VR Support for on foot gameplay - It's about time for this!

[noble eagle]

Honestly, Odyssey has been released for a few years now, and still has that ridiculous flat "cinema screen" presentation in VR on foot. This is wholly unacceptable and ruins immersion, thus making a mockery of what was once a premier VR game. Other, smaller, developers seem to have managed this (e.g. Hello Games), how come a quality developer like frontier seems incapable or unwilling to resolve such a glaring insult to the VR player community? In all truthfulness, you should feel highly embarrassed about this.
Can you get this resolved as a matter of priority please, and give those of us who play in VR the quality of game we have come to expect.
Even a paid update would be welcome if necessary - I would happily pay for an upgrade to get this sorted. For me, it has way more priority than any of the other niggles in the base game.
Thank you.

 

[horizone]

I couldn't agree more. I have some hope that the upcoming "long standing feature overhaul" is about VR (or have VR included). By now, there is some serious competition in the space game arena and there are millions of headsets out there. Did Frontier ever communicate the reason for not completing the feature? Was it just a lack of time and resources, or some technical or balancing problem with it? Anyone know?
It is so obvious that we are very close to a complete implementation as the third person camera mode manages on-foot VR without any issues.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Frontier never comments on such things, but I put my money on them having neither the capacity nor the expertise to deliver a good on-foot VR experience. Arf did let that shine through some time ago when he basically said "if we do it, we want to do it right, and we're not doing it for now".

VR development costs proper money and takes proper resources to do well. While Elite is often cited as the "premiere example for spaceship VR", delivering the same on foot is a whole other beast. For anyone who thinks it is easy to do I recommend playing Alyx with developer comments on.

On a personal note, it always confuses me when people claim "insult!" if Frontier (or any other developer for that matter) doesn't deliver a feature they desire. You need to stop taking it personal. It is all about money and resources. Putting the man-hours into on-foot VR has to gain them a profit, and I suspect even with a paid DLC, that revenue will not be enough. While we VR players are very passionate and excited about it, our demographic isn't nearly as large and relevant as some try to make it. Hiring people to do VR is probably just not worth it.

By the way, in my personal opinion, the VR implementation of NMS sucked. It was neither proper roomscale nor a pleasant seated experience. I ended up ditching it and playing in 2D. Also, the performance sucked badly, and when it didn't anymore, it looked worse. So no real praise justified in my opinion.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

It is so obvious that we are very close to a complete implementation as the third person camera mode manages on-foot VR without any issues.

We are so not close to a complete implementation. Just slapping mouse and keyboard controls onto a 3D camera isn't "complete". There is so much more to a proper on-foot VR experience than just head tracking.

 

[dexatron]

Don't waiste your time, They won't lisen They just do what ever they want and never mine US, the Paid customers.

 

[horizone]

Ofcourse, difficult or easy to implement very much depends on the quality and feature level you wish to achive and the know-how available. We do not know how much of an effort it would be for Frontier, how far they went before or how much they value completing this feature and especially to what extent. I think most of us would be very happy just to get rid of the flat screen for now.

On the other hand if they want to go all-in and have motion controller support and room-scale and actual arms and hands in VR, aiming, throwing grenades, manual reloading, fistfights , your VR fingers actually tapping on terminals, picking up things and so on, it's ofcourse on a whole different level of developer requirements.

What I meant by close to complete was actually just swapping the flat screen to a VR view. It could be an unofficial thing.

Wishful thinking is that the feature is almost complete but they waited because they didn't have the performance for smooth framerates in VR at the time. They've now optimised a lot since Odyssey release and are ready to go ahead with it. They've also had time to hire people with VR experience.

We will see. I would buy a full-VR DLC in a heartbeat, thats for sure.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

What I meant by close to complete was actually just swapping the flat screen to a VR view. It could be an unofficial thing.

They can't offer this, it would be a disaster. There are hardcore players who don't mind any kind movement, forced or otherwise, in VR, but having no form of motion controller support and no choice of locomotion system is a recipe for nausea and dizzyness for players less than "hardcore" that would quickly backfire.

Apart from that, especially in large populated settlements, the performance is still too bad to consider any fun action packed on-foot gameplay in VR.

