Frontier to drop VR support in 2020?

I don't know what to think of some comments in this section. Last year around this time; Sony sold about 5 million PSVR units. And the competition to create better vr viewers and with more immersion is increasing. 5 years ago graphics cards were 300% less powerful than current ones ... so if a company does not evolve the VR that already has some experience ... in the medium and long term future it will fall far behind
 
Hard to believe that Frontier would drop VR support in ED. VR in the age of Corona is only getting more popular. Beat Saber has sold a million copies world wide. Valve made the new Half Life game VR only. New HMD's are on the horizon and there is an actual enthusiast market for VR with Pimax, as well as an entry level starter market with the Quest. HMD's are sold out and there is still demand. Facebook is pouring cash into VR, Playstation is still supporting PSVR, Pimax had a successful Kickstarter in spite of its growing pains, StarVR has been announced, and there are several other very large names in the PC industry working on HMD offerings. In the last year with have seen some serious AAA deveopment in VR games outside of ED with Asgards Wrath, Walking Dead Saints and Sinners, Stormlands, Half-Life Alyx, etc.

All in all I would have to say that VR support in ED is not going anywhere. Yeah it lags sometimes but Frontier are a bunch of smart people and they have no desire to kill their baby.
 
If we get space legs then yes VR will be dropped. Star Citizen was gunning for VR markets as well until they put in space legs now its not even supported in the game.
 
If we get space legs then yes VR will be dropped. Star Citizen was gunning for VR markets as well until they put in space legs now its not even supported in the game.

Space legs had nothing to do with Star Citizen dropping VR support. They also claim it will be re-added later down the line. I have no idea where the nonsence of space legs being the end of VR in Elite comes from.... Many VR games run in first / third person with gamepad or K&M support.
 
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Floating around with space legs would be the same as floating around in a ship, or SRV. You have full control over the head's position be it with mouse, keyboard combination, HOTAS, or VR headset.
...

That said: I, for one, would certainly very much prefer proper VR support, with an in-game body, and the ability to manipulate things with my hands, including locomoting by grab handles and things when in freefall. The game character not following my moving around in my playspace (when in gravity/acceleration situations), and controlling like a tank that the player needs to keep themselves aligned with, rather than the other way around, would be right out.

The "headlock" that we have now, as implemented, is a bit problematic already: It does not seem to lock to one's real-world orientation as room-tracked, but rather to take a position/orientation "snapshot" and then keep track on its own, relative to that, so that errors can accumulate; Hopping into main menus a couple of times, seems to be a sure-fire way to acquire drift, leaving one needing to reset the HMD position with a quick F12, instead of things remaining "snapped" to where one took that snapshot, seated in one's meatspace chair.

I guess this is a remnant from days when the 3DOF Oculus Rift DK1 was the one and only headset, and ED one of the early adopters, never "properly" updated once Oculus and SteamVR got out of their initial develpment stages...
 
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I have more faith in FDev than that. With Half-life Alyx, VR has exploded. VR headsets worldwide have been soldout consistently since before Christmas, and the interest still growing further. On top of that, there are a lot of us who play ED only in VR; in fact, the few times I've ever seen someone mention this game outside of its own forums or subreddit were when someone was specifically pointing out ED as a fantastic VR game. It would be shocking to me if they suddenly decided to cut off their nose to spite their face, throwing away one of the best features available in this game.

Unfortunately, I only play ED in VR. If, by some unfortunate miracle, it turns out that the rumors are true then for me it would be the equivalent of them shutting down the servers and telling everyone the game was done.

Personally? I call on this particular rumor. But if it is true, then I've certainly enjoyed the time I've gotten to spend here and I won't forget about it! This game in VR has been a truly amazing experience, and I'm happy to have been able to see it at least once.
 
I'm hearing disturbing rumours that the big update for the game coming later this year is to drop VR support as the new features will not be feasible in Virtual Reality.

Now I don't believe rumour, however, this one has a grain of possibility due to the possible inclusion of space legs, and that might be more difficult to add.

Has anyone else heard of this?
No. I never trust rumours or hearsay.
 
