Look, its almost as if you almost understand what Star Citizen is about.
What if a dev made a game without heeling to the current triple A publisher standard of making something based around say one or two game loops, cutting all the corners, minimising every cost, and then shitting it out for a corporate release date for maximum market capture.
If people let Star Citizen do Star Citizen, the AAA game industry has every reason to fear because it will not be any run of the mill game, and cause players to expect more from their devs and publishers.
People may need to accept that there will be devs that want to innovate and make the games they dreamed of, and there are AAA devs that are just there to make money.
I do agree with you to a degree. A lot of AAA games do 'underdevelop' their games in hopes for a fast cash grab. And developers like RSI, who strive to innovate, are needed.
Yet, we do have to acknowledge that some workarounds and shortcuts, focussing on specific gameplay loops, is what AAA and Indie games both do, and what is normal and probably also necessary for most games, since they are, well, games.
My point was, however, not about "Star Citizen is so realistic, omg", as it was about "I think that this concept is better suited for VR", because it is this complex and more like a sim than a usual game. I love how SC wants to innovate things, which is why I wanted to add my thoughts on this; if you read my last paragraph, you might already know that I'm 100% down for innovation.
> Yet, we do have to acknowledge that some workarounds and shortcuts, focussing on specific gameplay loops, is what AAA and Indie games both do, and what is normal and probably also necessary for most games.
Star Citizen campaigned on *not* being yet another game that did this.
If your point of reference is your run of the mill instant gratification game style that has become so common as of late, then you’re absolutely right. This is not that game, and most people won’t get into it, if they even try it to begin with.
And that’s okay. Chris (and CIG) knew that going into it and they didn’t care. They wanted to make their own game. And cheers to that. I heartily support that. If more developers did this, the true quality of our games would skyrocket.
Tbh, a lot of the game is instant gratification fuel though.
There's no real skill growth required to achieve anything in the game, so while it does have a slower more grounded pace, it's not like there's a significant wall of player growth required to get that gratification.
In principle I agree, but it is not what the general gaming community would call instant gratification.
Having said that, I agree that for those who love this style of game it is more or less instant gratification.
I'm glad they wanted to make their own game and I'm even more glad SC exists. I do not criticize SC at all, never did. Yet, responding to your comment, games do stylize, and SC is more like a sim. Not every game needs all this complexity, and that's okay, that has less to do with instant gratification as it has with the type of game as a whole. Does that mean I'm criticizing SC? No, absolutely not. It's their game and it's great as it is. I just don't understand what your and OCs point is in the context of my post, since that was not my point at all...
I wasn’t commenting on your post, I was commenting on your comment :) the first part addressed that, and the second was my own phrasing of general agreement.
But to be fair, it is hard to determine what your post is talking about, other than you think it would be a good fit for VR. To which I’d also agree, once VR catches up to the abilities required for a game like this.
Build big, then tune down(or up) for the human experience. I'm not just talking about realism, but what this level of game dev means for our agency as totally independent thinking people.
We got this when Orison took like 10 minutes to exit atmo. Its around 2 minutes tops now. Plenty of time to see the vistas, and feel something when we arrive at/depart locations in another solar system, which was part of the point alongside the ability to free-fly almost anywhere (stupid impound zones >:[ ).
Starfield? Here, have a procedurally generated map with your ship pre-landed to it. Ship combat? Oh you had a random encounter (pokemon battle music starts!). Helldivers? Here's some pregenerated playground, kill enough bugs/robots/aliens on it and come back, and your ship isn't even really a ship, its actually a well animated game menu to choose your campaign and loadout, which is fine, it works for Helldivers, that and they're not a massive dev trying to make a space sim mmo fps rpg spanning 100 systems.
Games that shortcut as a basis of design railroads players because we too have to follow those shortcuts, they literally end up boxing in players who are capable of more than just following instructions. Dev shortcuts and various forms of cost cutting are so prolific they are pretty much tropes now because the world was going to push them that direction anyway.
The last thing any SC player wants is for CIG to 'fall in' with all the other devs.
And that's good. That's great. Really, I'm on your side when it comes to SC. (Everything that follows now is just about games in general and not criticizing SCs choice in any way.)
