Nvidia 3070, 3080 rtx. no excuse for VR removal, discuss.

[valbarr]

I fully expect that Frontier know what proportion of the player-base play in VR - just as they will know what hardware players are running the game on.

That knowledge may already have influenced their decision making in relation to whether or not to prioritise implementing ambulatory VR in Odyssey.

the game already works in odyssey in VR when your in a ship, so just take the ship away, and then your on foot, they actually had to program more, to make the stupid big screen when your on foot, than let people just see the game in VR the same as in ship, it was actually more work to do it this way.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

the game already works in odyssey in VR when your in a ship, so just take the ship away, and then your on foot, they actually had to program more, to make the stupid big screen when your on foot, than let people just see the game in VR the same as in ship, it was actually more work to do it this way.

That's aye been one of my arguments for why we should get VR head-look-on-foot, is the code is already in game for VR headlook, anything else was more work, and in the case of virtual flat screen, it was more for work for a lesser result. I still reckon they should ADD (reinstate) VR Headlook (for on foot) but RETAIN virtual flatscreen for those who find VR Headlook on foot for those who find VR-Head-look-on-foot a bit too much for their VR legs.

 

[Ted Striker]

How many players will buy those cards?

How many CAN buy those cards? They're unavailable and looks like that will continue through this year.

 

[Eraden]

I picked up my 3090 for 2500 dollars Canadian. I think that works out to roughly 1700 dollars American? My system has been built and operating for about 3 months now. Elite runs like a champ on it.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I picked up my 3090 for 2500 dollars Canadian. I think that works out to roughly 1700 dollars American? My system has been built and operating for about 3 months now. Elite runs like a champ on it.

That's ... a lot of money for just a GPU. Hope you didn't just buy it for Elite as that's way overkill, at least for Horizons (and I expect Odyssey to perform very similar post-optimisation tweaks).

 

[EUS]

Crazy prices, unicorn rarity.

 

[The Roofus]

I picked up my 3090 for 2500 dollars Canadian. I think that works out to roughly 1700 dollars American? My system has been built and operating for about 3 months now. Elite runs like a champ on it.

That's like 3 months pay for me 0.o

 

[valbarr]

How many CAN buy those cards? They're unavailable and looks like that will continue through this year.

you dont need a card like that for VR in elite, im using a 1080ti, odyssey works in VR while in a ship flying across a planets surface perfectly fine, all that spacelegs does is remove the cockpit, it could still use the exact same engine that the game uses for when your inside a ship, as outside it.

 

[Gut]

I never did understand why people like vr so much , if i use my mouse too look around it gets the same result lol

 

[CMDR Jayce MacLeod]

3080? 3070? I herd an obscure rumor that video cards called that were released, but looking around the internet and my local microcenter yields no results... lol

 

[Kerrash]

the game already works in odyssey in VR when your in a ship, so just take the ship away, and then your on foot, they actually had to program more, to make the stupid big screen when your on foot, than let people just see the game in VR the same as in ship, it was actually more work to do it this way.

You clearly have zero concept of how developing actually works.

 

[Ted Striker]

I picked up my 3090 for 2500 dollars Canadian. I think that works out to roughly 1700 dollars American? My system has been built and operating for about 3 months now. Elite runs like a champ on it.

That's actually not too bad. Original MSRP was 1,400 I think. They're going for upwards of 3,000 now, or at least the scalpers are trying to get that much.

No way would I ever let them profit off me though.

 

[GJ51]

A good crypto crash could fix many issues...

 

[Faded Glory]

Best way to do it frankly is to buy a new PC around one of the new cards. You need to wait a while for the manufacturers to get their inventory, but in the end you get a PC that won't have other bottlenecks (and you won't pay over the odds for it either).

I was going to try to upgrade my existing PC, a few years old now, i7 6700 CPU (from memory), 600w PSU and a standard 1TB HDD. Was looking at a 3070 or 3080 (not so much for Elite, but for Microsoft Flight Simulator and to drive a Reverb G2 HMD). In the end it needed to be be a 3080 really, plus I would have needed a new PSU, so at standard prices that would have been around $1,000 (at least). For $2,300 I got an i7 10700K, a Gigabyte RTX 3080, an 800w PSU, 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD drive. Significantly faster than my old PC would have been. And probably not much more than had I tried to get just the card from a scalper.

