Multicrew - Quick Review From a VR Player

[CylonSurfer]

I've not tried the gunner role as I have no interest in third person VR. Other than that my impressions are as follows:

Observations from a passengers perspective:
Fantastic for most part. Very smooth, I had concerns in this area as I often see my wingman stutter past me in supercruise, banding all over the place. This aspect of multicrew beat my expectations, the only odd issue I encountered was when we dropped into an asteroid belt, it took some time... I honestly thought the game had crashed. When the rocks finally appeared there was a moment where the ship seemed to 'rewind', as in move backwards for two or three seconds, then speed forward. Like some sort of sync up happened. Very odd to whitness.

VR as a passenger could take a little getting used to. I have an iron stomach when it comes to sim sickness but I felt a few twinges here and there as my pilot manoeuvred around the galaxy. I don't think I'll have any issues adjusting over a couple of sessions but others may struggle here.

I dislike the holographic ship model which was slapped in front of my face in the copilot position, it didn't show me anything useful and would have been better positioned where the radar would usually be. Very distracting, I hope this can be disabled.

The radar, why can't I see the pilots Radar.... seems rather odd to me. The guy I was with was mining so being able to see his radar would have alerted me to incomming potential threats. I guess voice comms would have helped here but alas not everbody, this guy included, have them or use them. Being able to see the pilots or my own radar would have helped immensely here.

The game dropped connection when I tried to launch a fighter. I'll try it again later as I feel this is where multicrew will shine.

All in all I was pleased with I saw for an early build.

Edit: I've just been told you can switch from ship render hologram to the traditional hud. I'll look into that shortly.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

As far as I can tell, the Gunner role in vr or not are utter useless.
Your better off just letting the turrets aim themselves.

Also body sizes seem to vary between cockpits.
I got up in my vette today and stood next to a crewmate.
His chair and himself looked only slightly larger than a child's car seat, and honestly about the size of my nephew when he was eight years old, and felt like picking him up...
My Fer-de-lance wasn't this bad, my buddy was still short, but to the end of low normal, and past the point of a swaddling.

 

[trigg88]

Hi
Just tried out the gunner roll in vr and it was good,no motion sicknesses and keeping the turrets on target was not to difficult
I'm impressed

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

All in all I was pleased with I saw for an early build.

What you see in Beta isn't an early build. I doubt there will be much change in the VR/gunnery role or elsewhere.

I hope they sort out the crashes - this was a problem in the live stream a few weeks back as well. Connection drop-outs and dropout on fighter launch seemed a bit dodgy.

Rubber-banding I can deal with, so long as the initial connect doesn't take too long - otherwise I agree - the player will tend to think the game has crashed, and try to exit out (that's when it usually does connect, and then you get booted lol).

 

[Nara]

I also think the gunner role in VR is a lot of fun. I really enjoyed being outside of the ship and seeing it swing around, while I was firing the turrets. Also had a great view of what the other crew member in the SLF was doing.

I guess if people want to be min-maxers and claim it's useless then that's their opinion. But it terms of having fun with the game and with other people it's great.

Also tactically it gives a great advantage. An observant gunner will be able to warn a crew member in a fighter if he's being attacked. And also give the pilot info about whats happening outside the ship. Especially in VR where we can very easily look around.

If people can get out of the solo mindset I think they'll start to see and utilise these advantages.

 

[CylonSurfer]

What you see in Beta isn't an early build. I doubt there will be much change in the VR/gunnery role or elsewhere.

I hope they sort out the crashes - this was a problem in the live stream a few weeks back as well. Connection drop-outs and dropout on fighter launch seemed a bit dodgy.

Rubber-banding I can deal with, so long as the initial connect doesn't take too long - otherwise I agree - the player will tend to think the game has crashed, and try to exit out (that's when it usually does connect, and then you get booted lol).

