VR support 'not at launch' for Odyssey

[rhiz]

There are lots of scenarios where a chunky loss (of cash and community goodwill) could be superseded by greater gains elsewhere from fresh players & alternate markets (such as the new consoles etc).

If they feel they can either win those lost players back with later VR deployment (or live without them in the bigger picture), then the decision could still make strategic sense.

Yes, that’s my hunch.

 

[Kelster87]

And the tread coins a new term

I spent some time working in a call centre, manglement was how we referred to management. As it seemed managements only real job was to mangle our jobs. The term has stuck with me, as it seems applicable more often than not.

 

[Demascus]

In the same way PC players can drop serious coin on a decent keyboard/mouse setup (mine for example cost over £200) and play some titles against folk with game controllers, or spend many hundreds on HOTAS/HOSAS/Cockpit setups (again mine cost well over £2,500 if you factor in designing and building my own CNC machine to make some of the kit) and have a massive advantage over those without such equipment, because I have all my primary flight and combat controls on both hands and don't take them off. Or drop several thousand on Titan GPU's to get more frames and therefore better "reflexes" when shooting opponents.

Should all of those be removed as well?

Eveyone has a PC or Console and the capability to play the game. Not everyone has VR set up. You can still play the game like us non-VR plebs.

 

[[VR] DDastardly]

They may be waiting for the next gen of VR that doesn't actually require specific software tinkering for all the different headsets...

Oculus, Microsoft & Valve have all now released support for Open XR (which enables devs to write an app once and have it work on any HMD).

for the sake of a maximum of less than 2% of sales.

The biggest annual survey of the flight sim community recently showed 17% of those users already have VR. I expect the figure is similar across the broader sim community (and rising every day).

It would make financial sense not to support it at all now if that's the case as it'll probably be irrelevant soon(ish).

We know from Braben himself that the initial implementation of VR in Elite was up and running in a day (thanks to the legendary "Greg") and we also know from experience that basically zero effort has been expended on VR in ED since then. The galaxy and system maps (and the FSSS) are just the standard pancake versions with the UI slapped on a 2D plane between the cameras and the rest of the scene, with no support for manipulating them with motion controllers. They never bothered adding gaze slaved weapons (which were excellent in Eve: Valkyrie and would have dramatically improved combat in Elite for both VR and TrackIR users, adding an opportunity for more skilled gameplay than gimballed or turreted weapons afford, whilst still being practical on larger ships which work poorly with fixed weapons). Obvious (and extremely easy to fix) visual bugs like smoke sprites rotating when a VR player tilts their head have languished unfixed for years etc etc.

Let's be charitable then and round up the total dev time expended on VR in Elite Dangerous to an entire "person week". We also know (again from Braben) that 10% of the early backers and buyers of Elite Dangerous were VR users, making that single week of development the most financially profitable time ever spent by anyone at Frontier in the entire history of the game (which makes the decision to drop VR support in Odyssey even more ludicrous).

That's the thing that would give it mass appeal, to the big studios and joe public.

You mean big studios like <deep breath> Rockstar (see L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files & their forthcoming "AAA Open World VR title") or Bethesda (see Skyrim & Fallout 4 VR) or E.A. (see Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One & Star Wars: Squadrons) or Respawn Entertainment (see Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond) or Ready at Dawn (see Lone Echo & Echo Arena) or Valve (see Half Life: Alyx) or Sanzaru Games (see Asgard's Wrath) or ILMxLAB (see Vader Immortal) or iD Software (see Doom VFR) or Rocksteady Studios (see Batman: Arkham VR) or Ubisoft (see Star Trek: Bridge Crew & Transference & Space Junkies & Eagle Flight & Werewolves Within) or Capcom (see Resident Evil VII) or Insomniac Games (see Stormlands & Edge of Nowhere & The Unspoken & Feral Rites) or Skydance Interactive (see The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners) or Codemasters (see Dirt 2 & 3) or Sony (see Iron Man VR)?

 

[Darkeyed]

In the same way PC players can drop serious coin on a decent keyboard/mouse setup (mine for example cost over £200) and play some titles against folk with game controllers, or spend many hundreds on HOTAS/HOSAS/Cockpit setups (again mine cost well over £2,500 if you factor in designing and building my own CNC machine to make some of the kit) and have a massive advantage over those without such equipment, because I have all my primary flight and combat controls on both hands and don't take them off. Or drop several thousand on Titan GPU's to get more frames and therefore better "reflexes" when shooting opponents.

see now your comparing a flight sim set up which is a far cry from and fps set up. when it comes to fps does better equipment help kinda when your playing someone of equal skill as you then yea the tippy top can win or loose a match on having a bad mouse but the majorty of the player base skill trumps skill, the person with the faster reflex time, more accurate flick etc etc. they are what determains the match. if you give a grandmaster a 10 buck walmart mouse and keyboard he will still kick in the teath of gold tier players. its only in grandmaster vs grandmaster that the gear truly matters. my buddy plays on a 4k rig cost him a pretty penny. I play on a tv moniter and i still trounce him in rainbow six..

