Frontier VR Developers -> REACT ! SIMPLE fix to double our effective solution. WHY ?!

[NumptyScrub]

@Sanderson
I bought the game recently, Oculus was and is officially supported.
The DK2 is the only reason why I invested in the game and why I keep trying to make it better.

It's not a "gift" it's a part of the game, an official feature and the reason for thousands if not tens of thousands of people why they bought ED.

Maybe for you it's a gift if you baked it before that was anounced.
For me (and many others) it's not.

If they do get round to giving us a player defineable HUD colour (or colours) that would be awesome, but I won't pretend it is any kind of right or entitlement. No warranty, either express or implied, has been given regarding the suitability or fitness for a particular purpose of the Rift DK2, as written in the Terms of Sale everyone (myself included) agreed to when they purchased the device:

9. PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS; DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

9.1 All Product specifications, illustrations, drawings, particulars, dimensions, performance data and other information on the Site or made available by us are intended to represent no more than a general illustration of the Product and its features and do not constitute a warranty or representation by us that the Product will conform with the same.

9.2 THE PRODUCT IS PROVIDED WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OR SUPPORT OF ANY KIND, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND NO OTHER REPRESENTATIONS OR CLAIMS OF ANY KIND SHALL BE BINDING ON OR OBLIGATE US. THE PRODUCT IS EXPRESSLY PROVIDED TO YOU “AS IS.” WE DO NOT AND WILL NOT provide ANY technical or customer support for the Product WHATSOEVER. IF ANY TECHNICAL SUPPORT OR ASSISTANCE IS PROVIDED WITH RESPECT TO THE PRODUCT AND THE USE THEREOF, IT IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTIES, REPRESENTATIONS OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE USE OR OPERATION OF THE PRODUCT WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE. YOU BEAR ALL RISKS RELATING TO THE USE OF THE PRODUCT AND THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PRODUCT AND ASSUME THE ENTIRE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY SET FORTH AS PART OF THE EXCHANGE POLICY. THESE TERMS STATE YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDIES.

The Rift DK2 deliberately has no warranties, is not supported by the manufacturer, and you personally (not FDEV) bear all risks related to the quality and performance of the product. The DK2 is not officially supported by FDEV, because there is literally no such thing as "official support" for the DK2.

That will come with the CV1, until then you are on your own, or at the mercy of FDEV spending their own time resolving issues that they are under no obligation to resolve. Previous experience suggests that they actually do spend their own time on Rift issues, so I'm quietly confident that something will end up getting done, eventually. Until then I'll just keep using it as usual, and maybe experiment with colour values to see what happens

 

[Darth Sidious]

Can't be replied upon enough
thank you thank you thank you

 

[Sanderson]

And it now is official and fully supported in the game, who cares Xmas at 2013... old news/ancient history, its here now and working sheesh. We are not asking for it NOW, we are not asking for it "or we quit", we just want to make sure our voice gets heard among the din of "whiners" who think the game is too boring (however if the OP is asking for this "right now", then by all means beat away lol).

ED in the Rift is INCREDIBLE and a huge game changing experience. I'll never play another non VR game if I can avoid it, it's just that good. We only want to see ED get better and "rule the rift".

So tweak the xml to make text green. It's been available for weeks already. There's even web tools to help you do it.

 

[Thorvald]

Oh I have, but it breaks all kinds of other items (no longer Red hostile ships etc).

I'll just wait till they improve the XML and allow us to adjust the font colour directly without affecting other areas of the UI if we don't need to.

 

[Lestenio]

@Sanderson
I bought the game recently, Oculus was and is officially supported.
The DK2 is the only reason why I invested in the game and why I keep trying to make it better.

It's not a "gift" it's a part of the game, an official feature and the reason for thousands if not tens of thousands of people why they bought ED.

Maybe for you it's a gift if you baked it before that was anounced.
For me (and many others) it's not.

You are still falling to grasp the concept that you have purchased a device intended purely for development purposes only and it has not been commercially realeased. The fact that you, me and others bought a DK2 for Elite is completely illrelevant. You cannot have release quality support for an unreleased device. It's as simple as that.

When Apple bring out a new OS, no one claims to fully support it during the beta. If you use a prototype phone you don't moan at developers because their software doesn't work on it.

