On foot 3D VR

[jojon]

All these things said; Given this is a pretty big studio, and not a solo developer free to type away in pursuit of their latest whim in their bedroom, I suspect there is probably more that goes into the work than what is apparent at first glance, beginning with a multidisciplinary meeting to choose the scope of the implementation*, determine exactly what needs to be done, down to the particulars, how it will exist alongside the current viewmode, and whether it will affect the game as it stands in any other way, as well as what future support debt it may incur... and then assign tasks accordingly.

Well worth the investment, in my opinion, even just to come across as a studio at the forefront, and maintain the competence, but that's my rather biased self. :7

* (E.g. Even if you opt for just the game exactly as-is, but with a stereo camera pair; Do you model a special version of the suit helmets to look out from within, and attach HUD "panels" to them, or do you just let the cameras float free? -Could there be any problems with just using the third person animations and full bodies without tweaks? (-Do you choose to skip the body entirely, and attach the screen-first-person chest-gun to the VR player's chin? -maybe turn arms/weapons off too, and keep only the reticle overlay (...which would preferrably need to be raycast to match stereo separation with the target)?) -What do we make avatar turning/translation/animation behaviour when player headlook moves past animation constraints? (Just let the developers loose to experiment and see what works, say I, but again, that's just me... :7))

 

[Wargrum]

Possibly... but I think most people are overthinking it. When you can turn on the camera suite in VR and all these new assets "just work" in a game that has had no dedicated VR development in what 3-4 years now? I would say you have a pretty damn robust vr implementation. That you can neglect it this long and still have it work this well is nothing short of amazing. I don't think they develop the new cockpits for VR... I think they develop them for flatscreen odyssey and they just work. If they had to put extra resources into the game to keep all that stuff running with new assets they would have canned it years ago.

 

[Darth Ender]

if you want vr done right, play nms in vr.

vr in elite is basically good for combat and mining in a space ship and basically nothing else because elite requires a second screen to either refer to things the game doesn't support or to keep you awake during the periods where nothing is going on. that and the issues plaguing rendering in this game will never be fixed because it seems like they got rid of low level engine developers long ago or they're too busy making park games. so if you don't want to be forever disappointed, use it for dogfighting, then put it away for everything else.

 

[Darth Ender]

Possibly... but I think most people are overthinking it. When you can turn on the camera suite in VR and all these new assets "just work" in a game that has had no dedicated VR development in what 3-4 years now? I would say you have a pretty damn robust vr implementation. That you can neglect it this long and still have it work this well is nothing short of amazing. I don't think they develop the new cockpits for VR... I think they develop them for flatscreen odyssey and they just work. If they had to put extra resources into the game to keep all that stuff running with new assets they would have canned it years ago.

considering that the cockpit in elite is effectively the same no matter what you fly, all that changes is the background environment the cockpit is in....i don't think the fact that it still works is surprising. it's not like the ships from different manufacturers or ship types have panels in unique places or different layouts and designs to give them their own identity. it looks and works exactly the same from sidewinder to Corvette.

the minute that changed from the initial implementation like 8 years ago, they didn't implement it at all and projected a monitor view instead.

 

[Wargrum]

But while the functionality is the same, the size and the feel of those cockpits in vr is totally different. A T8, a Python Mk II, and a Cobra V are very different environments in VR. I'm not so much talking about the functionality of the panels - your right those are identical. But the environments have quite individual feels, and I don't think they will have invested time making them VR compatible. I would say the renderer just takes whatever 3D model they use in the Flatscreen game and makes it happen. Same thing happens in the camera suite when you look at a planetary environment, a ship interior, a spacestation or a carrier.

They don't need to do anything special to make these environments work. They already do. We just need the player interface. And much like the cockpit interface once they make it their job is done.

And weirdly NMS is just not a game for me. Equally weirdly, with all its problems, Elite is. Go figure.

 

[Darth Ender]

vr in general just works given a 3d scene.

You're just rotating the camera around like a head would. the only real 3d vr work a game needs to do besides hook into the right libraries so when a vr headset advertises its displays, that the game supports rendering to two screens in slightly different camera angles.

it's all the '2d' rendering games do that needs extra effort to make right in vr and where elite decided that was too much work to bother with.

so i don't consider the background to the cockpit as giving it any uniqueness. it's a skin and little else since you can't do anything but look at it. the parts you interact with are common to all ships. and it's the 2d interfaces there that all the extra vr work exists around. otherwise everything else is common to non vr rendering.

 

[Darth Ender]

on a monitor a ui just basically needs to be rendered in a given order to layer on top of the background and be functional.

in vr, it needs to exist in the 3d scene as any other 3d object. that's extra work is not always easy to do depending on the way the ui is handled. what works with the much larger field of view and head tracking in vr may not work well on a monitor, and vice versa.

the 3d part is shared code basically. the ui rarely is, without compromising.

also I'm talking about vr like how elite does it. not vr implementations that stimulate things you don't experience in the game at all with a monitor. obviously there would be more to the vr implementation in such games that add full hand and body stimulation based on what you are doing in real life, etc. elite doesn't do that. there is nothing in the vr implementation not available in the monitor.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

The thing about FDEV's solution to this which bites so hard is that VR works on foot. Open your camera mode... its all there.. frame rates are similar to the rest of the game.

(Emphasis by me)

People keep claiming this, but that's not my experience. If I activate the camera when on foot, my framerate drops down into the 30s everywhere except totally barren, empty planets. It's instant vomit time for me. I can only imagine a few explanations for this:

People who claim the on-foot VR via the camera suite is totally fine are either completely immune to low framerates, or are lying to themselves and, by extension, us (well, me at least). I've seen the latter before here - people claiming Elite runs wonderfully maxed out and at like 300%, and later casually admitting that it runs at like 30 fps.

