I definitely would.
I wonder how many would pay for an Odyssey VR upgrade
- Thread starter CMDR Darth Vater
- Start date
So would I.
I've used VR since the Pimax 4K in 2016. I don't have anything Meta, have never had anything Meta, will never have anything Meta, I agree with you. The only thing I will credit them with is doing for VR what Apple did for tablets.
However, to FDev, in the words of Homer, "Shut up and take my money".
As far as I'm concerned, by already buying Odyssey I have already paid for VR.
Let me explain. When Odyssey was announced FDev said VR would NOT be supported. A lot of VR users then had a massive campaign on the forums and other social media to persuade FDev to include VR. Eventually FDev agreed to add VR to Odyssey, not at launch but in a later update and a 2D screen within the HMD would be an interim fix.. That seemed a fair move for myself and most other VR users. As a result I bought 2 pre-release copies of Odyssey, which I would not have done without a VR commitment.
Unfortunately the Odyssey release was a disaster with poor performance and a lot of bugs. We were told VR wouldn't even be looked at until the game was fixed, which was fair enough. Then after the time period for getting a refund from Steam or Epic had expired, FDev announced that any future VR support for Odyssey had been dropped. I've still not really forgiven FDev for that stunt, and my support for FDev (buying ARX) has been a fraction of what I spent before.
So why should I pay extra for something I've already bought?
Let me explain. When Odyssey was announced FDev said VR would NOT be supported. A lot of VR users then had a massive campaign on the forums and other social media to persuade FDev to include VR. Eventually FDev agreed to add VR to Odyssey, not at launch but in a later update and a 2D screen within the HMD would be an interim fix.. That seemed a fair move for myself and most other VR users. As a result I bought 2 pre-release copies of Odyssey, which I would not have done without a VR commitment.
Unfortunately the Odyssey release was a disaster with poor performance and a lot of bugs. We were told VR wouldn't even be looked at until the game was fixed, which was fair enough. Then after the time period for getting a refund from Steam or Epic had expired, FDev announced that any future VR support for Odyssey had been dropped. I've still not really forgiven FDev for that stunt, and my support for FDev (buying ARX) has been a fraction of what I spent before.
So why should I pay extra for something I've already bought?
Hmm.
I don't believe that's how it went, I don't believe they ever suggested the 2d screen was temporary.
Here is the announcement:
ANNOUNCEMENT - Odyssey: Update on VR and Ship Interiors
Greetings Commanders! We hope you enjoyed our first dev diary release and stream. It was our pleasure to bring you the latest news on Odyssey and needless to say we can't wait to share more info around further locations, missions, combat and more in further episodes over the coming months. We...
I also recall that they had said “not at launch” over annd over, and they never once said anything that suggested they would add it despite the many, many requests and complaints of VR players.
I would happily buy Odyssey VR if it worked well at release, but I definitely would not pre-purchase and would pass if it came out a buggy mess.
I would happily buy Odyssey VR if it worked well at release, but I definitely would not pre-purchase and would pass if it came out a buggy mess.
The way it was worded (“However, we do strongly believe that VR should only be enabled for on foot gameplay when we have an experience that truly matches the same quality bar that we set for cockpits.”) implies that the virtual flatscreen would be an interim solution. Ship interiors was the “not at launch” thing in that post.
I’m pretty sure that the interim period for on-foot VR will extend to the game’s end
(I’d also happily pay for a VR expansion)
I’m pretty sure that the interim period for on-foot VR will extend to the game’s end
(I’d also happily pay for a VR expansion)
I understand that many people without VR don't care. And it's not about them. 
I also understand that we probably "paid" that already and haven't got it with the foot included.
The thing is, I also understand they need a motivation for doing it otherwise we wait till me, the game or my VR is dead. I finally understand that money is the key motivation here. That's where my wallet comes into place. As someone already mentioned:
I also understand that we probably "paid" that already and haven't got it with the foot included.
The thing is, I also understand they need a motivation for doing it otherwise we wait till me, the game or my VR is dead. I finally understand that money is the key motivation here. That's where my wallet comes into place. As someone already mentioned:
I’m going to look at it this way.
In game VR is a bit buggy and not perfect yes, but overall VR is a very immersive and enjoyable experience and does enhance the game, and it’s also free so far.
Personally, I don’t play a lot of on foot content, so the fact it’s not in VR doesn’t really bother me. But if on foot game content was in VR I would probably start playing it more.
We are already being asked to pay for ships, so why not also on foot VR content, in which case I would pay.
In game VR is a bit buggy and not perfect yes, but overall VR is a very immersive and enjoyable experience and does enhance the game, and it’s also free so far.
Personally, I don’t play a lot of on foot content, so the fact it’s not in VR doesn’t really bother me. But if on foot game content was in VR I would probably start playing it more.
We are already being asked to pay for ships, so why not also on foot VR content, in which case I would pay.
To get ride of that frame in the face while on foot and fix the crash when we exit the vehicule... I would give some money. Already bought the last ships so I wouldn't mine. There is no games like that one as Space VR game. And adding more goodies out there would be nice too. As VR player, we invest lot of money in systems so FDEV should make some effort on their side too.
I'll fork over the cash if they switch to a fresh engine. The Cobra Engine is totally burned out. Odyssey was just a slapdash fix, the kind of "good enough for government work" job, thrown together to keep VR players in the game. I held off for a whole year before I even bothered getting out of my ship to tackle missions. A couple more years went by before I finally figured out why everything looked like a blocky mess straight out of Minecraft—and how to tweak it.
Still, I’m too hooked to quit. Guess we’ll see what’s in store down the road.
Still, I’m too hooked to quit. Guess we’ll see what’s in store down the road.
I'm going to go ahead and say NO, if we're just talking about them fixing the existing VR features (i.e., fix all the bugs on this thread - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/odyssey-vr-specific-bug-reports-please-contribute.575557/). We paid for the VR experience that was advertised and promised and we shouldn't have to pay for that again, just on principle. ED was one of the greatest VR titles out there when VR first came onto the scene (I've been into VR since the Oculus DK2 days for reference), and the in-ship experience was and still is one of the best VR experiences to this day in my opinion. They really knocked it out of the park on that initial VR implementation, so it's been rather disappointing for it to end up in the state it's in with Odyssey since VR no doubt brought many players to the game that might not otherwise have ever tried it. I get why a lot of VR players feel a bit betrayed in this respect.
Now all that said, I try not to jump on the "hate on FDev for everything" train and as a software engineer (though not a games/graphics programmer) I understand fairly well where the game is at in the software lifecycle and the revenue generation aspect, so I do try my best to be fair and not just complain all the time. So in that vain here are my thoughts (apologies in advance for typing a small novel here):
1. The VR hype train has officially died, and the number of people using it today isn't what it was during the initial hype years. It's not "dead" as some like to say, but the hype cycle is over and now it's a solidified segment of gaming and has its dedicated player base that is still using it and will continue to do so, but it's rather small compared to the ED player base as a whole, so that puts FDev in the position where it's hard to justify investing a serious amount of developer time for something that only a fraction of the player base uses, especially when there are other bugs affecting the whole user base that need tending to. Plus there's the ongoing support of the game that the developers have to contend with on new content (the Thargoid war wasn't exactly something they put together in a few weekends after all). So, with the realities of being a publicly traded company that has to make money to justify keeping the game alive, they have to balance the team of developers they still have dedicated to the game against the things that will provide the most benefit to the most players (while still bringing in sufficient revenue) and VR just isn't up there unfortunately.
