Hi guys,
Matheson from SimVRLabs here. My colleague Joe made the original SimVRLabs mod for the IXEG 737 1.21, but I would like to explain some things regarding the latest 1.3 update.
The SimVRLabs mod originally made for 1.21 will NOT work in 1.3 as many of you know. The reason for this is that IXEG overhauled the cockpit.OBJ in 1.3. For those of you who do not know, the cockpit.OBJ of any aircraft is a 3D model that XPlane uses which you mostly do not see. This 3D model contains information about how the user interacts with the aircraft.
A good way to show how this affects each aircraft is by comparing some aircraft. For example, some aircraft use the mouse scroll wheel to interact with knobs and switches, others may require you to drag your mouse up and down or side to side, or some may use a combination of both. The cockpit.OBJ is responsible for dictating this behaviour.
Each knob, switch, button, and anything you can physically interact with in an aircraft is called a manipulator. These are inside the cockpit.OBJ. Some manipulators work better than others in VR, but may not be the best for 2D users. While making a VR mod for an aircraft we always need to ensure that VR users have the best possible experience but without compromising the 2D user's functionality. This is a delicate balance and is the reason why there will never be an XPlane aircraft that works flawlessly in both modes, but we can make it pretty close.
Because of this, we must change some manipulators that don't work well in VR to a more VR friendly type. This is why we include cockpit.OBJ files.
You may be wondering how this relates to a VR_Config.TXT. All that file does is allow us to tune manipulator sensitivity (how much you need to move your controller for the manip to work), and change SOME (very few) manipulators into other manipulator types. Because we can only convert some types using the VR_Config, we have to do the rest in the cockpit.OBJ. We ALWAYS try to use the VR_Config.TXT FIRST before editing the cockpit.OBJ, simply because the VR_Config.TXT only applies the changes and settings when a user loads VR. It does not affect 2D pilots whatsoever.
In the case of the IXEG 737, Joe had to make changes to the cockpit.OBJ as some manipulators were not suitable for VR users. When IXEG released version 1.3 with an overhauled cockpit.OBJ, this rendered our mod broken in 1.3 and useless.
This is not the fault of IXEG. They made their product better than it was before, so they should be praised for their continued development and quality of life improvements.
Jan has said that VR support is planned for the near future. We can't wait to see what's in store for VR users and to possibly lend a hand with that task if needed.
I hope this clears up confusion about our mod and 1.3. If you have any questions, feel free to tag me in a response here or shoot me a message.
Cheers,
Matheson
SimVRLabs.com