DB's comments on VR

I've been looking for these comments, and I've been unable to find anything recent. Is this in reference to what he said in 2013/2014 about VR? Because if it is, then to be fair he was absolutely right at the time: VR as we know it today was in its infancy, was ridiculously expensive, and looked... well, not good. What he said about it in that interview was totally accurate for the time.

Of course, none of it would ring true today, but unless he's made new comments along the same lines then I'd say he likely knows that. I'm not sure I'd worry much if its based on those comments.
 
Alright, I knew I had been spending too much time on the forums lately, but this time it paid off. After reading this thread, it sparked a de ja vu in me, so I decided to go back into my post history, and I believe that I have found the origin of this "rumor".

After Googling for the past 30 minutes or so, I've come up completely empty handed on any mention from FDev or one of its employees of VR even being considered for removal. The only mention I can find of anywhere, anywhere, making such a mention is a player in a rather popular thread that is going around right now. As coincidence would have it, the mention in question happened 4 days before the creation of this thread.

So, I present the origin of this "rumor":

The origin of this rumor

I think we're good. It would be ridiculous for FDev to just yank VR out after all the time and money they've spent on it, and as much good PR as its gotten the game. Some of the most well known ED videos/reviews for this game, in fact THE most well known outside of these forums, is about ED in VR ("Elite Dangerous in VR is a Nightmare". Despite the name its a great review). Thinking about it logically- there's no chance in hell they'd make that kind of mistake.

All is well in VR world once more. Keep being immersed, fellow CMDRs! o7
 
Alright, I knew I had been spending too much time on the forums lately, but this time it paid off. After reading this thread, it sparked a de ja vu in me, so I decided to go back into my post history, and I believe that I have found the origin of this "rumor".

After Googling for the past 30 minutes or so, I've come up completely empty handed on any mention from FDev or one of its employees of VR even being considered for removal. The only mention I can find of anywhere, anywhere, making such a mention is a player in a rather popular thread that is going around right now. As coincidence would have it, the mention in question happened 4 days before the creation of this thread.

So, I present the origin of this "rumor":

The origin of this rumor

I think we're good. It would be ridiculous for FDev to just yank VR out after all the time and money they've spent on it, and as much good PR as its gotten the game. Some of the most well known ED videos/reviews for this game, in fact THE most well known outside of these forums, is about ED in VR ("Elite Dangerous in VR is a Nightmare". Despite the name its a great review). Thinking about it logically- there's no chance in hell they'd make that kind of mistake.

All is well in VR world once more. Keep being immersed, fellow CMDRs! o7
You got me curious too, so I’ve just done a ten minute looksee - behold my search-fu:

The original D. Braben article I mentioned in post #32 of this thread came out in Aug 2018; searching back in this VR forum revealed a thread about it and the following post, I believe, is the first seed of doubt sown to spawn the rumours...

 
You got me curious too, so I’ve just done a ten minute looksee - behold my search-fu:

The original D. Braben article I mentioned in post #32 of this thread came out in Aug 2018; searching back in this VR forum revealed a thread about it and the following post, I believe, is the first seed of doubt sown to spawn the rumours...


Interesting! So the "rumors" of this go back all the way to 2018, but they still at least do still start with just a forum post by a player.

Braben's comments are a bit newer than I had thought, but the content of the comments are still quite dated; the VR market exploded with HL Alyx and we're seeing more and more AAA games being added to it. Also- VR resolution on even cheap headsets utterly destroy what they were seeing at the time. with the Rift S running laps around the original Rift or original Vive, and at half the cost. I would be curious if he could still feel justified making the same comments today. I would suspect the answer is "no".

The only thing that is mildly concerning, looking through the latest patches, is that I cant seem to find a patch since april of 2019 with any VR notes in it. Now that could be because there's nothing to patch, but it could also be because they've stopped allocating resources to even VR bugfixes. That would be unfortunate.