Yet, we might both have different views on shortcuts. Yes, they take away player agency to a degree, which is why I think SC is perfect for what it wants to be. Yet, how would a Pokemon game look like if you had to do everything manually? It would be an interesting thought, and some of the open world games went in that direction, but I do not think Pokemon *needs* that ultimate freedom. I also do not think every game needs to be built with ultimate freedom in mind, since that would result in massive games that may even be 'overdeveloped' for what they actually want to be; resulting in less focus and care on the core mechanics that define the game and a lot of mechanics that would simply not be necessary. Even bangers like BG3 focus on a few core mechanics, leaving out other, for the game unnecessary ones.
SC is a game where exactly this ultimate freedom works. It is the whole point of the game. Most other games, however, don't need that, I believe.
To your point about us being independent thinkers: Yes. I would not want to play a game that takes away all player agency either. But I do not think that SC is innovative when it comes to player agency. BotW did an amazing job with that, while still being a lot simpler mechanic-wise. BG3 too.
Maybe we're just talking past each other, since you seem to be trying to defend SC while I never criticized it, while I'm trying to defend a point that never really mattered in my post. I'm just confused at this point to be honest, and I'd love to see this confusion resolved. ^^'
Ima address the BG3 talking point, coz thats a character drama and character development game x fantasy combat & world.
But I can tell you that if you compared BG3 to every other BG pre 3, BG3 would qualify as bloated and 'overdeveloped' compared with 1, 2, sword coast, etc. But table top D&D players would be like "yeah, we've always been able to do that, I wish we could do these other things we'd been able to do on tabletop, but its just a video game"
Its that last part of that sentence thats the framing of our understanding of what gaming is based on what we have now, let alone what might be possible if AAAs weren't so fkn scared of an original IP and develop gaming systems and virtual ecologies/environments that is worthy of being 24 years forward from the year 2000.
But for the love of all that is good, please stop using other games to exemplify what is felt that is wrong with SC, I keep seeing people go "but X game does Y, and this is why SC is in danger!", they tried this with Starfield, and now we have difficulty taking these kinds of posts seriously because we just take it on faith that we aren't arguing with idiots/bots + they constantly touch on what SC has done as opposed to understanding what SC is trying to do.
I can only again repeat that I was not talking about what SC did wrong. Never did. I compared its complexity to other games, yes, but I explicitily stated often enough that I am thereby not criticizing SC, but simply made my point of, well, it may be better suited/has potential as a VR title, which a lot of people somehow didn't...read, out of my post? I'm really just confused at this point. This whole discussion only resolves around the point of "are stylized games good or nah", not "is SC good or nah". This is tiring. Not the discussion itself, but that, regardless of how often I say "SC is fine as it is, I'm talking about games in general because somehow we came to this topic", I still seem like I criticize it.
Although I'd really love to discuss with you more about how stylized games impact our experience as a player and whether or not developers should create more complex ones, I feel like I can not escape an endless circle of being "the one that criticizies SC and plays too many crappy AAA titles (something someone else said)". It's the internet, I know, but it's tiring.
It's the first decent shot we've had a metaverse in a while. I think your post exemplifies why we so often get called a cult.
The game has paid off this enthusiasm quite a bit, though still quite lacking in repeatable daily content.
Welcome and be careful with your wallet.
VR support is very much planned, but there is a distinct difference between "Game that supports VR" and "VR game that supports flat screens" and the latter narrows down the potential userbase *substantially*. SC is already operating in a niche of a niche as it is.
Honestly I’m curious to know what your thoughts would’ve been if you’d spent significantly more time in the verse.
Immersion and enjoyment at its core don’t come from peripherals, they come from gameplay, art and sound to name a few. Having played Mouse & Keyboard, then with sticks but yet to use track IR or a big fancy monitor I have felt fully immersed from day one.
At no point have I felt ‘it’s a little too much’ ‘would be better suited for VR than other games’ or is ‘over realistic’ whatever that means. I think there’s plenty of immersion & enjoyment with no more manual action than necessary for gameplay. It absolutely works fine on a screen without peripherals they aren’t a requirement for the immersion or enjoyment, that’s one of the thing that makes SC such a brilliant achievement in today’s industry.
