Hi,

I've been playing with Condor 2 and the Oculus Rift more this week. Below is my latest review.

I am extremely impressed with the new VR functionality in Condor 2! I am using an Oculus Rift. I am surprised how much better it is than staring at a computer screen. The feeling of "immersion" is extremely cool! I feel like I'm sitting in the glider. I can glance back to see the runway as I fly down the downwind leg. I can glance up at the cumulus cloud overhead. I can even lean-out and look down at what is below me. I think it is worth the $349 for the Oculus Rift and about $300 for the PC graphics card upgrade.

I think every soaring club that wants to attract young soaring pilots should invest in an Oculus Rift, Condor 2, and any necessary PC upgrades ASAP. It is a great tool for teaching soaring on days when you can't go flying, or before or after flying. The PC monitor still shows the same 2D view it always has, but now it tracks the pilot's head movements. That way the instructor sees what the student is seeing.

There are 2 minor "nice to know" things that I should mention. At first, I found that I become motion sick when using the VR goggles - especially when I look around too much (which is easy to do when you're first amazed by the system). The great news is that the nausea improved with time. After an hour or two, it was no longer a problem. The 2nd thing is that the instruments on the instrument panel are slightly difficult to read in some of the sailplanes. Moving the goggles up and down a little to find the best focus helps a lot, but still, it is like my eyeglasses are slightly out of prescription. If I lean toward the instrument panel, I can read the instruments just fine. When I look around I can see objects outside the cockpit fine. These are not major issues, but ones worth mentioning.

Another cool benefit to buying the Oculus Rift is that the free Google Earth VR app is incredible! I can fly around soaring sites that I'm familiar with and feel like I'm there again. I especially enjoyed viewing the region between Nephi, Utah and Ely, Nevada - a journey that I haven't completed in a sailplane yet. It is very easy to use the Oculus hand controller to point in the direction you want to go, and fly off in that direction using the "hat switch". To fly faster, just pull the trigger. It is a great way to familiarize yourself with a soaring site before flying there. Also, my kids love the "Beat Saber" light saber and music beats app. It is a blast!

Best Regards,

Paul Remde
Cumulus Soaring, Inc.

On Saturday, December 29, 2018 at 12:26:38 AM UTC-6, Stanislav Los wrote:
I’ve been flying Condor 2 with Oculus Rift for last several days. It’s incredible! On my first try I got sever motion sickness after 10 minutes of flight, but on the second day I flew for 2 hours nonstop without much problems. Like with real motion sickness, it gets easier with practice.
Regarding immersion, it’s almost complete but lacks actual interaction with cockpit controls. I don’t have enough buttons on joystick, so in some cases I still have to use keyboard, which is impossible with googles on. Would be nice to do it in VR by using Oculus touch controller. That includes ability to reach game menu and settings.
A few words about Oculus Rift, it’s on sale now for $350 bundle with sensors and two controllers and definetely worth money spent. It also comes with free games that will make you feel like a kid, Robo Recall is one of them At first, I was concerned with field of view, is it wide enough? What about “door” effect? Well, it’s not an issue and it doesn’t interfere with immersion. You are “there”. The bigest problem is the clarity of the image. It’s just not clear enough due to low pixel density of the displays used in the headset. It’s bad to the point you need to lean toward dashboard to have a clear view of instruments and PDA. Imagine you’re short-sighted and you forgot your eye-glasses at home.
Hopefully, next generation of VR will address it, but even today it’s incredible. When I upgraded my rig, I had a choice to spend $900 on 38” wide screen monitor or buy Oculus. Oculus won with no regrets. Computer monitor just don’t make you feel like you’re there.