Allow the VR '2D screen' to be disabled?

[VR Golgot]

Have you actually got it to render in 3D to both eyes, even on foot as I assume you turn off VR in the EDO options, so no grey letterbox and the game assumes you're using a normal screen? I tried Vorpx years ago to see what happens with ED, and it did nothing in 3D, same with nVidia's 3D glasses apart from rendered the starfield depth all wrong. I haven't bothered reinstalling EDO whilst it's this crap to test it in the latest Vorpx, or indeed play it at all- no full VR development from Frontier, no more support from me.

Nobody’s got an EDO stereo view going via vorpX as far as I know.

If you do decide to have a tinker at any point though let us know how you go!

(It’s £33 these days, and I’d rather spend that on a full VR title than take a punt for a headlook hack right now )

 

[VR Dextrovix]

Wow, the Vorpx price has gone up hasn't it? I thought it was a weaker Pound against the Euro or something, but it seems it's been increasing in price over the years for any currency.

You know what, I will try Vorpx with Odyssey, just out of curiosity. I'll try this weekend and post the result on here. I'm sure it will indeed be just a headlook hack, but I'll confirm.

I've got a GTX 3090 though, so take any result with the FPS with a dollop of salt (indeed, more salt than I've spilt on the forum this year over VR).

 

[VR Golgot]

You know what, I will try Vorpx with Odyssey, just out of curiosity. I'll try this weekend and post the result on here. I'm sure it will indeed be just a headlook hack, but I'll confirm.

Nice one

 

[VR Dextrovix]

Ok, I've tried Vorpx today as I had some time.

VR Golgot, you should indeed spend you £33 elsewhere if you wanted Vorpx just for ED, although as I've said, if a game does work in Vorpx, it really does look good (Dishonored, Bioshock as I said before).

EDO does not render in 3D using Vorpx. The ahem "best" view is Virtual Cinema mode, which is like the 2D flatscreen FD have given VR players for on foot, except the Vorpx version at least is closer to your eyes, and looks better for it (FD can't even seem to improve that whilst they continue turd-polishing elsewhere on EDO).

If I turn off the Virtual Cinema mode and zoom in full screen, "Headlook" is basically the crosshair following your head, so whilst the view fills the screen and moves with your head, you can't see the outer edges of the screen where the HUD is, and you have to keep pressing the middle mouse button hotkey to switch the view between zoomed in to cinema, just to see it. You'd also be aiming with your head if along with the mouse, so I'd suggest not getting the hiccups.

So even if I left it this way for on-foot, because it's playable in a rough sense, everything else, menu, ship etc, are also exactly the same, so it's pointless as normal EDH portions of the games are in 3D and full VR if I turn on VR support, which is of course what we want from EDO in the first place.

Basically, Vorpx warns at the start it's an unsupported game, there is a cloud profile to import that was written many versions ago that makes no difference, so I'd add this to the Trackmania experience I had- a once great VR title has VR support depreciated- along with my own support for the developer.

 

[VR Golgot]

If I turn off the Virtual Cinema mode and zoom in full screen, "Headlook" is basically the crosshair following your head, so whilst the view fills the screen and moves with your head, you can't see the outer edges of the screen where the HUD is, and you have to keep pressing the middle mouse button hotkey to switch the view between zoomed in to cinema, just to see it.

Thanks for the lowdown D!

Sounds like some gameplay could be cobbled together there, but a lot of downsides as you say. Def not a VR experience really :/

 

[VR Dextrovix]

Well, of course EDO is playable (without Vorpx) if you like your on-foot experience very flat and grey, but what a contrast when you board your ship and you're back in three dimensions.

I'd come back to ED fulltime if Frontier made the current grey virtual cinema mode render in 3D, as the game is playable the way it currently is, just not very immersive for VR. I've at least completed the tutorial so am back on board my ship where I was, but that'll do for me right now.

Obviously headlook would be the icing on the cake, but having neither and no commitment from Frontier on any development of non-bug related VR, means no commitment from me.

