ANNOUNCEMENT Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Announcement

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.

CMDR Trium

CMDR Trium
-VR- Max Factor said:
It's simple. If you are playing the Odyssey client and you own horizons, you will be able to get out of your ship using your feet or SRV on any planet you can land on. When playing on the horizons client, you can only land and drive around on the planets that are allowable in horizons.

If you are winged with someone playing Odyssey, you may see their character out of their ship or SRV.

Look at it like the base game and horizons. Both share the same universe, you can wing up and even multicrew, but one can't land on any planets, when the other can.

They may bundle horizons in with Odyssey, or they may bundle it in with the main game, or they may keep it seperate.
Click to expand...

So you're certain that a player, playing Horizons can't enter the atmosphere of a planet with a tenuous atmosphere? Even though that doesn't specifically negate any VR features beyond what's already available on airless worlds? Sorry - but as a software developer - that inability would seem a little odd to me.... Why would entry into a tenuous atmosphere world cause problems for VR?
 

Riverside

Riverside
CMDR Trium said:
So you're certain that a player, playing Horizons can't enter the atmosphere of a planet with a tenuous atmosphere? Even though that doesn't specifically negate any VR features beyond what's already available on airless worlds? Sorry - but as a software developer - that inability would seem a little odd to me.... Why would entry into a tenuous atmosphere world cause problems for VR?
Click to expand...

It wouldn't. Not owning Odyssey would gate your entry to Odyssey content.
 

CMDR Trium

CMDR Trium
Arthur Tolmie said:
Firstly, sorry for the late reply – it has been a busy week!

As I said, I will give you what news I have, be that good or bad, when I have it as I feel that is fair.

The short answer, I am afraid, is I have no other news that what was stated in the previous post: Odyssey will not support VR at launch.

However, I wanted to add some context to this in the hope this will provide some understanding of what that means.

Firstly, we have no intentions of removing VR, or support for it in Elite Dangerous.

With regards to the Odyssey statement, there are as you can imagine, a multitude of factors in play when looking at how the VR experience could transfer to the new mechanics and features being implemented for this expansion. Hence why it will not be supported at launch.

We are exploring many options of how this could work without compromising the quality of the VR experience.

If / when we can find a way of doing this, we will of course communicate that.

I understand the desire from the VR community and I am listening to you.

I will of course come back when I have more information on this.

-Arf
Click to expand...

This is my first message to a Frontier Dev (which I gather you are), so let me begin by congratulating you, your team and Frontier on providing the gaming community with a truly epic and trend-setting gaming application across the last several years. You've brightened all of our lives, I'm sure and contributed to the continuing march forward in gaming performance!

Now with that bit of fan mail out of the way, I do have a few questions - speaking as a software dev myself. I'll try to avoid getting too technical, but there are some things about the game I don't quite follow where Odyssey is concerned.

  1. Can you make any comment concerning the marriage of Odyssey and Horizons insofar as the "tenuous planets" are concerned. I posted a reaction in a nearby thread on this forum that is brief and serves to clear something up for me (and a few others). Specifically, once CMDRs can take their ships into the atmospheres of tenuous planets, what software development / technical issues might prevent Frontier from allowing VR players from at least doing there what they can already do on airless worlds (i.e. fly into, land, access spaceport facilities, etc.)? Would there not only be a restriction insofar as "space legs" is concerned?
  2. In your post, you write:
    1. "We are exploring many options of how this could work without compromising the quality of the VR experience.
      If / when we can find a way of doing this, we will of course communicate that.

      So without committing Frontier to any particular development or feature path, can you offer any comment on whether you personally think it likely VR development will, at some point, be done for a future Odyssey release? (Otherwise, all this is saying to people is you can play Horizons for as long as you like but don't expect any new VR features going forward.)
  3. Is the issue with developing VR that because of the commitment to a "quality VR experience" and feature differences between different VR gaming platforms such as Xbox or Playstation? Are PC platform differences presenting an issue? A "multitude of issues" seems a little vague - for example in my limited exposure to the Unity 3D engine, I can convert a number of games between 2D and 3D modes (with some effort) relatively easily.
  4. Has Frontier considered an incremental approach when introducing VR features to Odyssey rather than some giant package that needs to clear the same bar(s) as the 2D release?
So I've tried to keep this brief and hope it will elicit some kind of response. I'm not going to necessarily take the attitude "I'll never play Odyssey if it don't got VR". That said, Elite is the real reason I got VR in the first place and if it is going to be deprecated the likelihood is that I simply will end up playing Horizons less and less if there's no new content or game feature introduced that support it. Answers to the above may serve ensure everyone that Frontier takes the (straw poll) 25% or so of the veteran player base dependent on it will remain as committed as ever.

Very gratefully,
 

Riverside

Riverside
CMDR Trium said:
...absent VR, which was kind of the whole point. ;)

Actually, another way to phrase the question would be - is adding a color to the sky so complicated it can't be included in VR?
Click to expand...
-VR- Max Factor said:
It's simple. If you are playing the Odyssey client and you own horizons, you will be able to get out of your ship using your feet or SRV on any planet you can land on. When playing on the horizons client, you can only land and drive around on the planets that are allowable in horizons.

If you are winged with someone playing Odyssey, you may see their character out of their ship or SRV.

Look at it like the base game and horizons. Both share the same universe, you can wing up and even multicrew, but one can't land on any planets, when the other can.

They may bundle horizons in with Odyssey, or they may bundle it in with the main game, or they may keep it seperate.
Click to expand...
 

CMDR Trium

CMDR Trium

This still doesn't answer my question. Shall I repost mine in reply again for you too? (I can read, in case there was doubt about that somehow.)
 