2. The idea of making a paid DLC JUST to enable an improved VR experience is also probably a non-starter for them. Sure they could do it that way, but then there will be those of us with the perception that we already paid for it once and the DLC is just a shameless money grab, and that's more negative PR they don't need in their lives. I think the only way you could pull off bringing in revenue for an improved VR experience would be a new content expansion like Odyssey (landable earth likes finally maybe???) and the enhanced VR experience is bundled as part of that. Some people would still complain, because that's always the case, but if it was truly a breakthrough level new type of VR experience I think most VR players would be fine with the cost of it being tied to a new content expansion the size of Odyssey (i'd be ok with it personally).
3. I'm also going to give them some defense on the whole "2D screen" VR implementation for on-foot display that a lot of folks don't like, because this wasn't just a matter of "laziness" as I've seen said on other threads before, but rather a challenge for any on-foot VR type of experience with lots of movement. It comes down to the user experience side of things - something that already takes work on traditional 2D games, and VR adds even more complexity to it. Here are a few issues to consider:
* How do you make the transition between flying in VR sitting in a ship to then disembarking and running around on foot a seamless one? If you're in VR flying a ship, you're almost surely sitting down in the real world to do that, so if they try to design a full-fledged on foot experience where you can move around freely (within the bounds of your play space at least) like you would in, say, Beatsaber or Arizona Sunshine..how do you handle the real-world part of that transition? The player would have to physically get up from where they're sitting and start moving around. This assumes you have space for a "room scale" standing VR setup, which many VR players don't have, so you can't design the experience around requiring it when some of your VR players (already a small percentage of the total player base as it is) don't have it. Most are flying the ships with either a HOTAS or a gamepad of some kind, and a full fledged roomscale experience would require grabbing the motion controllers to interact with the world instead, further complicating the input side of the gameplay. Also, if you were just sitting, you'd have to move that chair (or in my case the racing simulator cockpit I use for my seated VR games) out of the way so you don't run into and trip over it. And to get out of your seat you likely have to take your VR headset off so you can see while doing all this. The logistics of it are just kludgy, especially if you're disembarking right into the middle of a combat scene (a heavy focus of Odyssey) where all that time spent getting up in the real world leaves you getting shot and killed in game. Players would (rightfully) throw up their hands and complain that FDev designed the worst VR experience ever.
* Ok so if the standing room VR experience is a no-go, then what else can you do? Well the only other obvious option is to build the experience where the player remains seated in the real world, and they view the world in 3D from the perspective of being inside the suit. Seems intuitive enough at first, until you consider the issue of VR sickness that's induced any time the perceived movement of the game world is inconsistent with what your inner ear perceives in the real world (I don't remember the technical term for it so I'll just describe it as best as I can). This generally isn't an issue in the in-ship gameplay because the ship feels (mostly) consistent with what you're inner ear perceives as you're sitting still. The cockpit doesn't move around you as you fly, so it feels consistent, minus the G-forces of course, but your brain can reasonably acclimate to the lack of g-forces as it's still perceived as sitting still. Regardless of how you move the ship in the 6 degrees of freedom of 3D space, the interior is always stationary so you avoid this problem, but what happens once you get out of the ship and are running virtually on foot? Suddenly the world starts moving in a way that's not consistent with what your inner ear is perceiving. Every time you jump or rocket boost, the lack of any g-forces being felt by your inner ear is wholly inconsistent with the visual perception and VR sickness soon follows. And that's if you're on a planet with close to earth like gravity. If it's a low-g or zero g world, forget about it. There was a game called ADR1FT in the early days of VR that made this issue apparent very quickly. For the first few minutes it was a cool experience as you were in a space suit moving about a space in zero G, but as soon as you started thrusting around this issue manifested and you starting feeling nauseous and have to get out of VR. On the whole I've been pretty stout against motion sickness with most VR games that have this issue, but ADR1FT was one that I couldn't tolerate for more than 20 minutes at a time. So if you design an on foot experience that makes a large percentage of your player base sick...yeh, not a recipe for good PR.
