VR support 'not at launch' for Odyssey

[Captain N]

Elite: Dangerous, being a flight sim with continuous 6-DOF motion, is already not really a game for people to whom VR sickness is a major problem.

Chances are a first person portion would be less uncomfortable than what we already have. I've seen that in games like Bullets and More that have both walking and vehicles there are people who can tolerate the walking but can't use the vehicles because of motion sickness.

Unless FD has modelled legs after Tribes, and has us "skiing" around faster than our starships can fly, I doubt motion sickness is the actual reason VR is delayed. (If they actually did this, it would be almost awesome enough for me to forgive lack of VR support... almost. On a second thought I want my Tribes VR!)

 

[GraXXoR]

That doesn't necessarily mean that VR won't be supported. I would be shocked if FD dropped support for VR, given how many people play this game in VR and the fact that it's one of the best VR games out there.

When the game first launched VR was the hot new thing so it made sense to advertise that. Now it's not such a hot new thing, so it's probably less of a priority for their marketing now. It's also possible that they don't want to commit to supporting new VR headsets, but will keep legacy support for Rift/Vive/etc.

VR is the main reason I'm still playing this game, if they drop VR support I'll stop playing and I don't think I'll be alone. But I don't think it's time to panic.

Why would you be shocked? This is FDEV we’re talking about, not Hello Games.

 

[VR Golgot]

And found a way to deal with the problem and slowly get used to smooth motion in VR, didn't even take all that long.

Sure. Same.

But you keep repeating this stuff like it has some relevance to the issues we’re discussing.

VR designers still seek to mitigate nausea rather than forcing new users to adapt to it. Because it’s a better initial experience.

No amount of personal anecdote changes those facts on the ground.

 

[GraXXoR]

I'm interested how HOTAS support will work as well, though I'd be more than happy to use my XBox controller for movement when on foot. But... no VR would be a big shame.

I use HOTAS to fly but navigate menus with a mouse as needs be. All in VR. It’s trivial to switch to a mouse while wearing VR. It’s not like the mouse moves around by itself.

Likewise. Remembering key pressing on the keyboard while wearing a headset was simple and became automatic after a while.

 

[VR Golgot]

Surely the issue would be leaving the option for the cast iron stomached 20%, rather than making it exclusively flatscreen? Just accepting position and orientation data from, and presenting the final camera matrix to a VR API is the work of moments. Caveat emptor on whether or not you end up calling Hugh on the great white telephone. Yes "doing it properly" would doubtless be superb, but it would cost so little to just leave it "available" for those of an heroic bent.

It’s unlikely they’d do it for an official launch. (Making a ton of users feel off gets you bad reviews etc )

But some of the other options out there are: A less official 'experimental' branch for the hardy, or tacit approval of mods which turn VR on etc for solo play.

We might be able to harry them into supporting one of those for launch

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

@Stamford Rider - you are an absolute legend, I am very impressed with your "cool starry bra"! To not just jump on the bandwagon of criticising VR players for "whining" is one thing, but to put your hand in your pocket and rig up a VR experiment to see things from "the other person's point of view" is particularly enlightened. But even that wasn't good enough for you, you then shared the experience with others, saying "I can see their point now", ver magnanimous and genuinely impressive. I'll be pouring a stiff "dram" as a nightcap later on, and it'll be toasting your good health.

Props to you for taking the time to try it out and give it a go with what you had available. That's awesome indeed, and it's great to hear you've seen what we're all on about
Thanks for the support dude.

Sanderling and I both fly in VR with twinsticks with Flight assist off, and in a lot of threads we echo each others sentiments, picking up on flight assist off...

Surely the issue would be leaving the option for the cast iron stomached 20%, rather than making it exclusively flatscreen? Just accepting position and orientation data from, and presenting the final camera matrix to a VR API is the work of moments. Caveat emptor on whether or not you end up calling Hugh on the great white telephone. Yes "doing it properly" would doubtless be superb, but it would cost so little to just leave it "available" for those of an heroic bent.

IRL I don't get car, air or other travel sick, like trains or buses, but when I used to work in Offshore Oil and Gas, certain "wave periods", tempo of the vessel bobbing up and down, wrecked me. I remember my first proper sea trip, the captain of that vessel was a nutter, a sea mongrel (worse than a sea dog), he took us out of harbour heading out into 5m swell knowing that it was forecast to pick up to 13m swell overnight. I ended up being so severely sick that I couldn't even keep water down, I got so dehydrated that I had skin peeling like sunburn, tongue splitting, the captain and XO (executive officer) contemplated having me airlifted off the vessel. Yet, a few years later, having pushed myself through mild seasickness a few times, on a totally different vessel, I had no problems with 22m+ swell?

