Star Citizen‘s Senior Graphics Programmer Ben Parry has dropped a disappointing bombshell regarding the status of the crowdfunded title’s long awaited VR support, indicating that players may be waiting some time for it to emerge.

Star Citizen was the first title I ever wrote about on Road to VR, way back in the mists of 2012. The reason? The title was one of the first big titles to not only promise VR support, but to make it a specific feature of its crowdfunding campaign, a $12M stretch goal to be exact.

Star Citizen of course passed that $12M goal with ease, such was the desire for the sort of no holds barred, detailed PC-centric space combat simulation amongst the gaming community. The current funding total for Star Citizen now stands at a staggering $142,569,464 from over 1.7 million donors—surely one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns of all time.

Of course, the problems with setting specific goals for a project, especially if that project happens to be the development of a game is that, even with the best of intentions, those goals can prove tricky to meet with delivery dates becoming ever more fluid as time passes. Star Citizen is a case in point. Its original scope in 2012 was that of a relatively simple cockpit-based space combat sim, but this has since morphed into something of a monster, with the likes of first person exploration joining mountains of feature creep added as more and more money poured into the project.

We reported towards the beginning of last year that CIP’s founder Chris Roberts’ had affirmed that VR support was still being worked on and that he “would be expecting it to get up to speed with the most recent [VR] stuff sometime early next year,” meaning Q1 2016.

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So what is up with that VR support then? Well, Cloud Imperium Games‘ (makers of Star Citizen) Senior Graphics Programmer Ben Parry, responding to a question on just that subject a few days ago and stirred up a small hornets nest in doing so. Asked “With the new [Amazon] Lumberyard Engine and its easier to use integration functions, will we be seeing more talk of possibly moving back toward VR support for this game?”, Parry responded “Sorry to say, do not hold your breath for this. Ignoring the render tech for VR itself (which given the work we’ve done, would definitely be a read-and-rewrite job, not a merge-this-file job), making a game properly VR compliant takes a lot of work at the design and testing level regardless of the engine used. We’d probably need to get the framerate up a bit higher too, come to think of it.”

The statement caused a few eyebrows to rise, with some forum posters taking the comments to mean VR support may have been cancelled altogether. Parry however was quick to clarify saying “Sorry for any misunderstanding, my point was that some of the key obstacles to VR support aren’t about whether the engine has the technical capability for it. That kind of thinking leads to, well, this guy explains it better than I do. I’d prefer we don’t accidentally and permanently ruin anyone’s ability to enjoy VR.”

star-citizen-1So virtual reality support is still on the cards, but we may be waiting some time for it. Another poster asked if VR support would make it into Star Citizen after the game took its finished form, to which Parry responded “I wouldn’t say finished. It’s a balance. It certainly adds an extra % time tax to every feature that involves drawing things or player interaction, for specialised testing and the inevitable bug fixing.” He took to Reddit to further clarify his original statement, re-affirming that VR support was not off the table.

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It’s understandable VR implementation takes a very distant back seat to the actual completion of a game of course, that much is obvious. What’s more, it’s clear Parry has taken onboard the by now dominant view that VR support isn’t something you duct tape to the back of a project, it needs care and attention. This at least is an attitude that should be applauded.

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Paul James
Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • dextrovix

    Elite Dangerous had VR support added from the ground up, on a fraction of the SC budget. Whilst I can understand that the focus on such a massive project isn’t VR, support as Ben Parry said would require fundamental time-consumimg changes, and yet with such a large budget it demonstrates to me that this whole project lacks the planning and management to fulfil all the promises in my opinion, and smacks of misappropriated funds. I’ll give it a go once CIG release whatever they consider v1.0, once I’ve read the reviews of course. That is provided I’m still alive in the year 20xx- glad I backed the former.

    • Caven

      An all fairness, in Elite Dangerous you never get out of your ship. With Star Citizen, players can get out of ships and walk around, which does complicate a VR implementation.

      • compwagon

        That’s a really good point. That being said, the difference in funding is also likely an order of magnitude, and conceivably you could at least initially implement VR as “cockpit only.”

        • George Vieira IV

          They had VR “working”, but every major change broke it, so I think they decided it would be better to wait on further implementation.