 

[umbabrahattasil]

Considering the 3000 series is priced with common sense in mind, with a 3070 only being 500 bucks (and the founders card having a better cooler right now than what third parties are showing with their same old unoriginal designs) and stronger than a 2080 Ti, the 3080 being the flagship at I think it was 700 dollars and phenomenal performance, and the 3090 being the new Titan series card priced at 1400 (which at times was still cheaper than a 2080Ti)... I'd say a LOT of people are gonna upgrade. Stolen from Linus Tech Tips video but we haven't seen a performance upgrade of this magnitude between card generations since 2004. Yeah some generations were GOOD such as the stark Vram difference between a 970 and 1070, but in terms of sheer gain, this is a generation upgrade that if you have the cash to afford (and let's be honest, if you can afford VR you can afford a new Video Card, there's no two ways about that as if you were on a budget you wouldn't go for a niche platform like VR).

So yeah, this is the time to upgrade to a far superior set of video cards that for once arent starting at like 800 bucks for an entry card. Or even be smarter and wait for also DDR5 Ram to launch and the 4th Gen Ryzens, all three combined will yield a potential rig that is just jaw dropping performance.

Wow, you have no idea what's going on right now with the prices/scarcity of the video card market, do you? There's basically a bidding war on Ebay between bots and scalpers that bought out all the cards, and it's nearly impossible to get one at regular price.

To buy my card that I got a year ago, today, it would cost me the same as I paid for my whole top of the line rig, with the card included. It's insane.

Not talking smack, just saying it sounds like you're uninformed about the current market (not the performance of the cards etc). Now is definitely NOT the time to upgrade to a superior set of cards.

 

[Ambroza]

You read something wrong.

Frontier actually did say it took about a day to implement VR, as adding VR support to a seated cockpit game with no motion controls is extremely simple. Obviously adding VR support to Odyssey will be less simple

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Frontier actually did say it took about a day to implement VR, as adding VR support to a seated cockpit game with no motion controls is extremely simple. Obviously adding VR support to Odyssey will be less simple

Not necessarily, on foot gameplay is done using the same engine ad the cockpit stuff, essentially the same VR implementation we have for cockpit gameplay could be enabled / transferred to the new on foot stuff. It's essentially little more than "Head tracking akin to Trackir / ED-Tracker + 2D side-by-side piped to the screen(s) on the VR headset". Really all we are asking for is what would be "Level 2" VR on the scale I laid out in the post below:

I think with regards to our expectations/demands for VR in Odessy, we need to define what is a must-have versus what would-be-nice. These would be weighted differently for different individuals, but the expectations can be defined into "levels" of VR implementation, and each subsequent level would inherit the previous level's functionality. As such each subsiquent level will satisfy more of the VR playerbase.

1st Level - Pilots Seat only VR in Odessy

This would be the bare minimum VR approach for Odessy, and would essentially leave us with the same VR functionality, but be able to fly or drive under those coloured skies, this would allow VR Horizons players to continue as is, but gain access to the skies, and some Odessy content. There will be things like "new engineers" and "Sphere of Combat" from the release that could be partaken of in a ship / SLF / SRV and thus done in 1st level VR.

Where this gets clouded is what happens for on foot / Space Legs* content for VR level 1 players?

• Is this Space Legs* content disabled, like the exit SRV menu button greyed out when in VR?
• Is this Space Legs* content accessed by transitioning to flat screen, like click exit SRV brings up a black VR screen with a message "remove headset and press [BUTTON] to continue on foot"
• Is this Space Legs* content accessed by a virtual 2d screen rendered inside the headset?

2nd Level - WASD/ Gamepad Walking VR in Odessy

This level would "inherit" the flying and driving in VR from the first level, but would add to it by allowing the player to take to their feet while still in VR and have VR headlook while on foot. The game remains a "seated VR experience" and as such does not include use of hand controllers to track the players hands, as such this would be a wasd / gamepad control scheme, with things like [PRESS E or BUTTON 2 to plant charges] prompts as opposed to the player physically placing the charges with own (tracked by hand controllers) hands.

