VR support 'not at launch' for Odyssey
- Thread starter Lordxenu
- Start date
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
I won't lie..... It does look purdy!Also this from the dev diary :
There's a reason for that!...
They use weasel words all the time. If they plan to add VR after launch they could say "VR is presenting a challenge for an evolving UI and although we would like to support it at launch it would cause significant delays for everyone else. We are 100% committed to VR support and it will be in a release as soon as possible after launch".
Instead we get stuff like... "We love VR but we are passionate about it and can't do it until we can work out how to do it because we love it so much. IF we work out how we want to make it the best experience"... blah blah blah. Classic FDEV weasel words for we can't be bothered but don't want to say never.
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IMO you're confusing how simple it seems for the user to continue with very little change in terms of the view and use of the headset, and how much actual work it would be for fdev to code two entirely different versions of the game when first person sections were loaded.
I mean it wouldn't be difficult in a technical sense I'm sure, hell they could go full VR FPS like the more complex VR FPS titles. IF they wanted to spend the time and resources. Nothing is impossible to do, there's just a cost.
I hope they find a way to allow a switch from VR to flatscreen so people (myself included) can fly and land on atmos planets with VR. What I don't want and don't expect is for them to delay release to add a time consuming VR FPS element, and even headset for head-look would take more time than it seems to us to imagine it working simply and seamlessly.
Weasel words appears to mean "not the answer I want".There's a reason for that!...
They use weasel words all the time. If they plan to add VR after launch they could say "VR is presenting a challenge for an evolving UI and although we would like to support it at launch it would cause significant delays for everyone else. We are 100% committed to VR support and it will be in a release as soon as possible after launch".
Instead we get stuff like... "We love VR but we are passionate about it and can't do it until we can work out how to do it because we love it so much. IF we work out how we want to make it the best experience"... blah blah blah. Classic FDEV weasel words for we can't be bothered but don't want to say never.
The thing I don't get is there are plenty of games out there with really solid VR implementations done by bedroom VR fans without access to the source code and having to guess how the game works .
I am not a software dev and fully admit I don't know much.
But NOLF2, DOOM 3 BFG, Alien Isolation, Halo Reach, Half Life 2, yooka laylee all have VR mods made by people with no where near the tools or knowledge at their disposal that FD have with ED
I am not a software dev and fully admit I don't know much.
But NOLF2, DOOM 3 BFG, Alien Isolation, Halo Reach, Half Life 2, yooka laylee all have VR mods made by people with no where near the tools or knowledge at their disposal that FD have with ED
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No, weasel are weasel words. It is an actual thing in the English language. I'd have more respect for FDEV if they said what they meant.. "VR looks is cool but we don't see all that much money in it at the moment. It is money that drives us so we will come back to it if there is enough money to make it worth our while".
My point is what you are looking for are certainties and absolutes that, frankly, may just not exist.
Here's a revolutionary thought for you : maybe they aren't actually being misleading?
You are doing exactly what I said before. The tendency to assume the worst intentions on the part of fdev. By contrast, your suggestion for what they should say is full of absolutes that are just angry rhetoric.
Weasel word - Wikipedia
I actually posted on Egosoft forums why they weren't implementing VR for X4. An actual developer answered me, they spent a lot of money and dev time converting XRebirth to VR (including well realised tracking controllers far superior to NMS' effort and walking about in stations in VR) but the market wasn't (and still isn't) there (plus a load of other stuff).
So, even if we think VR is exploding on the scene because of hardware scarcity, it's still not big enough to justify a lot of time and dev cycles on (which is why I'd be happy with a cobbled together VR implementation).
I respect that kind of honesty and so did most of the posters on there.
That may be true.... But it is also possible there that X rebirth VR s fate was sealed before launch such was the negativity around the flat screen version of xrebirth.
Maybe "not at launch" is the only possible honest answer. It could be all the things you were told over on the Egosoft forum are true. FDEV are trying to implement it anyway.
They can't write it off whilst trying also they can't overpromise in case it doesn't work at all. Not much else they can honestly say really.
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there's a weird attitude that we MUST assume fdev are lying to us. Rather than ... I dunno ... believe what they say? And when they don't have an answer, sometimes it might be because they really don't have an answer yet.
They were asked about VR, base building, ship interiors and many other things. They answered two of them. Base building is NOT on the roadmap. That was pretty honest, no? VR is quite clearly still possible, they've explicitly said they are trying to work out how to do it, in part at least.
Not really - there should not be a need to code two entirely different versions of the game - the game engine already has VR!
Some game developers try to overthink the VR aspect, that is the key mistake since VR is first and foremost a head-tracking-3D-display. FDev already know how to do this and have done it with every update to date.
Where FP mode is concerned, if they have tried to copy mechanics/patterns from other existing FP games rather than following the standard implementation patterns they have been using to date then I can see potential issues that originate from unnecessary UI/Effect rendering "cheat" methods that are incompatible with stereoscopic 3D rendering so would cause a problem for non-VR 3D display technologies (e.g. nVidia 3D Vision).
The Fallout games (for example) have a mixed level of viability where 3D displays are concerned (possibly one of the reasons Fallout VR needed to be a separate product from Fallout 4 which it is based on) but ED to date has successfully supported VR in a seated-VR/cockpit centric environment and supported non-VR 3D displays.
