Oculus 0.7 SDK update

[Zac Antonaci]

Hi everyone,

We’ve had a number of requests for an update regarding the Oculus SDK 0.7. Over the recent weeks we have been working closely with Oculus to investigate the subject and we’re now able to give you an update. We understand that this news may disappoint some of you but we wanted to make sure you had the information at the earliest available opportunity.

We have supported Oculus as far as we can, but Elite: Dangerous is not compatible with Oculus SDK version 0.7, and 1.4 doesn’t change that. We hope a future version of their software can be made to work and we are continuing to work with them on this. Elite: Dangerous 1.4 does continue to work with Oculus SDK 0.5 and 0.6, but we continue to ask that players do not upgrade their Oculus SDK beyond 0.6 if they want to continue to play Elite: Dangerous. Our VR support continues to improve and we now also have support for SteamVR and the htc Vive.

I’m going to be checking in on the thread regularly so please do let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Zac

 

[Phosfurious]

Thank you for the update. I have to say that is slightly disappointing, but understandable. If you don't mind my asking, are you able to shed light on what kind of problem ED is currently having with the 0.7 SDK or what kind of fix would be needed to get things back on track?

 

[atlas974]

Thanks for the update!

 

[jabokai]

Our VR support continues to improve and we now also have support for SteamVR and the htc Vive.

It doesn't really "continue to improve" if one system (the only one available to most players at the moment) is being left behind.

Hopefully this news isn't the forerunner to turning ED into a Vive exclusive and you genuinely will be working towards getting it running with v1 of the Oculus SDK, if not 0.7.

Personally I'll probably be getting both systems but I hope these devices are treated purely as peripherals - like controllers - and we don't have the situation of Oculus exclusives and Vive exclusives as that would put me off those game/developers somewhat, as a matter of principle.

 

[Sir.Tj]

Cheers for the update Zac.

 

[Arithon]

I would assume (from my perspective as a developer) that a "final" i.e. release version SDK for Oculus isn't available currently, so cannot be rolled into planned ED development right now, but will be when the Oculus CV1 SDK shows up.

Would I invest time and effort making my software work with a pre-release dev kit, when the final one is a month or two away at most. Probably not. Especially when there is a working solution by sticking with the .5 or .6 versions.

I am only using my Oculus for Elite and so sticking with 0.5 SDK hasn't caused me any issues, but I certainly see both sides. Some DK2 users are going to want to upgrade. I am hopeful the solution should arrive no later than Q1 next year!

I very much doubt Frontier would get all "exclusive platform" on us at this stage. With PC, Mac and Xbox versions of ED and very likely PS4 version to come, that's not their track record.

 

[Tettric]

It doesn't really "continue to improve" if one system (the only one available to most players at the moment) is being left behind.

Hopefully this news isn't the forerunner to turning ED into a Vive exclusive and you genuinely will be working towards getting it running with v1 of the Oculus SDK, if not 0.7.

Personally I'll probably be getting both systems but I hope these devices are treated purely as peripherals - like controllers - and we don't have the situation of Oculus exclusives and Vive exclusives as that would put me off those game/developers somewhat, as a matter of principle.

It's not like they're leaving it behind because they want to or because of lazyness. Something significant has changed in the 0.7 release and has made it incompatible with the game. I imagine that doing the work to fix this would take time enough that a new SDK would be released before it was done thus rendering all the time and effort pointless.

The bottom line is, just make sure you've got 0.5/0.6 readily available for when you want to play. Holding off till the SKD has stabilised makes sense from the development side of things.

 

[jabokai]

It's not like they're leaving it behind because they want to or because of lazyness. Something significant has changed in the 0.7 release and has made it incompatible with the game. I imagine that doing the work to fix this would take time enough that a new SDK would be released before it was done thus rendering all the time and effort pointless.

The bottom line is, just make sure you've got 0.5/0.6 readily available for when you want to play. Holding off till the SKD has stabilised makes sense from the development side of things.

As I said, I'm just hoping that really is all there is to it. That there is no underlying "well, we're maybe going to be a Vive exclusive anyway so...".

Just as you imagine something, I can also imagine the above, being cynical and all.

Oculus seem to always have their newest SDK compatible with the one previous one. After v0.7 is v1 (release!) so effort on 0.7 would not be "pointless".

