[FeatureRequest] VR support

[vvvvvvvv]

Please consider adding basic VR support. "Basic VR support" means:

* Head tracking.
* No motion controls.
* 2d gui is projected in front of player on a semi-transparent plane.
* Player is still operating using mouse+keyboard or gamepad.

Basically, same deal as with Elite or Subnautica. No need to optimize anything either. Just feed the scene as is into VR render. Whoever can handle it, will play it. It could be a DLC that costs money.

Basically you have better ships than elite dangerous, and some of them have interiors. Not having VR seems like a missed opportunity.

[CBJ]

I'll just quote what has been said on the last dozen or so times this was brought up.

The issue with VR ... 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.

[Cresent]

I'll just quote what has been said on the last dozen or so times this was brought up.

The issue with VR ... 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.

It is really sad but it makes sense. Egosoft is not Ubisoft or EA with a legion of bad paid workers. It is better to focus the money and the work force to the main pillars of the game to improve and expand the core identity of the game and to features for the whole game and not for a niche. It would be really cool but there are more important things.

[vvvvvvvv]

I'll just quote what has been said on the last dozen or so times this was brought up.

Here's how it looks like from my end.

Your last foray into VR was Rebirth, and that is 2017, six years ago.

Since that time, as far as I'm aware there was at least attempt to provide consolidated facade for all platforms and that is OpenXR. In 2017 that API was just released for the first time and it was not available (as far as I know) when you were working on Rebirth VR..

> Implementing VR is not as cheap and easy as the VR manufacturers would have you think

A basic VR experience in off-the shelf engine like Unreal/Unity can be done in a hour. Now, they use their own facades for multiple APIs, but see my point about OpenXR.

> in order to capture enough segments of the fractured market

The idea would be to target OpenXR or SteamVR instead of trying to chase fragments. Fragments are not worth attention.

> cutting down on key elements of the game to achieve the high framerates required

High framerates are not required. Systems like Virtual Desktop allow comfortable play at framerate of 20-40 FPS (you'll see black borders at the edge of your vision). Basically, it is important to disable reprojection, if the system supports it, but your game does not have to render at 72 or 90hz. It was necessary around oculus Dk2 time because Dk2 was a display with no brain and a missed frame would result in confusing experience. Modern headsets can track position/orientation independently of PC, meaning if game skips frames, it'll show last frame at last known direction. That works well enough and is similar to VR movie.

I do believe this is not widely known, however. Also note specifically that I pointed "no cutting content". So you'd REALLY need to just implement a VR camera with a head tracking and a gui overlay. That's minimal amount of work.

> adapting the user interface and control system

The implementation I outlined is the cheapest possible and requires no adaptation. You only need to add a plane where mouse cursors works. That's what Elite went with. Not ideal, sure, but it is enough and better than nothing.

[dayang]

Is it possible to open up some of these things to being modded? I'm aware that there are devices that can do extra stuff like head tracking, but naturally they'll need a bit of support.

I believe the 2d gui is already done tbh. I uh... managed to bug sitting in the chair and opening up the menu, it was blatantly obviously that the screen appears as a 2d screen in front of the pilot. (Because it was very hard to navigate the menu off to one side). It's not as if it appears as a whole new screen as other games do (which is admittedly surprising).

I think the only thing that's really needed here is the head tracking. I'm gonna add my own request shortly that may seem relevant.

[vvvvvvvv]

I'll add some more information.

Here's a guy trying to hack VR into X4 using Reshade.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2957030766

I tried one of those before, it is "almost there", but usually those hacks are not playable, because of UI. Not sure if it was addressed, probably wasn't. Station look amazing in person, for the record.

In off-the shelf engines (unreal/unity) it is usually possible to hack in VR initialization and inject camera control, but that's not the case here.

The reason why I even bother making posts like this is because I'm interested in realistic space VR game where you can move around in VR.

At the moment, there are 3 contenders. No Man's Sky, X4 and Elite Dangerous. There's also possibility that Star Citizen will add VR maybe one day, but star citizen is a star citizen.

If we check the titles I listed, then No Man's Sky has everything, except it has no humans in it and no economic element. It is geared towards psychedelic visuals and wandering around.

Elite Dangerous used to be a decent experience in VR (headset + gamepad), until it released odyssey where they simply refused to enable VR camera on foot for no reason. It gets ridiculous, because game switches to flatscreen (projected into VR) on foot, but if you' enable you can enable third-person camera, that'll be full VR except you'll be forbidden to use interact button. Complete insanity.

X4 beats Elite in many aspects (Did you know x4 has better visuals for water worlds?) and used to have Rebirth VR. Relevant code is probably still the engine, and if some shader in uncooperative for stereo render, I'm sure Reshade divergence shader author would be willing to cooperate. So likely scenario is that close to minimum amount of work is necessary.

So, in practice there are two space game devs half a step away from the goal I'm looking for. Except they both refuse to do the final move. Which is frustrating.

And making my own game would cost me few years of lifespan, and a result would likely have Quake 1 visuals.

*sigh*.

[Alan Phipps]

@ dayang: X4 already has had some head tracking support since version 3.0. See this thread as an example. That's not the VR environment that this thread is about though.

[CBJ]

So, in practice there are two space game devs half a step away from the goal I'm looking for. Except they both refuse to do the final move. Which is frustrating.

And making my own game would cost me few years of lifespan, and a result would likely have Quake 1 visuals.

*sigh*.

Maybe the fact that another team, one with more resources, has come to the same conclusion we have should tell you something about the VR situation. It is not as simple as you seem to think, and creating a bad VR implementation, one that might be acceptable if produced by modders or hacking in VR support, is not something that a game's developers themselves can afford to put out.

[dayang]

@ dayang: X4 already has had some head tracking support since version 3.0. See this thread as an example. That's not the VR environment that this thread is about though.

True but by hijacking the headtracking support it's possible to make use of it for the VR, I'm confident there's a third party app out there that will do such things after all there are plenty of games out there with insufficient VR support and lots of gamers seeking a way around that.

Which all comes back to... this suggests that there's a need to add in additional modding support in this area. I can understand why the Devs may not be keen on doing something half-assed.

[vvvvvvvv]

Maybe the fact that another team, one with more resources, has come to the same conclusion we have should tell you something about the VR situation.

They didn't come to the conclusion. Elite is fully VR compatible except they purposely disable first person VR camera while on foot. If you use 3rd person view, you can see yourself in full VR. In the very same environment, and with no glitches. You can drive a car in that environment and fly a camera drone. You are not allowed to walk in first person VR. There's a rumor that this is the case because somebody got spooked by VR sickness. Having said that Elite Dev team is not a good example to follow. As they are apparently decided to dedicate their life to selling ARX and overpriced skins.

And regarding "other team", there is No Man's Sky, which is full VR with controllers, full body, on foot movement, etc. They also have a custom engine, though they supposedly use The Forge rendering framework. It certainly worked out for them.

If you don't want to implement it all yourself, at least it would be great if there was a hijack point where VR initialization could be forced. Modders would take it from there.