Riverside

Riverside
CMDR Trium said:
This still doesn't answer my question. Shall I repost mine in reply again for you too? (I can read, in case there was doubt about that somehow.)
Click to expand...

We are on the 321st page of this thread, your question has already been discussed at least 4 times, probably a lot more.

I understand that you are unhappy about VR not being included at all, but it may be that you will be able to do all the seated stuff in VR & only legs will be non-VR. We don't know. Assume the worst.

I do agree that flying down into an atmosphere isn't inherently incompatible with VR, technically it's probably going to be very similar to glide in Horizons. Legs as described so far looks to be just another SRV, so 'seated VR' would still work there, so maybe FDev just hate VR now, I dunno ;)
 

CMDR Trium

CMDR Trium
Riverside said:
We are on the 321st page of this thread, your question has already been discussed at least 4 times, probably a lot more.

I understand that you are unhappy about VR not being included at all, but it may be that you will be able to do all the seated stuff in VR & only legs will be non-VR. We don't know. Assume the worst.

I do agree that flying down into an atmosphere isn't inherently incompatible with VR, technically it's probably going to be very similar to glide in Horizons. Legs as described so far looks to be just another SRV, so 'seated VR' would still work there, so maybe FDev just hate VR now, I dunno ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, admittedly I didn't sift through the whole dialogue, nor did I care to read all 321 pages of discourse (much of which I did read earlier on in the thread. At any rate....

Of course VR players aren't happy with it not being included at launch. Frontier has been working on Odyssey for quite a while now and so there were higher expectations for it than what's likely to now be available per the announcement - VR support included. But those of us who got our VR headsets (and there are more than 1 or 2 of us) especially for Elite are feeling a bit discouraged at the moment because it isn't clear any new content or features will ever again be developed for us. It's the primary game interface for a lot of players, as I'm sure you're aware. It'd kind of be like taking HOTAS support away or maybe Xbox controller support and forcing those users to go back to keyboard play or another interface that isn't the preference. And in software development that's kind of something you're supposed to avoid. (I can recall thousands decrying the movement of features to the "ribbon" in Microsoft Office products a few years ago, for example.)

I really hadn't thought much about SRV gameplay. I suppose it's conceivable there will be features on tenuous planets that don't exist elsewhere in the game that would make rendering such objects in VR too great a challenge for immediate release. But not forever.

At this point I'd be satisfied to simply hear "VR features will be introduced at a later date" from Frontier. It's a little disturbing we haven't heard that stated explicitly yet.

Thanks for the reply.
 

TScal12

T
CMDR Trium said:
Yeah, admittedly I didn't sift through the whole dialogue, nor did I care to read all 321 pages of discourse (much of which I did read earlier on in the thread. At any rate....

Of course VR players aren't happy with it not being included at launch. Frontier has been working on Odyssey for quite a while now and so there were higher expectations for it than what's likely to now be available per the announcement - VR support included. But those of us who got our VR headsets (and there are more than 1 or 2 of us) especially for Elite are feeling a bit discouraged at the moment because it isn't clear any new content or features will ever again be developed for us. It's the primary game interface for a lot of players, as I'm sure you're aware. It'd kind of be like taking HOTAS support away or maybe Xbox controller support and forcing those users to go back to keyboard play or another interface that isn't the preference. And in software development that's kind of something you're supposed to avoid. (I can recall thousands decrying the movement of features to the "ribbon" in Microsoft Office products a few years ago, for example.)

I really hadn't thought much about SRV gameplay. I suppose it's conceivable there will be features on tenuous planets that don't exist elsewhere in the game that would make rendering such objects in VR too great a challenge for immediate release. But not forever.

At this point I'd be satisfied to simply hear "VR features will be introduced at a later date" from Frontier. It's a little disturbing we haven't heard that stated explicitly yet.

Thanks for the reply.
Click to expand...
Or there could be in-ship gameplay forcing Odyssey players to interact with NPCs and/or players on foot, which would explain why VR is completely nixed at launch. Because as you said, no reason to remove VR from in-ship or in-SRV gameplay unless there is in-ship gameplay that is not optional. Getting your ship boarded by pirates or players would be an example of that. In the end, none of us know anything beyond what they've told us.
 
Last edited:

-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
CMDR Trium said:
So you're certain that a player, playing Horizons can't enter the atmosphere of a planet with a tenuous atmosphere? Even though that doesn't specifically negate any VR features beyond what's already available on airless worlds? Sorry - but as a software developer - that inability would seem a little odd to me.... Why would entry into a tenuous atmosphere world cause problems for VR?
Click to expand...
Nope, because tenuous atmospheric planets are not part of the horizons expansion.

That's the reason why I have been calling for a Horizons Plus client for those that own Horizons and Odyssey, that allows people to play in VR and land on tenuous atmospheric planets as well as all the planets on horizons and drive around on them. They just won't be able to use their legs and any other feature that requires that method of movement until they release a full VR version of Odyssey.
 

thistle

T
CMDR Trium said:
...absent VR, which was kind of the whole point. ;)

Actually, another way to phrase the question would be - is adding a color to the sky so complicated it can't be included in VR?
Click to expand...
No, nobody is claiming it is afaik.

Adding full first person mechanics and whatever gameplay is included in Odyssey (we dont know yet) WILL/WOULD complicate the development. It's entirely possible of course, but it appears they aren't trying to do the first person part in VR at the moment.

The atmospheres in VR would be no problem I'm sure, hence Arf's response and the one above on twitter, ie

We're looking into various options for how VR players could transition from VR to the new mechanics of Elite Dangerous Odyssey without compromising the VR experience.
Click to expand...

Those new mechanics will be the on foot first person ones.
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom