POLL: Should Egosoft make X4 VR compatible?

[Duncaroos]

If you just want to look around the cockpit, just get Tobii eye tracker instead.

https://youtu.be/mTkIm4g1NWA?si=SApYcEAvdgwixGj8

[vvvvvvvv]

If you just want to look around the cockpit, just get Tobii eye tracker instead.

https://youtu.be/mTkIm4g1NWA?si=SApYcEAvdgwixGj8

The effect of VR comes from depth perception. With eye tracker you won't have that effect, because the screen is still flat.

[Hackod]

@ Hackod: Even assuming that the Egosoft devs found the method, will and time to do that officially, it might somewhat benefit players already owning VR headsets - but I doubt that many would go out and buy a VR headset just to look around X4 cockpits. It would also have to be another 'gameplay option' (which devs dislike adding) so as not to distort cockpit display for non-VR players.

Be aware that all 'unofficial mods' are released by 3rd party independent modders, and not by Egosoft.

The point isn't that someone will go out and buy VR just for this, but that those who already have VR might become interested in X4: Foundations.

What's the core idea here: the game already has the ability to look around using the Shift key. The same feature exists in War Thunder with aircraft. And War Thunder allows you to play from the first-person perspective both without VR, using the Shift key, and with a VR headset. The controls in both cases are through keyboard and mouse or a joystick.

The ability to experience being in the cockpit of a spaceship, just like in War Thunder, would be incredible.

Releasing this as a simple modification would shield the developers from a wave of criticism that might arise from, say, basic walking inside the game while wearing a headset—something not everyone is physiologically ready for. In other words, any other difficulties would be the players' problem, and there would be no issues with the developers, since this would be, hypothetically, an unofficial mod. At the same time, the game could attract a significant share of players who already own VR, just for the chance to feel the scale of massive space stations from a first-person perspective with full immersion.

[Vectorial1024]

This is becoming a dead topic, but seriously, how many among all PC gamers have VR headset? (I for one don't.)

For this much work to develop the VR version, only to realize there are probably only hundreds of new players (total existing players likely exceeds 20K), this is never going to get approved.

War Thunder etc decides to do VR because their user count is in the millions, and they have several 10K users online at the same time. They can therefore think of VR as a gamble to attract VR players; even if it didn't work out, they are large enough (both manpower and financially) to have a team only doing VR. EgoSoft clearly is not in this caliber.

[vvvvvvvv]

This is becoming a dead topic, but seriously, how many among all PC gamers have VR headset? (I for one don't.)

3 million users on steam alone.

For this much work to develop the VR version, only

It has been discussed before. There isn't necessarily "much work". You need to allow VR camera rendering, allow head tracking, ensure it still works with mouse/gamepad. The game already supports eye tracking, apparently. No optimization is necessary, modern VR like VirtualDesktop handles low fps well enough, that's how people play x-plane in VR. Also see how Euro Truck simulator did it. Also see this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2957030766

Were x4 a unity or unreal game, it would've been possible to hack VR support in. But in-house engine sort of requires some cooperation from the developers for proper VR mod to happen.

Also, people, in general, do not ask for supreme VR experience with full body tracking. The requests are MUCH simpler - allow VR camera in place of normal camera. Subnautica level integration. So, the talk about "dedicated team just for VR" doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

[GCU Grey Area]

3 million users on steam alone.

For context, that's out of 132 million active Steam accounts. Still very niche.

As for my own views on this, every time I've considered VR it's been too expensive & there aren't nearly enough VR games I'm interested in to justify the expense. Have always ended up getting a bigger & better monitor instead, for a lot less money & which works with almost everything.

[Hackod]

This is becoming a dead topic, but seriously, how many among all PC gamers have VR headset? (I for one don't.)

For this much work to develop the VR version, only to realize there are probably only hundreds of new players (total existing players likely exceeds 20K), this is never going to get approved.

War Thunder etc decides to do VR because their user count is in the millions, and they have several 10K users online at the same time. They can therefore think of VR as a gamble to attract VR players; even if it didn't work out, they are large enough (both manpower and financially) to have a team only doing VR. EgoSoft clearly is not in this caliber.

You have an extremely selfish and one-sided perspective. You may not have a VR headset, but 38% of Steam users do! 38%, Karl! That’s 38% of a paying audience ready to buy the game with all the DLCs if they want to.

And again, the point isn’t to create a new game tailored for VR. The point is to attract a new audience to an already developed game. Let me clarify. In War Thunder, there’s a cross-platform system. This means the same game can be played both on a monitor and with a VR headset. The same concept is being proposed here. While playing X4 on a monitor, you can look around the spaceship cockpit by holding Shift and using the mouse scroll wheel. So why not add the ability to do the same, but with a VR headset? Nothing more is required.

