I thought I'd post this up in a separate thread as its not completely Pimax related, but rather VR related.
Over the last week or so I have found a bit of time to try out multi-crew in VR, which will be a mainstay activity when flying with Mrs Teatime and friends from now on and hopefully shows some of the potential in this much maligned system (rightly so in some instances) and my thoughts on where it could be improved for the benefit of VR and non-VR players.
Firstly and most importantly the overall experience. As with all VR in the cockpit, the sense of "being there" is great, but the addition of another avatar into that environment and knowing its another human only pushes the realism/immersion dial up further. Even though they are a bit bare bones and limiting, the added roles, give that kind of Star Trek or Millennium Falcon crewed ship feel. I'm not sure how well this would translate to non-VR, which is maybe why multi-crew gets such a hard time, nor do I think its easily put into words like a lot of the VR sensation. Its one of those, you have to be in it to know what its like (something something Morpheus quote from the Matrix something, something).
So what have I/we tried so far and what are the observations:
I've run up three ships in multi-crew to date; the Asp Explorer with a kind of bog standard armed explorer/cartographer fit, a Keelback with multi-cannon turrets and and SLF and also the Krait MKII, with SLF and a kind of standard combat/multi-role load-out.
Let's deal with the Keelback first and some of this was dealt with in another post. The SLF is awesome in multi-crew. You fly to a location (e.g. RES or similar) get ready as the pilot for combat and then your crew mate deploys in the SLF. Even though you can just wing up and do the same thing and probably be more capable, there is something about having a nimble fighter being able to watch your six and provide mutual fire cover that I think transcends the wing experience. The docking after combat is also a great addition, as it ties both of you mentally to being more pilots/crew on a ship rather than "being your ships" if that makes sense. The launching also adds to this and is a bit of an event first time your crew mate does it.
Now I suspect that the carrier side of things "might" enhance this more when they get introduced, but I'll add some limitations I would like to see designed out. The main one is being able to hand over the mother-ship piloting role to a crew member. This would give more variety and also help in training both yourself and your crew mates.
Gunner position - I have still not got this working yet, but will attempt it again soon and post back, but to be honest I think unless the larger ships get a, imho, much needed nerf in turn rate and general agility, then using an SLF is a much better option, provided the main ship has the fighter bay. Also (and this is a pet gripe of mine), a gunner "floating" view just doesn't sit well in VR, where its all about the "being there in your ship" experience (ymmv of course). I know designing, coding and modelling this out to be something akin to first person B17's in space would be a lot of work, so maybe something for down the road and might have to be something that's limited to say Python sized ships and above, where such a use case scenario makes more sense...
Next is the Krait MKII. Where to start with this one...? Firstly the bridge/cockpit is some of the best work I have seen out of Frontier. Its got that Millennium Falcon feel to the interior, but with a Frontier spin and screams space legs. I also love the touches where the paint job is applied to the interior paint work as well as the exterior unless my eyes deceived me. As with the trailer where it was introduced the multi-crew seat placement is excellent, although if possible the co-pilot seating could do with some wider windows (if the general hull allows) as whilst their view is generally good it could be better with less occlusion. Mrs Teatime and I tried the Krait out last night and we went on a little jaunt to try out the exploration scanner stuff, we are both learning the ropes on this, so some things here might be EBKAC rather than design issues.
Landing in a system my intention was to hand over the scanning role to Mrs Teatime, as a Science Officer (SO) role, whilst I got on with piloting the ship, but we came across the first issue that I think I, as pilot, only have control over hard-points etc. So this means the initial "honk" is restricted to me, taking that action from the SO....not ideal. Anyway honk completed MRS Teatime could activate FSS mode and start scanning, which despite being her first try at this with a new HOTAS mapping etc. she enjoyed. However, you are limited in speed when doing this as a vessel, so me pushing the throttle up in SC to go visit her first scanned land-able planet, dumped her from the mode, back into the ship. Also it appears that, afaik, there is no roll control in FSS, which means she is orientated to whatever attitude the ship was at when she entered FSS and can't roll so that the plane of the ecliptic is horizontal (the most natural way imho) - this could do with adding if I haven't missed the mapping option somewhere. I can also see why the two camera positions need to remain roughly similar between cockpit and FSS mode, but if that could be worked on, that then gives pilot and SO something to do at the same time and would also allow a multi-crew bonus in terms of speed of system scanning. Perhaps a rethink of the way the FSS works is in order, given more coding time, to one where rather than giving the player a camera point that they then manipulate, the presentation is more a wide screen in cockpit that the view is projected onto and scrolls upon. Or put another way imagine being in a ship and having a 70" TV screen that you view the FSS view on, rather than putting you in a black "holodeck outside the ship"...hope that makes sense.
The probe launching thing again seem to be restricted to pilot only, which again is a little irritating, but maybe tied to ship entity ownership, even though Mrs Teatime could see the probes launched and gets the grid planet view that the pilot does. Maybe we were missing something to allow her to take this role...more playing required, but ideally I think if the SO role could do the tuning FSS stuff and the pilot the probe launching and flying to target planet, then that would give both a job to do at the same time.
