Some communications from Arthur Tholmie, the new Lead CM for Elite Dangerous, have reached us on the official forums to clarify two very important points for Odyssey: Ship Interiors and Virtual Reality.
We should also get some new details about Elite Dangerous this Thursday, September 10, thanks to a teaser recently made during the regular Monday Livestream, Supercruise News.
The Galnet News, the official roleplay stories, could be back?!
From Arthur:
Greetings Commanders!
We hope you enjoyed our first dev diary release, A Giant Leap and stream. It was our pleasure to bring you the latest news on Odyssey and needless to say we can’t wait to share more info around further locations, missions, combat and more in further episodes over the coming months.
We are aware that there are a lot of questions across the community and while we will be bringing a more detailed FAQ for these very soon we felt it was right to update you on a couple of the most discussed topics in the Elite Community at this time, specifically around VR in Odyssey, and ship interiors.
VR and Elite Dangerous Odyssey
We understand that our VR players are keen to know more about how the transition and gameplay will work in Odyssey in VR. With that in mind, we would like to share our current plan for how that will work.
In Odyssey, players will be able to fly down to planets, fly through atmospheres and drive along planet surfaces in their SRVs – all while remaining in VR.When disembarking your ship or SRV, players in VR will be presented with a projected flat game screen in their VR headset in order to continue on foot. Players will of course be able to remove headsets if they so choose, but this will not be a requirement to continue your adventure.
There will be no requirement to boot between Horizons and Odyssey in order to continue your journey.
We understand that VR is a big part of Elite Dangerous and is a feature that holds a dedicated and passionate community. However, we do strongly believe that VR should only be enabled for on foot gameplay when we have an experience that truly matches the same quality bar that we set for cockpits. That said, we do hope that this implementation will allow our VR players the best possible transition between their VR experience and exploration on foot.
Ship Interiors
Another topic we know players keen for more information on is around ship interiors, and we wanted to clarify our current position on this.
While Odyssey will see players explore a wide range of on and off world locations including station interiors, ship interiors will not be included at launch.
We understand that the bond between Commander and starship is incredibly strong and know this will disappointing news for some. However, we believe it is right to invest our development time in locations and features which offer the most meaningful experience and gameplay for all players. Rest assured that Odyssey will offer a great variety of long requested locations to explore, both on land and in space, which we’ll be sharing more details around very soon.
As always, we value and appreciate your passion and feedback and cannot wait to share more with you.
TL;DR:
- Stations’ interiors are confirmed and we will be able to visit them on foot.
- Ship interiors will not be present at launch, but it’s something the developers would like to propose in the future.
- The game can be launched in VR on its Odyssey version.
- It will not be necessary to close the Odyssey version of the game and boot it again in its Horizons version in order to visit the surfaces on foot.
- VR players on foot on the surface will be able to play with their VR headset on, thanks to a projected still image.
What do you htink about this?
I’m personally happy with these communications, the only things that worry me are the regularity of the updates once Odyssey launches and the Lore/gameplay.
I can’t wait to know more about them!
