ANNOUNCEMENT Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Announcement

[Cedarwood]

This is an article from a 3rd source. I've seen the reveal. VR was not mentioned.

You stated there will be no VR not that is wasn’t mentioned in the reveal. It is in the engine as identified by Epic, however this is irrelevant in this case as the focus here is on ED and their proprietary Cobra engine which has had full support for VR for some considerable time.

 

[Montpelier]

If it wasn't already crystal clear from the last couple of years, there have been big shifts in staff and culture within the company. The original game burst out of a driven team with a bunch of good ideas. They're gone now, and all that remains is some dedicated players and a collection of well meaning jobbers that don't know what to do with the game they have stewardship of. It takes more than a Braben to build a game in 2020.

Anway, it had a good run, all things considered. Bury the game, come back, and if it somehow turns out to be worth the wait it'll be a nice and extremely unlikely surprise.

 

[[VR] Mad Life Crisis]

We didn't have VR at the start IIRC so it could come along later.

We had VR since Christmas 2013 during Alpha.

 

[JOe59309]

So now we're on 'see it my way or you're not smart'.

It isn't obvious that they sacrificed one feature just to bring in another. It's more likely that they have been trying it and they aren't getting a quality experience out of it so they are forced to either postpone it or drop it completely until they figure out it. VR demands higher requirements in tech and performance. If they are getting terrible performance out of it and don't feel like they can have it settled before launch, it makes sense to delay it. No one wants to play a subpar VR experience as that tends to make people sick or at least uncomfortable. Frontier has their reasons for doing such and until they are willing to explain it, nothing is obvious, only speculation geared to fuel anger.

I'm not telling anyone to like it or suck it up, there's a right to be upset about the possibility of their beloved feature support being dropped. Though let's not make assumptions or stir the pot, especially not try to force people to buy your opinion lest they not have 'two braincells'.

we are waiting

Not a stat on ED, but on steam in general.

My guess is that the numbers in ED are higher, since it was marketed as a VR game.

But what this show is the potential market for VR, and needless to say that its... low.

Frankly I understand why ED are adamant to invest in such a niche technology, its sad to see people go over this, but I'm sure that there will be WAY more new players that don't care about VR.

And frankly, I wonder if its really such a bad thing...
I mean, there has been some comments form the VR crowd.

"If there is no VR in the new update, I wish there was no update at all"
"I don't care if the previous versions of Elite still supports VR, since the new expansion wont have it I will uninstall the game"

I mean, come on guys. I understand that you must somewhat justify that 2500$ kit, and I understand that seeing that less and less games will support it is concerning for you.
But history shows that day one adopters often expose themselves to see the technology being abandoned, its a risk.
The technology simply was not ready yet for mass adoption.

Now, the focus from big game developers has shifted to Raytracing.

Just see the new Unreal Engine. VR was never mentioned even ONCE. Time to move on.

You know nothing about vr, elite dangerous has mainly oculus user with their own laucher, most of them never use steam...

 

[ECity]

"And its really funny,,. in a publisher world, we would probably have had to put together a business case to support it (VR). I reckon it took less time supporting oculus rift on DK1 than it would have done to prepare a business case".

For their engine in 2015? What's the cost of supporting much more capable VR hardware now? What are the numbers?

 

[thistle]

If it wasn't already crystal clear from the last couple of years, there have been big shifts in staff and culture within the company. The original game burst out of a driven team with a bunch of good ideas. They're gone now, and all that remains is some dedicated players and a collection of well meaning jobbers that don't know what to do with the game they have stewardship of. It takes more than a Braben to build a game in 2020.

Anway, it had a good run, all things considered. Bury the game, come back, and if it somehow turns out to be worth the wait it'll be a nice and extremely unlikely surprise.

But weirdly, I'm really looking forward to it.

Can I just stay rather than going away and coming back?

 

[VR captpopup]

I wonder if the PC-VR players have been sacrificed for the consol community here.
Oh well... I have until early 2021 in Horizons and hopefully I can still access Horizons after that. Otherwise it's game over for me.
1984 and my Acorn Electron to present... all good things come to an end I suppose. Bought a lifetime pass for the love of the game and wanted to see it return, would I do it again
Feeling a bit raw at the moment
cmdr R P Taylor

 

[Drelthar]

Profit? FD knows how many of their customers use VR. And they chose not to include it at launch. So that tells me it wasn't a significant number, relative to the cost of including it at launch.

And that's the thing, if it's not significant enough now, why would it be later? - unless VR devices get drastically cheaper and uptake get's a lot bigger, that's the only way I could see it motivating them to include VR support for the new update if they didn't think it was worth it now.

 

[Cpt.Badger]

The whole argument about "development costs" and "Fdev is a business" is just invalid. Fdev had 120 people working on this PAID "expansion".
HELLO GAMES have about 25 PEOPLE in total, and yet they were able to add VR support to their game FOR FREE.