 

[[VR] DDastardly]

the point of the clip is not about the players death its about how vr can do thing that cannot be recreated by a player that is playing with just a keyboard and a monitor. how is it fair that a player can drop 400+ for a vr set and have an advantage over a player that does not have a vr set?
there is a reason why vr and montor play has been seperated when it comes to multiplayer. say you playing a sword and shield pvp game a vr player can attack and block in wild and unpedictable angles. as were a keyboard and mouse player will can only attack and block at programmed angles, is it fair to the moniter player to put him up against the vr player who can easly strike at and angle that the monitor players programed block cant block?

Presumably then you're in favour of removing mouse support too? After all, is it fair to those playing Odyssey with a joypad to put them up against someone using a mouse (which offers far more rapid and precise control of aiming)? As for your hypothetical example of mixed melee combat, it would be just as easy for the devs to program a monitor player's block to work against any angle of attack as to program it to only work against specific angles.

In reality, VR offers some advantages in an FPS like improved situational awareness and some disadvantages like the necessity to aim in 3D with unsupported hands and head at a lower resolution target (instead of simply using an absolute positional device supported on a 2D surface to position a crosshair on a high res 2D target); or having to physically turn around rather than spin 180 degrees in an instant with the flick of a mouse. None of these differences make balancing VR vs non-VR players an insurmountable challenge and it's certainly far easier than balancing mouse vs joypad players (spoiler alert: joypad players are going to get absolutely murdered, as they have in every FPS which permitted mouse and joypad players to play together).

 

[Kelster87]

I'm astounded that despite all the varied cynicism, that the 'Elite VR took 1 day' line is believed. I just can't see it, I've only done dev for flatscreen and coding a decent mouselook provided issues I hadn't foreseen. Admittedly, the VR in game as it stands is not really earth-shattering, most of it is simply flatscreen correctly rendered stereoscopically, which adds to depth perception, the rest is just some layering tricks for UI elements.

 

[[VR] DDastardly]

I'm astounded that despite all the varied cynicism, that the 'Elite VR took 1 day' line is believed. I just can't see it, I've only done dev for flatscreen and coding a decent mouselook provided issues I hadn't foreseen.

I don't see what incentive Braben could have had to lie about it. 99% of the details of image distortion, IPD adjustment, chromatic aberration correction, asynchronous time & space warp, headtracking etc are handled automatically by the VR API after the dev has inserted appropriate camera entities into the scene.

 

[Darkeyed]

Presumably then you're in favour of removing mouse support too? After all, is it fair to those playing Odyssey with a joypad to put them up against someone using a mouse (which offers far more rapid and precise control of aiming)? As for your hypothetical example of mixed melee combat, it would be just as easy for the devs to program a monitor player's block to work against any angle of attack as to program it to only work against specific angles.

first off no its not fair but you cant stop luntics from plunging in a joypad even when they have a functional mouse and keyboard. but now your being dishonest because on pc keyboard and mouse is standard if a pc user has a joypad will also have a keyboard and mouse. a joypad is an optional piece do you you honestly want to try and pretend that someone out their only has a joypad for their pc?

do you get it yet whaa the M+KB is better at fps than my joypad, then unplug your joypad and use your keyboard you prat. vr on the other hand is optional you dont have to have vr to have a pc and it gives the player a massive advantage in fps style games vs keyboard.

 

[Arioch]

because for those in non vr that feat could not be achived to be able to shoot around the corner like that the player would have to step out from behind the corner and open fire thus showing himself and giving the player stuck in the hallway a split second chance to return fire and put down the attacking player. in the timestamped video the player in the hallway had no chance to return fire because the only thing that came out around the corner was the bloody gun ie the player could not kill the attacking player if he had a better twitch reaction. in vr vs vr this kind of situation is ok because tec the other player could choose to do the same thing as well. but if you tried to say put vr vs monitor, the guess what the monitor player cannot repeat this action they have to step out of cover they have to reveal themselves.

So...have you played much PavlovVR? For such an advantageous tactic, it’s amazing how many times I’ve seen it used (none) - mainly because it is this effective:

not very much.

I’ve only done it once in my 44 hours playtime and that was in a situation where hip firing would’ve been the better option. It’s something to do for a laugh or if you’re making a YouTube video.

