ANNOUNCEMENT Odyssey: Update on VR and Ship Interiors

[londonx]

By "all planets in the game", I would assume he's referring to all accessible planets.

Not the inaccessible ones that are simply textured spheres with some bump-mapping. He's likely neglecting to think of those as "planets" in that sense, given that the context is about surfaces, which don't really exist on those worlds.

In other words, he's saying that the upgrades will apply to airless "Horizons" worlds as well and not just the new planets coming with Odyssey.

Source: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/737107973?t=0h41m38s

Specifically says "new tech we're working on will be applied to every single planet in the game" and then confirms that with "all planets in the game"... "not just landable planets". Pretty unambiguous to me.

For extrapolation purposes that is huge. To me it is evidence that "Next Era" and those 3 years of work was not just specifically about Odyssey content but a big push to remodel the whole game for the next couple of years of updates and that with the Odyssey launch the game will have the ground work done for access to all planet types. The art asset/procedural generation combination of the outposts and station interiors in Odyssey should also give us a clue about their tech for large sprawling human habitats. The NPC tech or Organics life in Odyssey is again a first glimpse of the "life" tech but like the planet tech I reckon this is at a far more diverse and "advanced stage" than what will appear in Odyssey. I reckon its now more about polish (no small feat but should see future premium updates appearing more quickly) and the all important market segregation ie how to make the most profit from all that dev time.

 

[thistle]

Then FD went through a phase of some updates it would work for me and some it wouldn't and now - never, I get disorientation whereby if I lean forward/sideways to look past a frame or beam and the whole damned cockpit leans with me. No idea why they nerfed this.

As Arioch mentions above, this isn't right, it's not something fdev have changed or nerfed. I have an older WMR headset myself and I only get this if the light is poor in the room and so the headset loses tracking, making it just 3dof. In good light it works perfectly.

 

[NULUSIOS]

I am sure I am the 347th to say that since they are not including ship interiors (which normally should be the simplest part of space legs - EXCEPT if they realized their measures don't add up correctly and realistically), they are probably not coming at all.
Which sucks.
I actually preferred the ability to walk around my ship (a la Mass Effect), making the bond and the sense of "home" stronger, than a questionable FPS/RTS (?).
Cheers.

 

[Jarbones]

Greetings Commanders!

We hope you enjoyed our first dev diary release and stream. It was our pleasure to bring you the latest news on Odyssey and needless to say we can't wait to share more info around further locations, missions, combat and more in further episodes over the coming months.

We are aware that there are a lot of questions across the community and while we will be bringing a more detailed FAQ for these very soon we felt it was right to update you on a couple of the most discussed topics in the Elite Community at this time, specifically around VR in Odyssey, and ship interiors.

VR and Elite Dangerous Odyssey

We understand that our VR players are keen to know more about how the transition and gameplay will work in Odyssey in VR. With that in mind, we would like to share our current plan for how that will work.
In Odyssey, players will be able to fly down to planets, fly through atmospheres and drive along planet surfaces in their SRVs - all while remaining in VR.

When disembarking your ship or SRV, players will be presented with a projected flat game screen in their VR headset in order to continue on foot. Players will of course be able to remove headsets if they so choose, but this will not be a requirement to continue your adventure.

There will be no requirement to boot between Horizons and Odyssey in order to continue your journey.
We understand that VR is a big part of Elite Dangerous and is a feature that holds a dedicated and passionate community. However, we do strongly believe that VR should only be enabled for on foot gameplay when we have an experience that truly matches the same quality bar that we set for cockpits. That said, we do hope that this implementation will allow our VR players the best possible transition between their VR experience and exploration on foot.

Ship Interiors

Another topic we know players keen for more information on is around ship interiors, and we wanted to clarify our current position on this.

While Odyssey will see players explore a wide range of on and off world locations including station interiors, ship interiors will not be included at launch.

We understand that the bond between Commander and starship is incredibly strong and know this will disappointing news for some. However, we believe it is right to invest our development time in locations and features which offer the most meaningful experience and gameplay for all players. Rest assured that Odyssey will offer a great variety of long requested locations to explore, both on land and in space, which we'll be sharing more details around very soon.

As always, we value and appreciate your passion and feedback and cannot wait to share more with you.

-Arf

Oh well. There's always that 'other option'. One day I'll get 'into' this game. (See what I did there?) Enjoy developing your game, sir.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

I am sure I am the 347th to say that since they are not including ship interiors (which normally should be the simplest part of space legs - EXCEPT if they realized their measures don't add up correctly and realistically), they are probably not coming at all.
Which sucks.
I actually preferred the ability to walk around my ship (a la Mass Effect), making the bond and the sense of "home" stronger, than a questionable FPS/RTS (?).
Cheers.

