ANNOUNCEMENT Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Announcement

[[VR] Mad Mike]

And yet Braben has made a massive sucess of FD since KS, five years ago. Maybe he knows something you don't?

I suspect David Branden thought VR was amazing and revolutionary when ED supported it.... And thought it was bandwagony and entirely optional when he realised they would no longer be supporting it in the future. A bit like the UKs covid track and trace app

 

[Rubbernuke]

You need a decent PC and GPU to play elite in the first place. No more space required in a seated game. Time to use it? No extra time required for VR.

No you don't. ED works on potato hardware- for ages I used a Core2Extreme, 4Gb RAM, GTX 460. Right now I'm on a E51650 and a GT 1030 pushing a 21:9 panel at native resolution. VR requirements are much higher than that and thus more expensive.

And if you have kids, not a lot of cash, a casual gamer or limited space (such as a small desk in a cramped office or corner) VR is not going to be viable. Even PSVR requires correct lighting, external cameras for positioning, proper seating and room. You are partly there ironically because of the Nintendo Wii, and thats in a spacious front room- hence why consoles will do it, and the PS5 eventually.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I suspect David Branden thought VR was amazing and revolutionary when ED supported it.... And thought it was am bandwagon my and entirely optional when he realised they would no longer be supporting it in the future. A bit like the UKs covid track and trace app

I get the impression VR was one of FDs wild inclusions in the early period of ED where FD literally threw everything at the wall. And like a lot of the early features they have become more of a burden as time has gone on holds broken Powerplay body

 

[amigacooke]

You are partly there ironically because of the Nintendo Wii, and thats in a spacious front room.

A few items of furniture and my hand holding the Wii remote suffered then in the cause of science.

 

[MarkyH]

The only thing(s) I want to know is with the new surface tech?:-
Rain - Y/N?
Rivers/Oceans - Y/N?
Clouds - Y/N?
Fog - Y/N?
Weather - Y/N?
Storms - Y/N?
Lightening - Y/N?
Aurora - Y/N?
Procedural plant life with sensible nods to science - Y/N?

Surely it can't just be detailed deserts to walk around? Because what was all that fuss year(s) ago about super detailed ice planets, and why was its tech delayed if not for a more encompassing development?

I doubt I'll be fussed about a FPS experience in ED as I very much doubt it'll compete with dedicated FPS experiences/titles already available. So I'm simply interested in if the new planetary tech will at long last bring some overdue bar raising depth and variety to exploration.

All No. I will bet on it. But if you really like that stuff buy Red Dead Redemption 2 , and sit in a tent for hours watching a storm.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

For those who want to walk around the ship, what is the proposed gameplay purpose of this? Other than "it sounds cool".

EVE already tried it. It bombed.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I few item of furniture and my hand suffered then in the cause of science.

My wife almost threw a WiiMote through the telly once. I almost smashed a table in Alien Isolation in VR (my VR game test).

 

[[VR] Orodruin]

Good question. It could have been either/both. Either way HMD's got sold to play it, so for those who bought it for Half Life, VR didn't put them off. And those who already had VR, liked the look of Half Life.

Or we had VR already and got the Index just to have an HMD upgrade. Half-life just came with it.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

FDev won't answer of course, but my gut feeling is this:

I'm expecting about the same - the rest is considerably more difficult to implement and would have been easy to show off in the trailer if they'd got it working.

Throw in some "bark mound" levels of occasional life forms as well, though - no actual biospheres, but not completely dead either.

(Not on the list, but also not on my expectations: any meaningful terrain that's not a heightmap or a close approximation to one - again, they'd probably have shown it if they'd had it)

All of the other stuff will come with later updates. Maybe. Someday. Possibly?

Clouds/weather is probably the easiest and still incredibly complex - not so much in terms of the graphics but in terms of synchronising it so that two players in the same place at the same time see the same weather at every scale from planetary to on-foot while keeping the simulation efficient. (Lava flows, weather consequences like rivers, droughts, aftermaths of high winds, plant distributions, etc. then another step higher in difficulty ... and mobile life then higher still)

So I'm guessing thin atmospheres only for now at a range of temperatures (maybe a maximum pressure threshold? easy to handwave as quality of atmospheric shielding) and the next step maybe in another five years?

 

[amigacooke]

My wife almost threw a WiiMote through the telly once. I almost smashed a table in Alien Isolation in VR (my VR game test).

It costs to blaze a trail.

