Elite, Braben, Kickstarter!

[Arwin]

I have enough games to play now, but am very interested. I think I'll hold off until I get a VR headset. I think that will be waiting for the consumer edition of the Oculus to come out. I will then upgrade my current i7 16GB PC with a decent GPU and powerbrick, and then everything will probably be perfect. Ah the virtues of being patient, they eventually pay off (it's the waiting that hurts )

 

[lanek]

I went and bought the Thrustmaster Warthog stick (without the throttle). It's ridiculously heavy and awesome! Now I'm just waiting for the 16th.

Had use this one for DCS A10C .. Well hard to find better than it for flight on the warthog, excellent quality, precision, everything you want, this one have it, perfect ( outside the cost ).

With my old one i was nearly unable to do an aerial refueling, with the Thrusmaster warthog one, no problem.. ( lol )

 

[Kyyla]

I've been playing this a lot and I like the game even though it is a very free form sandbox at the moment. The game has a great skeleton that just needs a little more meat around the bones. Anyway having enough fun trading and occasionally fighting.

The game has awesome sound desing btw and looks good! The first time you jump to a star system and arrive next to the star is a spectacle in itself.

 

[hughJ]

The game has a great skeleton that just needs a little more meat around the bones.

Yeah, this sort of sandbox style game sort of lives or dies on the ability to foster emergent gameplay where the players essentially become the content by being able to influence the game world in meaningful ways. There's probably a bit of a split with regards to how to achieve that gameplay depth. You've got the "younger" players (< 35) that might be wanting a more EVE-like, community focused game where the ebb and flow of the game world is dictated by those who can sink time into the game, and then you've got the older group that basically just want an updated version of the original without the pressure and frenetic pace of a competitive persistent world. If the forum poll regarding the age demographic breakdown is anything to go by, the majority of the playerbase is actually above 35 year old. Been a long time since I've been below the median age group for a game.

I've been playing this game exclusively in the Oculus DK2 now for the last week and I don't think I'll be able to go back to a monitor now for this game. The resolution and performance are only just barely playable, but every little mundane action that you pay no notice of with a monitor feels like an event when you're sitting in the cockpit of a spaceship. Coming in to land at the small station docks puts a smile on my face because of the extreme amount of confidence you get by being able to track the pad location and judge your rotation and deceleration with your eyesight. Instead of incrementally nudging your thrusters back and forth and double checking your nav instrumentation for your reference, you sort of come in at high speed and do it all in one motion (kinda like parallel parking a car after you've had a lot of practice.) I fly much much riskier now and have to constantly ignore the proximity warnings going off because I make approaches much faster and much closer than I ever did with a monitor.

 

[Kyyla]

The oculus integration sounds pretty amazing. I guess I will have to get one when they release the consumer version

 

[Daozang]

I'm using a Sidewinder 2 force feedback (from my X-Wing days) and a G13 with the stick set to analogue for forward and lateral thrusters. Now I need the rift to be released and I'm set!
I really like everything about the game especially the sound efects.
It needs refinement for sure, but the foundations are there for an amazing experience!

 

[Davros]

Does the game support force feedback?

 

[cheapchips]

No. They've not announced plans to as far as I know. FD tend to keep things close to their chest though.

 

[Daozang]

No unfortunately it doesn't support force feedback.
The only thing missing for me to relive the glory that was X-Wing Alliance!
But honestly what I want the most, is a consumer Rift release at 1440p.
I hear it's the definitive rift experience.

 

[hughJ]

ED with a 1440p 90hz consumer Rift will pretty much necessitate a VR/per-eye SLI mode (and even that may well not be enough if scaling isn't perfect), cause even the 970/980's can't confidently hold 1080p/75fps in VR. Elite Dangerous will probably be the definitive Rift experience for the coming year, but it may also be the example of why VR will never be feasible in the consumer space until they have a fixed platform with natively developed content. Or maybe eye tracking with foveated rendering will end up being the savior of PC VR, but that seems a long long way off and will almost certainly require retooling some portion of the rendering pipeline of existing game engines.

 

[Kyyla]

Damn I didn't think of that. I'm not willing to spend on two expensive video cards and the inconvenience associated.

 

[Daozang]

My understanding is, that although the game renders two views for VR purposes, it is still rendering one frame for both of them at 1440p.
If that is the case, I will check my frame rate and report back. I have a 1440p monitor and 970 sli.

Edit
Fraps is reporting 190 to 210 fps at most places...
Does anyone know specific instances where the game gets very demanding?

 

[hughJ]

My understanding is, that although the game renders two views for VR purposes, it is still rendering one frame for both of them at 1440p.
If that is the case, I will check my frame rate and report back. I have a 1440p monitor and 970 sli.

Edit
Fraps is reporting 190 to 210 fps at most places...
Does anyone know specific instances where the game gets very demanding?

It only renders one frame for both views so you've got:
a) double the POV (geometry)
b) substantially larger (maybe 2x) frustrum (more geometry)
c) a higher resolution pre-warp buffer in order to compensate for the barrel distortion that stretches the center portion of the image (~2x pre-warp samples to get 1x post-warp samples in the center of the POV)
d) that buffer is actually an over-sized buffer in order to support time-warp (so +% FOV and samples)
e) no frame queuing/pre-processing
f) many people actually add yet more super-sampling on top of all this due to the difficulty in reading the text on HUDs, aliasing, etc
g) vsync

With the Rift the consistently low spots seem to be inside busy stations. I think(?) you can enable the Rift mode in ED without a Rift plugged in or any oculus software/SDK installed. So you could set in nv control panel your max pre-rendered frames to 1, force vsync off (i think ED forces this on in the Rift mode), and see what sort of performance deltas you're getting between 1440p monitor and a "1440p" rift-mode. For myself with a single 970, I'm able to play on my 1440p monitor on pretty much highest settings and see solid 85-120fps in stations, but in the Rift at "1080p" I need to crank everything down, and even then I still get lots of dips below 75fps inside stations.

 

[Daozang]

I only found one option under 3D that enables what I believe is the rift mode.
Without the sdk or the rift installed, I got from 90 to 110 fps inside stations with a few stutters that although I almost couldn't detect looking at the screen, in the rift, they might be very noticeable.
Drivers and SLI profiles might improve that in the future.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Are there many folks that play this game on this board? I just bought this with my new Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas and I'm having a blast.

Been struggling to make much money in the game until recently Now I just bought myself my first ship.

 

[Grall]

Is it online only? I really haven't checked it out that closely...

 

[homerdog]

I think it is online only. They announced that at the last minute before release IIRC. Glad I didn't kickstart it or anything.

Will definitely check it out if they even implement an offline mode.

 

[cheapchips]

They thought that they could do a snapshot of the online galaxy to provide an offline mode. In the end they couldn't. Can't say it bothers me but it caused a stink for some backers. Frontier didn't handle it that well.

The game has a single player solo mode but it's still online (low bandwidth). The galaxy is shared with the multiplayer game. I find that a lovely idea, as at different times I fancy different levels of risk.

 

[Prophecy2k]

I've been playing in he open persistent universe for something like 20-30hours so far, and the only times I've even seen another human players is when we're all queued up outside a station awaiting patiently to dock. If it gets too busy i'll just go down to another stat in that system or move on to the next system. Not much of a deal breaker at all.

I'm really enjoying the game. It's a whole lotta fun dog fighting pirates.

 

[homerdog]

So if you're in solo mode you won't see any other players? That's fine, I don't really care if you have to always be online since I am always online anyway.

But do other players still impact your economy etc.?