There’s a guy on YouTube who’s explored all the ships in VR and there appears to be the odd problem with scale and a lot of low poly assets,so some work would need go into every cockpit.

 

[CMDR Yates]

ship interiors (which normally should be the simplest part of space legs

Disagree. Bridges only, maybe. But aside from fully modelling 30-odd ships, ship interiors done well with a proportional amount of activities and content to the level of hype around them could be almost as challenging as the the rest of the Odyssey update combined. Module repairs and self-engineering, ship boarding and hijacking, repelling invaders, interacting with passengers, interacting with cargo (black boxes, escape pods and whatnot), new tools and activities, they've talked about stowing away on ships... The boarding side of things alone would have a vast number of knock-on effects on balancing and the game at large.

Most of Odyssey's additions are a separate "layer" opened up by being able to exit the ship and enter thin atmospheres. It is not focused around ships, so doesn't impinge heavily on existing ship-based game design. Being able to do more stuff on our ships and on other people's ships, knocks on much more directly into the existing game, into existing game code, into existing rulesets, and would require a lot of re-building and re-balancing of existing stuff, that I suspect makes the job much bigger than its obvious parts.

A ship-interiors update with empty ships and nothing to do there would more likely be the sign they were washing their hands of them IMO. The interiors are partly complete in low-ish detail, they could just flip a switch and let us walk around that if they had no other plans for it.

 

[Frostydelic]

nobody should buy Odyssey if they don't include at least ship cockpits interiors, and also, cockpits for Carriers, and allow other CMDRs to board the carrier and interact.

I dont want to interact with passengers, or board other ships while on flight, nope. Just walk around in the cockpit, touch some touchscreens, and order my crew who will pilot the ship while im seated, to attack a target, just idle-fly in supercruise , dock, who knows, basic stuff, according to it's level.

if they want to add it later, so be it, but the basics are there... they're dragging a space-game to quake/doom/rts/fps like experiences...

This was about spacefaring not planetary shootings. But it sounds very fun, anyways.

I wanted ship interiors, not SRV with different 3d models and sounds that looks like a person holding a gun, marketed as "space-legs". Planetary Legs and Starport legs, I'd say.

 

[thistle]

nobody should buy Odyssey if they don't include at least ship cockpits interiors, and also, cockpits for Carriers, and allow other CMDRs to board the carrier and interact.

Nah, I think people should make their own minds up.

 

[CMDR Yates]

I dont want to interact with passengers, or board other ships while on flight, nope. Just walk around in the cockpit, touch some touchscreens, and order my crew who will pilot the ship while im seated, to attack a target, just idle-fly in supercruise , dock, who knows, basic stuff, according to it's level.

Here's the problem from Frontier's perspective: your average Joe Gamer who plays Elite sometimes but doesn't live on the forums... he isn't sitting around fantasising about the magical experience of being quietly and peacefully at one with the echoing corridors of his ship. He wants stuff to do.

So when the basic/empty implementation ship interiors you're talking about lands, the 10% of hard-core immersion fantasists will be happy for a minute, meanwhile there's a huge outcry on Twitter and Reddit about "half-baked features", "nothing to do", "a mile wide and an inch deep".

"This is an INSULT!" they will cry, hysterically and hyperbolically "I'm walking around a spaceship in 3307 and all I can do is play with some touchscreens and... WALK AROUND!! I can do that in my house right now!!"

The gaming press would review it and write scathing notices. People would make comparisons to previous poor decisions on this theme, including EVE Online's "walking around" update that likewise had little to do (on the promise of "more to come"), was brutally unpopular, never saw any further development, and was quietly retired in shame.

You may see it as enough for you. Hell, I'd like to play around with what you describe... for a little while.

But in the actual consumer marketplace, it won't fly.

Frankly, I can see it being very unpopular and terrible PR for the game, much worse than the current status quo, where Elite already has a bit of a reputation for being slightly "empty".

Which is why I think they'll wait until ship interiors can get a good, long, focused slab of development time spent on activities to do there.

 

[Gibbon]

nobody should buy Odyssey if they don't include at least ship cockpits interiors, and also, cockpits for Carriers, and allow other CMDRs to board the carrier and interact.

Considering everything bar the carrier cockpits are already in game, and you can interact with other players in some ships, you're not making a compelling argument for me not getting Odyssey, although it's free for me but that's not the point.

 

[Frostydelic]

Here's the problem from Frontier's perspective: your average Joe Gamer who plays Elite sometimes but doesn't live on the forums... he isn't sitting around fantasising about the magical experience of being quietly and peacefully at one with the echoing corridors of his ship. He wants stuff to do.