Considerations / problems that I can foresee would be:
This list of considerations is in addition to the list from 1st Level and relates only to the VR On Foot aspect

• Smooth Locomotion vs Teleporting?
  • Smooth locomotion may cause nausea in some
  • Teleportation is janky and could be used to cheat in FPS combat
    • pinned down? Simples... Teleport to a new safer location, this would be an exploited in PvE combat and an infuriating cheat in PvP FPS combat.
• When running is there an element of headbob, which might cause nausea, so could this be smoothed for VR? Maybe via an option in graphics setting like "SRV Keep Horizon" setting?
• What happens when the player leans their real body forward / back / left / right?
  • Would this be reflected by the "characters" and avatars?
  • Would reflecting this movement by the player need new animations for the "characters"?
    • Would the head be stuck to the neck and not movable at all?
    • or would the head only movable within certain limits?
    • Would hitting those limits induce nausea when the head motion stops changing the view?
      • as in you can move your head say ~150° (vertical to chin on chest), and more with slight shoulder / torso movement, but if the avatar/character is limited to say 110°, so movements from 110° to 150° of the players head would not be reflected on the view screen representing what their character's head is doing, the disconnect is a potential nausea trigger.
• Similarly - care would need to be taken when entering or leaving the pilots seat, [Press X to enter/leave Pilot's seat] and an animation of your character getting up or sitting down disassociating the VR players view with their physical movements and or expected view changes arising from their control inputs into the game/simulation.
  • Maybe this might be best served as an optional fade to black during the transition?
  • Maybe cut to a third person view instead?

3rd Level - Seated VR with Hand-controllers in Odessy

Third level would "inherit" the flying and driving in VR from the first level, and continue to allow the player to take to their feet while still in VR and have VR headlook while on foot from 2nd level VR, but Add limited hand controls to the game, and remain a seated VR experience. In this sort of implementation the player would move their character using the thumbsticks on their hand controllers, and be able to perform tasks with them such as instead of the [PRESS "E" or BUTTON 2 to plant charges] from 2nd level VR, 3rd level VR would see the player move their hand to their hip, or press a button to "equip charges" to avoid punching their sears arms with their hand controller, take the charges from their hip pocket, move to the action point, move their actual hand towards the virtual action point and release the charges.

Considerations / problems that I can foresee with hand controllers would be:
This list of considerations is in addition to the list from 2nd Level VR and relates only to the VR Hand Controllers functionality

• There would be a lot of work associated with elbows, with a WASD/Joypad game, the developers have control over the movements of arms, hands and elbows, and can have predefined animations for them. With hand controllers they need to, on the fly, figure out the appropriate movement for upper arm, forearm and below to reflect the changes of positional data from the hand controllers.
• There MAY be a lot of work to implement hand interaction with assets in game, for things like pressing the button to open a door.
• There would be a need to draw a line somewhere on what can and cannot be picked up and interacted with using hand controllers.
  • it would be cool if everything a player sees could be grabbed and manipulated as this would allow for things like throwing a pipe or a rock behind an opponent to distract them,
• When transitioning to / from the seat, player would need to put aside their hand controllers and grasp their HOTAS, or vice versa
  • not a biggie, the VR Player would do this during the transition (fade to black moment or animation)
• If the player has made their bindings use hotas buttons and hand controller buttons in the same mode, like if the left hand-controller grip button is also used for shield cell bank, working with the two types of controllers concurrently would be cumbersome.
  • not a biggie, the player simply needs to map more sensible control schemes and doing so is their problem not Frontier's
    • maybe put in checks in bindings to prevent ship / SRV functions being bound to a hand controller' buttons / axis' ?
  • Frontier would, however, need to ensure they don't create potential conflicts, by, for example making the open airlock button from the pilots seat one that needs "physically pressed" by using the hand controllers
• Clipping! If a player stands with their CMDR's toes against a wall and raises their arm 90 out in front of them could their arm "clip" through the wall, potentially allowing them to cheat by shooting through a wall if they raise a hand holding a gun. Or would their CMDR be bushed back from the wall? It's not insurmountable, but it will need addressing.