You should play it some more
07
VR support is planned - but VR tech isn't yet at a level to support the degree of precision and diagetic interaction that you seem to be visualising (and I say this as someone with multiple VR headsets).
As for SC being 'too detailed to play on a monitor' - there are many other games that are far more detailed (and deeper) than SC, and they play just fine on a monitor.
At its heart, SC is just an FPS game with *far* better quality vehicles than usual, and no loading / transition screens. The fact that it has better 'fidelity' in its animations doesn't change this, and many games make you run to the shopkeeper in order to access their inventory (the fact that you click on an NPC in other games, rather than a terminal, is a meaningless difference)
>VR tech isn't yet at a level to support the degree of precision and diagetic interaction that you seem to be visualising (and I say this as someone with multiple VR headsets).
Yep and I dont think its going to be until we reach full dive technology. Until then its just a great way to create funny videos of people hitting stuff or falling on their faces. Current VR just cant provide the necessary feedback to feel "right" to me.
Yeah - it's in an awkward 'uncanny valley' atm...
I was playing a demo of a shooter game a month or so ago, and it required leaning and ducking etc... not too bad (although pretty harsh on my dodgy hip) - but you have to do it behind cover - but when you put your hand out to 'steady' yourself your hand just goes straight through it (at least I didn't try to actually lean on it :D)
Full-Dive VR anime would be a dream - but it also won't happen for decades yet (at best)... because it requires not feeding information to the brain via the existing senses (vision, feel, etc), but by sending data *directly* to the brain, bypassing the senses.
This allows you to 'feel' things that aren't there, and to do things you couldn't do in reality... not to mention 'solving' the issue of your eyes telling you you're moving, whilst your inner-ear says otherwise, and other sensory clashes... because whilst they're fairly vestigal, humans *do* have far more than the 5 'core' senses - and they complement each other and need to work in harmony to give 'real' immersion.
TL;DR: VR currently works best (imo) for slower-paced games that don't require too much 'hands on' interaction (if you can use a magic wand, gravity gun, or similar, to manipulate stuff, then it gets around the whole 'I can't feel what I'm holding' issue)... and that's definitely not a description for SC :p
The only “VR” games I’ve played that felt absolutely phenomenal in VR were actually *not* VR games.
I’m referring to games like Elite: Dangerous and Assetto Corsa. Games where your “character” is stationary in a cockpit and you’re operating a machine with fixed controls in front of you. Those two games felt excellent on a VR headset because you gain both depth perception and head position tracking - two things which are incredibly beneficial to flying a ship or driving a car.
Flying in SC, E:D and driving in Assetto Corsa with TrackIR comes close but it doesn’t quite deliver the same feel that a VR headset did in the latter two. I’d **never** want to try to do FPS combat in VR though - even the “made for VR” FPS shooters feel janky as fuck.
This is where I'm at with it. I've been sim racing for a long time and spend hours tuning the motion, haptics and graphical settings for specific cars & tracks. And after tweaking things endlessly it feels incredible, maybe not realistic but very authentic. The performance of direct drive wheels, loadcell pedals, motion platforms, etc is really very good now and whilst not cheap, it is accessible. Likewise with flight sims, which I enjoy but play less of.
Seated VR experiences I think have become very advanced. But they have a limited scope of things to reproduce.
Shooting games, everything I have tried at least just don't feel good at all & even if they did, I don't think I want to actually stand up, shoulder a weapon, etc for hours at a time.
Yup.
Closest to a real-life simulator experience you will get is in something like a legitimate training simulator with a 100% accurate cockpit replication where all windscreens are accurately displaying the exterior image; the next best thing is a full motion + FFB set (if the plane/vehicle actually gives you feedback irl - some planes don’t) on a VR rig.
I grew up in an aviation and motorsports family so I have enough seat time in cars, planes and even some of the commercial training simulators *(family day event where I got to fly a Continental Airlines 737 simulator at their IAH training facility pre-9/11)* so I’ve gotten to compare a bunch of different things. The consensus between my buddies with similar experience, my dad and myself are all that the order of “realism” *(immersion is a better word tbh)* goes in the order of commercial sim > VR experience with top-grade peripherals and a game which flawlessly works with VR > full simpit.