 

[NoVR - What_The_X_F_Dev]

@Arthur Tolmie @sallymorganmoore @Bruce G @Zac Cocken

@Arthur Tolmie @sallymorganmoore @Bruce G @Zac Cocken still nothing to say to your VR playerbase?

 

[Arioch]

@Arthur Tolmie @sallymorganmoore @Bruce G @Zac Cocken still nothing to say to your VR playerbase?

Probably not at that time on a Sunday night

I’ve seen the following posted since Golgot’s CM pings:
‘Post in thread 'Elite Dangerous Issue Report - 10/08/2021'
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/elite-dangerous-issue-report-10-08-2021.587868/post-9583695
…which lets us know there is something happening - hopefully the remaining VR bugs ironed out in the future (or Acknowledged and on the to-fix-list) at least.

Personally I suspect any info provided will be in the vein of Console release news - nowt to say until they’ve owt to say

 

[NoVR - What_The_X_F_Dev]

Maybe it might be better if I ping the CM's in the evening UK time?
@Arthur Tolmie @sallymorganmoore @Bruce G @Zac Cocken @Stephen Benedetti

 

[Bantha]

still nothing to say to your VR playerbase?

They’re not even talking to the whole console player-base about the Odyssey release date, and this WAS promised.

Our chances of any communication about VR that was NOT promised are unfortunately zero.

What I don’t get is how it isn’t fairly easy to implement, given that when you enter camera mode it reverts to full VR - I can run, I can shoot.
I genuinely don’t understand because it clearly works.

 

[Arioch]

Maybe it might be better if I ping the CM's in the evening UK time?
@Arthur Tolmie @sallymorganmoore @Bruce G @Zac Cocken @Stephen Benedetti

Probably not at that time on a Friday night

I think you’d be better off reading the last Top 20 bug update thread or watching the Tuesday livestream - it seems quite clear to me that anything not performance related is off the table, and we’ll just get the same answer from the CM’s regarding VR.

Adding to the tsunami of Monday-morning ping notifications probably isn’t going to achieve much in relation to this thread.

 

[NoVR - What_The_X_F_Dev]

They’re not even talking to the whole console player-base about the Odyssey release date, and this WAS promised.

Our chances of any communication about VR that was NOT promised are unfortunately zero.

What I don’t get is how it isn’t fairly easy to implement, given that when you enter camera mode it reverts to full VR - I can run, I can shoot.
I genuinely don’t understand because it clearly works.

Thats the thing, we would be an easy win: all the bits are basically there it wouldn't take much to tie them together and put a disclaimer splashscreen* in front of it.

*The disclaimer splash screen would basically be so FDev could put in some plausible deniability for any perceived jankiness by saying this mode of VR game play is experimental / beta / early access and may induce nausea in some, as it is not fully developed and or polished yet.

 

[viceVR]

Thats the thing, we would be an easy win: all the bits are basically there it wouldn't take much to tie them together and put a disclaimer splashscreen* in front of it.

*The disclaimer splash screen would basically be so FDev could put in some plausible deniability for any perceived jankiness by saying this mode of VR game play is experimental / beta / early access and may induce nausea in some, as it is not fully developed and or polished yet.

Exactly this.

 

[jojon]

Well, that is pretty much the description of this thread to begin with, so... :7

Let's just hope there is not a ton of agitated individual advocacy massing up on FDev in private communcations, though; The developers of Everspace announced a few day ago that there will be no VR at all for their title currently in development, because of abuse they had received killing any enthusiasm they had for it.

 

[Arioch]

Well, that is pretty much the description of this thread to begin with, so... :7

Let's just hope there is not a ton of agitated individual advocacy massing up on FDev in private communcations, though; The developers of Everspace announced a few day ago that there will be no VR at all for their title currently in development, because of abuse they had received killing any enthusiasm they had for it.

I stopped following Everspace 2 when I read this post from March last year -

Spoiler

Now, before some of you ask: We still haven’t decided if we will support VR at some point. All we can say is that based on the experience from the predecessor, supporting VR is a ton of work for many reasons (like overhauling the UI, rebalancing the game, optimizing to demanding VR specifications) for a total addressable market of presumably close to 35 million on PC and console.