If you’re basing your opinions of VR shooters based on stuff like the video you linked, well, that’d be like thinking 360NoScope trickshot videos were representative of all shooter games

Anyway, to recap - trying to peep through walls blurs or bounces the VR player, the VR player’s hitbox will roughly equate to standard crouch/prone/lean, and blind-firing around corners is about effective as a clingfilm condom. What are we on to now? Melee combat directions or some such? Have you tried blocking in SkyrimVR by any chance?

 

[Kelster87]

I don't see what incentive Braben could have had to lie about it. 99% of the details of image distortion, IPD adjustment, chromatic aberration correction, asynchronous time & space warp, headtracking etc are handled automatically by the VR API after the dev has inserted appropriate camera entities into the scene.

I'm just pointing out how amusing it is that some will so readily believe the 'one day' line and yet then totally discount other things said.

 

[Stigbob]

Out of curiosity..... And no judgements either way have your tried ED in a high quality VR headset? It transforms ED from a game to an experience.
It's easy to pooh-pooh things you have never tried so cannot miss. I do the same myself for some things but it does not take the sting away from those who have.

Not ED. I've tried a few headsets and its fun but not that impressive. Someone mentioned earlier they're on their fifth headset already, I'll wait for the tech to improve and some standardization to kick in.

The thing that really puts me off VR currently is that games require specific VR support for specific headsets across the board support doesn't seem to be a very common thing. It reminds me of the bad old days of PC gaming when you had to be really thorough with compatibility checks.

I'll be more interested when a winner/standardization emerges.

 

[Darkeyed]

So...have you played much PavlovVR? For such an advantageous tactic, it’s amazing how many times I’ve seen it used (none) - mainly because it is this effective:

not very much.

guess whats you cant do in pavlov use mouse and keyboard its pure vr its not vr vs keyboard on vr vs vr, also your falling into a logical fallacy by making an acidotal argument in light of me providing a video where 2 people are letarly doing the very thing i was talking about. btw you tec lied since that video shows it so you HAVE seen it used.

here's the problem the tactic is not effect against vr players because vr players have far more options when it comes movement cover and their hitbox. keyboard players on the other hand dont we can't lean up against a wall unless the game has a cover system put in alot of fps dont use a cover system. you can only stand and crouch ocasinaly lay down depending on the game, on a button press.

SkyrimVR

I love how you keep going back to a single player RPG vr experience like that in anyway would relate to a PVP FPS

 

[Arioch]

guess whats you cant do in pavlov use mouse and keyboard its pure vr its not vr vs keyboard on vr vs vr, also your falling into a logical fallacy by making an acidotal argument in light of me providing a video where 2 people are letarly doing the very thing i was talking about. btw you tec lied since that video shows it so you HAVE seen it used.

here's the problem the tactic is not effect against vr players because vr players have far more options when it comes movement cover and their hitbox. keyboard players on the other hand dont we can't lean up against a wall unless the game has a cover system put in alot of fps dont use a cover system. you can only stand and crouch ocasinaly lay down depending on the game, on a button press.


I love how you keep going back to a single player RPG vr experience like that in anyway would relate to a PVP FPS

Oh dear, have I lied? I thought it was obvious that I meant “in game”, but hey-ho, yeah, I saw it in the video! The two players shooting around the corner had their target almost run into the end of their barrels, but one of them did score a kill, I’ll give them that.

Personally if I saw anyone poking their weapon around a corner, I’d duck (hopefully into cover), silently thank them for revealing their ambush position, then take careful aim on the corner for when they would eventually poke their heads out to see what had happened to me

Anyway, back to hypothetical VREDO - do you have information that a “lean” function is not in the game for flatscreen players? As I’ve mentioned before, the last “mainstream” shooter I played was CoD:IW and that had a nifty context sensitive lean-out/peek over button. Maybe FDev have something similar planned?

As for SkyrimVR - you mentioned melee stuff and I have that game as an example of how it works. If you now want to shift target and limit melee to being only as per PvP FPS games, well that is usually a wallop with a gun butt and is never a blockable attack, you just have to be within close range and facing your target. Why would it matter how a VR player’s flailing arms could trigger the same attack?

 

[KillZoneGB]

Love SkyrimVR, spell in one hand and a dagger in the other, go blitzoid on the NPC, faster than Skyrim pancake, no combat animations lol.
Does this make me a cheater, because I`m faster at attacking
Using the shield I just could not get used to it for some strange reason Arioch.

Got two Boxing games for VR both get you fit, but "the thrill of the fight" takes your fitness to another level.
I use these games for cardio workouts.

Got a Medieval game I have not tried yet, I think it`s set in the late 15th early 16th century, proper parrying and the shield to use as a defensive or offensive weapon.
Apparently you can also grab the NPC, Only thing is missing is the Scottish Kiss (C U Jimmy) this will also be my cardio work out game.

I also play a lot of Flight/driving Sim`s in VR, mainly because I love being in the game.