It'll definitely be interesting to see what they do. It's pretty safe to say 2020 isn't on the books no matter what, since they pushed the release of New Era to early 2021 and removing VR before then would just be spiteful. But honestly I still don't see them doing it considering it's one of the primary things that separates this game from Star Citizen, and a large chunk of the media available to gamers unfamiliar with the game specifically reference the VR, including the most well known review about it. There would be no winners if they removed it.

If you search Elite Dangerous and sort by view count, the highest BY FAR is about ED in VR (despite the name it's a positive review).

EDByViewCount.png


Honestly, my biggest takeaway here is that any hopes I had of PSVR support are now dashed lol. But I'm still not remotely concerned about them up and removing the PC support since it would make no actual sense to do so.
 
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We have to learn to read in context of what is said: In the Gamedaili.biz article, ... he says he sees it as a niche that needs a lot of resources (seen from the end user side) ....

"I have never believed [VR] would take off. Right from day one, I said it would be niche, ”I noted. “And it's a great niche, but it's still quite niche. We were, I think, the first people to support [VR] with a AAA game, with Elite: Dangerous in December 2013. It's a wonderful experience, it is really wonderful. But it puts quite a high bar on the hardware, so my personal view is you can't run any slower than about 90 frames a second, and the resolution you really want to be 4K per eye. [Currently] it is a bit blurry, it's quite hard on the eyes for a long time. And the other problem is, trying to use it in a family environment, it's really divisive. Because no one can see or hear what you're seeing. ”

Braben does see a “huge opportunity” in AR, and Frontier has worked with HoloLens and others from the early days, he said.

"I think when we see displays made by Ray Ban and all the big glasses companies, that's when we've won," I added. “I think the battle at the moment is getting that to a point where it's both usable and powerful enough not to be an issue. I think, when you're superimposing on the real world, you need even higher frame rates, because the tearing effect is really obvious when you move your head. ”


Gee, my English is very bad, but it is understood if you read the article repeatedly.
 
I am expecting FDev to drop VR entirely, which is why I am no longer considering an upgrade purchase for my trusty CV1.

On a side note: I would definitely recommend upgrading from a CV1. I went from that to the Vive Pro and it was amazing; the text went from blurry to clear as day for me.

Besides ED, there are a lot of games worth using VR for in the sci fi and space realm. Everspace, No Man’s Sky, X Rebirth VR (actually quite good despite the desktop version being meh), etc. This doesn’t even count the non sci fi games like Skyrim and fallout4 VRs, HL Alyx, borderlands 2, etc.

I would definitely suggest getting something like a rift S or other more modern model for ED, just because even if this game dropped support (it won’t) there are quite a few other AAA games that are still all in and more to come, and it just makes ED so much more fun. To me, at least.
 
On a side note: I would definitely recommend upgrading from a CV1. I went from that to the Vive Pro and it was amazing; the text went from blurry to clear as day for me.

Besides ED, there are a lot of games worth using VR for in the sci fi and space realm. Everspace [...]
Everspace is VR?
 
@Ganogati You keep saying that VR exploded on the back of HL Alyx. I'm curious as to what data you're using to qualify this? The only reason I ask is because, if one googles the market data, it shows that VR exploded well before this. Maybe we just define explode differently :geek:
 
@Ganogati You keep saying that VR exploded on the back of HL Alyx. I'm curious as to what data you're using to qualify this? The only reason I ask is because, if one googles the market data, it shows that VR exploded well before this. Maybe we just define explode differently :geek:

 
@Ganogati You keep saying that VR exploded on the back of HL Alyx. I'm curious as to what data you're using to qualify this? The only reason I ask is because, if one googles the market data, it shows that VR exploded well before this. Maybe we just define explode differently :geek:

Additionally, along with Zodd's post: Worldwide, all major PC headsets except the Pimax (because no one knows how to use it lol) were sold out from fall of last year through recently. It was physically impossible to find a single major PC headset anywhere except for, amusingly, Japan. Backorders for Valve Indexes and Vive Pros had waiting lists that were months long. I put my email in for a Valve Index back in November, and still have yet to hear back.

Every VR headset being produced is already claimed by someone who likely put their order in last October lol. And while COVID has had something to do with that since March, it does not account for the fact that it was also this way 5 months prior.
 
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