Certain VR experiences trouble me, or the seasick part of me, most don't, but with those that do, I work towards building up the tolerance for it. It's particularly frustrating with "lone echo" as I reckon its the notched thumbstick controls that go for me?

It took me a while to learn FAoff, it may take me another while to get over Odessy Nausea (if it's implementation of VR "triggers" me), but let me be the one who gets to make that decision.

@golgot is someone who I enjoy reading their posts on the VR topic, but at times I do wish he'd stop trying to be so pragmatic, most VR players know they are messing with experimental kit, and know somethings may unexpectedly trigger nausea responses they didn't have. I know of a guy who completed a few "levels" of a scuba diving game with no problem, the third "location" / level had a deeper blue hue to the water than the previous two levels and that was them finished, they couldn't do more than 5 minutes in that shade of water, yet they could spend hours straight in the first two paler water sections.

If developers were to always take the risk averse choice at every decision, we wouldn't have 3d games, would never have gotten past the coin drop mentality of 3 lives high score of early eighties gaming, would never have developed sophisticated online gaming (games as a service / MMO etc), we'd never have had games that warranted and induced the production of specialist peripherals, such as shots, forcefeedback steering wheels etc...

Sure there have been a few clangers out there, like PS DualShock vibrating in your hand like a nineties pager? Haptic feedback on smartphones? Early force-feed back peripherals such as the laughable Play Station "official" Gran Turismo steering wheel. But those clangers paved the way for later better peripherals, such as the Logitech G29, Thrust-master TX. 15 years ago games were taglining their title with online, like LAtest Street Racer-Online, RapidCombat-Online, before that, 25 years ago, the tagline title of choice was 3d, Shoot-Em-Up-3D, etc. But nowadays online and 3d are expected in games in much the same way as twincam and injection is no longer a selling point for a "sportier" car, it is derigeur. VR will go the same way, there are a lot of crumby titles out there using it as a tagline, Tetris_Clone-VR and the peripherals will at times be janky, but get better, as we went from DK1 --> DK2 --> Oculus Rift CV1 --> Pimax (mixed) --> HP Reverb the hardware is getting better, and so does the experience it offers the player.

The VR headset hardware is getting better, the graphics cards to drive it are getting cheaper, as in you can run VR on a rtx2060 now, whereas you needed a gtx980ti before. A rift S now costs half what a CV1 did, and an rtx2060 is roughly half the price of a 980ti back in the day. More and more headline are games are coming to VR, so it would be daft to remove it now that it is starting to show signs of coming of age.

 

[VR Golgot]

I vehemently disagree with the idea of "bribing" frontier. First of all, they're for all intents and purposes a big corporation which is publicly traded and have healthy financial stats - it's all for everyone to see. They're investing in franchise after franchise, and licensed ones at that. Secondly, they don't need chump change from VR users, on which they couldn't be more clear by dropping VR from Odyssey ALLTOGETHER. They're basically saying "we don't care if you won't buy the dlc, so long and thanks for the fish". Thirdly, it sends a very bad message for the rest of the industry that VR players want to be milked. I don't. It drives the cost of VR upwards because games are a cost factor too. If you want to make VR more popular, cost must be brought DOWN not UP because you want something shiny now now now and can afford it. No! Bad VR gamer, no!

Yeah I get you. I'm leery of advocating for it. But the reality is that VR games currently do charge well over flatscreen prices for the content they provide, because of the smaller market and fewer units sold. So it's not like it would be pushing FDev out of the current norms anyway. And it might also play into the next point:

I think the real reason is that rewriting things took too long, and they're way behind schedule. The initial alleged lack of ship interiors would point that way. They simply have their hands full and can't be bothered with coding for 2.8% users ;-) Most of which have LEP anyway. So why bother?

This could well be the case. That they're behind, or that they're worried about getting the content to the requisite quality. (Or even that the guys who've handled EDVR to date have other primary roles, and they're tied up with that etc).

The one thing that a community willingness to pay more than £30 would signal, is that they could take a punt on hiring dedicated VR staff. And get on with an adaptation sooner rather than later.

Last but not least, locomotion. Google earth has full locomotion using comfort blinders, same for Skyrim VR. It really can be done, there are myriads of examples of locomotion methods in various games. There are also 3rd party hybrids like "Natural Locomotion" which even further help fight the sensory disjoint which causes VR sickness. So I'm with Murgle on this one, this is not a reason. Also, almost every HMD owner knows the risks involved with smooth locomotion. It could have been a problem in 2016, but it no longer isn't one.

