Oculus reports on E3: Why no Elite mentioned?

Falkenherz

Falkenherz
I am a bit annoyed. Oculus Rift seems to demo only a few selected games, which are not even out yet, and there is not one single article which mentions the Oculus together with Elite: Dangerous, which is already out and ready to delivere a really mindblowing experience!

What kind of marketing nonsense is this? What do you think? Have the evil big companies already swallowed and slave-bound the guys at Oculus Rift, former spearhead of independence and kickstarting success?
 

duhone

D
Probably because VR is more of an after thought for FD. Its clearly not a priority, and just someone's side project. Although Elite is pretty awesome in VR, there are a lot of issues that if I was Oculus I would probably choose not to show it as one of my signature games. Almost impossible to read text, abysmal performance, ect. I tried Edge of Nowhere at E3, and it was on another level of VR quality. A friend of mine tried Eve, and he said they went so far as to wire IK into the pilots model so that when you move your head, the pilots body moves with you.
 

Soda Popinski

Soda Popinski
Maybe Frontier didn't want to pay for sponsorship? There's also the idea Frontier partnering with Valve/Steam soured the relationship, due to Valve being a direct competitor with the Vive.

I doubt that, as every game on Earth seems to be on Steam, or will be.
 

Falkenherz

Falkenherz
duhone said:
Probably because VR is more of an after thought for FD. Its clearly not a priority, and just someone's side project. Although Elite is pretty awesome in VR, there are a lot of issues that if I was Oculus I would probably choose not to show it as one of my signature games. Almost impossible to read text, abysmal performance, ect. I tried Edge of Nowhere at E3, and it was on another level of VR quality. A friend of mine tried Eve, and he said they went so far as to wire IK into the pilots model so that when you move your head, the pilots body moves with you.
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See, that´s what I don´t get. I used the Oculus on the Premiere Event and I was absolutely blown away by the experience itself. Shooting, like in Valkyrie, would have absolutely distracted me. My guess is that they signed with CCP for Valkyrie and thus cannot show any similar game because it would blow some kind of exclusivity-agreement.
 

nightsmoke

N
Falkenherz said:
See, that´s what I don´t get. I used the Oculus on the Premiere Event and I was absolutely blown away by the experience itself. Shooting, like in Valkyrie, would have absolutely distracted me. My guess is that they signed with CCP for Valkyrie and thus cannot show any similar game because it would blow some kind of exclusivity-agreement.
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I agree. Even just flying around in Sol to the different (familiar to people) planets and moons is pretty amazing in VR and impressive to even non-gamers.
 

Juanlo

Juanlo
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Elite Dangerous hasn't been ported yet to SDK 0.6, so no chance to show it on the Oculus Rift CV1. FD have been too busy with Powerplay and Xbox One launch, hopefully now they are working with Oculus to update the game asap.
 
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Frank

Frank
duhone said:
Probably because VR is more of an after thought for FD. Its clearly not a priority, and just someone's side project. Although Elite is pretty awesome in VR, there are a lot of issues that if I was Oculus I would probably choose not to show it as one of my signature games. Almost impossible to read text, abysmal performance, ect. I tried Edge of Nowhere at E3, and it was on another level of VR quality. A friend of mine tried Eve, and he said they went so far as to wire IK into the pilots model so that when you move your head, the pilots body moves with you.
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Was "Edge of Nowhere" running on a CV1? Maybe it was the headset that was giving the superior experience and not the game. It is true that Elite was not designed with VR in mind but they were certainly thinking about 3D. The text is small in VR but not completely unreadable. I don't know for sure but I do believe CV1 will help this, and if not CV1 on it's own, then maybe with a little help from some super sampling.

VR games might be getting a little too pertinacity about the lack of resolution. Elite Dangerous has a chance of becoming a hit with VR users because it is just a normal game that doesn't feel the need for any concessions to play it with a VR headset.
 
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Decado

D
I think unfortunately (or fortunately?) that FD will be 'partnering' with Valve/HTC's Vive. But due to legal reasons cannot announce it yet. Just a hunch. I remember that Alien Isolation there was a possibility to have official oculus support but it was pulled 'officially' (because as we know the code is in the game to enable it) and now the Vive has officially partnered with AI.