In other words, there’s no need to add support for interacting with the world using VR controllers. War Thunder doesn’t have this either. I think they added VR support (which, by the way, has very limited capabilities—nothing was developed for full VR) just to allow head movement in the cockpit. That’s it. And it’s freaking cool! It probably didn’t require significant resources from the company. They continued developing their regular game for regular monitors, and still do. Any new update doesn’t need to be specifically adapted for VR separately. It’s all one game, and in a single match, there can be players both with monitors and with VR!

[Hackod]

This is becoming a dead topic, but seriously, how many among all PC gamers have VR headset? (I for one don't.)

For this much work to develop the VR version, only to realize there are probably only hundreds of new players (total existing players likely exceeds 20K), this is never going to get approved.

War Thunder etc decides to do VR because their user count is in the millions, and they have several 10K users online at the same time. They can therefore think of VR as a gamble to attract VR players; even if it didn't work out, they are large enough (both manpower and financially) to have a team only doing VR. EgoSoft clearly is not in this caliber.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachment ... y=lossless

[CBJ]

You have an extremely selfish and one-sided perspective.

There is no need to get so unpleasant about it. Development resources are finite, and other people are entitled to object to that time being spent on something they have no interest in, and prefer that the time be spent on something they do want.

You may not have a VR headset, but 38% of Steam users do! 38%, Karl! That’s 38% of a paying audience ready to buy the game with all the DLCs if they want to.

And again, the point isn’t to create a new game tailored for VR. The point is to attract a new audience to an already developed game. Let me clarify. In War Thunder, there’s a cross-platform system. This means the same game can be played both on a monitor and with a VR headset. The same concept is being proposed here. While playing X4 on a monitor, you can look around the spaceship cockpit by holding Shift and using the mouse scroll wheel. So why not add the ability to do the same, but with a VR headset? Nothing more is required.

In other words, there’s no need to add support for interacting with the world using VR controllers. War Thunder doesn’t have this either. I think they added VR support (which, by the way, has very limited capabilities—nothing was developed for full VR) just to allow head movement in the cockpit. That’s it. And it’s freaking cool! It probably didn’t require significant resources from the company. They continued developing their regular game for regular monitors, and still do. Any new update doesn’t need to be specifically adapted for VR separately. It’s all one game, and in a single match, there can be players both with monitors and with VR!

What you seem to be completely missing is that we have already tried VR with our previous game. It did take up a lot of developer time and it didn't attract much of a new audience (even with support for a range of controllers), and it cost us considerably more to develop than it brought in as income. You can theorise all you like, but these are facts. It was a fun exercise, and we have no regrets about doing it, but we simply cannot afford to keep throwing developer time at it.

[vvvvvvvv]

3 million users on steam alone.

For context, that's out of 132 million active Steam accounts. Still very niche.

And still a lot of potential sales.

What you seem to be completely missing is that we have already tried VR with our previous game. ...

Your previous game has been released 6 years ago, in 2017. That's before Half-Life Alyx, before even Quest 1. Things changed considerably since and are not the same as they were in 2017.

People are not asking for a perfect tailored experience, but for a low-hanging fruit, where you do minimum amount of work to enable headset tracking. See how Elite or Subnautica does it.

[CBJ]

And still a lot of potential sales.

When you take into account the proportion of those headset-owners who are interested in playing complex space simulation games, it really isn't. I did a quick calculation, and proportionally that works out as just a few thousand people who both play X4 and have VR hardware. Obviously that's not necessarily accurate for various reasons, but it's not going to be several orders of magnitude out.

Things changed considerably since and are not the same as they were in 2017.

You're right, but sadly in some ways they are worse rather than better. Sure, improved consistency of APIs is great, but the range of actual devices and their different capabilities has got even broader, making development fragmented, frustrating and expensive. And some of the things that made the development of XR-VR difficult haven't changed at all: framerates are still an issue, UI is still an issue.

People are not asking for a perfect tailored experience, but for a low-hanging fruit, where you do minimum amount of work to enable headset tracking. See how Elite or Subnautica does it.

Again, this does not tally with our real-world experience. You may say that you're happy with that now, but what happens afterwards is that we get lots of negative feedback about all the things that are not supported, and we then either lose all the benefit that our work was supposed to bring (and more) or we end up spending hundreds more developer hours on "just one more thing" to make VR acceptable to a reasonable number of players.

Just to be clear, we have every sympathy with those who have VR devices and are frustrated by the shortage of games that support those devices, but the reality is that it's a chicken and egg situation. We can't afford to invest more in VR until there are a lot more people with hardware, and a lot more consistency in what that hardware offers. And meanwhile VR device manufacturers are all competing with one another to make their products stand out, fragmenting the market and making it less consistent. It's frustrating for us too, in fact, because we have seen what our games can look like in VR.

