Is VR still viable in ED?

Bill Clement

Bill Clement
I've been on a bit of a break from the game- the sheer frustration of engineering a mid range anti thargoid ship drove me away. I spent weeks trying to source mats, watched my existing supply of them evaporate and never did get very far with my bug hunter. People talk about 'grind', but I think it's the randomness that hacks me off. Just one more session might have scored the stuff I needed, but I got to the stage where I hated flashing the game up.

Life is way too short to waste getting annoyed by a video game!

Still, time marches on. Next month I'm going to build a new PC for myself. I've been saving for a while, the spec is pretty impressive (to me, anyway!) and the additional cost of a VR headset isn't going to break the budget. I like flight sims, I've enjoyed borrowed VR time on other people's rigs, it feels like the right time to dip my toe into the virtual ocean.

My question is whether VR is still worth the throw in ED? Can you use VR while on foot, or is it so awful to make it not worth bothering with? How about flying? Is VR still supported in ships and SRVs?I enjoyed playing with a friend's very early model Rift a few years back- can I still expect a similar experience with modern, higher spec headsets?

Or should I just get a copy of NMS for my VR jollies?
 

Frank

Frank
The early Rifts just showed a jumble of pixels. Headsets have gotten better since then. If you're putting together a system then the chances are that it'll cope with the extra burden of Odyssey. The extra strain is worth it. Odyssey is prettier than Horizons

Yeah it's still viable. I still play in VR, but seeing as my computer's a bit long in the tooth now, I tend to stick to Horizons for the extra FPS... and the whole thing about the on-foot stuff appearing in flat-o-vision has left me feeling a wee bit nonplussed. They could at least have given us stereoscopic
 

CMDR Is Fat

CMDR Is Fat
VR for sims, flight, race or whatever there is never any regretting it if you can get the power to drive the right headset. I use a Samsung Odyssey +, i love it, it does what i need it to. Disclaimer - my system has the power to max it in most scenarios so this helps.

VR in EDH awesome.
VR in EDO awesome, it is such a good looking game, until you get out of your ship\vehicle, then it gets hmm how you say, not great, im sure its been beaten to death plenty, its usable but at its basic is a flat screen plonked in your headset, not great and immersion breaking, in a bad way for me, but i put up with it because the flight and driving in vr are very very nice, i couldnt be bothered to switch modes desktop to vr and vice versa, i would end up dumping the game, but there is so much to like in the EDH\EDO vr experience, unfortunately on foot isnt part of the vr experience to like.

Full on foot vr and EDO would absolutely rock, as it is its just doing a little jig.

Vr you wont regret for any other game!

Just do it!
 
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Faded Glory

Faded Glory
VR is the same (pretty much) in Odyssey as it was in Horizons as in you can fly ships and drive SRV's with the VR headlook. If the on foot aspect of Odyssey is important to you then you'll likely be disappointed with that part of it as it's not VR. (And if you hate Odyssey you can always fire up Horizons.)

How good it is based upon the specs of your PC will depend really on what HMD you get. I have a Reverb G2 and also an Oculus Quest 2. Always used to play ED on the G2, but these days I play using the Quest on VR Ultra settings and it's nice and smooth and as clear as you can get with the Quest, although that's not as crisp as with the G2. But I can see everything I want and the HUD is fine... I use the G2 now with MSFS 2020 so I can read cockpit instruments, and on my PC, while the performance in Odyssey with the G2 was generally good (turned down a bit from from Ultra) I did suffer irritating stutters from time to time.

But yeah, as others have said, ED in VR (for flying and driving) is great, it's the only way I'd play it, and I do get out on foot occasionally, first footfalls on planets and strolling around my fleet carrier although I have no interest in and thus don't play any of the FPS stuff.

(For reference my PC specs - i7 10700k, RTX 3080, 32GB, M.2 SSD.)
 

Drannon

Drannon
I'm playing via the Oculus Quest 2 through Air Link and starting off I had a decent experience. My old system was an i5-4670K, EVGA RTX 2070 8GB and 16GB RAM. I had to put most settings to VR Low since my CPU was the performance bottleneck, but I could get away with bumping up a couple GPU dependent settings. Space and space combat were smooth as there isn't much to render out there. Planetside was a hit or miss and settlements/concourses were very laggy. CZs would slow my system to a chug.

I recently upgraded to a Z13 Flow with the XG Mobile eGPU, which boasts an i9-12900H, RTX 3080 16BG and 16GB RAM. The difference is astounding. I have it set to High at the moment (any VR preset would cause a crash but it may have been unrelated, I'm still optimizing and tweaking with it) and planetside is beautiful. Concourse runs at around 30 FPS but it's a lot smoother than before. I haven't done any CZ content yet but I'm hoping the difference is much more noticeable.
 

TheKracken

TheKracken
For me VR is still the biggest draw for playing Elite I even made attachable flight arms to my chair for making flying in VR immersive.

