X4 VR

[Dexatronn]

I was just wondering if you guys have any plans on making this game in VR. I'm really Enjoying the Rebirth VR and would love to see the new game in VR

[Slashman]

The short answer is no. It was too costly versus money earned. It was not worth it for the team to pursue. Sorry.

[Rastuasi]

Might be worthwhile to use the search function, there's already 4+ threads on this in just the past month, most with official Egosoft replies and such.

[Alan Phipps]

CBJ recently said in an X4 topic:

"The issue with VR (and for that matter multi-player) is not just about whether there's a market for it, but whether the cost of implementing it relative to the size of that market actually makes sense.

Implementing VR is not as cheap and easy as the VR manufacturers would have you think. Aside from the overhead of supporting numerous different VR implementations in order to capture enough segments of the fractured market to make it viable at all, making it comfortable to use means cutting down on key elements of the game to achieve the high framerates required, adapting the user interface and control system, and making numerous other smaller changes, all of which takes a considerable amount of work. Our experience with XR VR showed that while it was a really nice addition to the game, and great fun to work on, the numbers simply didn't add up. Nothing that has happened since then has convinced us that that situation has changed, and we cannot afford to keep throwing money at VR on the off-chance that it may one day pay off."

[Franc Kaos]

...
making it comfortable to use means cutting down on key elements of the game to achieve the high framerates required, adapting the user interface and control system, and making numerous other smaller changes
...

Then don't make it comfortable to use (us VR users are a hardy bunch), just pipe it to HMD as MouseLook and like XRVR, let players yank the headset off and continue playing on the monitor for station / map play. Graphic options are there for a reason and most people were happy enough to lower FalloutVR settings to get the darn thing playable and even then there were spikes and lags but it didn't seem to hurt their sales, plus system speeds increase every six months. I played XRVR with the original campaign and stations mods and didn't notice any issues (1060 & i5).
We (and I don't mean to speak for the entire VR base but basic VR is better than no VR), don't need the touch controllers, we have HOTAS or basic controllers and many of us have learnt the WASD area of the keyboard blind (the F key has a notch), happy to use what's already available.
I know this isn't going to make a difference but I'd really love to play this game in VR (or put the map part of the game into X Rebirth VR - it really is sublime), it's so hard to go back to the small window map.

[Slashman]

...
making it comfortable to use means cutting down on key elements of the game to achieve the high framerates required, adapting the user interface and control system, and making numerous other smaller changes
...

Then don't make it comfortable to use (us VR users are a hardy bunch), just pipe it to HMD as MouseLook and like XRVR, let players yank the headset off and continue playing on the monitor for station / map play. Graphic options are there for a reason and most people were happy enough to lower FalloutVR settings to get the darn thing playable and even then there were spikes and lags but it didn't seem to hurt their sales, plus system speeds increase every six months. I played XRVR with the original campaign and stations mods and didn't notice any issues (1060 & i5).
We (and I don't mean to speak for the entire VR base but basic VR is better than no VR), don't need the touch controllers, we have HOTAS or basic controllers and many of us have learnt the WASD area of the keyboard blind (the F key has a notch), happy to use what's already available.
I know this isn't going to make a difference but I'd really love to play this game in VR (or put the map part of the game into X Rebirth VR - it really is sublime), it's so hard to go back to the small window map.

So you are saying after all that CBJ explained that you want them to make the user base even smaller than before (because I'm sure as hell dead certain that there are users who would mind it). And it would still take personnel to make the changes which costs money and it wasn't worth it when they had the full market of VR users so why would they bother now at all?

[Franc Kaos]

So you are saying after all that CBJ explained that you want them to make the user base even smaller than before (because I'm sure as hell dead certain that there are users who would mind it). And it would still take personnel to make the changes which costs money and it wasn't worth it when they had the full market of VR users so why would they bother now at all?

Erm, yea? Because X4 is far superior to X Rebirth. EA (the profits driven monolith) and Rockstar are dipping their toes in the expanding user base (Oculus Quest with Link alone has generated a substantial increase in users), Bethesda made bank on their FalloutVR ($6 million ish*) release, and I want to (not entitled, not demand, just would love) to play this title in VR.

It's the difference between watching interstellar on an imax screen vs a smart phone.

*https://www.vrandfun.com/bethesda-sold- ... lout-4-vr/

[Slashman]

So you are saying after all that CBJ explained that you want them to make the user base even smaller than before (because I'm sure as hell dead certain that there are users who would mind it). And it would still take personnel to make the changes which costs money and it wasn't worth it when they had the full market of VR users so why would they bother now at all?

Erm, yea? Because X4 is far superior to X Rebirth. EA (the profits driven monolith) and Rockstar are dipping their toes in the expanding user base (Oculus Quest with Link alone has generated a substantial increase in users), Bethesda made bank on their FalloutVR ($6 million ish*) release, and I want to (not entitled, not demand, just would love) to play this title in VR.

It's the difference between watching interstellar on an imax screen vs a smart phone.

*https://www.vrandfun.com/bethesda-sold- ... lout-4-vr/

See this is always mind-boggling to me. A developer of the game says something cannot work and is not profitable but an outsider then proceeds to tell them that there is money to be made in it...the same thing that they tried already.