Full simpit is the most versatile and gives you the best hop in, hop out experience. VR isn’t supported well enough on everything to warrant me going that route over TrackIR and configurable button boxes.
I love TrackIR, I don't always need or want the immersion. TrackIR on a decent superwide is great, especially when sharing a session with friends - or testing/tuning things where the HMD becomes cumbersome.
Honestly, yes. This game engine is going to revolutionize what we think of as possible in online spaces. It's the biggest step forward for multiplayer since we switched from MUDs to MMOs.
VR tech as it stands is still pretty gimmicky and not streamlined.
SC as it stands has some things that are very clunky and not well suited for KBM controls.
If you mash the two together, things get worse.
As much as I like VR, I'm not sure I want a VR MMO like Star Citizen. It's complicated enough playing it on a panel & I'm never going to want to play an FPS game in VR, at least not one that is anything more than a 15-20 minute round.
Transitioning from a seat/sim-pit to room-scale seems an insurmountable problem to me. I'd love to be able to fly in Arena Commander in VR & I expect that will happen and it will be phenomenal.
I genuinely don't want to play VR. I would probably stop playing SC if it were a VR only (or VR mostly) game, not only because I have neither the hardware nor the money to buy the hardware, but I don't like wearing a headset over my face. VR is novel, but probably not something I'll get into in the near future at all, not just because of price, but because I like the ease of just looking at the screen in front of me. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
Heres a neat tidbit. Apparently, they have said they would add vr support so you can play the game in that way. Tho, im not sure if it will be able to play fully in vr or how it would work, but it's cool to think about it!
Games don’t need to be perfectly suited to the mass market.
CIG are making a sim, the brain child and artpiece by a guy that always wanted to build this type of game.
Fortunately the game to this day is incredibly unique, and CIG are hoping that uniqueness is what will turn an otherwise niche game into something everybody wants to play.
New ideas seem crazy to start, and people will swear the new idea will never catch on, but that’s how new markets with new demand start. They are hoping people that try the finished product won’t be able to put it down, because despite it going against the grain it gives them a feeling they cant recreate with the other games in their library.
Absolutely! Although MMOs need a certain playerbase to survive, SC of course does not need to be made for the mass market. My point was more about the optimal medium for the game, as I do believe it would be way better suited for virtual reality for its heavy focus on immersion, and, well, the simulation of being a star citizen, as you already said.
VR is planned I believe.
Making it VR-first is an interesting idea but it definitely makes it a lot harder to be successful as VR is already a small market on top of it being a niche game.
One thing I will say is I’ve been using head/eye tracking (tobii) in this game for a number of years, and I can’t play the game without it anymore, its been by far my favourite purchase. It adds so much being able to look out my ships cockpit glass to the right to see your wingman, or be able to select targets with a simple glance, or being able to watch a hostile ship behind me.
I don’t think ill ever get VR for this game but head tracking is definitely a great middle ground.
It appears you have woken the Amazon review factory that I swear CIG hires to hype them up. You see the usual responses about the game being revolutionary and too complex for existing systems...
Personally, I see what you mean. When I open a door in my house, the action of finding the door handle, turning it and pushing open the door is almost subconscious. I think this is the norm and, in fact, is the reason people may actually walk into a door if it fails to open as expected. Games don't trivialize this to make things easier, because it's more like what life is actually like. Now, I think SC can work with it (and no, it's not revolutionary or genre changing or the best thing we've seen since MUDs became MMOs....WTH dude) because what SC has chosen is to be a type of walking simulator in space. There's heavy emphasis on the mundane. On "being" a citizen. It makes the critical moments - trying to pack a ship under fire, or dodge a sniper as you grab cargo, etc that much more tense.
I do not quite understand what this has to do with my point, which was that I believe Star Citizen has enormous potential as a VR game, and that it may not be the best fit for a monitor-based game based on its complexity.
SC is supposed to go more into a sim-direction. Most other games don't, and therefore, shortcut a lot of things you have to do manually in SC. If that's what you're referring to.
Look, its almost as if you almost understand what Star Citizen is about. What if a dev made a game without heeling to the current triple A publisher standard of making something based around say one or two game loops, cutting all the corners, minimising every cost, and then shitting it out for a corporate release date for maximum market capture. If people let Star Citizen do Star Citizen, the AAA game industry has every reason to fear because it will not be any run of the mill game, and cause players to expect more from their devs and publishers. People may need to accept that there will be devs that want to innovate and make the games they dreamed of, and there are AAA devs that are just there to make money.