Yes, there was a release day glitch with the FSS mode effects but they were addressed reasonably quickly and FDev should have learned from the experience and avoided comparable issues with Odyssey. From the sounds of things, it may be the case that they did not and screwed up again by using non stereoscopic-3D-display compliant effects. If so, shame on the FDev management team for letting it happen.
[EDIT]Where X4 and VR is concerned, I have played both X-Rebirth and X-Rebirth VR and appreciate why they are reluctant to add it to X4. The X-Series has enough performance issues with non-VR as it stands (X2 being perhaps the best of of the series for frame rate management) and my experience with X-Rebirth VR was not exactly a pleasant one. ED on the other hand already has a fair and reasonable approach to VR and does not have the same performance concerns that the X-Series does.[/EDIT]
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![[VR] Enexemander](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/119/119036.jpg?1621636716){kind=avatar}
Having now played ED in VR and a number of other VR titles, I'm left with the feeling that VR in ED is some (Oculus) example code hacked in to the engine. VR in Elite is functional, but it's far from great. And I rather suspect, on this basis, that a complete rewrite for the VR portion of the code is needed to ensure a smooth transition in to EDO's new features.
As far as FDev is concerned, for now, I'll take their word on VR in EDO. What they've said so far makes sense and to take it any other way is just speculation or salt mining.
BTW Thistle, I've nothing personal against you, dut you appear to be settling in to a devils advocate position, so I'm hoping you don't mind debating things a bit further?
When you said:
*I'll pick up on my emphasis of the word genuinely - VR is a strange thing, for all it's complexity, and the astonishing results it offers for developers to embellish their games with, it is very little known that most of the "heavy lifting" is all done for the developer behind the scenes in the VR runtimes.
When you said:
My first thoughts were the bedroom built player sourced VR mods, but since MadMike's listed them I won't go over it all again, other than to reiterate for the most part "we" aren't looking Odyssey VR to be Elite:Alyx, I for one would be over the moon with VR headlook, and if players ca patch that onto other games, adding VR to a game must be at least relatively simple, especially for the games developer...
Frontier have a really bad track record with weasel words, particularly that "not at launch", the PS4 is about to be obsoleted, and the PSVR support that was "not at launch" still hasn't materialised, Horizons gave way to beyond, and we're past the roadmap for beyond, and moving into a new patch, and where are the additional SRV's promised to come later in the horizons season but "not at launch".... Oh! I'm seeing a pattern here.There's a reason for that!...
They use weasel words all the time. If they plan to add VR after launch they could say "VR is presenting a challenge for an evolving UI and although we would like to support it at launch it would cause significant delays for everyone else. We are 100% committed to VR support and it will be in a release as soon as possible after launch".
Instead we get stuff like... "We love VR but we are passionate about it and can't do it until we can work out how to do it because we love it so much. IF we work out how we want to make it the best experience"... blah blah blah. Classic FDEV weasel words for we can't be bothered but don't want to say never.
This was mostly answered by MadMike in the following quote, but I'd like to elaborate a bit on it, so for continuity & context I'm quoting MadMike as well before I start my commentary:
I think you are / Thistle is genuinely* overestimating how hard it would be, Greg did VR in Alpha in a day, one guy one day, even allowing for an order of magnitude increase in the complexity of adding VR headlook to a character that isn't maglocked into a pilots seat, one guy for a fortnight or two for a week, on a two year project with a hundred devs? It's not a huge ask, indeed it would be barely noticeable on the project resource usage analysis reports.
*I'll pick up on my emphasis of the word genuinely - VR is a strange thing, for all it's complexity, and the astonishing results it offers for developers to embellish their games with, it is very little known that most of the "heavy lifting" is all done for the developer behind the scenes in the VR runtimes.
Actually weasel words means "waffled with out saying anything of any substance and we call them out for weasel words when we hear evasive non-committal banal platitudes, which is seemingly Frontiers Lingua Franca. I for one have said it, and I suspect others share the sentiment, even if it isn't the answer I want to hear, but a hard resolute yay or nay is infinitely better than an evasive well, maybe's but possibly not" - A few pages back I beseeched frontier to do just that give us a firm statement to put us out of our purgatorial misery.
Optimisation isn't the be all and end all, most long term VR players accustomed to "needing" high end kit to make VR work, think back to 2016 with the Oculus rift looking for two HD pictures at 90hz, hello GTX1080/GTX1080Ti - Other than bitcoin miners I think VR players were the largest initial sales of those two cards. (1080Ti will run elite at 1920x1080 resolution at >200FPS) and the 30 series Nvidia cards are about to release... Were we to struggle with Odyssey VR on our 10/20 series card, we all know how to turn down the settings, and a significant chunk of players would be willing to either buy a new 30 series card, or a used 2080/2080ti.
If we look at the matter from another perspective, the hardware requirements for a smooth VR experience are lower than running the game at 4k.
The total resolution of the Oculus Rift S is 2560x1440 (1280x1440 per eye) while the flat screen 4k resolution is 2.25x higher at 3840x2160.
FDEV needs to take into considerations that even if they exclude VR, they will still need to optimize the game and eventually rise the hardware requirements to support the new display technologies.
At this point it wouldn't be reasonable to keep pushing their cobra engine on 10 years old pc. At some point they need to look forward, include new technologies and rise the hardware specs.
In fact, Flight Simulator 2020 was a big evidence to the market that people are willing to spend money in hardware to have an appealing graphical experience. FDEV should not miss this train.
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