One more time. the oculus rift has not been commercially relased yet. Do not expect commercial level support regardless of the reason you bought it.

@Thorvald:
Like most of us I guess, I am thankfull that Frontier decided to release the game with DK2 support.
But also this is the sole reason why I bought it, that's a multi million business reason for Frontier on the other end. That's why I don't understand why they didn't already fix this in earlier beta.

Let's be honest here. Frontier are not raking in multi millions of pounds, they are certainly not raking in multi millions of pounds based on prototype hardware. Neither for that matter are Oculus. They haven't released it yet. They are telling people not to buy it but to wait for the consumer release.

I want great rift support as much as the next person. But the DK2 is a doomed device that will be replaced with a commercial version hopefully this year. Im sure FD are working closely with Oculus and I'm hoping for improvements in the meantime, but happy for FD to prioritise based on game features and an amazing consumer release

 

[Lirezh]

@Thorvald
You are not right entirely, check out my first posting again.
The matrix mod I posted there does NOT remove friend/foe, with that mod you still have red colors just text is green.


@Lesbinio

They say they support it, I read that, I bought it. No more to say about it, it's supported no matter if you like that fact or not.

The Rift was sold more than 100,000 Times.
The DK2 was already preordered 60,000 times before it was on the market, you can guess 150-200k is likely the current number shipped.
As Elite is by far the best official game for DK2/Oculus I'd expect a large percentage of DK2 owners to buy Elite just for this purpose (like me and many others who wrote here already).
So let's say 1/4 of the 150k owners bought Elite, that's already 37.500 sales pure on DK2 at a price tag of 60-75$ (let's say 70$ in average)
70 * 35,000 = 2.5 million USD

And there is no retailer and no marketing to finance.


Regarding the close working relationship with Oculus: I doubt it.
They got HD prototypes for development, later the Crescent bay and likely a support contact.
But their choice of color for HUD and text shows that there was no close contact at all. From all colors the orange is probably the worst you could choose.
It halfs the resolution and distorts the picture.


CV1 is not out, there is no release date and once it is released it's going to take a long time for all orders to be shipped again.
Many players will continue to use DK2 as not everyone can afford a new hardware and the increased cost for SLI you will likely need to play it on current GPUs.
On top Pentile displays are a trademark of Samsung who is a partner of Oculus, CV1 is likely to use a pentile display again at a higher resolution.
Which again means : green will be required to make the best out of it.

But hey, you are welcome to continue using red or orange or whatever color you want as long as we get our bugfix



P.S.
Anyone who just stumbled in and does not know what this is about, move this thread (the image attachment) to your extended DK2 and look at the two text examples.

 

[NumptyScrub]

@Lesbinio

They say they support it, I read that, I bought it. No more to say about it, it's supported no matter if you like that fact or not.

Legally binding agreement that you agreed to when you bought the DK2:

9. PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS; DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

9.1 All Product specifications, illustrations, drawings, particulars, dimensions, performance data and other information on the Site or made available by us are intended to represent no more than a general illustration of the Product and its features and do not constitute a warranty or representation by us that the Product will conform with the same.

9.2 THE PRODUCT IS PROVIDED WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OR SUPPORT OF ANY KIND, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND NO OTHER REPRESENTATIONS OR CLAIMS OF ANY KIND SHALL BE BINDING ON OR OBLIGATE US. THE PRODUCT IS EXPRESSLY PROVIDED TO YOU “AS IS.” WE DO NOT AND WILL NOT provide ANY technical or customer support for the Product WHATSOEVER. IF ANY TECHNICAL SUPPORT OR ASSISTANCE IS PROVIDED WITH RESPECT TO THE PRODUCT AND THE USE THEREOF, IT IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTIES, REPRESENTATIONS OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE USE OR OPERATION OF THE PRODUCT WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE. YOU BEAR ALL RISKS RELATING TO THE USE OF THE PRODUCT AND THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PRODUCT AND ASSUME THE ENTIRE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY SET FORTH AS PART OF THE EXCHANGE POLICY. THESE TERMS STATE YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDIES.

No more to say about it, it is not officially supported whether you like that fact or not

You see how the tone of my reply (which I copied straight from you) immediately makes you angry at me? I'd recommend adjusting that, because it does not paint your opinion in a good light.