4th Level - "Room scale" VR in Odessy
4th level would "inherit" the flying and driving in VR from the first level, and continue to allow the player to take to their feet while still in VR and have VR headlook while on foot, and the hand controls from third level VR, but now becomes a "room scale" VR experience. In this sort of implementation the player would move their character using either the thumbsticks on their hand controllers, or by walking (within the confines of their room) they could also control stance by physically crouching etc. There may still be a reliance on some VR Hand Controller inputs for walking as the player only has a room not a holodeck. Continued over from 3rd Level VR the room scale player would be able to perform tasks with their hands through the hand controllers. As such instead of the [PRESS "E" or BUTTON 2 to plant charges] from 2nd level VR, Like 3rd level VR, a roomscale player would move their hand to their hip, take the charges from their hip pocket, move to the action point, move their actual hand towards the virtual action point and release the charges.

Considerations / problems that I can foresee with hand controllers would be:
This list of considerations is in addition to the list from 3rd Level and relates only to the "room scale" functionality

• Again, potentially a limit on the "physics" available to interact with, room scale players might see an apple sized rock that would be ideal to throw to distract a guard, and the could crouch down to pick it up, but would the game necessarily enable them to do that?
  • Finding out what is and isn't interactive could distract the player from core gameplay.
  • Adding more and more "physics" means an exponential growth in developer workload for diminishing returns in added gameplay
• Room scale is good, but its not infinite. The boundaries could be a problem, if they hit a boundary of their play zone and have to turn 180° IRL and counter that with a thumbstick input to retain their original heading to continue walking down their corridor, in a 300m long ship, that's going to get a bit tedious.
• Tracking of posture, stand up right, ducking slightly, fully ducking, crouch, kneel, prone all need to be tracked and calculated from head and hands alone.
• Out of sync return to seats. A player gets out of gaming chair IRL, walks within their playzone to where their virtual SRV hangar is located, boards SRV, but they are now 3m away from their seat...
  • Do they walk back to their IRL seat and recenter avatar?
    • How do they do that without clipping through bulkheads?
• First Person Combat, granted Room Scale would be good for enabling the player to go through stand / crouch / kneel, but how does that work with going prone? Or Cossack Crawling?
• Clipping (again) if a player centres VR on current location when they have a couple of metres in front of them IRL, but only a couple of centimetres in game from a wall, could they simply step forwards 2m IRL and walk through the wall that way?
• "Periscoping" - in a combat situation it might be possible for the player to crouch, reset VR, stand up, and have their view point from 3ft above their characters head somewhat akin to the way some players abuse third person in games like ARMA.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7zoVIsIT2A

 

[dannysquid]

Isn't it less hardware requirements and more the huge amount of design work and experimentation required? They could turn on VR with 10 minutes of coding. Making it actually good and not disastrously rubbish is the issue.

 

[Faded Glory]

To all the VR geeks out there all I have to say: Get real. Odyssey currently seems to require high-end machines and even if the situation won't be quite that bad at release, I doubt it can be completely optimised away. If you then take into account that GPU requirements for VR are usually roughly twice as high as for flat screen, ask yourself what sort of futuristic GPU we are looking at...

Not exactly a VR geek - not sure what that is - but I enjoy playing ED in VR, and also MSFS2020. Now, ED ran in VR quite nicely on my old GTX1080 even, rather surprisingly on the new Reverb G2 HMD which requires quite a bit more resource wise than the old Rift did. Lovely clear and sharp it was, and frankly I don't notice all that much difference in ED with my new PC which is considerably higher spec. FD have said Odyssey won't require more resources than Horizons, and since the current release isn't optimized we'll have to wait and see if that's indeed the case.

Now, MSFS is a different thing altogether, was just about playable in VR with the 1080, but runs really quite nicely on the 3080... So don't need anything too futuristic just yet. (I'm sure it'll be even lovelier when Nvidia sort out their driver issues. )

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Isn't it less hardware requirements and more the huge amount of design work and experimentation required? They could turn on VR with 10 minutes of coding. Making it actually good and not disastrously rubbish is the issue.

I've been playing alpha to see if it "would work" on VR, and I can honestly say that I haven't seen any of the gameplay / design that would be "disastrously rubbish" on VR, as such I implore them to spend the ten minutes to do the coding to turn on VR. If they were worried about it being perceived as rubbish, they could call the VR mode, an experimental / development / early access feature.