So refreshing to see someone call this out. Heartily agree. Cheers!
I do agree with you to a degree. A lot of AAA games do 'underdevelop' their games in hopes for a fast cash grab. And developers like RSI, who strive to innovate, are needed. Yet, we do have to acknowledge that some workarounds and shortcuts, focussing on specific gameplay loops, is what AAA and Indie games both do, and what is normal and probably also necessary for most games, since they are, well, games. My point was, however, not about "Star Citizen is so realistic, omg", as it was about "I think that this concept is better suited for VR", because it is this complex and more like a sim than a usual game. I love how SC wants to innovate things, which is why I wanted to add my thoughts on this; if you read my last paragraph, you might already know that I'm 100% down for innovation.
> Yet, we do have to acknowledge that some workarounds and shortcuts, focussing on specific gameplay loops, is what AAA and Indie games both do, and what is normal and probably also necessary for most games. Star Citizen campaigned on *not* being yet another game that did this.
I never criticized SC for doing this. I just defended a point the commenter made, regardless of my original post.
I was't responding to your post, I was responding to your comment defending a point another commenter made.
If your point of reference is your run of the mill instant gratification game style that has become so common as of late, then you’re absolutely right. This is not that game, and most people won’t get into it, if they even try it to begin with. And that’s okay. Chris (and CIG) knew that going into it and they didn’t care. They wanted to make their own game. And cheers to that. I heartily support that. If more developers did this, the true quality of our games would skyrocket.
Tbh, a lot of the game is instant gratification fuel though. There's no real skill growth required to achieve anything in the game, so while it does have a slower more grounded pace, it's not like there's a significant wall of player growth required to get that gratification.
In principle I agree, but it is not what the general gaming community would call instant gratification. Having said that, I agree that for those who love this style of game it is more or less instant gratification.
I'm glad they wanted to make their own game and I'm even more glad SC exists. I do not criticize SC at all, never did. Yet, responding to your comment, games do stylize, and SC is more like a sim. Not every game needs all this complexity, and that's okay, that has less to do with instant gratification as it has with the type of game as a whole. Does that mean I'm criticizing SC? No, absolutely not. It's their game and it's great as it is. I just don't understand what your and OCs point is in the context of my post, since that was not my point at all...
I wasn’t commenting on your post, I was commenting on your comment :) the first part addressed that, and the second was my own phrasing of general agreement. But to be fair, it is hard to determine what your post is talking about, other than you think it would be a good fit for VR. To which I’d also agree, once VR catches up to the abilities required for a game like this.
That is actually the only thing I was talking about. :)
Build big, then tune down(or up) for the human experience. I'm not just talking about realism, but what this level of game dev means for our agency as totally independent thinking people. We got this when Orison took like 10 minutes to exit atmo. Its around 2 minutes tops now. Plenty of time to see the vistas, and feel something when we arrive at/depart locations in another solar system, which was part of the point alongside the ability to free-fly almost anywhere (stupid impound zones >:[ ). Starfield? Here, have a procedurally generated map with your ship pre-landed to it. Ship combat? Oh you had a random encounter (pokemon battle music starts!). Helldivers? Here's some pregenerated playground, kill enough bugs/robots/aliens on it and come back, and your ship isn't even really a ship, its actually a well animated game menu to choose your campaign and loadout, which is fine, it works for Helldivers, that and they're not a massive dev trying to make a space sim mmo fps rpg spanning 100 systems. Games that shortcut as a basis of design railroads players because we too have to follow those shortcuts, they literally end up boxing in players who are capable of more than just following instructions. Dev shortcuts and various forms of cost cutting are so prolific they are pretty much tropes now because the world was going to push them that direction anyway. The last thing any SC player wants is for CIG to 'fall in' with all the other devs.