So basically there's really no straightforward and workable way to provide the experience some VR players were hoping to have for on foot gameplay. The 2D screen inside the headset is really the only thing you can do, as your brain just perceives it like a 2D screen in front of your face the same way you would playing on a monitor. I think their biggest mistake was just not committing to doing it that way in the first place, as not being able to exit your ship on foot if you're in VR would have been an absolutely horrific user experience. Personally, I've only ever played this game in VR, so I'd be lost if I had to fly a ship playing the non-VR way. The statement they made at the time ("However, we do strongly believe that VR should only be enabled for on foot gameplay when we have an experience that truly matches the same quality bar that we set for cockpits.) is basically them acknowledging the reality I just described, though I do think they should have written a longer post explaining the issue in depth as I just did (only in much more eloquent wording and technical terms). I think if they had just put a bit of time into a proper explanation of why it was infeasible to do it, most of the players would have understood and it wouldn't have been this whole PR mess that it was. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
To end this long novel I've just typed up, I'd be happy if they just devoted a little developer time to fixing the existing long standing bugs with the existing VR experience. With my Pimax 5K Super headset I experience quite a few of them and it seems to me a graphics programmer with VR programming experience could probably fix most of them with relatively little developer time. If they no longer have any graphics programmers on staff that do VR, finding a VR developer to do it on a temporary contract basis probably wouldn't be too difficult. If all those issues were fixed then I'd personally be happy with where it's at.
Now all that said, I try not to jump on the "hate on FDev for everything" train and as a software engineer (though not a games/graphics programmer) I understand fairly well where the game is at in the software lifecycle and the revenue generation aspect, so I do try my best to be fair and not just complain all the time. So in that vain here are my thoughts (apologies in advance for typing a small novel here):
1. The VR hype train has officially died, and the number of people using it today isn't what it was during the initial hype years. It's not "dead" as some like to say, but the hype cycle is over and now it's a solidified segment of gaming and has its dedicated player base that is still using it and will continue to do so, but it's rather small compared to the ED player base as a whole, so that puts FDev in the position where it's hard to justify investing a serious amount of developer time for something that only a fraction of the player base uses, especially when there are other bugs affecting the whole user base that need tending to. Plus there's the ongoing support of the game that the developers have to contend with on new content (the Thargoid war wasn't exactly something they put together in a few weekends after all). So, with the realities of being a publicly traded company that has to make money to justify keeping the game alive, they have to balance the team of developers they still have dedicated to the game against the things that will provide the most benefit to the most players (while still bringing in sufficient revenue) and VR just isn't up there unfortunately.
2. The idea of making a paid DLC JUST to enable an improved VR experience is also probably a non-starter for them. Sure they could do it that way, but then there will be those of us with the perception that we already paid for it once and the DLC is just a shameless money grab, and that's more negative PR they don't need in their lives. I think the only way you could pull off bringing in revenue for an improved VR experience would be a new content expansion like Odyssey (landable earth likes finally maybe???) and the enhanced VR experience is bundled as part of that. Some people would still complain, because that's always the case, but if it was truly a breakthrough level new type of VR experience I think most VR players would be fine with the cost of it being tied to a new content expansion the size of Odyssey (i'd be ok with it personally).