I run a rift S on a 3060 and I occasionally get chug in some stations or when goid/bounty hunting, but it's worth playing especially in Odyssey.
 

Darth Ender

D
I wouldn't invest a lot of money in VR just for Elite at this point, it's waning years.

But if you have a cheap source for VR gear and a lot of money already invested in a fast graphics and cpu setup. Then it's certainly worth the setup.

EDH VR will perform better than EDO VR.

If you like dogfighting though, VR gives you a significant edge over monitor play. It's so much easier to target when your target is way bigger in your POV via VR. Plus it's just way more fun. for me, I do all my combat in VR and everything else on monitor since anything besides combat in the game usually requires multiple screens (if not for info then to combat the boredom).
 

Bill Clement

Bill Clement
Darth Ender said:
I wouldn't invest a lot of money in VR just for Elite at this point, it's waning years.

But if you have a cheap source for VR gear and a lot of money already invested in a fast graphics and cpu setup. Then it's certainly worth the setup.

EDH VR will perform better than EDO VR.

If you like dogfighting though, VR gives you a significant edge over monitor play. It's so much easier to target when your target is way bigger in your POV via VR. Plus it's just way more fun. for me, I do all my combat in VR and everything else on monitor since anything besides combat in the game usually requires multiple screens (if not for info then to combat the boredom).
Click to expand...
How do you switch between VR and screens, Darth? Is it easy to do on the fly?
 

Darth Ender

D
Bill Clement said:
How do you switch between VR and screens, Darth? Is it easy to do on the fly?
Click to expand...
generally you would have a small monitor resolution when playing in vr, and head tracking would be an issue so you may have to disconnect your headset if you wanted to do it on the fly even if you were playing full monitor resolution.

I just switch between sessions. I'll login with vr specifically to do combat. do that for an hour or two until it gets a bit boring. Then log out switch to non-VR and just change my screen resolution back to full monitor resolution and play some other task.
 

Dragsham

Dragsham
I play it all in vr.
3090fe assures no jitter. G2 reverb shines it's just a fab headset.
Haven't played horizons since my last jaunt to the Crystal forest.
And that's now in odyssey .
It looks amazing but runs poorly at orbitals and planetary bases.
Yes if you like vr go for it
 

Craith

Volunteer Moderator
Craith
I still play almost exclusively in VR

Spaceships is still one of the best VR experiences out there, driving around is great too - on foot is great for casual sightseeing (using the external camer and adjusting it to simulate 1st person), but the virtual screen quickly kills my immersion, often making me stop playing for the day. So I avoid on foot stuff (which is a shame, since it can be a funny change of pace, but not worth it for me)
 

[VR] James Constantine

[VR] James Constantine
Would I invest in VR just for ED? My experience is that ED became my sole VR game, to the point that I didn't bother replacing the batteries in my VR controllers for over a year because I was using a HOTAS (and occasionally a mouse) and would otherwise just go into ED. So for me, I'd say yes, but I already had a PC that was powerful enough so all I really had to invest in was the headset.
 

Dragsham

Dragsham
Once you've got a headset that's 3 times as good as the g2. With no screen door at all, in glorious 8k.
Then...then the revolution will begin.
Has to be light weight affordable and durable. No dodgy wires or controllers neither.
I'd pay 600 quid for that.
Because in elite it would just be astonishingly amazing..!
 

Frank

Frank
Dragsham said:
Once you've got a headset that's 3 times as good as the g2. With no screen door at all, in glorious 8k.
Then...then the revolution will begin.
Has to be light weight affordable and durable. No dodgy wires or controllers neither.
I'd pay 600 quid for that.
Because in elite it would just be astonishingly amazing..!
Click to expand...

That's not to say that the Reverb G2 isn't good enough now

To put it into perspective. I've got a pretty bad telly. I'm currently playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on a virtual 2D screen on my G2, because the quality of the picture is better than my telly
 

Dragsham

Dragsham
I've an oled. Defo not as good as that.. I've a g2 and screen door is still apparent.
Specially Wen as I've done recently, I get fixated on it !!
 

aXeL

A
Dragsham said:
Once you've got a headset that's 3 times as good as the g2. With no screen door at all, in glorious 8k.
Then...then the revolution will begin.
Has to be light weight affordable and durable. No dodgy wires or controllers neither.
I'd pay 600 quid for that.
Because in elite it would just be astonishingly amazing..!
Click to expand...
8k will only reduce pixel size by ~1/3rd. For screen door, I reckon pixel size needs to be reduced by ~3/4, i.e. half as wide, half as tall before screen door is completely 'ignorable'. TBH, I think aspheric lenses are better fix rather than throwing pixels at it because we won't, IMO, focus on a dinky sweet spot which makes screen door more noticeable. Moreover, aspheric lenses don't need more compute to drive the better quality display.

That being said, I have to keep very still and look very carefully to see it on my old G1. Maybe that's a perk of being far sighted.
 
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