 

[Dante80]

As I said, I'm just hoping that really is all there is to it. That there is no underlying "well, we're maybe going to be a Vive exclusive anyway so...".

Just as you imagine something, I can also imagine the above, being cynical and all.

Oculus seem to always have their newest SDK compatible with the one previous one. After v0.7 is v1 (release!) so effort on 0.7 would not be "pointless".

This is indeed a valid point.

Zac, I know that this might be above your paygrade, or that simply you cannot comment at this point in time. I would like to state though that if FDEV is moving away from OR support (for any reason, possible partnership with Steam included), the sooner you can articulate this in a frank and truthful manner, the better. I would also like to remind everyone that one of the big selling points of this game after launch has been VR compatibility, and that almost every customer/tester of Oculus has either tried or is an owner of Elite Dangerous.

In my view, it is imperative for a space sim like ED to support every VR consumer product available. It will be a massive sales driver in the future and I really hope that FDEV are not putting themselves in a specific corner, camp or side without first trying their dandiest to support all the big players that are emerging in the VR market.

Many thanks for the update.

 

[horizone]

Thanks Zac,

As interesting as it would be to know where exactly the showstopper is, I suppose it wouldn't change anything. The Oculus Rift DK2 have been a hassle to get to work (from a user friendliness perspective) with almost all VR enabled software to date. It's very much a developer kit that only developers was supposed to get, but a lot of people have been buying them anyway, including me. I got it mainly for Elite but was very aware of the devkit status. I have it working and will stick with 0.6.0.1 which I have working in Win 10 by manually starting the service.

If I understand everything I've heard about this correctly, the problem is more on Oculus side than Frontier's. Your own engine one-game only scenario getting to be a low priority fix for them for the time being. Hopefully once they realise that Elite is going to sell thousands of Vive's in the long run (multicrew cockpits in VR) they will be alerted.

Disclaimer: I am guessing stuff in this post!

 

[Tettric]

jabokai

I imagine that the move from pre-release SDKs to V1 will be used to implement many changes that have no been fitted in in the past. Beyond that, if Oculus do make their new SKDs compatible with the previous ones, why doesn't 0.7 work with the setup FD have for 0.6?

I doubt very highly that there's any chance of VR platform exclusivity for Elite, after all the backlash from the people who bought Oculus for the game would be immense and I don't think that either Oculus or Steam/HTC are offering exclusivity contracts (yet anyway).

Besides I doubt that we'd be repeatedly told about how closely FD are working with Oculus if they were signing exclusivity contact with HTC in the background.

Either way, it's easy to be cynical with what goes on in the games industry on a regular basis. However in this case it just doesn't seem practical for the insidious 'exclusivity' contracts to be making their way to VR when there aren't any consumer products out from any of the big players.

 

[jabokai]

Oculus are actually funding exclusives! It's no great stretch to assume that HTC/Valve will want to attract exclusives too. Eve Valkyrie will be an Oculus exclusive so again, not a great stretch that HTC/Vive might want a space smash-em-up (CQC is similar to the kind of thing Valkyrie will be.)

Of course there's an unhealthy dose of cynicism and paranoia there but FD were really behind Oculus for a long time, quickly squishing bugs and making support for it better and better. That has pretty much stalled, for whatever reasons - whether black and white "a technical issue" or that and other things - and with the support for the Vive... well, come on - how long have you been following the games industry!?

I guess 0.6 works because it supports 0.5 (which is where ED is officially at). 0.7 supports 0.6 but not 0.5.

 

[Ramjet]

Sorry but to be brutally honest it smells bit fishy to make such a statement which appears to squarely put the blame on Oculus that 0.7 sdk cannot be made to work when Elite worked fine up until 0.6 and each iteration of the sdk has been a progressive upgrade in terms of features etc. Look at Project Cars to see what I mean. Frontier should just be frank and honest, either they are ditching Oculus support or they just do not wish to allocate time to recode for the sdk update. If it is ditching Oculus, so be it and tell us now. However delaying updating the Elite code makes no sense purely because the necessary changes cannot be bypassed just by waiting for sdk 1.0, it will be even more work by then.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Hi, thanks for the info.

So would it be correct to say that from your view, the issue is on the oculus side and any progress with be based on oculus doing something to help fix however elite implements VR?

or is it more just that it is a waste of (precious) dev time to produce support for a beta driver which will be obsolete in a few months time?. I know you say you are working with oculus, however, this could be just 1 email a week, or it could be, gearing up to put some serious dev time into it once the 1.0 driver comes out.

from my point of view I understand bypassing 0.7, but just knowing you will be going all balls out to fix things once SDK 1.0 is out will be nice.