3. I'm also going to give them some defense on the whole "2D screen" VR implementation for on-foot display that a lot of folks don't like, because this wasn't just a matter of "laziness" as I've seen said on other threads before, but rather a challenge for any on-foot VR type of experience with lots of movement. It comes down to the user experience side of things - something that already takes work on traditional 2D games, and VR adds even more complexity to it. Here are a few issues to consider:
* How do you make the transition between flying in VR sitting in a ship to then disembarking and running around on foot a seamless one? If you're in VR flying a ship, you're almost surely sitting down in the real world to do that, so if they try to design a full-fledged on foot experience where you can move around freely (within the bounds of your play space at least) like you would in, say, Beatsaber or Arizona Sunshine..how do you handle the real-world part of that transition? The player would have to physically get up from where they're sitting and start moving around. This assumes you have space for a "room scale" standing VR setup, which many VR players don't have, so you can't design the experience around requiring it when some of your VR players (already a small percentage of the total player base as it is) don't have it. Most are flying the ships with either a HOTAS or a gamepad of some kind, and a full fledged roomscale experience would require grabbing the motion controllers to interact with the world instead, further complicating the input side of the gameplay. Also, if you were just sitting, you'd have to move that chair (or in my case the racing simulator cockpit I use for my seated VR games) out of the way so you don't run into and trip over it. And to get out of your seat you likely have to take your VR headset off so you can see while doing all this. The logistics of it are just kludgy, especially if you're disembarking right into the middle of a combat scene (a heavy focus of Odyssey) where all that time spent getting up in the real world leaves you getting shot and killed in game. Players would (rightfully) throw up their hands and complain that FDev designed the worst VR experience ever.
* Ok so if the standing room VR experience is a no-go, then what else can you do? Well the only other obvious option is to build the experience where the player remains seated in the real world, and they view the world in 3D from the perspective of being inside the suit. Seems intuitive enough at first, until you consider the issue of VR sickness that's induced any time the perceived movement of the game world is inconsistent with what your inner ear perceives in the real world (I don't remember the technical term for it so I'll just describe it as best as I can). This generally isn't an issue in the in-ship gameplay because the ship feels (mostly) consistent with what you're inner ear perceives as you're sitting still. The cockpit doesn't move around you as you fly, so it feels consistent, minus the G-forces of course, but your brain can reasonably acclimate to the lack of g-forces as it's still perceived as sitting still. Regardless of how you move the ship in the 6 degrees of freedom of 3D space, the interior is always stationary so you avoid this problem, but what happens once you get out of the ship and are running virtually on foot? Suddenly the world starts moving in a way that's not consistent with what your inner ear is perceiving. Every time you jump or rocket boost, the lack of any g-forces being felt by your inner ear is wholly inconsistent with the visual perception and VR sickness soon follows. And that's if you're on a planet with close to earth like gravity. If it's a low-g or zero g world, forget about it. There was a game called ADR1FT in the early days of VR that made this issue apparent very quickly. For the first few minutes it was a cool experience as you were in a space suit moving about a space in zero G, but as soon as you started thrusting around this issue manifested and you starting feeling nauseous and have to get out of VR. On the whole I've been pretty stout against motion sickness with most VR games that have this issue, but ADR1FT was one that I couldn't tolerate for more than 20 minutes at a time. So if you design an on foot experience that makes a large percentage of your player base sick...yeh, not a recipe for good PR.
So basically there's really no straightforward and workable way to provide the experience some VR players were hoping to have for on foot gameplay. The 2D screen inside the headset is really the only thing you can do, as your brain just perceives it like a 2D screen in front of your face the same way you would playing on a monitor. I think their biggest mistake was just not committing to doing it that way in the first place, as not being able to exit your ship on foot if you're in VR would have been an absolutely horrific user experience. Personally, I've only ever played this game in VR, so I'd be lost if I had to fly a ship playing the non-VR way. The statement they made at the time ("However, we do strongly believe that VR should only be enabled for on foot gameplay when we have an experience that truly matches the same quality bar that we set for cockpits.) is basically them acknowledging the reality I just described, though I do think they should have written a longer post explaining the issue in depth as I just did (only in much more eloquent wording and technical terms). I think if they had just put a bit of time into a proper explanation of why it was infeasible to do it, most of the players would have understood and it wouldn't have been this whole PR mess that it was. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
To end this long novel I've just typed up, I'd be happy if they just devoted a little developer time to fixing the existing long standing bugs with the existing VR experience. With my Pimax 5K Super headset I experience quite a few of them and it seems to me a graphics programmer with VR programming experience could probably fix most of them with relatively little developer time. If they no longer have any graphics programmers on staff that do VR, finding a VR developer to do it on a temporary contract basis probably wouldn't be too difficult. If all those issues were fixed then I'd personally be happy with where it's at.