          • Cloverfield

            That is not how VR works in development. You just can’t flip a switch later down the line. Go through existing literature and you will realise it has to be developed and tested from the ground up in parallel with the rest of gameplay features for it to have any chance at all.

          • George Vieira IV

            Keeping it working in a playable state for alpha is different than stopping development on it.

          • compwagon

            I don’t disagree that it makes sense for them to hold off on reopening access until core engine changes stabilize a bit. As someone who was REALLY looking forward to SC, though, “don’t hold your breath” doesn’t sound encouraging.

          • Pre Seznik

            This is why they failed. If you want VR in your game, you make sure it works with every update.

        • quesa

          They never said that they are nixing the implementation. One key point that people seem to forget, SC is in Alpha, and a rapidly changing Alpha to boot. When they get part of the way through Beta and still have no roadmap for VR, then I’d get worried.

          • compwagon

            As Cloverfield pointed out above, either they implement it along with all the other features, or they are not going to implement it at all (in any significant way). It’s not just another module, and if it is approached that way, the experience ends up being horrible. The only exception would be if they made VR cockpit-only, since a cockpit experience is just about the only type of gameplay that lends itself to having VR “tacked on.”

          • quesa

            It has worked in the past but broke after each major/minor iteration. It’s just not worth fixing each time you update the game. So it has had VR support from the beginning.

      • Zetta

        In all fairness, you do. You currently exit your ship to an SRV. What currently happens is that you stay in a seated position, ie you don’t move between the two as a character, but that’s something coming to the game in due time, it’s always been on the cards.

        • Caven

          I haven’t played Elite: Dangerous since they added SRVs, so I forgot about them. That doesn’t change the intended point that the character is always limited to sitting in cockpits of vehicles. If Elite: Dangerous does add walking support, then that will complicate their VR implementation as well. I’m not saying they can’t do it, but it will require more effort than supporting VR for vehicles alone.

          • Raphael

            It’s a myth that walking requires some strange and magical changes to be made in VR. The only difference being that walking without vr generally uses head-bobbing but that’s a redundant effect for VR.

          • Caven

            That’s not what I’m talking about. There are two issues to deal with as far as getting VR to work in Star Citizen.

            One issue is that the developers take control of the camera away from the player at times, which in Alien Isolation meant having to try to dance around to avoid having my view clip into geometry and suddenly go black when the animations do whatever the hell they goddamn please. They’d have to go back and add VR-friendly animations for doing things like climbing into spacecraft.

            The more serious issue is that Star Citizen isn’t what I’d call a gamepad game. Ideally a person should be using a HOTAS to play it, which isn’t the best controller system in the world for on-foot movement. So either a person is going to have to put up with cumbersome on-foot controls, or they’re going to have to periodically switch between different controllers while effectively blind. This doesn’t even get into the issue that I think on-foot movement is better done while standing and using motion controllers (and no, I’m NOT talking about teleportation bullshit), as opposed to the seated experience of flying spacecraft. None of it is an insurmountable problem, but accounting for it does complicate VR support beyond simply letting you move your head around in a cockpit.

          • Raphael

            I agree with all the issues you raised here. I think battlefield is a good example of moving between different controllers. I used a hotas for flying and mouse/keys for running or tank driving. Vr users would complain if vr controllers weren’t supported so as you say that would require people stand up. It’s all very cumbersome but doable if a developer is motivated.

            I don’t think this dev is motivated. I think they see these issues and take the easiest route of not bothering at all.

            I think the route they should take is do it anyway. Even though players might go from sitting with hotas to standing with vr controllers. Let the player do it if they want. Vr isn’t going away and it’s not going to stay a niche peripheral forever.

            David Braben is well placed to tackle these issues in future if and when he adds EVA since vr is a big part of elite.

          • Konchu

            I think they bit off more than the can chew in a sense. So much feature creep they just start nixing things for the time and hoping they have time to get back to VR later. I just hope they don’t hurt themselves in the end. I don’t feel adding VR in has to be hard but you build an entire world only to find some of you effects/shaders dont play nice in VR then you have real work.

      • Fundamentalist Daleks

        in fairness Frontier are consummate professionals and Chris Roberts is a hasbeen who never successfully ran his own company that released products.

