Eve: Valkyrie Alpha – Hands-On with an Oculus Rift app | Hacker News Reader

Eve: Valkyrie Alpha – Hands-On with an Oculus Rift app

polygon.com

49 pointsevo_930 comments

I found the bit about looking down at the console in the ship to be interesting. I had a bit of a similar experience after playing racing games for years, then finally getting on the track in real life on a motorcycle. In a racing game you can pretty easily keep an eye on the speedometer to set corner entry speeds, etc. In real life you simply do not have time to take your eyes off the track and look down at the speedometer. You have to do it by feel. It's a very important skill for real life racers, and something you could never develop to any accuracy from a tv screen - a sense of your actual speed.

Presumably these space pilots would have helmets, and if we have spaceships we would probably have reasonable in-helmet AR technology, thus obviating the need for a speedometer built into the cockpit...

Well presumably VR is a better solution for space navigation than having a windowed cockpit if we're on that subject already :)

Just to add some context (the article was a little misleading about this):

E:V is not strictly speaking a Rift exclusive. It's also coming to PlayStation VR. Presumably though the Rift together with a qualifying PC will offer an E:V experience with higher fidelity and detail than PSVR. It's also highly likely that the Rift will launch before PSVR.

It's also only packaged with Rift pre-orders, not all Rift purchases. Lucky's Tale is the game which is uniquely packaged with all Rift purchases, including but not limited to pre-orders. Lucky's Tale is also (to my knowledge) a true Rift exclusive.

Will E:V come to the HTC Vive?

Most likely they will be compatible, oculus powers GearVR so that compatibility is pretty much guaranteed but considering that in all cases the GPU is still doing most of the work I don't see a reason why there should be an issue.

Controller specific things might be "exclusive" but those should a) be easily ported over with user config and b) wouldn't matter much for EVE:V since you'll be using a HOTAS setup any how the only thing that really needs to work is the head tracking.

That was a pretty thin article, I gather there's not too much to say at this point.

I used to play Eve heavily, but I no longer play because it is too time consuming alongside a full time job. I'm hoping that Valkyrie will allow me to get back into that universe without the "wait and grind" that is present in Eve Online.

The problem that Valkyrie is going to face is that dogfighting in space gets boring fast. There's a great free-to-play game called Star Conflict that is pretty much Valkyrie, minus the VR stuff, and I had a great time with it for a few weeks. But after the initial "lasers and explosions" excitement wore off and once I got comfortable moving around in 3-space, it became very repetitive.

I really hope Valkyrie has something more than just VR dogfighting because flying in circles, playing the "who-can-get-behind-who-first" game gets old fast.

I really hope Valkyrie has something more than just VR dogfighting because flying in circles, playing the "who-can-get-behind-who-first" game gets old fast.

What made the Descent series so much fun was that it took place in an enclosed environment, with obstacles and other environmental effects to consider.

My ultimate "space sim" would take place in Karl Schroeder's Virga environment, which is a giant air-filled bubble in zero-g. Speed and sight-distance can be realistic, air resistance makes maneuvering fun, and you can have lots of obstacles if desired.

Though I'm hoping that there will be some decent plain old flight simulators coming out with Rift support. That would be a good reason to upgrade my gaming system.

Hardwar was kind of like your "ultimate space sim": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardwar_(video_game)

War Thunder has good support for the rift: https://share.oculus.com/app/war-thunder

Considering the physics of EVE: Online, I would be surprised if what you're asking for isn't roughly what EVE: Valkyrie will be.

Due to space-magic in the engines every ship pretty much acts like there is some sort of fluid filling all of space, and EVE is surprisingly non-empty when it comes to obstacles.

A lot of players are very addicted to elite dangerous, even though I personally think it's a very shallow game, some people just love space sims.

Although ED doesn't support the most recent oculus SDK update, 0.7 and it's been 4 months or so I think, so no idea what's so broken they can't update.

As their first game Eve:Online is a very complicated game it is encouraging to know they are thinking about casuals from the beginning,

> "We don't yet know who our audience is. It would be crazy to assume everyone who buys an Oculus is a hardcore gamer; I don't think that's the truth," Willans said. "We're going to have a really diverse cross section of people who are buying the technology."