[MKL81]

People are not asking for a perfect tailored experience, but for a low-hanging fruit, where you do minimum amount of work to enable headset tracking. See how Elite or Subnautica does it.

I don't think adding VR support with this game, that combines many aspects of 4x meta game and space sim, would have any low hanging fruit anywhere within developers reach (might be wrong of course). Considering also the fact that there are so many other improvements, that myself and other players would like to see in the game, my answer is easy - NO. VR should be very low priority on to do list.

[vvvvvvvv]

I did a quick calculation, and proportionally that works out as just a few thousand people who both play X4 and have VR hardware. Obviously that's not necessarily accurate for various reasons, but it's not going to be several orders of magnitude out.

Consider situation where VR attracts people that would not play the game in flatscreen. For example, one of the best experiences in VR I had were Elite and No Man's Sky. For me, flat-screen Elite has zero appeal and is not interesting, while flat-screen No Man's Sky is average game. VR headset makes a huge difference. Elite becomes an interesting experience, and NMS becomes a must-play.

If number of sales is very low, it means the development cost should be cut to the point where it can be finished by a single employee in weeks. As I said, basic experience, no optimization, no motion controls, etc. One of the games that did it is BeamNG. They added basic VR support. Same deal, had no interest in flatscreen, grabbed it for VR. BeamNG also has small team, and they use Torque engine which is not very difficult from inhouse. Same deal for X-plane, and so on.

So, bottom line is, VR experience in addition to appealing to existing people, attracts NEW players, though not in a huge number.

Examples of games with small small and very small teams are:

* Euro Truck Simulator (unlisted, works)
* Universe Sandbox (tiny team)
* Space Engine (standing on surface of the sun in person is interesting)
* BeamNG.

Regarding fragmentation/etc. Cut out what is unnecessary. For example, target only SteamVR and nothing else. That'll reduce the workload and simplify the situation. Do not optimize for VR, leave as is, mark as experimental and unsupported. The point is to provide entry point where people can see SOMETHING in the headset, that'll open it up for modders.

You kinda already have features like that. And you're already experimenting this way. For example, new Teladi rep interior is very cool, but it certainly won't directly result in a huge number of sales. Your recent DLC, Timelines is another experiment. I'd expect VR support, to cost orders of magnitude less than Timelines. Because situation changed since 2017.

[Hackod]

And still a lot of potential sales.

When you take into account the proportion of those headset-owners who are interested in playing complex space simulation games, it really isn't. I did a quick calculation, and proportionally that works out as just a few thousand people who both play X4 and have VR hardware. Obviously that's not necessarily accurate for various reasons, but it's not going to be several orders of magnitude out.

Things changed considerably since and are not the same as they were in 2017.

You're right, but sadly in some ways they are worse rather than better. Sure, improved consistency of APIs is great, but the range of actual devices and their different capabilities has got even broader, making development fragmented, frustrating and expensive. And some of the things that made the development of XR-VR difficult haven't changed at all: framerates are still an issue, UI is still an issue.

People are not asking for a perfect tailored experience, but for a low-hanging fruit, where you do minimum amount of work to enable headset tracking. See how Elite or Subnautica does it.

Again, this does not tally with our real-world experience. You may say that you're happy with that now, but what happens afterwards is that we get lots of negative feedback about all the things that are not supported, and we then either lose all the benefit that our work was supposed to bring (and more) or we end up spending hundreds more developer hours on "just one more thing" to make VR acceptable to a reasonable number of players.

Just to be clear, we have every sympathy with those who have VR devices and are frustrated by the shortage of games that support those devices, but the reality is that it's a chicken and egg situation. We can't afford to invest more in VR until there are a lot more people with hardware, and a lot more consistency in what that hardware offers. And meanwhile VR device manufacturers are all competing with one another to make their products stand out, fragmenting the market and making it less consistent. It's frustrating for us too, in fact, because we have seen what our games can look like in VR.

Let it be a problem for modders, not yours. Just open a loophole, and people will do everything themselves if there is technical capability. You see, even games that are not designed for VR at all have been turned into VR by modders. Valheim is a good example of this. Just make it possible to launch the game in VR at least with the Steam HTC Vive, without any additional development or significant time investment, and provide some tools that allow modders to edit the interface or other elements needed by users. Moreover, games created specifically for Oculus Rift can also be run on HTC Vive, even though they are essentially different products. People will figure it out themselves if there is at least a basic technical possibility. When I talk about an unofficial mod, that's essentially what I mean—a base on which enthusiasts can implement everything they want.