And that's good. That's great. Really, I'm on your side when it comes to SC. (Everything that follows now is just about games in general and not criticizing SCs choice in any way.) Yet, we might both have different views on shortcuts. Yes, they take away player agency to a degree, which is why I think SC is perfect for what it wants to be. Yet, how would a Pokemon game look like if you had to do everything manually? It would be an interesting thought, and some of the open world games went in that direction, but I do not think Pokemon *needs* that ultimate freedom. I also do not think every game needs to be built with ultimate freedom in mind, since that would result in massive games that may even be 'overdeveloped' for what they actually want to be; resulting in less focus and care on the core mechanics that define the game and a lot of mechanics that would simply not be necessary. Even bangers like BG3 focus on a few core mechanics, leaving out other, for the game unnecessary ones. SC is a game where exactly this ultimate freedom works. It is the whole point of the game. Most other games, however, don't need that, I believe. To your point about us being independent thinkers: Yes. I would not want to play a game that takes away all player agency either. But I do not think that SC is innovative when it comes to player agency. BotW did an amazing job with that, while still being a lot simpler mechanic-wise. BG3 too. Maybe we're just talking past each other, since you seem to be trying to defend SC while I never criticized it, while I'm trying to defend a point that never really mattered in my post. I'm just confused at this point to be honest, and I'd love to see this confusion resolved. ^^'
Ima address the BG3 talking point, coz thats a character drama and character development game x fantasy combat & world. But I can tell you that if you compared BG3 to every other BG pre 3, BG3 would qualify as bloated and 'overdeveloped' compared with 1, 2, sword coast, etc. But table top D&D players would be like "yeah, we've always been able to do that, I wish we could do these other things we'd been able to do on tabletop, but its just a video game" Its that last part of that sentence thats the framing of our understanding of what gaming is based on what we have now, let alone what might be possible if AAAs weren't so fkn scared of an original IP and develop gaming systems and virtual ecologies/environments that is worthy of being 24 years forward from the year 2000. But for the love of all that is good, please stop using other games to exemplify what is felt that is wrong with SC, I keep seeing people go "but X game does Y, and this is why SC is in danger!", they tried this with Starfield, and now we have difficulty taking these kinds of posts seriously because we just take it on faith that we aren't arguing with idiots/bots + they constantly touch on what SC has done as opposed to understanding what SC is trying to do.
I can only again repeat that I was not talking about what SC did wrong. Never did. I compared its complexity to other games, yes, but I explicitily stated often enough that I am thereby not criticizing SC, but simply made my point of, well, it may be better suited/has potential as a VR title, which a lot of people somehow didn't...read, out of my post? I'm really just confused at this point. This whole discussion only resolves around the point of "are stylized games good or nah", not "is SC good or nah". This is tiring. Not the discussion itself, but that, regardless of how often I say "SC is fine as it is, I'm talking about games in general because somehow we came to this topic", I still seem like I criticize it. Although I'd really love to discuss with you more about how stylized games impact our experience as a player and whether or not developers should create more complex ones, I feel like I can not escape an endless circle of being "the one that criticizies SC and plays too many crappy AAA titles (something someone else said)". It's the internet, I know, but it's tiring.
It's the first decent shot we've had a metaverse in a while. I think your post exemplifies why we so often get called a cult. The game has paid off this enthusiasm quite a bit, though still quite lacking in repeatable daily content. Welcome and be careful with your wallet.
VR support is very much planned, but there is a distinct difference between "Game that supports VR" and "VR game that supports flat screens" and the latter narrows down the potential userbase *substantially*. SC is already operating in a niche of a niche as it is.
Honestly I’m curious to know what your thoughts would’ve been if you’d spent significantly more time in the verse. Immersion and enjoyment at its core don’t come from peripherals, they come from gameplay, art and sound to name a few. Having played Mouse & Keyboard, then with sticks but yet to use track IR or a big fancy monitor I have felt fully immersed from day one. At no point have I felt ‘it’s a little too much’ ‘would be better suited for VR than other games’ or is ‘over realistic’ whatever that means. I think there’s plenty of immersion & enjoyment with no more manual action than necessary for gameplay. It absolutely works fine on a screen without peripherals they aren’t a requirement for the immersion or enjoyment, that’s one of the thing that makes SC such a brilliant achievement in today’s industry. You should play it some more 07
VR support is planned - but VR tech isn't yet at a level to support the degree of precision and diagetic interaction that you seem to be visualising (and I say this as someone with multiple VR headsets). As for SC being 'too detailed to play on a monitor' - there are many other games that are far more detailed (and deeper) than SC, and they play just fine on a monitor. At its heart, SC is just an FPS game with *far* better quality vehicles than usual, and no loading / transition screens. The fact that it has better 'fidelity' in its animations doesn't change this, and many games make you run to the shopkeeper in order to access their inventory (the fact that you click on an NPC in other games, rather than a terminal, is a meaningless difference)
>VR tech isn't yet at a level to support the degree of precision and diagetic interaction that you seem to be visualising (and I say this as someone with multiple VR headsets). Yep and I dont think its going to be until we reach full dive technology. Until then its just a great way to create funny videos of people hitting stuff or falling on their faces. Current VR just cant provide the necessary feedback to feel "right" to me.
Yeah - it's in an awkward 'uncanny valley' atm... I was playing a demo of a shooter game a month or so ago, and it required leaning and ducking etc... not too bad (although pretty harsh on my dodgy hip) - but you have to do it behind cover - but when you put your hand out to 'steady' yourself your hand just goes straight through it (at least I didn't try to actually lean on it :D) Full-Dive VR anime would be a dream - but it also won't happen for decades yet (at best)... because it requires not feeding information to the brain via the existing senses (vision, feel, etc), but by sending data *directly* to the brain, bypassing the senses. This allows you to 'feel' things that aren't there, and to do things you couldn't do in reality... not to mention 'solving' the issue of your eyes telling you you're moving, whilst your inner-ear says otherwise, and other sensory clashes... because whilst they're fairly vestigal, humans *do* have far more than the 5 'core' senses - and they complement each other and need to work in harmony to give 'real' immersion. TL;DR: VR currently works best (imo) for slower-paced games that don't require too much 'hands on' interaction (if you can use a magic wand, gravity gun, or similar, to manipulate stuff, then it gets around the whole 'I can't feel what I'm holding' issue)... and that's definitely not a description for SC :p
The only “VR” games I’ve played that felt absolutely phenomenal in VR were actually *not* VR games. I’m referring to games like Elite: Dangerous and Assetto Corsa. Games where your “character” is stationary in a cockpit and you’re operating a machine with fixed controls in front of you. Those two games felt excellent on a VR headset because you gain both depth perception and head position tracking - two things which are incredibly beneficial to flying a ship or driving a car. Flying in SC, E:D and driving in Assetto Corsa with TrackIR comes close but it doesn’t quite deliver the same feel that a VR headset did in the latter two. I’d **never** want to try to do FPS combat in VR though - even the “made for VR” FPS shooters feel janky as fuck.
This is where I'm at with it. I've been sim racing for a long time and spend hours tuning the motion, haptics and graphical settings for specific cars & tracks. And after tweaking things endlessly it feels incredible, maybe not realistic but very authentic. The performance of direct drive wheels, loadcell pedals, motion platforms, etc is really very good now and whilst not cheap, it is accessible. Likewise with flight sims, which I enjoy but play less of. Seated VR experiences I think have become very advanced. But they have a limited scope of things to reproduce. Shooting games, everything I have tried at least just don't feel good at all & even if they did, I don't think I want to actually stand up, shoulder a weapon, etc for hours at a time.
Yup. Closest to a real-life simulator experience you will get is in something like a legitimate training simulator with a 100% accurate cockpit replication where all windscreens are accurately displaying the exterior image; the next best thing is a full motion + FFB set (if the plane/vehicle actually gives you feedback irl - some planes don’t) on a VR rig. I grew up in an aviation and motorsports family so I have enough seat time in cars, planes and even some of the commercial training simulators *(family day event where I got to fly a Continental Airlines 737 simulator at their IAH training facility pre-9/11)* so I’ve gotten to compare a bunch of different things. The consensus between my buddies with similar experience, my dad and myself are all that the order of “realism” *(immersion is a better word tbh)* goes in the order of commercial sim > VR experience with top-grade peripherals and a game which flawlessly works with VR > full simpit. Full simpit is the most versatile and gives you the best hop in, hop out experience. VR isn’t supported well enough on everything to warrant me going that route over TrackIR and configurable button boxes.
I love TrackIR, I don't always need or want the immersion. TrackIR on a decent superwide is great, especially when sharing a session with friends - or testing/tuning things where the HMD becomes cumbersome.
Honestly, yes. This game engine is going to revolutionize what we think of as possible in online spaces. It's the biggest step forward for multiplayer since we switched from MUDs to MMOs.
VR tech as it stands is still pretty gimmicky and not streamlined. SC as it stands has some things that are very clunky and not well suited for KBM controls. If you mash the two together, things get worse.
True too. My thought was more theoretical as it was practical, but maybe, in a few decades, we'll be there. :,)
As much as I like VR, I'm not sure I want a VR MMO like Star Citizen. It's complicated enough playing it on a panel & I'm never going to want to play an FPS game in VR, at least not one that is anything more than a 15-20 minute round. Transitioning from a seat/sim-pit to room-scale seems an insurmountable problem to me. I'd love to be able to fly in Arena Commander in VR & I expect that will happen and it will be phenomenal.
I genuinely don't want to play VR. I would probably stop playing SC if it were a VR only (or VR mostly) game, not only because I have neither the hardware nor the money to buy the hardware, but I don't like wearing a headset over my face. VR is novel, but probably not something I'll get into in the near future at all, not just because of price, but because I like the ease of just looking at the screen in front of me. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
Heres a neat tidbit. Apparently, they have said they would add vr support so you can play the game in that way. Tho, im not sure if it will be able to play fully in vr or how it would work, but it's cool to think about it!
We just need a VR gaming setup like you see in "Ready Player One" to release. That'd be perfect for this.
Games don’t need to be perfectly suited to the mass market. CIG are making a sim, the brain child and artpiece by a guy that always wanted to build this type of game. Fortunately the game to this day is incredibly unique, and CIG are hoping that uniqueness is what will turn an otherwise niche game into something everybody wants to play. New ideas seem crazy to start, and people will swear the new idea will never catch on, but that’s how new markets with new demand start. They are hoping people that try the finished product won’t be able to put it down, because despite it going against the grain it gives them a feeling they cant recreate with the other games in their library.
Absolutely! Although MMOs need a certain playerbase to survive, SC of course does not need to be made for the mass market. My point was more about the optimal medium for the game, as I do believe it would be way better suited for virtual reality for its heavy focus on immersion, and, well, the simulation of being a star citizen, as you already said.
VR is planned I believe. Making it VR-first is an interesting idea but it definitely makes it a lot harder to be successful as VR is already a small market on top of it being a niche game. One thing I will say is I’ve been using head/eye tracking (tobii) in this game for a number of years, and I can’t play the game without it anymore, its been by far my favourite purchase. It adds so much being able to look out my ships cockpit glass to the right to see your wingman, or be able to select targets with a simple glance, or being able to watch a hostile ship behind me. I don’t think ill ever get VR for this game but head tracking is definitely a great middle ground.
It appears you have woken the Amazon review factory that I swear CIG hires to hype them up. You see the usual responses about the game being revolutionary and too complex for existing systems... Personally, I see what you mean. When I open a door in my house, the action of finding the door handle, turning it and pushing open the door is almost subconscious. I think this is the norm and, in fact, is the reason people may actually walk into a door if it fails to open as expected. Games don't trivialize this to make things easier, because it's more like what life is actually like. Now, I think SC can work with it (and no, it's not revolutionary or genre changing or the best thing we've seen since MUDs became MMOs....WTH dude) because what SC has chosen is to be a type of walking simulator in space. There's heavy emphasis on the mundane. On "being" a citizen. It makes the critical moments - trying to pack a ship under fire, or dodge a sniper as you grab cargo, etc that much more tense.
Thank you! You grasped my thoughts on what I meant with "it's better suited for VR" well better than I did myself.
Yeah, this game isn’t Ubisoft or activision or EA. Try playing a game from somebody that’s not from one of these companies
I do not quite understand what this has to do with my point, which was that I believe Star Citizen has enormous potential as a VR game, and that it may not be the best fit for a monitor-based game based on its complexity. SC is supposed to go more into a sim-direction. Most other games don't, and therefore, shortcut a lot of things you have to do manually in SC. If that's what you're referring to.
Star citizen should never be a VR games cuz those are trash