Welcome and requirements
What Virtual Real Cockpit does, what you need, and how this manual is laid out.
Virtual Real Cockpit puts your real cockpit into VR. It adds your SimHub dashboards, your own steering wheel, windows to your real keyboard and drink, and your tracked hands to the sim you already drive. Everything is placed once per car and comes back the next time you drive that car.
It has two parts:
- The app. A Windows program where you set things up: dashboards, wheel, passthrough, settings.
- The VR add-on. A small part that loads into the sim and draws everything in the headset. You never start it yourself. The app registers it during setup.
What you get
| Feature | What it does | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboards | Any SimHub dashboard, or any window, floating in the car. | 5 |
| Your wheel | A 3D model of your wheel that turns with the sim, with a live dashboard on its screen. | 6 |
| Passthrough | Windows to the real world: your keyboard, button box, drink. | 7 |
| Hands and arms | Tracked hands that grip the wheel. | 8 |
| Lighting and cockpit shake | The game's light on your wheel, and the cockpit's bounce over kerbs. | 9 |
| VR menu | Change and place everything without taking the headset off. | 10 |
| Car presets | One setup per car, switched for you when the car changes. | 4 |
Requirements
| Part | What you need |
|---|---|
| Windows | Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit |
| VR runtime | An OpenXR runtime: Virtual Desktop (VDXR), Meta Quest Link, SteamVR, Pimax and others |
| Headset | Tested with a Meta Quest 3 on Virtual Desktop. |
| Sim | A sim that runs in VR through OpenXR and draws with DirectX 11 |
| SimHub | Optional, for dashboards. Its web server must be on (port 8888). |
Some features depend on the headset. Chroma-key passthrough needs Virtual Desktop. Full-colour passthrough needs a headset with colour cameras, like the Quest 3. Hands need hand tracking.
Sims
Telemetry (the wheel turns, presets switch by car, cockpit shake) comes straight from:
- iRacing
- Le Mans Ultimate
- Automobilista 2
These sims have a built-in preset and run through OpenXR or OpenComposite:
- Assetto Corsa
- Assetto Corsa Competizione
- Assetto Corsa EVO
- BeamNG.drive
- EA Sports WRC
- rFactor 2
- DiRT Rally 2.0
- RaceRoom Racing Experience
- F1 25
You can add any other OpenXR game yourself (chapter 2). Sims that only run on SteamVR (OpenVR) need OpenComposite, which makes them use OpenXR.
Sims that draw with DirectX 12 or Vulkan load the add-on but show nothing.
How to read this manual
- BUTTONS, TABS and switch names are written the way the app shows them.
- F9, X and other keys and controller buttons look the same.
- Tip, Note and Warning boxes look like the strips in the app.
- Chapter 11 lists every setting. Chapter 12 is troubleshooting. Chapter 14 explains the words.