There's no need for a full VR port; just create an unofficial mod for the existing game X4: Foundation that allows players to turn their heads using a VR headset inside the ship. Additionally, there should be a button to center the headset at the pilot's position, similar to how it works in War Thunder. That’s all that’s needed. There’s no need to change the interface inside the ships; players can adjust it to their preferences themselves.

When the map opens by pressing the M key, a 2D window could simply appear a bit away from the player, like a monitor hanging in the air. Players should be able to adjust its size. Enthusiasts will take it from there and improve the interface, uploading their modifications to Nexus Mods, as long as they have the technical ability to do so.

You wouldn’t even need to worry about it with future updates or DLC since it merely changes the player's camera perspective.

And yes, you're comparing X3: Rebirth and X4: Foundation. Seriously? I bought X3 but never really played it because it was my first introduction to the series, and I didn't understand anything. In the end, it wasn’t interesting. However, I fell in love with X4. From what I’ve heard, X3 and X4 are worlds apart in technical terms, according to veterans of the series.

Moreover, it seems to me that the initial approach was incorrect. The task was too ambitious and overly complicated. Please, just try borrowing a VR headset from someone (or it’s easier to visit), and play War Thunder first on PC from a first-person perspective with an NXT Gladiator joystick or any other, and then play it in VR. You will realize that it’s exactly the same game. The client is even the same. If I'm not mistaken, you released an entirely separate game, significantly complicating the task. Even large companies don't take on such a volume of work.

Essentially, a VR headset just replaces the model of the head, and the player experiences the game incredibly well from the inside. All that exists in VR settings is just a button that allows the current position of the VR headset to be centered to a predefined point set by the developers, thus aligning the camera as if the person is sitting straight and looking directly at the pilot's position. Everything brilliant is simple.

"Just to be clear, we have every sympathy with those who have VR devices and are frustrated by the shortage of games that support those devices, but the reality is that it's a chicken and egg situation. We can't afford to invest more in VR until there are a lot more people with hardware, and a lot more consistency in what that hardware offers. And meanwhile VR device manufacturers are all competing with one another to make their products stand out, fragmenting the market and making it less consistent. It's frustrating for us too, in fact, because we have seen what our games can look like in VR."

Once again, how many VR headsets were there as part of Steam’s user base in 2017? 5-7% at best?

Now it's 38%. But few are interested, myself included, in playing an outdated game in VR. However, X4 is an excellent alternative to something like War Thunder. Although honestly, it’s not even worth comparing the two. X4 will clearly be a favorite, at least for me. Moreover, I don’t really know of any serious offline space simulators that support VR.

[vvvvvvvv]

Let it be a problem for modders, not yours. Just open a loophole, and people will do everything themselves if there is technical capability.

I agree with everything said.

[Hackod]

Oops. I know it would’ve been in my best interest to keep quiet, but the screenshot I provided earlier misled me. It's the popularity among those who own headsets, meaning Oculus is used by 38% of those users. But overall, only 1.69% of all Steam users have a headset... I apologize for the hasty conclusions.

All I can say now is: "Pretty please.") Just as an unofficial mod, which would remove all responsibility from the developers, a basic option to switch the player's camera to a VR headset. This would make VR completely adaptable for any new DLC or update that was created without any consideration for VR.

[Casishur]

Opinion.
It would only be enough if Egosoft would provide the VR API interface for it. the rest, the community could try to do.

Meinung.
Es würde ja lediglich reichen, wenn Egosoft die VR API Schnitstelle dafür bereitstellen würde. den rest, könnte die Community versuchen zu machen.

[vvvvvvvv]

Turrns out, UI is VR compatible. As in fully. Probably has been done to support eye tracking. While any menu is open, you can press numpad 1/3/7/9 to look at a corner, and it'll be visible that the UI is rendered in 3d on a floating transparent panel. That would be the primary point of concern, were it rendered as 2d shapes onto screen. But the work is already done.



So, really, only need to enable rendering into headset, plug in head position data and let modders take it from here, if anyone wants to optimize anything.

[TheDeliveryMan]

Meanwhile, the percentage of NO votes increases.

[Hackod]

Turrns out, UI is VR compatible. As in fully. Probably has been done to support eye tracking. While any menu is open, you can press numpad 1/3/7/9 to look at a corner, and it'll be visible that the UI is rendered in 3d on a floating transparent panel. That would be the primary point of concern, were it rendered as 2d shapes onto screen. But the work is already done.



So, really, only need to enable rendering into headset, plug in head position data and let modders take it from here, if anyone wants to optimize anything.

Brilliant. As if the developers had initially considered such an option. This really, in theory, significantly simplifies the creation of cross-platform access to the same game by simply changing the player's camera to a VR headset. Enthusiastic modders will gladly handle everything else.