Would have loved to play that arcade racer called "F12020" but seeing that game has no VR support and will not ever have VR, I just gave it a wide birth,

FPS I only have Fallout4VR, can`t aim for toffee only if I use the gangster approach and turn the gun 90` degrees and fire, go figure lol.

Did enough Online FPS to last me a lifetime, got bored, got fed up from Aimbot players.

anyhoo, enough of this ramblings.

Night All 🛰¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[Darkeyed]

Oh dear, have I lied? I thought it was obvious that I meant “in game”, but hey-ho, yeah, I saw it in the video! The two players shooting around the corner had their target almost run into the end of their barrels, but one of them did score a kill, I’ll give them that.

still saw it yet you said that you have never seen anyone use this tactic well guess what you have seen them. but this point is moot since its anecdotal. I have not seen any hackers on cs-go I dont go around telling people that there are NO hackers on cs-go because i have not seen them.

Did enough Online FPS to last me a lifetime, got bored, got fed up from Aimbot players.

way to shoot yourself in the foot when it comes to talking about the fps aspects of odyssey and vr vs moniter.

 

[Viajero]

Update to earlier posts: Out of curiosity I just ran the Hardware Survey on my Elite install and funnily enough the display device is listed as Unknown and there does not appear to be a VR section on there.

The closest the Hardware Survey gets is to identify an input device as a Pimax P2A, but that's in the same section as my TM Cougar, Leo Bodnar BU036A etc.

My conclusion is, that unless Frontier are parsing that data into a database and checking against an up to date and maintained list of known VR HMD models specifically and able to recognise them against a massive list of "Input Devices", then there is every chance they are missing a chunk of VR users in their stats (there are 6+ Pimax HMD models out there for example) and possibly have a skewed view of the numbers out there (or no idea at all other than industry stats, which anyone can look up, as I have done).

I'm also pretty certain this is the first time I've run the Hardware Survey since I have had my Pimax (Rift owner before that). Mrs Teatime I don't think has had the Hardware Survey run as well (Pimax 8K+ user).

Even if that was an issue I suspect there are many other ways for them to accurately estimate the number of VR users. The simplest one is probably to extrapolate from Steam VR data when launching Elite.

 

[Arioch]

still saw it yet you said that you have never seen anyone use this tactic well guess what you have seen them. but this point is moot since its anecdotal. I have not seen any hackers on cs-go I dont go around telling people that there are NO hackers on cs-go because i have not seen them.

Oh Lordy forgive me, I’m about to summon SteamStats...

PavlovVR usually gets about a thousand peak daily players, CS-GO about a million. I think I’d have a better chance at spotting blind-fire players than I would aimbotters. I would’ve at least expected to see it in-game (that’s in-game, just to emphasise) at least once in 44 hours playing.

Hey, while we’re on the “I’m lying” thing - I’ve just remembered that I have actually seen it in game once - it was the side view of my p90 as I poked it around a corner and emptied the magazine at a stationary target with their back to me at a range of about 3 virtual meters! It worked so well that I’ve never done it again

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Not ED. I've tried a few headsets and its fun but not that impressive. Someone mentioned earlier they're on their fifth headset already, I'll wait for the tech to improve and some standardization to kick in.

The thing that really puts me off VR currently is that games require specific VR support for specific headsets across the board support doesn't seem to be a very common thing. It reminds me of the bad old days of PC gaming when you had to be really thorough with compatibility checks.

I'll be more interested when a winner/standardization emerges.

That's not really accurate. Rift S or quest with usb cable from oculus can play practically everything for PCVR.
Things are a little less clear once you go for a non oculus headset. They can play everything officially that isn't locked to oculus store. They can still play those as well however using a piece of software called ReVive which is a free download and integrates into steam really well .. but I grant you that is not ideal (and is what I am facing as I replace my rift for a Reverb G2)
All companies are supporting a new platform called openXR which will hopefully end any fear of fragmentation.
As for some on their 5th headset. They are a minority. But that said my 3rd headset is on preorder. That is since 2014 however. You don't HAVE to upgrade all the time it is like some upgrade their gpu every time a new one comes out others wait for significant update. I sit in the middle.

 

[Darkeyed]

PavlovVR usually gets about a thousand peak daily players, CS-GO about a million. I think I’d have a better chance at spotting blind-fire players than I would aimbotters. I would’ve at least expected to see it in-game (that’s in-game, just to emphasise) at least once in 44 hours playing.

hey look a I showed you a lovely video were people are blind firing. its almost like just because you have not personally experience it doesnt not mean it does not exist.
but blind firings is not the issue issues which you keep refusing to address because you know you cant its that vr players can blind fire and montier players would not be able to. ie the vr players can do things that montier players cannot do. which is the problem with VR vs Moniter PVP.