When Frontier announced Elite Dangerous’ Odyssey expansion earlier this summer, it came with a belated caveat: that the expansion wouldn’t include VR compatibility at launch. VR players were understandably grumpy about this, leading Frontier to rethink its plans and come to a sort of compromise.
“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,” the studio explained this morning.
“When disembarking your ship or SRV, players 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.”
The forum post also gives a bit of bad news, though: Ship interiors won’t make it into the launch, which means “walking in ships” isn’t gonna be a thing initially. Frontier says that instead it will “invest [its] development time in locations and features which offer the most meaningful experience and gameplay for all players.”
Community reaction seems mixed, with the forums a bit happier than Reddit about the tradeoff.