Cmdr Darock put some serious graft in here. However, I got us far as, "The VR hype train has officially died, and the number of people using it today isn't what it was during the initial hype years". I would love to see your fact checking for this because I can't find any data to support your claim. Doing a quick objective search on "PC VR gaming adoption chart" ( note the careful avoidance of subjective bias ) - I only see charts showing very obvious growth. Literally nothing showing any decline.
After that I stopped reading. Props to you for the patience and passion to write it though.
After that I stopped reading. Props to you for the patience and passion to write it though.
Ok, I guess that criticism is fair. My comments about the hype having died down were admittedly entirely my own perception, not a hard data point. Just between the failure of Metaverse and the fact that I see less VR games being announced than I used to makes me feel like it's sorta leveled off, but it's entirely possibly I'm wrong.
But if you're curious why I think FDev didn't implement on foot VR more thoroughly, you can skip points 1 and 2 and just read my bullet point # 3. I think I did a decent job explaining all the issues around doing it, but I'll leave it for others to judge whether I did or not
TL;DR - I like how you present your reasoning, however... IMO, it needs to be a little more thought through before diving off into one direction whilst, seemingly, arbitrarily excluding others. ( I say with zero authority or qualification ).
Ok, taking the time to read point 3, after all you did put the effort in. Broadly I see where you're going, however there's some positing of opinion as fact, unless I'm misreading it - which is possible. BTW the phrase to characterise the disparity between the visual cortex and the vestibular canals, IIRC, is called 'motion sickness', nothing more clinical AFAIK. Also, it's mostly about rotation as opposed to translation as this is when the canals sense the greatest movement. Think of them as 3 spirit levels joined together on 3 axes and little hairs inside to sense the motion of the fluid. Quite a clever bit of engineering IMO. The nausea is only when the disparity is enough that the brain decides there is a problem and that's due to nothing more than the latency response of the headsets which is getting better and better.
Also, no-one I've read about, is talking about wanting room scale VR for sims ( maybe I missed it - nay sayers come and get me! ). I certainly wouldn't want to have to get up and start wondering around the room.
BTW, in XR, I can stand up and walk around my ship and walk off the ship to docking bays. It's basically a dumbed down version of X4 in VR but the space legs functionality is fine. In fact the cockpit and wondering around in VR is quite a bit more polished. I would play it more if only there was anything to do. No nausea issue there. Tedium, yes. In SkyrimVR, FalloutVR, NMS VR, I can run around all day outside and in, from my chair with no issues and I will speculate, again no data, that this is pretty standard for most players of these games.
So when we get to "So basically there's really no straightforward and workable way to provide the experience some VR players were hoping to have for on foot gameplay", I am a bit like, "Ok now, wut?".
The whole "It will make everyone sick" and lets not forget the good old, "It's just too hard" and it's "Too computationally difficult" ( somewhat surprised you didn't go there ), just doesn't wash. As it is, SkyrimVR, FalloutVR, even NMS are rendering far more objects and detail than EDO does when on foot and that was on older hardware. Moreover, us VR junkies were modding the configs to push the rendering harder ( uGridsToLoad anyone? ). Unless of course we're just talking about the aging Cobra engine. It does a lot very nicely and, aside from smoke which rotates with my head, the only real gripe I have about it is the absolute mess it makes of antialiasing.
If you were specific in talking about limitations of the Cobra engine, I might buy that, if you also had any technical data to support the position.
But... if we're just going with "So if you design an on foot experience that makes a large percentage of your player base sick" as an argument for why it's not been done then lets face facts. The ONLY way this could be definitively true is if the Dev Team Lead wandered into the VR group one morning and said, "Ok everyone, stop what you're doing, we did an alpha test on space legs and half the office vomited their kimchi".