 

[Northpin]

On a personal note, it always confuses me when people claim "insult!" if Frontier (or any other developer for that matter) doesn't deliver a feature they desire. You need to stop taking it personal. It is all about money and resources. Putting the man-hours into on-foot VR has to gain them a profit, and I suspect even with a paid DLC, that revenue will not be enough. While we VR players are very passionate and excited about it, our demographic isn't nearly as large and relevant as some try to make it. Hiring people to do VR is probably just not worth it.

Even more so when FDev announced well in advance of Odyssey release that they will not support VR in Odyssey...
So, yea, the entitled will always feel insulted....

 

[horizone]

In any case, I for one, am very positive and optimistic about the future if me agreeing with OP didn't convey that, and I have trust in Frontier to do their best. If on-foot never becomes true VR, I will have to accept that and live with it but I will always long for the full immersion as I put my heart into my hobbies.

 

[GodrikUnderscore]

To my knowledge there was only a small period of time where Frontier had an actual VR developer hired. This dev left the company after the port to VR was completed. Rumor has it he also took the only VR headset with him when he left.

Frontier has made it pretty clear that they will no longer support VR, other than VR specific bug fixes.

On foot VR is just not going to happen, at least not within the next few years. They just don't have the capacity.

 

[noble eagle]

Ofcourse, difficult or easy to implement very much depends on the quality and feature level you wish to achive and the know-how available. We do not know how much of an effort it would be for Frontier, how far they went before or how much they value completing this feature and especially to what extent. I think most of us would be very happy just to get rid of the flat screen for now.

On the other hand if they want to go all-in and have motion controller support and room-scale and actual arms and hands in VR, aiming, throwing grenades, manual reloading, fistfights , your VR fingers actually tapping on terminals, picking up things and so on, it's ofcourse on a whole different level of developer requirements.

What I meant by close to complete was actually just swapping the flat screen to a VR view. It could be an unofficial thing.

Wishful thinking is that the feature is almost complete but they waited because they didn't have the performance for smooth framerates in VR at the time. They've now optimised a lot since Odyssey release and are ready to go ahead with it. They've also had time to hire people with VR experience.

We will see. I would buy a full-VR DLC in a heartbeat, thats for sure.

I fully agree. I understand putting in the placeholder of a flatscreen when Odyssey was still in the public beta phase and not optimised, but that is long gone.
We do not need the functionality of Half-Life Alex, or even Skyrim VR; we do not need to pick up objects and throw them, or peek around corners - cool as that would be. The on-foot experience in 2D is generally sub-par anyway, compared to many modern games. That does not bother me, it is still fun. I am happy to "interact" with objects in a simple way - I just want to walk around in VR and not lose immersion.
Of course full function VR is the gold standard, but ED never had that - as a fixed position interaction in a defined space (you are in a ship, you don't pick-up or press stuff, you still interact via your physical controllers). So I suggest we do not need that - at least not now. Just dump this awful flat screen and let us walk about with the minimal functionality we have at present.
I know folks will disagree and moan that "it is not realistic", "this is pathetic for a modern game", "I want to walk around my ship or carrier or a station/base", and the usual whinging - but anything is better than what we have, which is truely terrible.

 

[noble eagle]

Even more so when FDev announced well in advance of Odyssey release that they will not support VR in Odyssey...
So, yea, the entitled will always feel insulted....

Especially by unhelpful comments like this ^^^^

 

[Northpin]

I fully agree. I understand putting in the placeholder of a flatscreen when Odyssey was still in the public beta phase and not optimised, but that is long gone.

It was never just a placeholder, that was the intention, way before launch.
This message was from Arf, at the beginning of September 2020 - 10 months prior Odyssey launch

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.

Especially by unhelpful comments like this ^^^^

reality bites, but that's just how things are.

 

[amigacooke]

If I recall correctly the phrase touted was no VR for Odyssey at launch.

If you've been around ED for a while you know what that means, if you haven't you might think it implies something will be done after launch.