I am most excited about this game so far and have tried another space sim in the DK2 and it was COMPLEX (elite dangerous). Not just because of the game but because moving in 3D space first person is not first nature to many... Even flying around though, not knowing what I was doing, was one of the most immersive fun experiences I had.

As long as they have a way to get casuals to know the basics and have fun play they should be a great start to VR.

> Not just because of the game but because moving in 3D space first person is not first nature to many

On a mostly unrelated note, this is one good marker of good space opera/sci-fi - how well it gives you a sense of where space ships are positioned and moving relative to each other at vast distances. Being able to communicate how people move through space in writing is extremely difficult.

It'll be interesting to see how this translates into VR games... if you ever play EVE you'll notice that basically all movement is performed relative to other objects and not in terms of absolute directions. I imagine communicating a sense of spatial position is going to be an very challenging part of games like Valkyrie.

The enemy's gate is down!

Is it really possible to have a casual Oculus Rift gamer, though? The Rift itself is $600 (which I think is entirely reasonable, by the way) but in order to drive the Rift properly you also need a computer capable of producing TWO simultaneous (minimum) 1080p+ 90fps outputs, and even a lot of off-the-shelf gaming PCs can't really do that without sacrificing a great deal of graphical quality.

That might be what "casual" means for VR for a while, graphics that hearken back to the early ages of 3D on consoles.

Some people can spend lots of money, but not lots of time. Which makes them a "casual" player, rather than a "dedicated" player.

I'm in that boat. I can spend $1500 on a Rift... but I might only get to play with it 7 hours a week, or less.

On the hardware side, no, a person dropping $600 for a Rift + $900+ on a desktop to run it is unlikely to be a casual gamer. I think the parent comment is referring to "casual" in the context of game style, though. EVE Online has a very steep learning curve and can sometimes devolve into life-sucking "spreadsheets in space" gameplay, which does not appeal to people who just want to jump in a game and have fun shooting stuff. E:V seems more casual friendly in the sense that you can learn to play it quickly and have fun in matches without needing to invest dozens of hours in mastering the metagame.

Its for the 1% casual gamer. Indeed not sure if that market exists, the richer folks tend to buy Macs instead.

In a sense PSVR will probably be most people s first VR experience.

I think there are quite a lot of people out there who are maybe a bit older (30s or 40s), can easily drop a couple of thousand on new toys every now and then, but have very limited time to play with said toys.

    > Is it really possible to have a casual Oculus Rift
    > gamer, though

... me? I've pre-ordered it, and will buy a gaming PC to run it when it shows up. It'll be the first non-Apple device in my house for a while, other than my Kindle. My gaming is currently limited to playing Red Alert on my laptop when bored on flights, and the odd iPhone game here and there. Really hope I can get a laptop that will support it, but I suspect it'll have to be a tower.

I'm buying it because I think the VR will be awesome, and because I think VR is the future, and because I'm curious.

The game they are bundling is NOT EVE:Online, it's EVE:Valkyrie. It's a dogfighting game, think wing commander, not 'The Universe as a Spreadsheet'.

Is Valkyrie tied into the EVE MMORPG the way that Dust 514 was going to be, or is it a strictly standalone game? I see no mention either way.

It seems like it, which I think will be super fun!

They mentioned there will be microtransactions in game for cosmetic things and xp boosters. Ain't no need for xp w/o rpg skills!

It would be awesome to have all EVE (Dust, Online, Valkyrie) games in a simultaneous environment. I think there have been no other games like this before?

I know, made it more clear in the post.

I wonder why the dev team opted not to put more information in the HUD and instead forces players to look at in-cockpit controls. Seems a bit odd since HUD info has been a part of modern fighter aircraft helmets for years, and it's even cropping up in cars now.

The articles explains that you don't, in fact, need to look at the controls all the time. You can fly by feel.

HUDs (i.e. face-locked user interface elements, as opposed to world-space UI like on the cockpit surfaces) can cause discomfort in VR. One reason is the vergence accommodation conflict. Focusing on objects inches away from your face is also difficult and painful with the current generation of VR headsets due to the fixed focal plane (1.5m in DK2, infinity in others).

I've played EVE:Valkyrie for a few hours in the Rift, and the cockpit-based UI is extremely comfortable.

Investing in VR- https://gfycat.com/SafeWatchfulAmbushbug

I can't wait for the day I try that!

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