Holy crap guys. So I'm at Oshkosh and got to fly about 45 minutes on a VR Robinson R44 sim today. I know the VR portion was an HTC Vive. The collective/cyclic were proprietary. I have never tried VR, and never actually flew a helicopter in real life. I use a Thrustmaster Warthog and try (usually poorly) to fly effectively in a heli with that. After watching 10 people in front of me treat it like a game and ultimately end up on the rotors, I had my shot at it. I looked like a newborn calf for about 3 minutes, then I locked into a hover. Aww sooky sooky. The sim was X-plane 11. I was hovering around the buildings at KSEA and even hovered around a 747. I am hooked. Especially when the guy said to look out the window at the skid.

So long story short, I was amazed at the immersion and the 3d feeling. I wished the resolution was slightly higher, but hey, what can you do. So here's my question....

What hardware is out there that I can wishlist regarding a cyclic/collective? I'm a real-world pilot and want it to feel as real as it can. A quick google search shows some ridiculously priced hardware. What are you all using? and should I hold out and wait for a higher resolution VR headset?

Can't speak for the collective and cyclic but i would advise you to wait for the next generation of the VR headsets. Got to try out both the Oculus and the Vive a few days ago and both resolutions were less than optimal. If you can't wait, I'd go with the Vive over the Oculus though, it seemed a slight bit sharper but maybe that's just me

I've never seen a consumer-focused collective PC peripheral, but the professional stuff is out there.. For a price.

www.helistart.com/helisimcontrols.aspx

Here's something I found with just a quick google search. I think you'll have to be prepared to spend multiple hundreds of dollars, but it's possible.

I have the rift and am enjoying it immensely. I agree the gauges can be difficult to read on default settings but gets better if you turn up the pixel denisty. That being said you will need a pretty beefy computer to get it close to what you would get on a normal monitor. I am running a 1080ti with a PD of 2.5 and it is still not quite at the levels of a 1080p monitor. However the immersion is so good, I don't know if I can play flight sims without it.