Or those people are always running the latest and greatest in hardware, swapping their CPU and GPU for the latest flagship every six months, spending thousands of currency units on it every year. I have (or used to have - I guess it's starting to age now) a beefy system with a 5900X, a 3080 ti and 32GB of 3600 MHz RAM, and I'm sorry - the camera suite is total crap when on foot, that's just unplayable, while in-ship VR is an order of magnitude better.

Or people just choose to ignore it to make an argument. I don't know.

As long as on-foot VR doesn't run somewhat smoothly on the majority of systems (and despite it showing its age I consider mine still at least in the top half) it's not "just there and working".

 

[Wargrum]

(Emphasis by me)

People keep claiming this, but that's not my experience. If I activate the camera when on foot, my framerate drops down into the 30s everywhere except totally barren, empty planets. It's instant vomit time for me. I can only imagine a few explanations for this:

People who claim the on-foot VR via the camera suite is totally fine are either completely immune to low framerates, or are lying to themselves and, by extension, us (well, me at least). I've seen the latter before here - people claiming Elite runs wonderfully maxed out and at like 300%, and later casually admitting that it runs at like 30 fps.

Or those people are always running the latest and greatest in hardware, swapping their CPU and GPU for the latest flagship every six months, spending thousands of currency units on it every year. I have (or used to have - I guess it's starting to age now) a beefy system with a 5900X, a 3080 ti and 32GB of 3600 MHz RAM, and I'm sorry - the camera suite is total crap when on foot, that's just unplayable, while in-ship VR is an order of magnitude better.

Or people just choose to ignore it to make an argument. I don't know.

As long as on-foot VR doesn't run somewhat smoothly on the majority of systems (and despite it showing its age I consider mine still at least in the top half) it's not "just there and working".

It is fair to say there is quite a bit of variation. And thats all around Fdev's optimisation. Some terrain elements like Guardian sites, some resource sites, and probably anything created during odyssey have additional volumetric fog and dust effects that really hit frame rates. You also see this in some planetary rings. Thats been a problem a lot longer than Odysseys release. There was a post floating round a few years back (from Old Duck I think), on how to turn those effects off entirely in the settings files.

Fdev haven't bothered optimising for VR specifically in a very long time. All I meant is that when they fixed Odyssey frame rates generally they also improved the VR frame rates.
And frankly its always been up to the VR adopter to tweak their game for manageable framerates. Until VR becomes mainstream that will not change.

Actually those frame rate drops won't just be on foot in the camera suite. You'll also notice them flying low over the same terrain in your ship in VR. Its not a specific "on foot" problem at all.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

It is fair to say there is quite a bit of variation. And thats all around Fdev's optimisation. Some terrain elements like Guardian sites, some resource sites, and probably anything created during odyssey have additional volumetric fog and dust effects that really hit frame rates. You also see this in some planetary rings. Thats been a problem a lot longer than Odysseys release. There was a post floating round a few years back (from Old Duck I think), on how to turn those effects off entirely in the settings files.

Fdev haven't bothered optimising for VR specifically in a very long time. All I meant is that when they fixed Odyssey frame rates generally they also improved the VR frame rates.
And frankly its always been up to the VR adopter to tweak their game for manageable framerates. Until VR becomes mainstream that will not change.

It is true that being a VR enthusiast comes with a certain amount of baggage - tinkering to optimize settings is a must, and a certain willingness to suffer too .

But a certain batch of enthusiast does tend to use hyperbole and over-exaggeration just to make a point and help their argument. The thruth is, for a release that the developer can stand behind, VR on foot is nowhere near a ready state. And why should it be? Frontier made it clear that there will be no more VR development for the time being. I have no clue if that will change now that the annual financial report made everyone a happy camper, but generally it seems while the media is hyping VR like mad, it is still very much a niche thing and, frankly, not worth the time and money for most developers unless they are VR enthusiasts themselves or light their fireplaces with 100 dollar bills.

And you know the argument of "just make it an experimental feature" isn't going to cut it. If Frontier "releases" a half-baked feature they are going to get crushed. Often enough we get the odd post here why Elite VR doesn't support motion controllers. Go figure.

Actually those frame rate drops won't just be on foot in the camera suite. You'll also notice them flying low over the same terrain in your ship in VR. Its not a specific "on foot" problem at all.

Not my experience. While my ship VR is pretty stable (albeit with the compromise of accepting reprojection in stations and the like), on-foot VR via the camera suite is just terrible eveywhere, period. Hell in a busy concourse it's even terrible on the virtual 2D screen. I have no clue what it is, but I guess for anything but a top tier super gaming rig, there's something still fundamentally wrong on foot.

 

[Arioch]

I don’t see any frame rate drop when changing between virtual flatscreen and camera suite - it stays at a steady 72Hz even when on a station concourse.

When looking at the performance monitor though, I can see that my performance headroom drops by about 20%.

i7 11700, RTX 4070ti, Quest 3.

 

[misterDNA]

if you want vr done right, play nms in vr.

vr in elite is basically good for combat and mining in a space ship and basically nothing else because elite requires a second screen to either refer to things the game doesn't support or to keep you awake during the periods where nothing is going on. that and the issues plaguing rendering in this game will never be fixed because it seems like they got rid of low level engine developers long ago or they're too busy making park games. so if you don't want to be forever disappointed, use it for dogfighting, then put it away for everything else.

If you want an extra screen in VR (like, for example, floating in your cockpit off to the side or even above you) for things like a web browser for Inara or for an ED app like EDCopilot, I recommend using the free Desktop+ app that's available on Steam. Look to YouTube for more information on this, there are a few videos that can help you get it set up.