 

[noble eagle]

They can't offer this, it would be a disaster. There are hardcore players who don't mind any kind movement, forced or otherwise, in VR, but having no form of motion controller support and no choice of locomotion system is a recipe for nausea and dizzyness for players less than "hardcore" that would quickly backfire.

Apart from that, especially in large populated settlements, the performance is still too bad to consider any fun action packed on-foot gameplay in VR.

Obviously, there is a bit more to it than simply implementing a camera - it does require planning and thought beyond changing a few lines of code. However, my point is that we do not need (we might like, but not need) room scale, fully functional interaction like we see in many standalone dedicated VR games. I do agree that "any fun action packed on-foot gameplay in VR" is a long way off, if ever. FDev are still struggling to get this to work in 2D, for the most part!

 

[Northpin]

If I recall correctly the phrase touted was no VR for Odyssey at launch.

That was said during the first announcement regarding the game.
Then, a bit later, Arf created a thread on the matter of VR and Ship interiors and said what i quoted above - the on-foot flat screen was the plan 10 months before launch
No one can say they didn't knew what will they get with Odyssey in terms of VR

 

[noble eagle]

It was never just a placeholder, that was the intention, way before launch.
This message was from Arf, at the beginning of September 2020 - 10 months prior Odyssey launch





reality bites, but that's just how things are.

That maybe so, but surely by now it is time to lobby for this and not just roll over and take it. As I wrote elsewhere, ED was never a fully-functioned VR game, it was always a cockpit based illusion (an excellent one, but still functionally limited) - on-foot presents many different challenges, but surely there is room for compromise between "fully functional" and "terrible"? Limited functionality and 3D movement would be fine, even if the promise of more functionality was vague and limited. This is a space game after all, walking about is just icing on the cake.

 

[Arioch]

I know it would not be to every VR player's liking, but I'd be all for a "head gun" implementation for on-foot play - I've completed Cyberpunk 2077 using the VR mod in this fashion (over 100 hrs) and it was superb.

I occasionally use the full-VR camera suite in Odyssey to get a feel of what it could be be like - but not too often 'cos it makes me sad knowing it's likely never to happen

This was a walk around a short while ago - the camera occasionally blanks out when too near to stuff but generally its good enough for walkabout:

Source: https://youtu.be/nK3fSJ5bcAU

 

[noble eagle]

I know it would not be to every VR player's liking, but I'd be all for a "head gun" implementation for on-foot play - I've completed Cyberpunk 2077 using the VR mod in this fashion (over 100 hrs) and it was superb.

I occasionally use the full-VR camera suite in Odyssey to get a feel of what it could be be like - but not too often 'cos it makes me sad knowing it's likely never to happen

This was a walk around a short while ago - the camera occasionally blanks out when too near to stuff but generally its good enough for walkabout:

Source: https://youtu.be/nK3fSJ5bcAU

Exactly, I agree. There are plenty of fully functional dedicated VR on-foot adventure and combat games around if that is your thing. Elite has different visual modes (ship cockpit, SRV cockpit, and on-foot) which makes it more complex, so keep it simple. A "head gun" implementation is just fine.
As an aside, the fact the FPS games make a big deal about being able to "use any vehicle" (even in 2D) show that this is not a trivial thing to implement. Elite does a fine job at doing this over three different transport media, all with different requirements. It also seems that much of the coding for "head gun" is pretty much present (e.g. with Camera) - so let's not over egg the pudding and get it done.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

I do appreciate how jarring it is to move from one of the premier VR experiences to an obvious placeholder. You just have to look up some of my streams and you tubes to see how disappointed I get when I have to get out of my ship/srv.

The problem is that on foot VR is a hell of a lot more difficult to do than sit down VR. I’m really impressed by the NMS sky implementation but to put that in in ED would two years (as it did in NMS) and I don’t think that fdev have the expertise for on foot VR at the moment.

The other issue is cost, it won’t be odyssey cost us it will still be quite high and I think it’s unfair for flat screen players to subsidise the development of a VR version. Now I would happily pay for a VR expansion to Odyssey but we all know that there are individuals who would point to the kickstarter and complain that it’s not a free update when the said all their updates would be free back then.

Heck, I’m learning VR development at the moment, if I get good enough, I’d volunteer to do it.