I suppose if you believe in it that much you could front them the money for several of their staff members to work on it. I mean you have no chance of losing. After all, EA and Rockstar, multi-billion dollar corporations, are trying to make VR profitable. A small developer can surely just follow in their footsteps. It would be totally worth it. Let me know how it works out for you.

[Shehriazad]

Just accept that it won't happen.

Maybe X5 that'll release in like a 7+ years or so you can have it


Also I'm on the floor over someone thinking they can compare a very well established Bethesda IP with X.

Fallout 4 sold about 15 MILLION copies...which means just about an additional 1% was sold in VR copies.

If we assume X4 sells about 10% of that in non VR copies... calculate that down to VR. A nightmare.

X Rebirth VR Sold less than 50K units according to steamspy statistics....and it might be as low as 20k. Try turning a profit on that.


And lastly, even though I'd like more VR games...they'd have to stop or slow down development on mainline X4 a lot... I'd prefer If they finish that first.


Edit: Also 6 Million dollar in SALES. They financially EARNED next to nothing on that. The Dev time spent and Steams cut have taken care of that money.

[Franc Kaos]

Maybe y'all missed the part where I said

I know this isn't going to make a difference

I'm just adding my voice to the literally dozens of us who'd like to play in VR.

I know it's not economically viable but I still have to stand up and say 'VR please' in a public forum because that is my desire and, you never know, some kindly soul might read these words and graft VR onto it, like one man converted GTA5 into VR, one dev released a VR mod for Dying Light, others did Half Life 2, Alien Isolation... ran out of examples.

If a butterflies wings can cause a tornado on the other side of the planet (quantum mechanics), then maybe a bunch of pro VR words written somewhere might cause someone to mod it in for us - yea, I'm a dreamer

and yep, can't wait for X5 maybe we'll get planetary landings finally (pretty please) - it'll still be out before Star Citizen 1.0.

[Shehriazad]

Maybe y'all missed the part where I said

I know this isn't going to make a difference

I'm just adding my voice to the literally dozens of us who'd like to play in VR.

I know it's not economically viable but I still have to stand up and say 'VR please' in a public forum because that is my desire and, you never know, some kindly soul might read these words and graft VR onto it, like one man converted GTA5 into VR, one dev released a VR mod for Dying Light, others did Half Life 2, Alien Isolation... ran out of examples.

If a butterflies wings can cause a tornado on the other side of the planet (quantum mechanics), then maybe a bunch of pro VR words written somewhere might cause someone to mod it in for us - yea, I'm a dreamer

and yep, can't wait for X5 maybe we'll get planetary landings finally (pretty please) - it'll still be out before Star Citizen 1.0.

Get into modding and do it yourself! If you can survive the nightmare that is modding X4 right now

[Slashman]

Everything is out before Star Citizen 1.0...literally everything.

We can't even get Squadron 42, a single player flight sim ( well last time I checked) out of them.

[Raevyan]

I mean people were able to mod HL2 and GTA V and made it possible to play those in VR. Maybe it’s possible for X4 too. Who knows?

[leoriq]

See this is always mind-boggling to me. A developer of the game says something cannot work and is not profitable but an outsider then proceeds to tell them that there is money to be made in it...the same thing that they tried already.

I suppose if you believe in it that much you could front them the money for several of their staff members to work on it. I mean you have no chance of losing. After all, EA and Rockstar, multi-billion dollar corporations, are trying to make VR profitable. A small developer can surely just follow in their footsteps. It would be totally worth it. Let me know how it works out for you.

I'm with you here, share the popcorn please

[Rastuasi]

Maybe y'all missed the part where I said

literally dozens of us who'd like to play in VR.

Hmm looking through the forum posts, there's less than 12 individual voices posting about wanting VR, they're just restarting threads every few months. For "literally dozens", I'd expect at least 24..

[Panos]

And all this because 3D glasses didn't took off. -_-

X3 worked amazing with Helix and 3D monitor & glasses (Nvision kit). Same applies to numerous other games during the early 2010s which needed barely any configuring, even games that didn't supported it from 2002 could use 3D glasses!!!!!

[Franc Kaos]

Maybe y'all missed the part where I said

literally dozens of us who'd like to play in VR.

Hmm looking through the forum posts, there's less than 12 individual voices posting about wanting VR, they're just restarting threads every few months. For "literally dozens", I'd expect at least 24..

I'm speaking for the silent ones, the lost souls out in the wilderness and those who don't post in forums

[Panos]

Maybe y'all missed the part where I said

Hmm looking through the forum posts, there's less than 12 individual voices posting about wanting VR, they're just restarting threads every few months. For "literally dozens", I'd expect at least 24..

I'm speaking for the silent ones, the lost souls out in the wilderness and those who don't post in forums

[Alan Phipps]

Waits patiently for a response along the lines of:

"I'm speaking for the silent ones, the lost souls out in the wilderness and those who don't post in forums who really don't want Ego to work on VR at the expense of the main game "

[Falcrack]

Waits patiently for a response along the lines of:

"I'm speaking for the silent ones, the lost souls out in the wilderness and those who don't post in forums who really don't want Ego to work on VR at the expense of the main game "

Every moment they are not working on VR for X4, they are working on something else that I care more about