The early build remark was more to do with glitches and connection drops and the devs stating that the beta is more of a beta of a beta (alpha?). The rubber banding has to be fixed for release, last night my pilot dropped out at a station, for him it was business as usual, for me the ship slammed into the side of the station and then rubber banded to the correct position. Not good. I would also hope they move the passenger UI (radar / ship hologram), it's way to high and close to your face.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

The early build remark was more to do with glitches and connection drops and the devs stating that the beta is more of a beta of a beta (alpha?). The rubber banding has to be fixed for release, last night my pilot dropped out at a station, for him it was business as usual, for me the ship slammed into the side of the station and then rubber banded to the correct position. Not good.

Yep, understood. I'm a bit more concerned with the overall wing/multi-crew connection - the 2.3 livestream a couple weeks back and the Pax East livestream with Sandro both showed poor connections, with plenty of failed connects, dropouts on role change ie launching a SLF etc not resolved. Sure, at Pax East, they probably had a poor net connection (they said so). However, its not great marketing to showcase the flaws.

I'm wondering how much improvement we'll see with the rubber banding etc once you do finally connect. If a player has a high latency, then all the players/crew in that instance will see those effects, and connection dropouts will probably still happen.
Its not a major thing in super-cruise, but in close quarters, or as crew viewpoints it could get ugly.

I'm not a network programmer but its obvious only a small amount of real data changes hands, but the peer-to-peer game states seen by the different clients are much more sensitive to latency between the current game host and each player.

I'm in Perth Western Australia, and will generally have a high latency compared to most in the US or Europe. Does that mean I'll get kicked/booted for rubber-banding all over the place (might be handy 'armour' for a SLF lol)
Still, as a seasoned gamer since 1987, I'm still amazed that it works at all

 

[atlas974]

tried both gunner and fighter role in VR and find them to be quite good!

Imo fighter got the best part because the role is more "complexe" that the gunner one. Gunner role need to have some kind of depth in usage, i would like to see special pip management for the turrets in gunner view to put some strategic use for them. Right now most of the time you simply look for ennemies and keep firing at them til they die: it feels too linear.

 

[Globusdiablo]

I've not tried the gunner role as I have no interest in third person VR. Other than that my impressions are as follows:

Observations from a passengers perspective:
Fantastic for most part. Very smooth, I had concerns in this area as I often see my wingman stutter past me in supercruise, banding all over the place. This aspect of multicrew beat my expectations, the only odd issue I encountered was when we dropped into an asteroid belt, it took some time... I honestly thought the game had crashed. When the rocks finally appeared there was a moment where the ship seemed to 'rewind', as in move backwards for two or three seconds, then speed forward. Like some sort of sync up happened. Very odd to whitness.

VR as a passenger could take a little getting used to. I have an iron stomach when it comes to sim sickness but I felt a few twinges here and there as my pilot manoeuvred around the galaxy. I don't think I'll have any issues adjusting over a couple of sessions but others may struggle here.

I dislike the holographic ship model which was slapped in front of my face in the copilot position, it didn't show me anything useful and would have been better positioned where the radar would usually be. Very distracting, I hope this can be disabled.

The radar, why can't I see the pilots Radar.... seems rather odd to me. The guy I was with was mining so being able to see his radar would have alerted me to incomming potential threats. I guess voice comms would have helped here but alas not everbody, this guy included, have them or use them. Being able to see the pilots or my own radar would have helped immensely here.

The game dropped connection when I tried to launch a fighter. I'll try it again later as I feel this is where multicrew will shine.

All in all I was pleased with I saw for an early build.

Edit: I've just been told you can switch from ship render hologram to the traditional hud. I'll look into that shortly.

The new comms panel is driving me nuts. Even worse in MultiCrew when you use text comms. It's one big panel of yellow and blue text messages from players and NPCs. And the worst part is the 10 second linger on the comms panel. None of the other panels linger. Why does the comms panel have to linger? It should work as the other panels; open when I look at them, close when I look away. Seems like a major "bug" to me.