      • ummm…

        how does that complicate it? we know walking can be done easily and with many methods. educate me.

        • Caven

          My response to Raphael should cover it, but basically flying and walking are best done with two entirely different sets of physical controls, and some of the canned animations in Star Citizen aren’t VR friendly.

          • Raphael

            The animations can be shown on a virtual screen for vr users. Simple.

          • Caven

            That would actually make the problem substantially worse in some cases. I’m talking about animations where you climb up a narrow tube that you enter from a hatch on the underside of the spacecraft, then have to move forward to get into a pilot seat that rotates 180 degrees to have you facing forward. There’s nowhere to put an external camera for a good view of something like that, and the developers clearly want to maintain a sense of presence, so they would need to implement what I’ll call closet-scale VR in order to allow players to navigate tiny, cramped environments. Just to be clear, my example isn’t a made-up scenario. I’ve personally experienced it in Star Citizen. I think that stuff can be made to work in VR–especially after trying Vive games with climbing mechanics, but it does require more effort than temporarily placing a stationary camera view for the player to look at during animated sequences.

    • merciful

      Elite is just a simple cockpit game, that gane isn’t even 5 GB and famously one mile wide one inch deep. Generic procedural low quality graphics like that probably run on an iPhone. They slapped VR on in the cheapest possible way. Why even bring this junk up? Enough of the Elite spam, it’s ridiculous

      • Cloverfield

        May I pass you the salt? Or you served?

      • Groo Gadgets

        Wow you clearly haven’t played the game have you? Elite delivered on their promises, years ago. I would say it was the best VR experience I had when I first purchased a DK2.

        In my view there are two constants whenever Star Citizen if featured in the news:
        1. Look how much money we’ve made from you suckers!
        2. Yet another development delay.

        Don’t you think it’s highly unethical to sell ships ($2,500USD or more!) for a game that hasn’t been released yet? I guess if you’re stupid enough to buy the snake oil you’d be stupid enough to drink it right? ;-)

        • EZ

          So the cheapest ship is $2500, TIL!

        • TBone

          No, it’s not unethical because you are not buying a ship. You are making a pledge of support for continued development. The ship comes with the pledge. Every ship will be available in the game to purchase with in game currency regardless if you pledged for a starter game package or the highest priced ships.

          • Groo Gadgets

            The crux of the matter is this game is from Chris Roberts; a once highly revered developer of arguably the best space sim games of all time.

            If he had pitched his idea for SC to publishers and investors he would probably got as much money as he has raised so far. The big difference is that he would be contractually obliged to meet his deadlines and above all FINISH THE GAME ON TIME!

            Getting fans to fund the game removes the urgency that investors and publishers impose. So if they want they can continue to promise the world (or universe as it were) so long as the faithful keep contributing to the collection plate every Sunday!

            I’ve heard too many alarm bells ringing over the past 5 years to think that everything is going to turn out OK. Changing engines mid development? Anyone remember when that little known game Duke Nukem Forever did that? Turned out pretty well for them huh? Can you imagine how much worse it would have been if DNF were crowd funded?

            At the end of the day I really do want to play this game but there’s no way i’m going to contribute to something that after 5 years development is still considered an Alpha. I seriously doubt we will see the final release during this decade if at all :-(

          • AStormApproaches

            I agree with the rest of your post, but:

            “If he had pitched his idea for SC to publishers and investors he would probably got as much money as he has raised so far. ”

            After the way Freelancer went, I doubt this to be the case.

          • kalqlate

            Lumberyard IS CryEngine. Amazon licensed it from Crytek in 2014: http://kotaku.com/sources-amazon-spent-big-bucks-on-cryteks-engine-1696008878 .

          • Raphael

            I knew it had something to do with wood-cutting but I couldn’t remember the name. Doesn’t seem like a smart move to associated your game engine with “lumber” (moving in a slow, heavy, awkward way).

          • Ken

            It’s an engine that you build games in…Lumberyard = building supplies. It makes perfect sense.

          • Raphael

            It’s a lumbering lumberyard with no VR support.

