Ingame Web Browser

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Title says it all really. What are your thoughts on an in game web browser?
Ideally in an overlay like the current galnet, or fixed to the functions panel as it's own tab?

I'm mostly for it.
The pro's being, all those handy tools we like to use, eddb, coriolis, lfw, etc, would be nice if they were accessible from the game.
Watching tutorials, or reading news, or movies, etc, while on long haul flights, or mining etc
Galnet in space.
Plus a few others I forgot.
In most cases, could for immersion, especially VR users, who would probably find it more jarring to alt tab out.
And handy for people who don't have second monitors or tablets.
Or even just to visit these forums!

The only downside (after lots of dev time) might be from people using it to stall their internet connection, and lag people out, but that can also be done many other ways.
And immersion breaking from reading today's(2016s) news. or checking Twitter/fb, etc Lol

Thoughts?

 

[Shadowriser609]

that would be nice also it woud be cool to access our music from the game menus because i don't want to alt-tab all of the time

 

[DocLooshkin]

... Or to put it another way, let's take some of ED's hardworking developers, remove them from working on the game proper and waste their talents on building and maintaining an embedded browser nobody really needs.

There's something of a fair case to be made for building a strictly-limited API, one which would allow pre-approved, ED-formatted webpages to display in the games UI, but that's it, in my view.

The only good argument for a fully-fledged browser comes from the VR side - and that's something better dealt with by either Microsoft or by the VR developers themselves, rather than by FD. Given that Microsoft will probably fix this themselves, at some point, any effort by FD in this corner would presumably be wasted.

 

[Magic Man]

...as above, pointless waste of developer time and out of context with your role in game.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Not really a fan; web browsers these days are massively complex beasts, and I wouldn't want the added surface for vulnerabilities in the game.

Same for the sometimes requested media players.

 

[RhymeRhyme]

I think it would come handy. Especially for people using VR. I just change to my desktop quite often when I play ED just to not to have to wait bored waiting to finally arrive at my destination.