Murgle and others are advocating for WASD / controller stick alone for locomotion. The examples you give offer motion controllers as an option (Skyrim), or only use motion controllers (Google Earth, natural locomotion systems).

Locomotion like the above can definitely done in ED. The questions floating around are more: Whether FDev would launch with retro WASD / stick alone (I think not, at least not officially. Too outdated without motion controllers, to low on nausea relief options). And how much dev does more fulsome motion controller support entail. (Given it's multiplayer with PvP, stuff like IK arms etc seem like a given. Need to see where your opponent is aiming, etc etc)

And with Oculus Quest on the rise, we will probably see more games coming to VR soon. Also if EA sends a signal that VR is cool, that's something. Valve had real stake in it, EA couldn't care less, but they did, for the coolness factor. I think it's great. I didn't think I'd praise EA for anything in the upcoming decade. But knowing as little as I know now about SW:Squadrons, I will (after the release, if it holds ). I know I will be buying SW:Sq for the amazing SW in VR experience, I know I won't be buying Odyssey at launch (see what I did there? )

SW:Sq looks like it's gonna be fun (Some HOTAS support, crossplay, power management, lots of loadout options etc). But on a VR tech front, it's just doing what ED's already done

 

[THECATISDEAD]

+1


+1 except I joined in late 2015, and I've deliberately spent a fortune on paints etc, like enough that "the Duchess Le Chardon" would do her nut if she knew just how much, just to " help keep the game funded".

But having spent that money, primarily to contribute towards future development, I feel betrayed that I'm being excluded from the new content which I (tried to) help fund the development of.

You’re part of the problem. Don’t be a whale if you want fully fleshed our games. Games shouldn’t be designed as services.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

You assume noobs would jump into VR without even the slightest research, just buy an expensive HMD, and be completely surprised if they experience nausea.
Dirt rally 2 marks the stages with a lil symbol to indicate the risk of motion sickness, I'm sure Frontier could manage something similar on the inevitable loading sreen that comes before the leggy experience, maybe even a warning when you load the VR version explaining motion sickness and what to do when you experience it.

+1 warning screens hide a multitude of sins. I remember in one of the modern warfare games having the game warn me of a disturbing scene, and asking did I want to skip it? Odessy VR could do something similar in start up, "Odessy contains first person gameplay elements, which when played in VR may cause Nausea, do you accept that risk and wish to proceed?"

Just a general question: if FD are indeed using the Outsider as a template, how would you do VR in that? I'm guessing that FD want legs to be visible to drive Holo Me / clothes Warframe style. The video hints at a 3rd person view with the aiming scene, would that be disorienting in VR?

Ewww- All the footage I've seen for the outsider looked to be third person :-( but an intriguing game all the same. However picking up on the cosmetics thing, I play in VR, and I've spent money on clothes for the CMDR, I don't think there'd be any difference in purchasing habits if the CMDR is stuck in the chair or fully able bodied, players would still likely buy clothes. Indeed, latest modern warfare, or warefare with the amount of microtransactions available to buy for it, feature "operators" which I think are skins for your character.

I vehemently disagree with the idea of "bribing" frontier. First of all, they're for all intents and purposes a big corporation which is publicly traded and have healthy financial stats - it's all for everyone to see. They're investing in franchise after franchise, and licensed ones at that. Secondly, they don't need chump change from VR users, on which they couldn't be more clear by dropping VR from Odyssey ALLTOGETHER. They're basically saying "we don't care if you won't buy the dlc, so long and thanks for the fish". Thirdly, it sends a very bad message for the rest of the industry that VR players want to be milked. I don't. It drives the cost of VR upwards because games are a cost factor too. If you want to make VR more popular, cost must be brought DOWN not UP because you want something shiny now now now and can afford it. No! Bad VR gamer, no!

I think the real reason is that rewriting things took too long, and they're way behind schedule. The initial alleged lack of ship interiors would point that way. They simply have their hands full and can't be bothered with coding for 2.8% users ;-) Most of which have LEP anyway. So why bother?

