Bad news ahead?

The Lawful

The Lawful
Hi VR fellows,

as you may have noticed, FD have recently updated their ED site (elitedangerous.com). While the new site looks much more professional and flashy (optimized for generations who prefer visuals over text and have a short attention span, possibly), two things struck me:

1. All the hardware vendor logos (Thrustmaster, Saitek, TrackIR, Logitech and so on) are gone. Including Oculus.
2. Steam (Vive) is only listed as a distribution channel, along with XBox and PS4. No mentioning of Oculus store anywhere.
3. There is zero mentioning of VR support being a game feature at all anymore.

Now while the reason behind this may be trivial, fears have been around since long that FD might drop VR support one day, and the "exciting, brilliant" thing around the corner (space legs, atmo planets) might be a suitable reason.

Do you think this may be indicative in some way? Without VR, ED most certainly would not be a game I'd like to play anymore :(

O7,
[noob]
 

Hell Razor5543

H
I would be VERY surprised if FDev were to drop VR. Elite: Dangerous was written with VR in mind from day one, rather than having VR as an add on. I have the Rift CV1, and (as all other VR users will know) when you are out in the Black in VR you KNOW you are there!

It may well be that, with all of the other logos, FDev felt the web site was becoming too cluttered and untidy.
 
Last edited:

Sweet&Dandy

Sweet&Dandy
Hell Razor5543 said:
I would be VERY surprised if FDev were to drop VR. Elite: Dangerous was written with VR in mind from day one, rather than having VR as an add on. I have the Rift CV1, and (as all other VR users will know) when you are out in the Black in VR you KNOW you are there!

It may well be that, with all of the other logos, FDev felt the web site was becoming too cluttered and untidy.
Click to expand...

I doubt they COULD drop it, having sold it as a VR game, but they certainly could stop adding VR support to new chapters / features.
 

Neutronium

Neutronium
I don't use VR beacuse I wan't to have awareness of the real environment (mostly), but also because of high cost and difficulty in acquisition of the hardware in my country.
But, havisng said that, ED was one of the very few pieces of software (the other being Space Engine - see sig) that I was willing to make an exception and one day put some effort to acquire VR hardware.
If Frontier is to drop support that is going to kill my remaining incentives for this. And it will be a very sad and bad move for the franchise...: 1st drop of MAC support, now this? I hope the OP proves to be wrong because if he is right then anything can come next from PS4 drop to Xbone to PC and finally one day a message from Frontier saying how sorry the feel that they have to shut down the servers and shelve the game and how much great time they had with us the community and how much they want to thank us and bla, bla, bla..
 

znôrt

znôrt
i don't think they will drop vr support, but it has long ago ceased to be their selling point, which could mean they have shifted audience (which would be appalling since vr is the single feature that holds the game together) or that they simple don't care anymore. vr has lost a lot of the marketing hype it had 5 years ago. they seem to have neglected vr almost completely in q4, but it still works and i would attribute that more to rushing out the update and poor engineering rather than a deliberate change in strategy.

just my opinion, ofc, but the day ed doesn't work in vr there will be no reason for me to run it anymore.
 

VR Skinnerer

V
This will be:
A tidy-up before consolidating Elite's web presences.
The lessening of marketing which was used to push the release versions.
A probably drop in sponsorship from hardware providers.

I don't see any mention from FD about dropping VR in Elite. Every VR games list has Elite way up there as a shining example. This is probably the best advertising FD could wish for. By dropping VR support, they cut off a lot of potential custom, and the inevitable mentions it gets from it.
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
TheLawful said:
Hi VR fellows,

as you may have noticed, FD have recently updated their ED site (elitedangerous.com). While the new site looks much more professional and flashy (optimized for generations who prefer visuals over text and have a short attention span, possibly), two things struck me:

1. All the hardware vendor logos (Thrustmaster, Saitek, TrackIR, Logitech and so on) are gone. Including Oculus.
2. Steam (Vive) is only listed as a distribution channel, along with XBox and PS4. No mentioning of Oculus store anywhere.
3. There is zero mentioning of VR support being a game feature at all anymore.

Now while the reason behind this may be trivial, fears have been around since long that FD might drop VR support one day, and the "exciting, brilliant" thing around the corner (space legs, atmo planets) might be a suitable reason.

Do you think this may be indicative in some way? Without VR, ED most certainly would not be a game I'd like to play anymore :(

O7,
[noob]
Click to expand...

The only reason I personally never bought into the VR hype (which is a justified hype, because it is awesome) for ED is that... if FDev is delivering on its plans to add FPS/FPA gameplay to ED, I believe the VR experience will be in trouble... it will be for me personally anyhow. That is why I refuse to get used to VR in ED.
VR works very well when the player is seated in a vehicle, but not so well when you are quickly moving around/turning around on the level of a human being.
For some (if not many) the nimble SRV is already problematic in VR. FPA/FPS will only exaggerate those problems.

I do not believe FDev will drop VR support however. So many cmdrs just love ED in VR. I think there would have to be serious technical problems for them to drop VR support (remember the MAC).
 
Last edited:

The Lawful

The Lawful
Well, this is from the Wayback Machine, last June (forgive me, #bazmeson):

https://web.archive.org/web/20180603044829/https://www.elitedangerous.com/

faZJVZf.png

sVj86iJ.png

It's gone, Jim, gone for good it seems. It may well be that ED is the premier VR title of them all, but it's niche and FD may well risk losing that fraction of the player base in favor of 'exciting, epic, brilliant' things just over the horizon. VR support was so prominent then that they even gave it its own category in the header. Gone are those days! Given the reluctant answers during the Q4 livestreams, I actually fear for the worst now.

O7,
[noob]
 
Last edited:

Good Death

Good Death
I don't understand the connection of dropping VR support because of an fps aspect. I went through an entire play through of Subnautica in VR using a xbox controller.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
TheLawful said:
Given the reluctant answers during the Q4 livestreams, I actually fear for the worst now.
Click to expand...

I still remember the look on one of the Adam's (IIRC) face during the livestream demonstrating the FSS, when somebody in chat asked how the FSS would work in VR. That look seemed to clearly shout, "I didn't even consider VR when designing this... Ooops!"
 

Wasp0

Wasp0
You are all scaring me, Just stop it........Maybe not a good time to consider investing in changing from Rift to Vive pro then?
 

The Lawful

The Lawful
Old Duck said:
I still remember the look on one of the Adam's (IIRC) face during the livestream demonstrating the FSS, when somebody in chat asked how the FSS would work in VR. That look seemed to clearly shout, "I didn't even consider VR when designing this... Ooops!"
Click to expand...

Not only that, but add DBOBE's opinion on VR laid out in that article back then plus the fact VR had not even been tested once until the Q4 beta, most of the bugs were so obvious there simply is no other possible explanation. And now this. The overall picture is clear. VR is the last thing on their list and may simply be kicked over the cliff. The writing is on the wall.

Some kind of FPS may inevitably come once they implement space legs, for just walking about in the ship or stations will get old really soon and AFAIK SC has it too. Not that I know of any plans, though. Considering atmo planets, there obviously have been switches inside the exe since long, as for Thargoids or MacGuffins and so on. Who knows? Heh, legs. These will be tough. Found that out when I crashed the FA-18 in DCS recently and ejected shortly before the plane went up in flames, but apart from feeling a little uneasy when walking around the burning wreck, nothing bad happened. Well, they could provide some wheelchair of sorts or make it optional.

O7,
[noob]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom