I haven't made the jump into VR ... yet. In fact, I'm still using a simple head tracking clip in DCS, Elite and FlightGear. But we're getting closer to some of these developments becoming release quality, even if the titles are limited.
Don't know how many of you have been tracking these developments, like Oculus, Steam and others, but Ars had a good interview with Braben last week on the challenges of real VR.
Braben's 30+ year-old Elite franchise (3 titles from mid '80s to early '90s), which got a "reboot" in 2013-2014 thanx to UK Kickstarter, with the official release in 2015. Since then Frontier has been literally making major game publication houses look stuck in the 20th Century ... including having the only Triple-AAA rated VR game, and pretty much makes any other 3D attempts look laughable or ones that constantly have to be hacked and otherwise tweaked.
Although it slipped, today marked the original release date of Horizons. If you haven't seen the gameplay trailer, and you likely haven't because the "gaming media" doesn't care about Kickstarters, especially not from 50+ year olds who pioneered some of these genres, their channel on YouTube has it.
Ironically, the massive, procedurally generated galaxy (although the first 150,000 stars of the galaxy are based on real stars and real near space), along with the new engine for the planetary landings, have been getting a lot of non-gaming interest. The overall immersion of the game is still unmatched by anything else, which leads to complaints in other areas, by the general "I can't just pick it up and play it like a shooter" and the "there's no fixed plot" arguments.
My favorite channel on YouTube is Obsidian Ant, who has some great examples of the type of expanse involved in the game.
Although there are a lot of reviewers, including Obsidian, on YouTube using VR as well, there's really no way to show it off.
Don't know how many of you have been tracking these developments, like Oculus, Steam and others, but Ars had a good interview with Braben last week on the challenges of real VR.
"Ars talks with David Braben on the challenges of making games for real VR
Elite: Dangerous lead also talks about the game’s 2.0 beta and future features."
2015 Dec 09
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...n-the-challenges-of-making-games-for-real-vr/
Elite: Dangerous lead also talks about the game’s 2.0 beta and future features."
2015 Dec 09
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/...n-the-challenges-of-making-games-for-real-vr/
Braben's 30+ year-old Elite franchise (3 titles from mid '80s to early '90s), which got a "reboot" in 2013-2014 thanx to UK Kickstarter, with the official release in 2015. Since then Frontier has been literally making major game publication houses look stuck in the 20th Century ... including having the only Triple-AAA rated VR game, and pretty much makes any other 3D attempts look laughable or ones that constantly have to be hacked and otherwise tweaked.
"The Oculus Rift makes Elite: Dangerous amazing—and impossible to describe
The worst part about an awesome VR experience is you can’t share it with pix or video."
2014 Nov 06
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/...dangerous-amazing-and-impossible-to-describe/
The worst part about an awesome VR experience is you can’t share it with pix or video."
2014 Nov 06
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/...dangerous-amazing-and-impossible-to-describe/
Although it slipped, today marked the original release date of Horizons. If you haven't seen the gameplay trailer, and you likely haven't because the "gaming media" doesn't care about Kickstarters, especially not from 50+ year olds who pioneered some of these genres, their channel on YouTube has it.
Elite Dangerous: Horizons - Planetary Landing Gameplay Trailer
Ironically, the massive, procedurally generated galaxy (although the first 150,000 stars of the galaxy are based on real stars and real near space), along with the new engine for the planetary landings, have been getting a lot of non-gaming interest. The overall immersion of the game is still unmatched by anything else, which leads to complaints in other areas, by the general "I can't just pick it up and play it like a shooter" and the "there's no fixed plot" arguments.
My favorite channel on YouTube is Obsidian Ant, who has some great examples of the type of expanse involved in the game.
<Obsidian Ant> - Uranus' moon Ariel in-game (7:15 mark)
<Obsidian Ant> - Galaxy Map, Far Side of the Galaxy in-game (9:00 mark)
Although there are a lot of reviewers, including Obsidian, on YouTube using VR as well, there's really no way to show it off.
Added Note: I'm still hopeful we'll get a Linux port, which is virtually the #1 request among Kickstarter supporters, along with an off-line, subset of the galaxy. With Apple being so far behind on adopting newer OpenGL v3+ support, which is required for Horizons, they've had to drop OS X as a platform. So there's hope that team might start doing Linux, especially with Steam VR having a devkit and the SteamOS being a major, development focus for them.
![[roll]](http://l.yimg.com/j/assets/img/emoticons/classic/roll.r191677.gif "roll [roll]")