Last but not least, locomotion. Google earth has full locomotion using comfort blinders, same for Skyrim VR. It really can be done, there are myriads of examples of locomotion methods in various games. There are also 3rd party hybrids like "Natural Locomotion" which even further help fight the sensory disjoint which causes VR sickness. So I'm with Murgle on this one, this is not a reason. Also, almost every HMD owner knows the risks involved with smooth locomotion. It could have been a problem in 2016, but it no longer isn't one. And with Oculus Quest on the rise, we will probably see more games coming to VR soon. Also if EA sends a signal that VR is cool, that's something. Valve had real stake in it, EA couldn't care less, but they did, for the coolness factor. I think it's great. I didn't think I'd praise EA for anything in the upcoming decade. But knowing as little as I know now about SW:Squadrons, I will (after the release, if it holds ). I know I will be buying SW:Sq for the amazing SW in VR experience, I know I won't be buying Odyssey at launch (see what I did there? )

It's a tricky one, I can see where you are coming from there, and I share some of the sentiments you expressed, but I'd rather be milked than marooned if that makes sense?

Like you I'd never have seen me buying anything from Electronic Ar's - the amount of good studio's they've asset stripped and killed over the years.

So I'm relatively new to VR and when I saw people on this forum discuss legs and stating with absolute certainty that VR legs would make you sick as a dog I was worried because I was considering getting VR for E: D. When I finally got a HMD I picked up Skyrim VR on a Steam sale just to make sure I wasn't setting myself up for a disappointment (little did I know FD would do that for me) and yeah I did some research...


And found a way to deal with the problem and slowly get used to smooth motion in VR, didn't even take all that long.

Edit: didn't miss the sarcasm, wouldn't have missed it if it hadn't been there though but I figure why not drop in a useful tip just because...

What can I say, other than I agree with that and +1.

 

[VR Murgle]

Elite: Dangerous, being a flight sim with continuous 6-DOF motion, is already not really a game for people to whom VR sickness is a major problem.

Chances are a first person portion would be less uncomfortable than what we already have. I've seen that in games like Bullets and More that have both walking and vehicles there are people who can tolerate the walking but can't use the vehicles because of motion sickness.

Unless FD has modelled legs after Tribes, and has us "skiing" around faster than our starships can fly, I doubt motion sickness is the actual reason VR is delayed. (If they actually did this, it would be almost awesome enough for me to forgive lack of VR support... almost. On a second thought I want my Tribes VR!)

Tribes VR now that would be something...

 

[VR Murgle]

Sure. Same.

But you keep repeating this stuff like it has some relevance to the issues we’re discussing.

VR designers still seek to mitigate nausea rather than forcing new users to adapt to it. Because it’s a better initial experience.

No amount of personal anecdote changes those facts on the ground.

VR got to where it is today because someone took a chance, playing it safe isn't going to make it go further.

 

[Old Duck]

Here I am, still at the party but hanging out at the snack bar watching everybody else dance, just like IRL.

 

[CMDR M Kozak]

Here I am, still at the party but hanging out at the snack bar watching everybody else dance, just like IRL.

There are lots of us at that bar. If you need to display a bit of tapdancing - I can hold your beer at any time.

 

[VR Golgot]

VR got to where it is today because someone took a chance, playing it safe isn't going to make it go further.

Says the person who hates motion controllers

Tell it to Valve, who just played it super-safe with Alyx. No climbing, no melee, transitions for mantling, transitions if you fall off a ladder. Etc etc. And the reason they did that is because they know we're still in an onboarding stage. You don't get a broader casual crowd into VR, and give it a chance of success, by pushing everyone up against the hard edge of what it can do.

Boneworks can be there giving you rigid body physics and all that other fun experimental stuff. The whole indie scene is trying mad things constantly, and it's great. And that stuff percolates out and can go mainstream. Plus AA+s can and do experiment within their 'safer' boundaries. But they're always going to include nausea-tempering options wherever they can. It's just freaking common sense in a growing market.

You and I did our research on VR, bulled through stuff because we were motivated. And we get the full reward. But a ton of gamers just want to step into stuff. And if you close the door to them you close the door to greater adoption for VR.

Plus, aside from anything else, what you're advocating (classic stick control on a console controller) is retrograde as anything . It's not some novel form of creative experimentation

Anyways, the story still hasn't changed. The market still demands motion controllers and options like controller-relative motion for a modern first person release. You're wishing on a star thinking FDev would consider anything less for a full release. The only way we'll see a basic K/M & controller version in ED would be via a dirty experimental branch or mods. Which is probably what we should push for next time the lines of communication open

 

[BurntJello]

Hey, no list of WASD VR games?

Cool yep, you’ve mentioned that occasionally . The devs making all the VR games seem to disagree with you though. And that’s kinda the crux of the issue.

Lack of keyboard+mouse support is the reason why I have yet to buy a single "VR" game.
It is unfortunate that game devs seem to think that motion controllers are necessary. Motion controllers are fine for little gimmicky mini-games (like the bow and arrow game in The Lab)... but for the real thing, they are awful. So count me in the "hate motion controllers" camp.