As good as 1.4 is, right now it is a massive step backwards in terms of VR support as super cruise is bordering on fully broken.

thanks for reading.
M.

 

[carabassa]

Thank you vey much for the update. It is really appreciated when you share info with the customers.
It is great to know that even if SDK 0.7 is not supported yet you are still improving VR support and adding HTC Vive Support.
I hope sooner than later you find the way to support the newest Oculus SDK because every day there are more games supporting it and it is a big improvement.

 

[alkapon]

In a way, thank you for the update, but in the other way, I really don't understand.

Obviously, I'm not a developer so I cannot understand how it works, so I have to trust your words. However, when oculus, no, I'd say, when Microsoft released Windows 10, I really wanted to upgrade, which I did, and then I realized, , oculus doesn't work anymore. I was extremly desapointed, but then, not too much later, oculus did the update, yes with a new SDK removing the extended mode. From there, almost no games was suported, at least none of those I play. Again, very desapointed, even if I could understand that direct mode is totally better and that the extended was a pain in the ass.

And then, almost all the games that I played and loved so much with the oculus (#1 Elite Dangerous 2# DCS World 3#FSX 4#Eurotruck Sim 2 5# Alien Isolation) updated with the runtime 0.7... DCS, FSX, Eurotuck work great, in direct mode! For DCS there is still some bugs, yea, but they did it. Unfortunatly, not for alien, at least not natively, but for this one, they never said they will support VR officialy, so I can understand.

And there is Elite, the best game in VR, where they state they will not update for those who unfortunatly upgraded to Windows 10 until the CV1 (and this is still unclear).

So my question is, why can't you do anything where the others can ? not even a beta option ? even a buggy one, who can just gives hope for oculus players ?

Anyway, I'm aware Oculus is still in development kit/beta, so I cannot really complain about this, but still In my opinion and for now, Elite is the best experience for VR games.

Cheery guys~~

 

[Zac Antonaci]

It doesn't really "continue to improve" if one system (the only one available to most players at the moment) is being left behind.

Hopefully this news isn't the forerunner to turning ED into a Vive exclusive and you genuinely will be working towards getting it running with v1 of the Oculus SDK, if not 0.7.

Personally I'll probably be getting both systems but I hope these devices are treated purely as peripherals - like controllers - and we don't have the situation of Oculus exclusives and Vive exclusives as that would put me off those game/developers somewhat, as a matter of principle.

Hi Jabokai,

Don't worry I can put your mind at rest. The issues were serious technical issues and we would love to support any and every VR studio we can.

 

[Zac Antonaci]

Zac, I know that this might be above your paygrade, or that simply you cannot comment at this point in time. I would like to state though that if FDEV is moving away from OR support (for any reason, possible partnership with Steam included), the sooner you can articulate this in a frank and truthful manner, the better. I would also like to remind everyone that one of the big selling points of this game after launch has been VR compatibility, and that almost every customer/tester of Oculus has either tried or is an owner of Elite Dangerous.

Speaking completely frank to you, it is really important that if there is a message to go out which cause some friction then it is always best to do it openly, honestly and as quickly as possible.

This thread itself is an example of that.

I understand that there are some concerns but I can put everyones mind at rest that the issues faced with Oculus are completely technical. both the Oculus team and the development team have worked hard to try and find a solution but sadly it has not been possible. It's something that the team would like to support in the future.

 

[Javert]

Hi Jabokai,

Don't worry I can put your mind at rest. The issues were serious technical issues and we would love to support any and every VR studio we can.

Hi Zac,

I think what would be really interesting to know is whether you are suggesting that it's down to Oculus to fix their end so that you don't have these serious technical issues, or whether it's more a fact that you don't want to do a lot of work to resolve the issues without knowing whether the 1.0SDK will be the same or not?

If it's the former, the logical conclusion of that is that you won't support Oculus any more unless they resolve the issue from their end.

 

[Ryder35]

Anyone who thinks that ED are going to support OR in the future are far more optimistic than me. CV1 run time will be based on .7 and will have the same seemingly insurmountable technical obstacles. Looks like it is full steam ahead for Vive