Once I had mapped a moon I got a load of Geological sites come up, which was great, but Mrs Teatime couldn't see them on the planet, but could int he left hand menu Nav panel....again something that might need to be worked on. Having a consistent display between crew members would be cool.
We also descended to the planet to check out the geological signals and found some orange coloured geysers, which were great, but again the multi-player asset ownership restrictions set in, as the SRV is verboten in multi-crew and the ability to dispatch one of us to investigate the geysers (or whatever we find) whilst the other crew members does an "Ash" from the bridge would be fantastic. Hopefully legs and its associated feature sets may sort this out, as I suspect the whole player avatar/asset ownership thing will need to be sorted at a foundation level to allow that to be realised properly.
All that said,again the experience was enjoyable and again the immersion was there, but not quite consistent between us. Hopefully this is something that could be worked on in the future (if it wasn't EBKAC that is).
Oh whilst I remember we also had an oddity where we were interdicted after arriving in the system, but after submitting the offender obviously had second thoughts and never showed up...probably just as well for him/her as the Krait had an SLF as well as a half decent weapon load-out
I have also tried the Asp Explorer with a friend of mine a week or so ago and he was blown away by the view from the bottom deck. I think this maybe the ship of choice for two player multi-crew exploration, but will play with that more on my next session with Mrs Teatime and see how we get on. For three player, the clear winner has to be the Krait MKII and in a couple of months (or sooner), my friend should either have his own Pimax or possibly my secondhand Rift, with Mrs Teatime and myself in Pimax's. We'll then see how this behaves and especially as one of us is likely to be somewhere else on the internet and not on my LAN - hopefully I am not spending too much time calming the two of them down like bickering kids in the back of my car
I'm looking forward to more features and roles in VR multi-crew very much now and despite its current shortcomings, our inexperience and the general view that this is the ugly step child of Frontier's development, I really do think this could (with the right attention and planning) be the absolute crown jewel for Elite Dangerous, even though its got a very high bar in terms of investment for players.[up][up]
I'd love to hear about anybody else's VR multi-crew experiences, as I don't think I've read any others so far and I think its maybe been a bit ignored due to the stigma that's been attached to it from the "2D player-base" (some of that is imho justified, but maybe not to the extent it has been).
I also hope Frontier don't abandon it, but keep iterating on the experience as they move forward generally, as to waste this feature would be a massive unfulfilled potential imho. In the meantime I will be using the feature(s) as they stand extensively from now on - its a great immersion factor multiplier, that can only get better as time goes by.
Over the last week or so I have found a bit of time to try out multi-crew in VR, which will be a mainstay activity when flying with Mrs Teatime and friends from now on and hopefully shows some of the potential in this much maligned system (rightly so in some instances) and my thoughts on where it could be improved for the benefit of VR and non-VR players.
Firstly and most importantly the overall experience. As with all VR in the cockpit, the sense of "being there" is great, but the addition of another avatar into that environment and knowing its another human only pushes the realism/immersion dial up further. Even though they are a bit bare bones and limiting, the added roles, give that kind of Star Trek or Millennium Falcon crewed ship feel. I'm not sure how well this would translate to non-VR, which is maybe why multi-crew gets such a hard time, nor do I think its easily put into words like a lot of the VR sensation. Its one of those, you have to be in it to know what its like (something something Morpheus quote from the Matrix something, something).
So what have I/we tried so far and what are the observations:
I've run up three ships in multi-crew to date; the Asp Explorer with a kind of bog standard armed explorer/cartographer fit, a Keelback with multi-cannon turrets and and SLF and also the Krait MKII, with SLF and a kind of standard combat/multi-role load-out.
Let's deal with the Keelback first and some of this was dealt with in another post. The SLF is awesome in multi-crew. You fly to a location (e.g. RES or similar) get ready as the pilot for combat and then your crew mate deploys in the SLF. Even though you can just wing up and do the same thing and probably be more capable, there is something about having a nimble fighter being able to watch your six and provide mutual fire cover that I think transcends the wing experience. The docking after combat is also a great addition, as it ties both of you mentally to being more pilots/crew on a ship rather than "being your ships" if that makes sense. The launching also adds to this and is a bit of an event first time your crew mate does it.
Now I suspect that the carrier side of things "might" enhance this more when they get introduced, but I'll add some limitations I would like to see designed out. The main one is being able to hand over the mother-ship piloting role to a crew member. This would give more variety and also help in training both yourself and your crew mates.
Gunner position - I have still not got this working yet, but will attempt it again soon and post back, but to be honest I think unless the larger ships get a, imho, much needed nerf in turn rate and general agility, then using an SLF is a much better option, provided the main ship has the fighter bay. Also (and this is a pet gripe of mine), a gunner "floating" view just doesn't sit well in VR, where its all about the "being there in your ship" experience (ymmv of course). I know designing, coding and modelling this out to be something akin to first person B17's in space would be a lot of work, so maybe something for down the road and might have to be something that's limited to say Python sized ships and above, where such a use case scenario makes more sense...