We don't know the exact reason but money probably had something to do with it. Then again this could all be complete hogwash :D
 

Mosait

Mosait
Juanlo said:
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Elite Dangerous hasn't been ported yet to SDK 0.6, so no chance to show it on the Oculus Rift CV1. FD have been too busy with Powerplay and Xbox One launch, hopefully now they are working with Oculus to update the game asap.
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I think most of the guesses here are correct, but I believe you and duhone are probably closer to the truth. FD has spent just enough time to get oculus basically working to kind of satiate the VR crowd, but focuses more on things like PP and xbox implementation. IMO a poor choice by FD, but I'm clearly biased for VR development.
 

CMDR Holycow

CMDR Holycow
duhone said:
Probably because VR is more of an after thought for FD. Its clearly not a priority, and just someone's side project.
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Frank said:
It is true that Elite was not designed with VR in mind.
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Totally and utterly untrue. Braben himself has said in interviews that the game was designed from the ground up to be 100% VR ready, regardless of the HMD platform. It certainly was deigned with VR in mind. The reason it hasn't had a lot of attention, is because technically speaking, there isn't a production model VR HMD in which to optimize the game for. They aren't going to dump a bunch of money into optimizing the game for a development kit. Expect a lot more work to be put in for VR next year after the platforms are in people's hands.

I quote "we designed it in, right from the start".
 
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Frank

Frank
CMDR Holycow said:
Totally and utterly untrue. Braben himself has said in interviews that the game was designed from the ground up to be 100% VR ready, regardless of the HMD platform. It certainly was deigned with VR in mind. The reason it hasn't had a lot of attention, is because technically speaking, there isn't a production model VR HMD in which to optimize the game for. They aren't going to dump a bunch of money into optimizing the game for a development kit. Expect a lot more work to be put in for VR next year after the platforms are in people's hands.

I quote "we designed it in, right from the start".
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Are you sure about that? It was a couple of years ago but my recollection was different. We were told that the models were more detailed than they needed to be because they wanted to future-proof the game, and Frontier Development asked us KickStarter backers if there were any features they wanted included in the game. Quite a few backers yelled out for Oculus Rift support. I didn't have one at the time so I was yelling for SBS 3D support. David Braben added both features, but this was at a point after the cockpit layout and HUD had been designed. Technically, you could say that the Rift support was there at the start because this all happened before the game was released.

All of this is a moot point anyway. As time progresses, the very slight niggles which show that the game wasn't completely designed with VR in mind are being ironed out, and I'm sure that Elite: Dangerous will be a great experience for the CV1 when it's released.
 

Frank

Frank
CMDR Holycow said:
Am I sure? Maybe re-read my quote :D
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Here's what I found on the web..

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-26-elite-dangerous-the-david-braben-interview

and here's the relevant bit of text..
David Braben: That's right. Right from the start we planned to support head-mounted displays, but I didn't expect to do it until a lot later. I fancied it, because I thought, oh, that's cool. I wonder what it looks like on that. And so many of our team thought that. We talked with the backers, who also said, this has to be on Oculus Rift. DK1 was just out for developers then. It was still a bit niche at that time.


I said, look, I'd really like to do this. How long will it take? The team said, oh, three days. I said, let's give it a go. Then we released it at Christmas. Now, with a publisher, we would have had a conversation: we'd like to add this support. We would go through a whole, well, how many people have it? We need to see the results. Actually, you end up spending more time on that than implementing the thing. So we just said, right, let's do it. And the response has been amazing.
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You do realise there is a bit of a difference between planning to support at much later date and "we designed it in, right from the start". Of course it's possible that David Braben said both things, but it must be obvious to you yourself when you play Elite: Dangerous that the Rift was added in later. Having to touch-type systems in the galactic map search box should be enough of a clue.
 

el_tel

el_tel
OR support (as well as SBS and anaglyptic 3D) was introduced in Alpha 1.1, which was released 1 week after Alpha 1.0
 
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