 

[jafergon]

For those who want to walk around the ship, what is the proposed gameplay purpose of this? Other than "it sounds cool".

If they didn't have a gameplay plan for walking on ships they shouldn't have used it as a selling point when we backed the project in the original Kickstarter campaing in first place. FD is the one to answer that question, not us.

 

[Sethiest]

Because I sit in front of my PC with my HMD on, I just wish I could switch between the two without exiting the game. Land my ship, select space legs, take off my HMD and continue on the monitor.

For those who want to walk around the ship, what is the proposed gameplay purpose of this? Other than "it sounds cool".

Immersion. Escapism. Realism. The same reason we have COVAS. You have text with warnings, you don't need the ship to audibly tell you. Or even station flight control do-da people. It all adds to the experience.

 

[Plaid_unicorn]

Since base building isn't a thing, being able to customize your ships interior with collectables would be nice. I know that is extremely "gamey"...

but its a game, and tons of people enjoy that type of stuff.

 

[ECity]

The point of that post was in reply to another post, highlighting the stuff that David Braben said in an interview regarding VR in Elite back in April 2014.

A for-profit corporation is not required to support VR on launch of a 2021 product based on the state of the technology in 2014.

FD knows how many people use VR. They know the cost of implementing it. They "re-examined" it. They rejected it for launch.

 

[scholesey]

No you don't. ED works on potato hardware- for ages I used a Core2Extreme, 4Gb RAM, GTX 460. Right now I'm on a E51650 and a GT 1030 pushing a 21:9 panel at native resolution. VR requirements are much higher than that and thus more expensive.

And if you have kids, not a lot of cash, a casual gamer or limited space (such as a small desk in a cramped office or corner) VR is not going to be viable. Even PSVR requires correct lighting, external cameras for positioning, proper seating and room. You are partly there ironically because of the Nintendo Wii, and thats in a spacious front room- hence why consoles will do it, and the PS5 eventually.

With that hardware it suggests you haven't/can't play elite in VR? If not you cannot possibly comment on the VR discussion. And you will be playing on a monitor with settings well down on optimal. Elite is a seated game, I play it on a small desk in the corner, I use a rift S that has no external trackers and works happily in low light. You don't need more space to play elite in VR that you do on keyboard/mouse. And I am a single parent not that I see the relevance.

 

[Skizomeuh]

What I really do hope Odyssey won't end to be like:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/gwz7fy

 

[scholesey]

A for-profit corporation is not required to support VR on launch of a 2021 product based on the state of the technology in 2014.

FD knows how many people use VR. They know the cost of implementing it. The "re-examined" it. They rejected it for launch.

And dumped the investment of a lot of players in the process.

 

[Plaid_unicorn]

What I really do hope Odyssey won't end to be like:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/gwz7fy

omg that's terrible.

 

[Ethaidan]

I wonder if the VR community will buy Odyssey.

Besides how many players are in VR? And the shortfall for Frontier will be important ?

Sure, but as a game company, how does this potential shortfall (possibly only temporary if they add it post-launch) stack up against the potential attraction of new customers? It's really not hard to imagine FDev having some of their focus on potentially appealing to an entirely new player type (FPS) given how incredibly large that market is, with adding VR in the future.

Depending on how Legs are integrated into the existing game (ie can I have two other Cmdrs in my Krait and fly down to a planet for FPS based missions?) I can think of a dozen people who I will be able to recommend the game to just so they can multicrew up as shock troops and. None of them are particularly interested in the game as is, but buy & play pretty much every FPS game that comes out.

 

[ECity]

Have you ever watched a sci-fi movie or series, or read a sci-fi novel featuring space ships? Questions like these are the equivalent of pointing at a wheel in 2020 and wondering what possible use such a spherical object could possibly have. "Maybe it looks cool to spin around? Dunno. Must be a pointless thing."

Honestly I get people being skeptical when first confronted with a novel idea the first time someone pioneers it, but you'd expect at some point that people would be intuitively familiar with the concept on their own without needing elaborate explanations. :/

Software engineering costs money and time. I've yet to see any suggestion for inside-the-ship gameplay that makes sense with a cost/benefit analysis. (As opposed to walking on planets which could have a large benefit).

Instead people keep proposing ideas that would cost huge $$$ to implement with very little additional gameplay. We already have SRVs for example. That added more gameplay. Adding the walking to the SRV adds a large cost but almost no value.