Polygon and Twinfinite interviews - more Odyssey details, unknowns, and Walking-In-Ships not at launch

[Boff'in]

Okay, first off, PSVR wasn’t expected “at launch” -> how’s that one coming along? Different SRV types after the launch of Horizons? Perhaps you may see where VR user’s concerns are coming from now?

As for the rest of your post, have you played many VR games? I’m currently playing one that has spaceship flying, vehicles, walking, jetpacking around, planets, Station and capital ship interiors, all that stuff in VR and I get to play with flatscreen players too! No zero-G though, mores the pity.

While HL:Alyx has set a benchmark, I’d say it’s a pretty unreachable apex for most other VR games at the moment, but I’d hope something akin to Subnautica VR would be more feasible for Elite. Have you tried the work of lone modders, like the Alien: Isolation one, or the fantastic first-person body mod with inverse kinematic arms for SkyrimVR?

I actually developed for VR Demo’s about 3 years back, MR with the hololens 2 years ago, and I co-wrote a demo and Research paper about reaction times and eyetracking about 5 years back.
Can’t say I’ve kept myself up to date the last 2 years though, I heard there is a cool jet-pack island thing, but isn’t that in 3rd person?

The 3rd person view actually disconnects the brains natural instinct as to how locomotion “should” occur and thus by-passes the motion sickness issue (for some).
I noted Similar experiences with eyetracking occurred, a stable 3rd person camera pan is preferred over a direct 1:1 first person camera control because the closer you get to how our biology works the greater the disparity of the small flaws when the game fails to function like reality. That’s why many VR games have been goofy looking cartoony graphics. Even in flatscreen experiences, people unconsciously accept unrealistic physics or interactions in behaviour in Minecraft world and NPC’s, but a hyper-realistic witcher3, staccato NPC animations are a big failure on behalfOf the developers.

Plus blocky graphics are faster to render and smoothness in VR is of the upmost importance.
Bringing us back to locomotion.

The staple locomotion system of the first person VR experience has be teleporting/fast traversal to a location works, which works well in a single player environment where the steps “in-between” can be simulated, but in a multiplayer arena, player location is 1:1 and their locomotion has to be continuous real-time movement.

Continuous first person locomotion isn’t the “best” design practice, add in net-work lag-spikes, Erroneous network predictions and rubber-banding and it’s a recipe for motion-sickness in many die-hard VR users. Again different story with a 3rd person view or a stable vehicle seated-view.

But As I’ve said, I’ve been out of the loop for a bit, so I’m happy for you to rattle of the names of these games you refer to so I can look them
up to see what I’ve been missing.

 

[babelfisch]

They also mentioned a bunch of stuff that won't be in Odyssey "at launch" which somewhat suggests further content updates. Is the difference between Horizons' and Odyssey's release model just semantics?

As I said earlier (maybe in a different thread or another life), I would guess that any major addition to Odyssey is going to be paid micro DLC. Paradox is quite successful with that model and it would work really well for stuff like ship legs.

 

[Sysmon]

As I said earlier (maybe in a different thread or another life), I would guess that any major addition to Odyssey is going to be paid micro DLC. Paradox is quite successful with that model and it would work really well for stuff like ship legs.

Every time people write ship legs I think of Airmen:

Spoiler

S

 

[Arioch]

I actually developed for VR Demo’s about 3 years back, MR with the hololens 2 years ago, and I co-wrote a demo and Research paper about reaction times and eyetracking about 5 years back.
Can’t say I’ve kept myself up to date the last 2 years though, I heard there is a cool jet-pack island thing, but isn’t that in 3rd person?

So have you played many VR games? The game I mentioned isn’t in VR third-person, no, however I do have one VR game that is, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and very good it is too. Amazing graphics as well as clever use of sound.

I disagree with the issues raised about teleport vs smooth locomotion vs flatscreen players - games exist where these things aren’t a problem, but as you’ve said, you’re a few years behind the curve. If you’re interested...

But As I’ve said, I’ve been out of the loop for a bit, so I’m happy for you to rattle of the names of these games you refer to so I can look themup to see what I’ve been missing.

...I could name quite a few, but where’s the fun in that? Forum user [VR] Golgot has a nice thread going in the Off-Topic section which is well worth a look:

Virtual Reality Reviews

Just dumping these here in case anyone's looking for a new VR game :) Some of the older links lead off-site, just refresh the page if it doesn't jump straight to the review. The ratings are out of 5. Sometimes I throw some pluses and minus in too ;) --- REVIEWS: --SHOOTERS & BRAWLERS--...

forums.frontier.co.uk

As a follow up to one of your earlier points regarding detail quality - I’ve been quite happily using ED’s camera suite as a sort of pseudo EVA for the last few years, and while the outer game-world graphics are Doom3 level when up close, the ship internal stuff is pretty good.

The hands, screens, panels, objects are "far" away, and aren't needed to be mirrored in your Game World in insane detail like a First-Person VR experience.

Although my Commander doesn’t have all the doo-dads of Alyx’s gravity gloves, outfits don’t look too bad up close in VR:

Spoiler

I apologise to everyone else for being off topic, but if you (Boff’in) want a chat about current VR I’ll happily do so in a more relevant thread

 

[TScal12]

"They range from fairly large industrial kind of endeavors, down to military bases, and to small outposts, almost like little villages right on the frontiers of space ".

Regarding little villages in non breathable atmospheres, I hope they surprise us with Domed cities and settlements, filled with trees and parks