 

[Lirezh]

Well according to EU commerce, marketing and customer protection laws I am right.
According to logic I am right.
According to their own marketing I am right.
According to common sense I am right.

Such terms in TOS are in general invalid in all of Europe, no matter if you accept them or not. (and the game is sold in EU)
I don't know for sure about US law, I doubt it's that different in that case.


So essencially you are trying to say that FD try to scam us, they promise support and they break it in secret because they want to fail with their game in reviews and customer satisfaction?
That makes sense.
I strongly doubt FD wants Elite to fail.

 

[scriptacus]

Another pointless argument.

It doesn't matter if the Rift is "officially" supported or not. There is no "official" feature set that FDEV is required to support in any way, shape, or form. They could choose to leave out HUD color customization entirely and be perfectly within their rights to do so.

At most, even if FDEV "officially" says they support the Oculus Rift and advertise such, that simply means the game will render correctly to some extent on the Oculus Rift. That's all. They don't have to support custom colors, they don't have to guarantee you some target framerate on your hardware, and they don't have to support all of the graphical bells and whistles if they choose not to. Would it be a wise choice to say they support the rift and then make it a stripped down version of the standard game? Of course not. But that isn't the point; they would be well within their legal rights if they did so. They've already given you far more than you're owed (which appears to be far less than you think you're owed... hooray for entitlement) so what you should really do is ask for the additional features nicely and leave it at that. And as stated, this particular feature is already in the works.

TLDR; the game already supports the Oculus Rift far beyond any "legal requirement", if such a thing even existed, and implying that it doesn't or that you're somehow legally entitled to anything more is factually incorrect.

 

[Phier]

Oh I have, but it breaks all kinds of other items (no longer Red hostile ships etc).

I'll just wait till they improve the XML and allow us to adjust the font colour directly without affecting other areas of the UI if we don't need to.

Lirezh's color fix, keeps the enemies red and the shields color coded, something my fiddling with broke. Try it.The only downside is that red text is very hard to read... but its minor.

 

[Johaunna]

Nice post +1rep

 

[Mr Ru]

To all the people saying DK2 is "just a beta" and Frontier shouldn't bother improving for it, interviews and feedback about Crescent Bay suggests that it's not much better at reading small text. The CV1 may still have these problems.

And again, requests for in-game settings for gui colour and panel size/position are neither unreasonable nor solely beneficial to VR users. I don't really understand the hostility people have towards it.

 

[Lestenio]

I don't really understand the hostility people have towards it.

Nobody is hostile towards improvements, what most people have issue with is the OP continuously calling this a bug, when clearly it's not, and demanding that FD drop everthing and fix it.

FD will make improvements, but they will do it on their terms.

 

[Nikita]

Well according to EU commerce, marketing and customer protection laws I am right.
According to logic I am right.
According to their own marketing I am right.
According to common sense I am right.

Such terms in TOS are in general invalid in all of Europe, no matter if you accept them or not. (and the game is sold in EU)
I don't know for sure about US law, I doubt it's that different in that case.


So essencially you are trying to say that FD try to scam us, they promise support and they break it in secret because they want to fail with their game in reviews and customer satisfaction?
That makes sense.
I strongly doubt FD wants Elite to fail.

I am sorry, I honestly don't understand what your problem is guy. This thread was useful. Changing colors using the matrix improves quality in the DK2. Wonderful. Calling the HUD color a bug is absurd. The game is not primarily designed for the Rift, as such compromises have to be made. Furthermore, DK2 is just a development kit. It is used by developers as a tool to help make their game run well for when the "consumer version" of the rift is released. Do you know what the specs of the consumer version are ? No you don't. If the consumer version does not have a pentile matrix display then spending development time in order to make the text more readable on the DK2 will be a waste and better spent elsewhere. I have a DK2 and I recently had the chance to try Crescent Bay. The Crescent Bay display looks significantly different already. Different enough that I asked the guys whether it was still a pentile matrix screen to which they only responded that it was a custom screen and not finalized either. So things will change before the consumer rift is out and there is a distinct possibility CV1 will not benefit from having green text at all. In which case I would actually prefer Elite's default color scheme. As for EU commerce, I am sorry but you are plain wrong. DK2 is not a consumer product. In fact when you order the DK2 you have to distinctly confirm that you understand that the DK2 is not meant for consumers. Frontier, is under no obligation to continue supporting the development kits. They are building the game with CV1 in mind not DK1 and not DK2. Quite frankly, the current solution of changing the HUD color via the .xml color matrix is sufficient. I'd rather Frontier focuses on other open construction sites, like adding COOP missions and WINGS ASAP. Also, getting low persistence to work properly and using Direct-to-Rift ranks higher in my eyes than changing the HUD.