I tried Borderlands 2 VR. My gosh it was horrible with the motion controllers.

I have yet to find a single FPS VR game that uses keyboard+mouse. (If any of you know of one, please tell me... or even a game with a mod that allows it)

Alien Isolation is the closest. Left/right turning is perfect. But, it has horrible face-aiming and the mouse can't be used to look up/down. Plus it's just a mod so there are some issues.

Half-Life 2 VR (it's built into the game) is a bit worse and better at the same time. Left/right turning is worse because you have to move the mouse "far enough" before the view turns, making it nauseating. Mouse is at least used for vertical aiming, but the game still won't let you use the mouse to look up/down. Another disappointing failure.

So at least for me, FDev only needs to provide the same "controls" experience, just in 3d (VR).
With FDev's existing VR experience, this shouldn't be that difficult for them.

What I don't understand though is why FD cannot offer the same experience as we have now in VR. That is, essentially, a 6 dof 3D headtracker which uses exactly the same game controls as the flat monitor view. If the new update allows running, jumping and hiding behind rocks using WASD, mouse or game controller then why not give us VR users exactly that? I expect the vast majority of current VR users would be perfectly happy with this approach, firstly because we are already used to this control method and secondly because we would rather have VR without fancy "Lone Echo" hand controller stuff than no VR at all.

^ This exactly.

Now a fully realised VR implementation would use VR controllers to press buttons and control the hologram panels directly instead of using arrow buttons. But that would mean making the cockpit fully interactive which is a much bigger job.

I don't want this at all. Motion controllers = dead on arrival (for me).

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I don't want this at all. Motion controllers = dead on arrival (for me).

It would be an option. Personally I would love it, as I would feel like I'm actually controlling the ship with my hands. It's one of the reasons why I don't bind lots of things that can be controlled by those panels to a button.

 

[jojon]

Half-Life 2 VR (it's built into the game) is a bit worse and better at the same time. Left/right turning is worse because you have to move the mouse "far enough" before the view turns, making it nauseating.

Sounds like you are using one of the windowed vr_aim_move_mode 's. I preferred mode 0 (AFAIR) myself, which coupled the mouse directly to turning, but I am pretty sure I recall that one had you aiming vertically using your face, which it sounds like is not your preference.

 

[VR Murgle]

Says the person who hates motion controllers

Tell it to Valve, who just played it super-safe with Alyx. No climbing, no melee, transitions for mantling, transitions if you fall off a ladder. Etc etc. And the reason they did that is because they know we're still in an onboarding stage. You don't get a broader casual crowd into VR, and give it a chance of success, by pushing everyone up against the hard edge of what it can do.

Boneworks can be there giving you rigid body physics and all that other fun experimental stuff. The whole indie scene is trying mad things constantly, and it's great. And that stuff percolates out and can go mainstream. Plus AA+s can and do experiment within their 'safer' boundaries. But they're always going to include nausea-tempering options wherever they can. It's just freaking common sense in a growing market.

You and I did our research on VR, bulled through stuff because we were motivated. And we get the full reward. But a ton of gamers just want to step into stuff. And if you close the door to them you close the door to greater adoption for VR.

Plus, aside from anything else, what you're advocating (classic stick control on a console controller) is retrograde as anything . It's not some novel form of creative experimentation

Anyways, the story still hasn't changed. The market still demands motion controllers and options like controller-relative motion for a modern first person release. You're wishing on a star thinking FDev would consider anything less for a full release. The only way we'll see a basic K/M & controller version in ED would be via a dirty experimental branch or mods. Which is probably what we should push for next time the lines of communication open

As I have said before I have no problem with motion controllers being supported, it the exclusivity that bugs me as most VR games would workperfectly fine with gamepad or WASD. And as for the gamers who just want to step into the stuff, motion controller might reduce the risk of VR motion sickness but as far as I know they don't completely eliminate it so VRgins unaware of the risk could be in for a nasty surpise.

Besides the biggest risk of VR isn't nausea, it's auto strangulation everyone know that...

 

[VR Murgle]

It would be an option. Personally I would love it, as I would feel like I'm actually controlling the ship with my hands. It's one of the reasons why I don't bind lots of things that can be controlled by those panels to a button.

Oh for crying out loud, it's 3306 nobody pushes buttons anymore voice control is where it's at!

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Oh for crying out loud, it's 3306 nobody pushes buttons anymore voice control is where it's at!

Not at all interested in voice control myself. I don't want to look even more stupid then what I already do with a VR unit on my head.