This is just pure incompetence on Fdev's part. There's simply no defending "we can't do that with 5X bigger manpower in TWICE the time".

 

[Riverside]

I used to use 3x22's, great for the peripheral vision, awesome for driving game,s but for elite, I felt like I was peering into the cockpit through the letterbox. The 43" will be a nice size, and the 120hz - yum. Mine is "only" 60hz but I'm in late thirties, so I can live with that frame rate.

I've made this image as a powerpoint
View attachment 175575

If you want I can photo it with sticks and keyboard and mouce on the desk infront of it so you can "confirm" 43" as the size you want?


Mine is flat - so more points to you, as it really means 2d on monitor is properly flat for me.

I used to do a lot of driving games, for ED I only use the central monitor now for the game itself. A 43" is the same height (roughly) as a 24" in portrait, so the plan is two of my existing monitors will go one either side of the new central one.

I really 'need' the higher refresh rate but £1100 is way more than I really want to spend on a luxury right now

 

[Sweet&Dandy]

If it wasn't already crystal clear from the last couple of years, there have been big shifts in staff and culture within the company. The original game burst out of a driven team with a bunch of good ideas. They're gone now, and all that remains is some dedicated players and a collection of well meaning jobbers that don't know what to do with the game they have stewardship of. It takes more than a Braben to build a game in 2020.

Anway, it had a good run, all things considered. Bury the game, come back, and if it somehow turns out to be worth the wait it'll be a nice and extremely unlikely surprise.

two words... Michael Brookes....

I always though DB was the man, the legend - but having met both, it was immediately clear which of the two understood what Elite Dangerous needed to be. Not sure why he started playing with dinosaurs, but the quality and creative direction nosedived IMO.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

The whole argument about "development costs" and "Fdev is a business" is just invalid. Fdev had 120 people working on this PAID "expansion".
HELLO GAMES have about 25 PEOPLE in total, and yet they were able to add VR support to their game FOR FREE.

This is just pure incompetence on Fdev's part. There's simply no defending "we can't do that with 5X bigger manpower in TWICE the time".

It's even more maddening when you consider its not they are refusing to add it, it is that they have elected to remove it.

 

[Riverside]

The whole argument about "development costs" and "Fdev is a business" is just invalid. Fdev had 120 people working on this PAID "expansion".
HELLO GAMES have about 25 PEOPLE in total, and yet they were able to add VR support to their game FOR FREE.

This is just pure incompetence on Fdev's part. There's simply no defending "we can't do that with 5X bigger manpower in TWICE the time".

I own both games. I have over 100 hours in NMS, it's a great game. I have nearly 10,000hrs in ED though.

 

[JOe59309]

The whole argument about "development costs" and "Fdev is a business" is just invalid. Fdev had 120 people working on this PAID "expansion".
HELLO GAMES have about 25 PEOPLE in total, and yet they were able to add VR support to their game FOR FREE.

This is just pure incompetence on Fdev's part. There's simply no defending "we can't do that with 5X bigger manpower in TWICE the time".

totally agree moreover in nms vr was implemented by just 2 motivated devs in one year!

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

I used to do a lot of driving games, for ED I only use the central monitor now for the game itself. A 43" is the same height (roughly) as a 24" in portrait, so the plan is two of my existing monitors will go one either side of the new central one.

I really 'need' the higher refresh rate but £1100 is way more than I really want to spend on a luxury right now

I've got to put my hands up that in my late thirties, 60hz is about my reaction time nowadays :-(
If you have the reflexes to warrant the extra hertz, enjoy them! And that setup with the portrait monitors flanking the main screen will be sweet for working on, I used to have the outer 2 of my 3x22" on swivels so I could flip to portrait for full page on screen at one time for documents.

 

[Cpt.Badger]

It's even more maddening when you consider its not they are refusing to add it, it is that they have elected to remove it.

Yes, precisely. This is even more mind-boggling. First the fleet carriers fiasco and now this? Do they hire only interns or what? /s

 

[thistle]

Not sure why he started playing with dinosaurs, but the quality and creative direction nosedived IMO.

... looks around the forum, reads the comments and the insults, hmmm ...

 

[Vikinger]

I play the game exclusive in VR so No VR in Odyssey. No expansion for me. Even if its free as a life timer. But i will still play the game in Horizon mode.

 

[ECity]

They are understandably upset and this is your response. Why? Because it doesn’t concern your style of play? Because more players will play? Because we are a minority?

Because 99% of the posts are from this 5% minority, making any other discussion impossible.

 

[Cpt.Badger]

totally agree moreover in nms vr was implemented by just 2 motivated devs in one year!

SCS software (Euro Truck Simulator 2 / American Truck Simulator) has ONE DEVELOPER commited to VR support. It's a "passion project" for him, which he reportedly does IN HIS FREE TIME, outside of his regular dev duties.

Fdev is just...