Next is the Krait MKII. Where to start with this one...? Firstly the bridge/cockpit is some of the best work I have seen out of Frontier. Its got that Millennium Falcon feel to the interior, but with a Frontier spin and screams space legs. I also love the touches where the paint job is applied to the interior paint work as well as the exterior unless my eyes deceived me. As with the trailer where it was introduced the multi-crew seat placement is excellent, although if possible the co-pilot seating could do with some wider windows (if the general hull allows) as whilst their view is generally good it could be better with less occlusion. Mrs Teatime and I tried the Krait out last night and we went on a little jaunt to try out the exploration scanner stuff, we are both learning the ropes on this, so some things here might be EBKAC rather than design issues.
Landing in a system my intention was to hand over the scanning role to Mrs Teatime, as a Science Officer (SO) role, whilst I got on with piloting the ship, but we came across the first issue that I think I, as pilot, only have control over hard-points etc. So this means the initial "honk" is restricted to me, taking that action from the SO....not ideal. Anyway honk completed MRS Teatime could activate FSS mode and start scanning, which despite being her first try at this with a new HOTAS mapping etc. she enjoyed. However, you are limited in speed when doing this as a vessel, so me pushing the throttle up in SC to go visit her first scanned land-able planet, dumped her from the mode, back into the ship. Also it appears that, afaik, there is no roll control in FSS, which means she is orientated to whatever attitude the ship was at when she entered FSS and can't roll so that the plane of the ecliptic is horizontal (the most natural way imho) - this could do with adding if I haven't missed the mapping option somewhere. I can also see why the two camera positions need to remain roughly similar between cockpit and FSS mode, but if that could be worked on, that then gives pilot and SO something to do at the same time and would also allow a multi-crew bonus in terms of speed of system scanning. Perhaps a rethink of the way the FSS works is in order, given more coding time, to one where rather than giving the player a camera point that they then manipulate, the presentation is more a wide screen in cockpit that the view is projected onto and scrolls upon. Or put another way imagine being in a ship and having a 70" TV screen that you view the FSS view on, rather than putting you in a black "holodeck outside the ship"...hope that makes sense.
The probe launching thing again seem to be restricted to pilot only, which again is a little irritating, but maybe tied to ship entity ownership, even though Mrs Teatime could see the probes launched and gets the grid planet view that the pilot does. Maybe we were missing something to allow her to take this role...more playing required, but ideally I think if the SO role could do the tuning FSS stuff and the pilot the probe launching and flying to target planet, then that would give both a job to do at the same time.
Once I had mapped a moon I got a load of Geological sites come up, which was great, but Mrs Teatime couldn't see them on the planet, but could int he left hand menu Nav panel....again something that might need to be worked on. Having a consistent display between crew members would be cool.
We also descended to the planet to check out the geological signals and found some orange coloured geysers, which were great, but again the multi-player asset ownership restrictions set in, as the SRV is verboten in multi-crew and the ability to dispatch one of us to investigate the geysers (or whatever we find) whilst the other crew members does an "Ash" from the bridge would be fantastic. Hopefully legs and its associated feature sets may sort this out, as I suspect the whole player avatar/asset ownership thing will need to be sorted at a foundation level to allow that to be realised properly.
All that said,again the experience was enjoyable and again the immersion was there, but not quite consistent between us. Hopefully this is something that could be worked on in the future (if it wasn't EBKAC that is).
Oh whilst I remember we also had an oddity where we were interdicted after arriving in the system, but after submitting the offender obviously had second thoughts and never showed up...probably just as well for him/her as the Krait had an SLF as well as a half decent weapon load-out
I have also tried the Asp Explorer with a friend of mine a week or so ago and he was blown away by the view from the bottom deck. I think this maybe the ship of choice for two player multi-crew exploration, but will play with that more on my next session with Mrs Teatime and see how we get on. For three player, the clear winner has to be the Krait MKII and in a couple of months (or sooner), my friend should either have his own Pimax or possibly my secondhand Rift, with Mrs Teatime and myself in Pimax's. We'll then see how this behaves and especially as one of us is likely to be somewhere else on the internet and not on my LAN - hopefully I am not spending too much time calming the two of them down like bickering kids in the back of my car
I'm looking forward to more features and roles in VR multi-crew very much now and despite its current shortcomings, our inexperience and the general view that this is the ugly step child of Frontier's development, I really do think this could (with the right attention and planning) be the absolute crown jewel for Elite Dangerous, even though its got a very high bar in terms of investment for players.[up][up]
I'd love to hear about anybody else's VR multi-crew experiences, as I don't think I've read any others so far and I think its maybe been a bit ignored due to the stigma that's been attached to it from the "2D player-base" (some of that is imho justified, but maybe not to the extent it has been).
I also hope Frontier don't abandon it, but keep iterating on the experience as they move forward generally, as to waste this feature would be a massive unfulfilled potential imho. In the meantime I will be using the feature(s) as they stand extensively from now on - its a great immersion factor multiplier, that can only get better as time goes by.
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