At first sight, that number doesn’t look too shabby. However, the technical requirements for VR, as well as significant fragmentation issues and major marketing challenges, have to be factored in.

To elaborate a bit further, optimizing for PSVR on a regular PS4 all the way to the brand new Valve Index with its proprietary VR controllers takes even more effort than porting a typical PC game designed for mouse + keyboard input to also run console with proper gamepad controls from last-gen to current-gen and even to the next-gen.

On the marketing side of things, we have seen non-VR players who ignore or hesitate to buy games with a VR tag. While on the other hand, quite a lot of VR players miss or have trouble altering graphic settings in games with optional VR support, resulting in negative reviews and complaints about performance issues in VR, which of course hurt overall sales. Last but not least, it would actually be hard to justify to our entire community if we spent a lot of development resources exclusively on a feature for a comparatively small group of players.

Therefore, we decided to look at VR as a separate platform that requires a solid business case to make it worthwhile to support. Long story short, EVERSPACE 2 for VR is currently not on our list, but who knows what kind of deal might happen in the future…?

…so I’ve just searched for the announcement you mentioned:

Spoiler

Well, it's probably about time to close this topic for good. First off, thank you to everyone in this thread who has listened to us as we’ve been saying that we don’t want to create a VR experience for EVERSPACE 2. We understand that you are all passionate about VR as a whole, but we are not going to spend time and resources creating this for EVERSPACE 2.

Without going too much into technical/design details or debating business cases (we’ve shared our reasoning in-depth in an earlier comment about why we don't plan to support VR in ES2), we’ve come to the conclusion that we would not be able to match high expectations of all VR players while justify spending our limited resources on a complex feature that is relevant to less than 5% of our target audience.

FWIW, the final nail in the coffin for VR in ES2 is this thread. Disrespectful comments from VR players calling our team lazy, technically incompetent—mind you this is to a veteran team that has been working their butts off to deliver best-in-class space combat games on all kinds of gaming platforms—and/or greedy because we allegedly "mislead" VR players that we'll add VR to ES2 (a never-promised feature). Even if there are VR players who only bought the first EVERSPACE because of VR support, that does not mean it is a guaranteed feature in the sequel. Frankly, many of the comments here show a level of entitlement that is off-putting to a team that really does find VR an exciting platform, and two studio founders willing to invest a six-digit budget in VR out of their own pockets.

Our PR folks are probably pulling their hair out right now—I've been called out for poor communication to VR users before, but I genuinely don't care anymore—if any gruntled VR user is still reading, ask yourself WHY in the world should any indie developer get excited about putting their house on the line to make significant changes to their game to support a heavily fragmented platform for a single-digit percentage audience? This is especially difficult when the feature asked for is led by a vocal minority with utterly unrealistic expectations as if the title was designed as a VR-only game, and frequently shows a complete lack of understanding of what it takes to properly implement VR, also often paired with outright false perceptions of how the gaming business works.

On a personal level, the audacity of some hardcore VR fans calling me out for being patronizing while I genuinely wanted to openly share our reasoning about our business decision which was based on deep market research and our own internal data at the beginning of this thread—arguably quite rare in the gaming industry—was just the beginning. Meanwhile, we’re at a tipping point: the bridges are burned, and I couldn't genuinely care less about any business consequences due to not supporting VR in ES2. Even if the business decision might hurt my own pocket as is claimed throughout this thread, at this point, I am more concerned about protecting our team from toxic community feedback than delivering the next big VR title.

/Michael

PS: This post has passed our PR police, so this is no joke!

…which makes for some interesting reading.

What’s the saying? “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”

Something for my fellow VR users to ponder on

 

[NoVR - What_The_X_F_Dev]

I bought the orioginal everspace BECAUSE it had VR, but I don't think I've played it much if at all, whenI heard everspace 2 was announced as NOT having VR I quickly removed it from my steam wish list and haven't looked back since. Now I see the publisher is having a pop at VR players, I won't touch ANYTHING they make, so yeah, more flies with honey than vinegar works both ways.