Give it a rest.

To all the people saying DK2 is "just a beta" and Frontier shouldn't bother improving for it, interviews and feedback about Crescent Bay suggests that it's not much better at reading small text. The CV1 may still have these problems.

And again, requests for in-game settings for gui colour and panel size/position are neither unreasonable nor solely beneficial to VR users. I don't really understand the hostility people have towards it.

I have tried it. It is definitely better. The key question is whether making the text GREEN is going to have any benefits for CV1, since it is unclear that the device will have a pentile matrix screen.

 

[NoshDaMinsk]

These settings pasted into your GraphicsConfiguration.xml give you a green GUI and the enemies show up as red.

I swear by it

<GUIColour>
<Default>
<LocalisationName>Standard</LocalisationName>
<MatrixRed> 0.2, 0, -1 </MatrixRed>
<MatrixGreen> -1, 1, -1 </MatrixGreen>
<MatrixBlue> 0.17, 0.31, 1 </MatrixBlue>

Nosh

 

[mickeeie mouse]

These settings pasted into your GraphicsConfiguration.xml give you a green GUI and the enemies show up as red.

I swear by it

<GUIColour>
<Default>
<LocalisationName>Standard</LocalisationName>
<MatrixRed> 0.2, 0, -1 </MatrixRed>
<MatrixGreen> -1, 1, -1 </MatrixGreen>
<MatrixBlue> 0.17, 0.31, 1 </MatrixBlue>

Nosh

cheers mate, proper good!! rubber dingheeie rapids bro hahaa.

on the GUI/rift colour subject, the DK2 is exactly that, a dev kit, the CV will have a different screen, so why optimize the game for something that will be obsolete in next couple of months? thats my take on it

mm

 

[Lirezh]

Pentile on CV1 is very likely, it reduces screen door effect while offering a "partly" higher resolution than the current techology can do.
CV1 will most likely be 1440p on pentile.
The absolutely optimal case would be 1440p on a custom designed screen which is optimized for zooming optics but I strongly doubt this is going to happen for now.

Aside that CV1 is not monthy away, Oculus recently stated that they can not push anything in the shelfes without having proper VR input devices alongside. And that is going to take time and will need an own development/beta phase for support.
They also stated there will be no DK3, so I fear we have to live with what DK2 has to offer for quite a while.

In any case, using non green colors for text is a bug in VR.
Games which support VR need to do more than add headtracking into it, they need to be designed for VR. Which means at this point in regard to resolution: a lot of green structures, color mixes chosen in a way that create minimal distortion, etc.
It's not a huge work for developers once they know about the hardware limitations but not doing it results in buggy vision for VR users.

P.S.
NoshDaMinsk: the settings you posted are identical (by 0.1 or so) to the ones I posted in the first posting.
I guess it's the best possible one for now.
The only drawback is that red text is very dark and difficult to read, even closeup. However red text is rare in that setting.

 

[Lestenio]

In any case, using non green colors for text is a bug in VR.
Games which support VR need to do more than add headtracking into it, they need to be designed for VR. Which means at this point in regard to resolution: a lot of green structures, color mixes chosen in a way that create minimal distortion, etc.
It's not a huge work for developers once they know about the hardware limitations but not doing it results in buggy vision for VR users.
.

It is not a bug that the UI is not green. Using that mentality, every non-monochrome game that has rift support is bugged.

Games do need to be better designed for the rift, but spending development time on an unreleased produced is foolish. FD have better things to focus their time and development resources on than something that is not released yet.

For you we know, Oculus could moved to totally new screen design.

 

[Nikita]

In any case, using non green colors for text is a bug in VR.

Can you do me a favour and define what the word "bug" means in context of software development ?

 

[Lirezh]

A software bug is an error, flaw, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways.