But where is FOIP (SC GamesCon 2017) used successfully now in a game title? Where is the ability to be in command of a ship while seeing a co-player though the glass of a space station wall and have interaction such as simply waving to each other (SC GamesCon2016).
It was used in games before and flopped. Just because CIG
want to use it successfully doesn't mean they will nor does it make it new. FOIP is not new, it's not "far future" it's yesteryear.
As for waving at another player, I can do that in Destiny, Vivecraft, tons of MMOs, etc.. Waving through a screen does not make the act of waving new. However, the only somewhat new sounding thing in the game is their render-to-texture but even then prey, new prey, portal... have all done this. It's not new or future either. Mobiglass... deadspace or anything using scaleform really... For any example of "future technology" that people come up with to praise CIG for doing something never before done I can point to any number of games using the same thing. I am sure if I looked hard enough I can find a game that's multiplayer where you can see the output of a camera in the gameworld on a screen that has the render of a real world location on it where other players appear.
Now someone did try to say that mobiglass/rendertotexture in an MMO is groundbreaking... but again in this case it isn't. namely because there's no MMO. SC as it stands is a collection of standalone modules with low server caps. It's not an MMO by any stretch. When CIG gets this stuff working in a real MMO setting then I'll concede that they've doing something that hasn't been done before.. except perhaps by that time someone will have done it.
This is future stuff, no other game does it now and expectantly so.... as no publisher would put the capital into something this far ahead. I simply see CIG as the gaming world's DARPA.
Not really, it's old stuff being repurposed in a new environment, and publishers/devs do that
all the time.
No other game publisher out there is pushing the envelope like CIG, and rightly so.... CIG is the only one in this unique position to do what they are doing. Good for them!
Now this is nonsense, expect maybe that CIG push the envelope of milking a fanbase before a game ever launches like never before. That I believe in.
Both AAA and Indie devs and publishers are constantly pushing all sorts of envelopes all the time and, as an aside, manage to launch games while doing it. That's something CIG have yet to prove they can manage. If those envelopes weren't being pushed by people other than CIG gaming and interactive entertainment would not be where it is today. I'd go so far as to say that Elite has pushed far more envelopes from VR to planet landings to multicrew to galaxy scale/simulation in a playable game far more than than CIG can even pretend to. They did it all first, and they did it all while still launching a game. SC plays catch up, switching it's dev focus to whatever someone else/frontier have already done only they will "do it better" of course all while forgetting what they were supposed to be working on the week prior.