Ok, taking the time to read point 3, after all you did put the effort in. Broadly I see where you're going, however there's some positing of opinion as fact, unless I'm misreading it - which is possible. BTW the phrase to characterise the disparity between the visual cortex and the vestibular canals, IIRC, is called 'motion sickness', nothing more clinical AFAIK. Also, it's mostly about rotation as opposed to translation as this is when the canals sense the greatest movement. Think of them as 3 spirit levels joined together on 3 axes and little hairs inside to sense the motion of the fluid. Quite a clever bit of engineering IMO. The nausea is only when the disparity is enough that the brain decides there is a problem and that's due to nothing more than the latency response of the headsets which is getting better and better.
Also, no-one I've read about, is talking about wanting room scale VR for sims ( maybe I missed it - nay sayers come and get me! ). I certainly wouldn't want to have to get up and start wondering around the room.
BTW, in XR, I can stand up and walk around my ship and walk off the ship to docking bays. It's basically a dumbed down version of X4 in VR but the space legs functionality is fine. In fact the cockpit and wondering around in VR is quite a bit more polished. I would play it more if only there was anything to do. No nausea issue there. Tedium, yes. In SkyrimVR, FalloutVR, NMS VR, I can run around all day outside and in, from my chair with no issues and I will speculate, again no data, that this is pretty standard for most players of these games.
So when we get to "So basically there's really no straightforward and workable way to provide the experience some VR players were hoping to have for on foot gameplay", I am a bit like, "Ok now, wut?"
.The whole "It will make everyone sick" and lets not forget the good old, "It's just too hard" and it's "Too computationally difficult" ( somewhat surprised you didn't go there ), just doesn't wash. As it is, SkyrimVR, FalloutVR, even NMS are rendering far more objects and detail than EDO does when on foot and that was on older hardware. Moreover, us VR junkies were modding the configs to push the rendering harder ( uGridsToLoad anyone? ). Unless of course we're just talking about the aging Cobra engine. It does a lot very nicely and, aside from smoke which rotates with my head, the only real gripe I have about it is the absolute mess it makes of antialiasing.
If you were specific in talking about limitations of the Cobra engine, I might buy that, if you also had any technical data to support the position.
But... if we're just going with "So if you design an on foot experience that makes a large percentage of your player base sick" as an argument for why it's not been done then lets face facts. The ONLY way this could be definitively true is if the Dev Team Lead wandered into the VR group one morning and said, "Ok everyone, stop what you're doing, we did an alpha test on space legs and half the office vomited their kimchi".
LOL!, well if nothing else I have to say your reply was good for some laughs from the way you phrased a lot of things, so I much appreciate that.TL;DR - I like how you present your reasoning, however... IMO, it needs to be a little more thought through before diving off into one direction whilst, seemingly, arbitrarily excluding others. ( I say with zero authority or qualification ).
Ok, taking the time to read point 3, after all you did put the effort in. Broadly I see where you're going, however there's some positing of opinion as fact, unless I'm misreading it - which is possible. BTW the phrase to characterise the disparity between the visual cortex and the vestibular canals, IIRC, is called 'motion sickness', nothing more clinical AFAIK. Also, it's mostly about rotation as opposed to translation as this is when the canals sense the greatest movement. Think of them as 3 spirit levels joined together on 3 axes and little hairs inside to sense the motion of the fluid. Quite a clever bit of engineering IMO. The nausea is only when the disparity is enough that the brain decides there is a problem and that's due to nothing more than the latency response of the headsets which is getting better and better.
Also, no-one I've read about, is talking about wanting room scale VR for sims ( maybe I missed it - nay sayers come and get me! ). I certainly wouldn't want to have to get up and start wondering around the room.
