08:52

    At 05:05 11/06/2015, Jim Rooney wrote:

    Hi Austin.

    If you haven’t found this already, I figured I’d share the secret to getting FSX-VorpX-DK2 working.

    I got stuck at the same point you did, having everything work on the monitor but being unable to push it over to the Rift.

    For whatever reason, switching the graphics in FSX to 1024x768x32 did the trick. It was truly that simple. Once I did that, I could push the display to the Rift with Win-Shift-Arrow where before I was just getting a black screen when I did.

    Headtracking doesn’t always start… for me it’s every time… I hit V, it pops up a dialogue that I can’t read due to the split screen, but when I hit enter to close it, I can then either hold the spacebar or hit Shift-O to toggle head tracking.

    Setting the “Mouse Look” sensitivity to maximum and dead zone to minimum is pretty essential also, otherwise your head spins far too fast.

    It’s not as good as DCS, but it’s a very fun and usable sim now.

    Good luck. Jim

  2. bat says:
    June 11, 2015 at 14:47

    Jim Rooney added:

    I only stumbled over the solution when I misread the notes of Crim3 on the Oculus Developer board…
    https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?t=752&start=180

    Now that I’m reading it again with a clearer head, he seems to have found a way to do this without VorpX? I’ll have to test that this morning.

    In any case, switching the FSX’s resolution did the trick. I was amazed that it was that simple. It’s also amazingly frustrating as without that, it just doesn’t work. As you know, it works perfectly until you try to push it over to the Rift… when you do, you just get a black screen!

    Here’s the fun bit too… I misread his directions and did it backwards, setting FSX’s rez, not the Rift’s. But that’s what made it work. Setting the Rift instead of FSX like he said, didn’t work… only by messing it up did it work. What a happy mistake!

    Set the Rift as secondary and extended mode. Full 1920×1080 rez. In FSX, set it to output at 1024x768x32.

    Get everything up and running on your main monitor, then use the Win-Shift-Arrow trick to move it over to the Rift.
    If you get a white triangle smear in the right eye, either hold ALT for a few seconds or turn “3d Reconstruction” off in VorpX. If headtracking isn’t working straight away, hit V (pops a dialogue), then Enter to close the popup… Hit Shift-O to toggle head tracking.

    Setting the Rift as primary can be tricky. I think I can shed a little light on that as I’ve actually found instances where it’s useful. DCS in particular. In DCS, if the Rift isn’t the primary monitor, you lose your “clickable cockpit”.

    By the way, if you haven’t tried DCS in the Rift, drop what you’re doing and do it now. It is hands down the most amazing flight simulator experience I’ve ever seen. It has full positional head tracking and it makes all the difference in the world. You “feel” like you’re flying. I’ve not tried a full motion sim, but I fly for a living and this is as close to the real thing that I’ve seen so far.

    The other reason for the Rift as primary is a refresh quirk. For some reason, when the Rift isn’t primary, it can sometimes adopt the frequency of the primary monitor. It’s been a while since I’ve run into it, but I think you lose timewarping because you drop to 60hz. I’ve got my primary monitor running at 75hz now, so it’s no longer an issue for me (outside of DCS).

    Also, WarThunder is a very impressive flight sim for the Rift. It has excellent Oculus support and natively mirrors the screen to the main monitor so it’s easy to do demos. Full positional tracking and pretty good flight dynamics… not as good as DCS, but close enough. Both can be found on Steam. DCS can also be found here:
    http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/world/

    If you don’t have Bilago’s fantastic VR Game Manager, I highly recommend picking it up. It makes life so much easier.
    https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=12754

  3. bat says:
    June 11, 2015 at 14:50

    Crim3 on the Oculus Developer board… as referred to in Jim Rooney’s comment, and copied here for convenience…
    https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?t=752&start=180

    There it is, a first attempt to support DK2. DK1 should also work, but I can’t test it. Also, FSXRift crashes when closing FSX, I´ll look into that later.

    For those who don’t know, fsxrift only adds headtracking to FSX, it has nothing to do with the rendering of the game.

    I’ve discovered that those strange resolutions of the DK2 (948×1080@120Hz and 768X1024@120Hz) makes the DK2 automatically show the desktop in side by side with the result that it is viewable in the DK2. It means that you can run any game that can run windowed, LIKE FSX!!!, and automatically view it on the Rift without extra software and at high fps.

    Of course, There is no distortion nor color aberration correction nor stereoscopic separation, but it makes for quite a decent experience when coupled with the 6dof head tracking.

    Steps: Extend the desktop to DK2. Set resolution of the DK2 to 948×1080. Run FSX. Run FSXRift. Launch the flight. Once in the simulation, If it is in full screen press Alt+Enter to switch to windowed mode. Move the window to the DK2 portion of the desktop and maximize the FSX window.
    It’s worth the try.

  4. bat says:
    June 17, 2015 at 09:53

    Jim Rooney discovered more…

    I’ve been flying FSX a bit lately and I’ve discovered a few more tricks.

    The best of which is probably getting it to render in full rift resolution. If you use the 768X1024 settings, you get a usable sim, but you get big black bars on the right side of the screen. Happily, this can be avoided. I start the game loader on my main monitor as usual… I have FSX setup to not load the previous flight on start, so you’d need to exit that flight first. Set the FSX configuration to render at 1920x1080x32. Set the mouse look to full sensitivity and minimum dead zone.

    Once I have my flight and settings configured on the loading screen, I put on the rift and then Win-Shift-Arrow the loader screen to it and hit “Fly”. It then loads the flight in full screen full resolution. Easy peasy.

    The first thing I do in the sim is hit Shift-O to enable head tracking and use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom out. With it zoomed out, it feels more like a normal cockpit.

    The virtual cockpit is still clickable, but whatever knobs and switches you’re trying to manipulate have to be dead center in your view. The visual mouse cursor and where it actually clicks get more spread out the further away from center you are.

    My trick of this is to pause the simulation and use the mouse wheel to zoom right in. So for the nav radios, I pretty much fill the screen with the radio… then they function normally. When I have the settings done, I zoom back out and resume. It’s a bit clunky, but it works.

    I recommend assigning the mouse look toggle function (in control settings) to a button on the joystick. I wind up turning the head tracking on and off a lot and that just makes life much easier.

    My FSX seems to forget my settings every time I load it, so keep an eye out.

    Also… if you wind up still having no joy… there is an other way to get the rift to display things… Pick up Virtual Desktop http://www.vrdesktop.net/

    Not only is it a fantastic program, it will mirror your main monitor display to the rift.
    I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. Be warned though, it’s super finiky with FSX. I’ve found that pulling the win-shift-arrow trick to be far less frustrating in the long haul.

    Good Luck, Jim

  5. bat says:
    July 9, 2015 at 20:08

    Daniel Church has produced an early version of an improved way to use FSX with the Oculus Rift called “FlyInside FSX” and a Kickstarter campaign is raising funds to improve and test that…

    http://flyinside-fsx.com

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