 

[Terry Daniels]

…which makes for some interesting reading.

I read it as it was going on and did feel sad it wasn't getting VR, but also respected the devs choice in the matter, Egosoft pretty much said the same thing about X4 when I asked in their forums* - tho weirdly I bought X4 but not ES2...
No matter the big Quest2 sales there's still only a tiny percentage of those that wanna play space sims in VR, then you've got the players who expect nothing less that HL Alyx in the walking bits.
That's why I try to be patient with EDVR, at least VR is still mostly alive in the game. SC is years off from any hope of VR (but I will jump ship when it arrives )

* About the tiny market share and how much money they lost on X Rebirth VR not players being nasty.

 

[Arioch]

I bought the orioginal everspace BECAUSE it had VR, but I don't think I've played it much if at all, whenI heard everspace 2 was announced as NOT having VR I quickly removed it from my steam wish list and haven't looked back since. Now I see the publisher is having a pop at VR players, I won't touch ANYTHING they make, so yeah, more flies with honey than vinegar works both ways.

If you read that second statement as the Devs “having a pop at VR players” - I must be reading it differently than you It seems very clear to me that it was about a small number of individuals who managed to spoil whatever possibility there was of any future VR implementation.

“Frankly, many of the comments here show a level of entitlement that is off-putting to a team that really does find VR an exciting platform, and two studio founders willing to invest a six-digit budget in VR out of their own pockets…at this point, I am more concerned about protecting our team from toxic community feedback than delivering the next big VR title.”

I would dearly like to play a better on-foot VR experience than the Odyssey camera suite allows me, and I don’t want whatever small chance there is of getting it scuppered by anyone souring the Devs on the VR community.

Every time I see someone pinging the CM’s, I can’t help but frown and think, “you’re not helping, mate” - at best the CM’s are only going to say what they’ve said before, at worst the ping has added VR to their annoyance pile.

 

[VR Golgot]

Let's just hope there is not a ton of agitated individual advocacy massing up on FDev in private communcations, though; The developers of Everspace announced a few day ago that there will be no VR at all for their title currently in development, because of abuse they had received killing any enthusiasm they had for it.

What’s the saying? “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”

Nicely put both.

There are some distinctions with EDO which perhaps explain some additional fan annoyance here. (It being a DLC for a VR compliant game, and coming from a dev house with greater resourcing than Rockfish, etc). But...

Those posts are a genuine insight into the dev costs, ROI issues, and general difficulties of adding VR to flatscreen-first games. And they also underline how even passionate VR advocates within a dev house can get turned off by fan antipathy and blame.

It's great that lots of us are still passionate about EDO getting VR. Let's try and communicate that passion as constructively as possible

Withhold your cash from FDev, boycott EDO, whatever works for you, that's all cool. Keep suggesting hacky holdovers in the meantime. (I certainly will be ). But let's definitely avoid falling into the trap of simply berating devs and management over this decision. It is doubtless a more complicated decision than it appears to us players on the outside.

(I think most posters in this thread have mainly been playing nice on that front recently, but it does flare up occasionally . And it definitely doesn't help when it happens :/ )

 

[VR Golgot]

Probably worth highlighting this recent post from Sally again, for those who haven’t seen it:

I know, I know and I totally do hear you on this. Not at all frustrated by you raising it - you're entitled to speak up if course.
Thing is we have currently console players on one side feeling left behind, Odyssey players on the other feeling disappointment, and VR down the middle also feeling left behind, all at once.
We want to get to you all, but we can't just flip flop the team from one priority to the other, that's not how development works efficiently at all and would burn the entire department out - we need to focus the work in the most optimal order for ALL OF YOU.
As we've said before, we absolutely are interested in fixing and making current VR experiences refined - so issues are still very much collected and talked through.
I know that's not much to give you right now but hoping it's something until we get to a point where we can breathe between expectations and priorities.
Big o7.