Oculus Rift SDK update

[[VR] Mad Mike]

You understood? Could you explain it to me then? they will work on .7 when it arrives or will wait until 1.0?

I feel a VIVE steam "exclusive" coming on! ... Lol
Watch this space boys and girls!

hmmmmm this crossed my mind too! DB has said they will always support all HMDs on the market where practical. Practical does leave some wiggle room however!

a little post from the devs would be nice just to let us know that even if a few months go by with no support, it will be all hands on deck to get SDK 1.0 working however.... just to put us rift users at ease

I am undecided which HMD I will ultimately go for (it wont be both) but I really hope it is only an absolute minority of games which go exclusive to one or the other..... The market will be niche enough as it is with out adding a "3DFX or Videologic Power VR" only kind of exclusivity to the mix!

 

[Karnath]

I feel a VIVE steam "exclusive" coming on! ... Lol
Watch this space boys and girls!

Well look at it this way, you got Frontier to admit they have tried ED with something better than a DK2
So I guess that means VIVE or CV1 since my guess is the CV1 possibly won't be using a compatible SDK/Runtime version for ED

Then my logic (which is not always correct ) could be a VIVE exclusive for now

 

[Void Sun]

As far as I can remember the last OR driver code-base added to ED was 0.4.

If they had upgraded this to 0.5 or 0.6 (im running this at the moment) we would have been OK with the 0.7 upgrade.
However this would have been a fair piece of work and I understand Frontier wanting to wait for a stable code release closer to the final commercial code base before undertaking this work.

So 0.7 will break OR in E: D as it currently stands, we will have to wait for the re-code for 0.7 and all the performance (new rendering engine) and quality improvements this brings. Accessing these new feature will probably require some redevelopment from F: D as well.

So as Ed says, stay below 0.7 if you want to still play E: D in OR.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

ED was updated a monthish ago to 0.5 iirc. I was hoping (still am) that this is phase 1 of completely updating the rift support.

0.7 only supports 0.6 stuff onwards. Anything built from 0.5 apparently wont work.

 

[SlackR]

But are they saying they will or wont try to support .7?

 

[Karnath]

The way that statement comes across to me is, no more VR SDK updates until they release a consumer V1.0
I just wish they weren't so cryptic about how they announce things

 

[Void Sun]

ED was updated a monthish ago to 0.5 iirc. I was hoping (still am) that this is phase 1 of completely updating the rift support.

0.7 only supports 0.6 stuff onwards. Anything built from 0.5 apparently wont work.

Ah I got my 0.4s and 0.5s mixed up there didn't I.

 

[Tinman]

The way that statement comes across to me is, no more VR SDK updates until they release a consumer V1.0
I just wish they weren't so cryptic about how they announce things

What's cryptic?

As long-time supporters of VR and early adopters of Oculus, we remain in close communication with them as they work towards a production version of their SDK, but want to be open that without that SDK in hand, we cannot guarantee future compatibility.

They don't have the SDK yet and until they do (and have had time to look at it) they simply can't promise anything.

 

[Darkmark07]

They're saying nothing at all other then that ED as it stands won't work with the 0.7 SDK.

As usual, they are playing their cards very close to their chests and as usual this gives massive room for interpretation which leads to rumour which leads to speculation which leads to a lot of nonsense spouted on these forums.

With that in mind, my reading of the above is that it is very much expectation management from FD. The more cynical among you will see this as confirmation that they won't be making any effort to implement further SDKs prior to the launch of CV1 or that they will be dropping rift support in favour of [insert your preferred device here] at the earliest opportunity.

The more pragmatic of you will say that they are just doing the right thing and informing us that the new promised land of 0.7 is not attainable in ED thereby saving a few brave souls the effort of finding this out for themselves; and that they will work in support for 0.7 'when they get a couple of minutes' ('cos they haven't ruled it out', right?).

TBH, whilst I have to hand it to FD in that they have delivered a brilliant VR experience thus far and have gone a long way beyond what could be expected to support a bunch of early adopters playing with a dev kit, I find what isn't said in the announcement above troubling. NDAs notwithstanding, they've given us no real news other than a vague statement that they 'might' be doing 'something' at some unspecified point in the future. This is frustrating as hell and leads to irritation that they can't come out and give us some real answers with a real timeline.

That said, I managed a couple of hours of play last night and seem to have found a sweet spot on my rig which works pretty much perfectly, so until the consumer-ready devices come out what do I care?

 

[SlackR]

They're saying nothing at all other then that ED as it stands won't work with the 0.7 SDK.

As usual, they are playing their cards very close to their chests and as usual this gives massive room for interpretation which leads to rumour which leads to speculation which leads to a lot of nonsense spouted on these forums.

With that in mind, my reading of the above is that it is very much expectation management from FD. The more cynical among you will see this as confirmation that they won't be making any effort to implement further SDKs prior to the launch of CV1 or that they will be dropping rift support in favour of [insert your preferred device here] at the earliest opportunity.