BTW, in XR, I can stand up and walk around my ship and walk off the ship to docking bays. It's basically a dumbed down version of X4 in VR but the space legs functionality is fine. In fact the cockpit and wondering around in VR is quite a bit more polished. I would play it more if only there was anything to do. No nausea issue there. Tedium, yes. In SkyrimVR, FalloutVR, NMS VR, I can run around all day outside and in, from my chair with no issues and I will speculate, again no data, that this is pretty standard for most players of these games.
So when we get to "So basically there's really no straightforward and workable way to provide the experience some VR players were hoping to have for on foot gameplay", I am a bit like, "Ok now, wut?"
The whole "It will make everyone sick" and lets not forget the good old, "It's just too hard" and it's "Too computationally difficult" ( somewhat surprised you didn't go there ), just doesn't wash. As it is, SkyrimVR, FalloutVR, even NMS are rendering far more objects and detail than EDO does when on foot and that was on older hardware. Moreover, us VR junkies were modding the configs to push the rendering harder ( uGridsToLoad anyone? ). Unless of course we're just talking about the aging Cobra engine. It does a lot very nicely and, aside from smoke which rotates with my head, the only real gripe I have about it is the absolute mess it makes of antialiasing.
If you were specific in talking about limitations of the Cobra engine, I might buy that, if you also had any technical data to support the position.
But... if we're just going with "So if you design an on foot experience that makes a large percentage of your player base sick" as an argument for why it's not been done then lets face facts. The ONLY way this could be definitively true is if the Dev Team Lead wandered into the VR group one morning and said, "Ok everyone, stop what you're doing, we did an alpha test on space legs and half the office vomited their kimchi".
I got curious and looked it up. Apparently the term used for the phenomena (according to the NIH) is simply "VIMS" (VR Induced Motion Sickness)....yeh, doctors got real creative there. You're definitely onto the right track though in regards to it being heavily influenced by latency and rotation. I once had a headset with a 70Hz refresh and if I got too crazy in an SRV on bumpy worlds that bounce your SRV up and around I'd start feeling the sickness after a while. Definitely don't miss those days.
I've seen a few people over the years ask for a roomscale experience, but admittedly not many. No Mans Sky does it so I guess they though Elite should too (shrug).
Does XR put you on foot in VR from the perspective of being inside a space suit? (Never played X so no idea what the game experience is like). I know of a few techniques devs have learned to user over the years to get around some of the common issues with motion sickness, so I'm curious if XR does that.
Yeh I wasn't going to say the Cobra engine is incapable of pushing a better VR on foot experience cause that's impossible to know unless you're a dev working in the source code. so I just stayed away from speculating on that one.
I played ED, Subnautica, MNS, HL Alyx, ... very relaxed in my chair. Who is "trained" won't have problems with motion sickness.
In ED you can move around in camera suite already. Only the on-foot interface is missing. And of course bugfixes like for orbital lines.
In ED you can move around in camera suite already. Only the on-foot interface is missing. And of course bugfixes like for orbital lines.
Careful with such blanket statements. I am well trained, I think. VR in-ship is childsplay, the free camera (so having no visual reference in your FOV) isn't a problem (exception see below), I played Alyx with no issues multiple times, I did high speed racing, I had no issues with Lone Echo (which is worst case first person 6dof with little reference), I played FO4 VR - I think I can claim pretty stable VR legs for me. Yet the SRV on rocky terrain still bashes my head in after half an hour, and I get an urgent desire to vomit the moment I touch the mouse when I am in the free cam in Elite (I usually navigate the camera suite with my HOSAS).
Everyone is different. In order to make it acceptable and viable as a product, Frontier will have to catch all the cases. Which means multiple modes of locomotion and all that. And clearly that's not in the cards for now. It is nice that they fixed a few VR issues, but that's about all we can expect.
And personally I don't think making the VR players pay for an expansion will not even remotely cover the costs to implement and support it. So don't count your chickens.
Also I wonder how many VR players would be like me - I don't think I would buy a VR upgrade, I just don't do enough on-foot gameplay, and with what I do I'm just fine with the virtual screen.