So when the basic/empty implementation ship interiors you're talking about lands, the 10% of hard-core immersion fantasists will be happy for a minute, meanwhile there's a huge outcry on Twitter and Reddit about "half-baked features", "nothing to do", "a mile wide and an inch deep".

"This is an INSULT!" they will cry, hysterically and hyperbolically "I'm walking around a spaceship in 3307 and all I can do is play with some touchscreens and... WALK AROUND!! I can do that in my house right now!!"

The gaming press would review it and write scathing notices. People would make comparisons to previous poor decisions on this theme, including EVE Online's "walking around" update that likewise had little to do (on the promise of "more to come"), was brutally unpopular, never saw any further development, and was quietly retired in shame.

You may see it as enough for you. Hell, I'd like to play around with what you describe... for a little while.

But in the actual consumer marketplace, it won't fly.

Frankly, I can see it being very unpopular and terrible PR for the game, much worse than the current status quo, where Elite already has a bit of a reputation for being slightly "empty".

Which is why I think they'll wait until ship interiors can get a good, long, focused slab of development time spent on activities to do there.

I really love your reply, but ...

What about COMMODITIES?

most useless feature of the game, ever implemented in any game.

I mean there is NOT A SINGLE GAME where items you carry, are just that useless.

 

[CMDR Yates]

I really love your reply, but ...

What about COMMODITIES?

most useless feature of the game, ever implemented in any game.

I mean there is NOT A SINGLE GAME where items you carry, are just that useless.

Yeah, it would be cool to perform surgery on a damaged escape pod to try and save the life of the occupant, or crack the encryption on a black box to get some juicy exploration data, or westle a HIP Proto Squid back into its container, but that's all a load of work to implement too

 

[Skizomeuh]

Just walk around in the cockpit, touch some touchscreens, and order my crew who will pilot the ship while im seated, to attack a target, just idle-fly in supercruise , dock, who knows, basic stuff, according to it's level.

if they want to add it later, so be it, but the basics are there... they're dragging a space-game to quake/doom/rts/fps like experiences...

This was about spacefaring not planetary shootings.

So you would prefer they drag a space-game to a walking sim* in a relative tiny room? And let others man your ship a game about piloting ships?

*Joking here: I love walking sims, and I'd prefer FPS in ED being less COD and more immersive sim - and we're hinted by reveals that it won't be COD in space.

 

[Leper Messiah]

I suppose I thought the interior of the ship might be for downtime activities, playing that quaint wireframe version of Elite on the Platstation 1023, a walk in wardrobe in which to peruse my collection of customised suits, the trophy room where I can admire my achievements (instead of having to crowd them onto the dashboard), the emplty room I can walk into, look around in a staged manner for the popular telecast "Ships under the Hammer'.

Oh the old version of elite playable is an AWESOME idea!! I must admit I've spent a bit of time playing the minigames in System shock 2! Outrun in Shenmue as well.

 

[Zieman]

Oh the old version of elite playable is an AWESOME idea!! I must admit I've spent a bit of time playing the minigames in System shock 2! Outrun in Shenmue as well.

Haha, I remember playing Maniac Mansion in Day of the Tentacle.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

Apologies, I haven't read the whole thread so this may have been answered: but what percentage of players actually play in VR?

 

[Arioch]

Apologies, I haven't read the whole thread so this may have been answered: but what percentage of players actually play in VR?

It’s not been said what the percentage is, but it appears (thankfully) that it’s enough for FDev to provide a partial solution for VR players upon Odyssey launch.

 

[CMDR Yates]

we're hinted by reveals that it won't be COD in space.

This is something that's getting glossed over a lot, but it's a point worth bearing in mind. A game where we can travel freely and interact in first person with NPCs and mission givers in a procedural galaxy definitely sounds a lot more like its going into Daggerfall/Fallout type territory with a bit of multiplayer tactics grafted on as well, as opposed to some sort of intense, hand-crafted twitch shooter like the ones people keep comparing it to. The Call of Duty/Quake comparisons really don't make a lot of sense in relation to Elite, either as it stands now or from what little we know of Odyssey (with its heavy focus on exploration, among other things).

 

[Skizomeuh]

If I ever have to decide what 1st person Odyssey should take its inspiration from, it would be Arkane's Prey with heavy emphasis on 6DOF and gravity influence.

 

[govny]

nobody should buy Odyssey if they don't include at least ship cockpits interiors, and also, cockpits for Carriers, and allow other CMDRs to board the carrier and interact.

sorry but I prefer to think for myself instead of let others tell me what I have to do.