The more pragmatic of you will say that they are just doing the right thing and informing us that the new promised land of 0.7 is not attainable in ED thereby saving a few brave souls the effort of finding this out for themselves; and that they will work in support for 0.7 'when they get a couple of minutes' ('cos they haven't ruled it out', right?).

TBH, whilst I have to hand it to FD in that they have delivered a brilliant VR experience thus far and have gone a long way beyond what could be expected to support a bunch of early adopters playing with a dev kit, I find what isn't said in the announcement above troubling. NDAs notwithstanding, they've given us no real news other than a vague statement that they 'might' be doing 'something' at some unspecified point in the future. This is frustrating as hell and leads to irritation that they can't come out and give us some real answers with a real timeline.

That said, I managed a couple of hours of play last night and seem to have found a sweet spot on my rig which works pretty much perfectly, so until the consumer-ready devices come out what do I care?

Im in the same boat TBH as I don't play anything other than ED, but the non backwards compatibility thing will cause problems for those who need their Dk2 for other things.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Im in the same boat TBH as I don't play anything other than ED, but the non backwards compatibility thing will cause problems for those who need their Dk2 for other things.

A bit messy I know, but there's always dual booting for different configs. If you just play Elite on one build, it can be seriously tweaked for performance, and another build for everything else.

 

[Ryder35]

They are pretty much saying they cannot guarantee that CV1 will ever work with ED, add to that the fact that they are no longer demoing VR at conventions does cause me some concern. Hopefully I am just being paranoid!

 

[Frank]

It's Working!.. Nobody Sneeze!

The DK2 was my first thought when I first saw that free upgrade icon in my tray. There's no way I'd take the leap to Windows 10 because of the thought of it mucking up my set up, which is working perfectly well at the moment.

 

[Yololo69]

A bit messy I know, but there's always dual booting for different configs. If you just play Elite on one build, it can be seriously tweaked for performance, and another build for everything else.

+1 and this is what I'll do soon when I'll have enough time in front of me. Not that difficult, and in my case the C: is a 128MB SSD with more than half free space so perfect to split in 2 with a new partition and install a fresh Windows 10 install (I prefer fresh than an upgrade from Win7).

So each time I'll boot, the system will propose me WIndows 7 64 bits which will have ED installed (on my d:\games\frontier current directory) and Oculus Runtime 0.6.x (the ones I use successfully currently) and the other one will have Windows 10 64bits fresh, and I'll install also ED on it (in another directory E.g. d:\Win10\Games\Frontier, not sure it's needed but I guess it's safer than a common directory for both OS) and I'll be able to test new future Oculus Runtime when FD will say we can safely upgrade.

Best of both Worlds

Found this if you're not too scared to proceed, safe if you follow exactly this easy tutorial (and have some knowledge about your machine of course, I'm not responsive for any problems you'll meet following it) :
http://www.howtogeek.com/197647/how-to-dual-boot-windows-10-with-windows-7-or-8/

 

[Caspar]

I'm reading this to mean not to expect support for 0.7.

It sounds like the changes Oculus have made are significant. I very much doubt FD would be hesitant to commit to development if they weren't.

 

[Sanderson]

First Windows 10 and now ED.

Doesn't that suck?

What, exactly, does this mean?

FD won't do OR until 1.0? Just waiting to get .7 "in their hands"? ?????????

Could you be a LOT more specific Ed?

 

[Sanderson]

It took FD 3 days to implement OR, don't see why, after getting .7 sdk, they can't do it again.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

It took FD 3 days to implement OR, don't see why, after getting .7 sdk, they can't do it again.

I am not a dev, perhaps you are and are speaking from a position of experience, in which case fair enough, however from everything I have read extended mode is relatively simple to shoehorn into an app....... and this seems to be supported in that all of the 3rd party stuff added into existing games all insist on using extended mode.

Elite uses extended mode and from the sounds of it Frontier are having a devil of a time getting direct running properly. SDK 0.7 has dropped extended support, so in theory what was simple in SDK 0.3 onwards (which is what ED supported iirc on launch) is suddenly much more tricky.

I am hoping we can take them at their word literally, and they simply have not got their mitts on 0.7 yet and so are playing it safe without over promising (SC still has not had any official rift support in there yet for instance as cryengine has not until now supported VR at all). Fingers crossed what ever issues broke direct in earlier SDKs will be easier to get around in 0.7

 

[Ryder35]

As long-time supporters of VR and early adopters of Oculus, we remain in close communication with them as they work towards a production version of their SDK, but want to be open that without that SDK in hand, we cannot guarantee future compatibility.

If you take them at their word they may not be looking at anything until SDK 1.0 is here

 

[Mashchax]

This is the kind of news that you should be displaying in the launcher. There's LOTS of people who don't even come to the forums. I would higly suggest that.