          • kalqlate

            Oh, no, Raphael, you continue to bat ZERO. The engine supports VR; Start Citizen has simply not chosen to implement it yet for the reasons they cited. Search this Amazon Lumberyard FAQ page (https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/faq/) for “VR” to reveal…

            Q. Does Lumberyard support VR?
            Yes. We currently support Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and OSVR. Because VR is a rapidly evolving area, we’ve built Lumberyard’s VR support to be modular, meaning you can add support for new HMDs without writing code, helping you support new HMDs as they are released.

          • Jason

            Changing engines? WTF are you on about. They changed from CryEngine 3.8 to lumberyard (which is based on CryEngine 3.8). This was mainly to allow them to use amazon’s servers as their code is mostly custom anyways.

          • Cheyno Mdingi

            Moving from Cryengine to Amazon Lumberyard, which is literally a fork of Cryengine, is hardly switching engines

          • Groo Gadgets

            Yes guys, thanks for pointing out what I already know. Semantics aside the point is making a fundamental change to the source code 5 years into development is a pretty scary thing to do no matter how you look at it.

            SC hasn’t been a game since the Kickstarter, it’s been a exercise in greed. Could you imagine belonging to a bank that has a live ticker showing their profits growing in realtime? The audacity of CIG is astonishing!

            If they do go belly up you can’t feel sorry for anyone dumb enough to have invested any money let alone thousands of dollars. It’s actually all the people who keep giving them money is why they are still in this situation all these years later. Why can’t we all buy things the old fashioned way; hand over money for a finished product!

            I reckon if we sent Kyle Reece 5 years into the past with the mission of making the Kickstarter fail we would have seen Roberts find funding from investors and/or a publisher and a much more humble version of Star Citizen would have come out in 2015 then we would nearly have an expansion or sequel around about now.

          • TBone

            Yes, we know this. That was actually the selling point of crowdfunding the game so that we don’t have a publisher pressing them to complete the game and forcing them to put out the typical game that falls short at release with a bunch of paid DLC that should have come with the game.

            However, since we are not in game development, we don’t fully understand how long it can actually take to make a game of this scale. We aren’t talking about the next Call of Duty where the same engine and established team is being used and you can just pump out a game in a couple of years. A lot of this game is being built from scratch. Especially, when you consider that they had to build a company of four studios while making the game.

            That’s not to say that mistakes haven’t been made. They have made plenty and the Kotaku article goes into a lot of those mistakes. It probably would have been better for them to have built their own engine, but it is what it is and they got lucky they were able to get Crytek’s best engineers when Crytek was unable to pay its employees. However, I don’t know where you got the idea that they changed engines. Yes, they switched to Lumberyard, but that’s still based on the same build of Cryengine that they were working on. So, the comparison to DNF is off base.

          • David Compart

            That is the stupiest argument I keep seeing fellow Star Citizen backers make. No, you are buying a ship as defined by U.S. and European law. That’s precisely why CIG has had to cave when it comes to refunds. If they don’t they will get taken to court and all will be known.

            Look I have over $1500 dollars in the game myself, but don’t be a white knight, it helps nobody.

          • TBone

            I’m no White Knight. I have been quite critical of this project at times, especially after the fiasco of the holiday stream and CIG backing out of the vertical slice. I have less than $200 in this game with starter ships (Aurora , Avenger, and Reliant) and I won’t put anymore into it because I want to start low and work up. When you make a purchase, it clearly states in the terms that this is a pledge to support development of the game. It’s no different than if I give money to PBS to fund their programming and they give me gifts for that pledge in exchange. Unless you were in the original kickstarter you are due no refund because the terms were different and based on a much smaller game that was pitched then.The only thing CIG offers now is a 14 day refund as a cooling off period. In any case, the point is that you don’t have to spend $1500 on this game. That was your choice. Nobody forced you to open your wallet. You could have just spent $45 – $60. There is plenty of information about this game and the controversy surrounding it. How about people take some personal responsibility and look before they leap.

          • Dementropy

            Yes, but if you backed for what CIG stated in the kickstarter (such as for VR, mod-able private servers, and many complete star systems), and then you keep seeing these things getting pushed back until they’re barely hanging on the table at all – in conjunction with meager communication with backers and missed dates, it’s hard not to rethink the money spent.

            Looking before you leap is one thing, but if CIG keeps lowering the water level in the pool while you’re in mid flight, then the responsibility is on them, not the people giving them money.

          • David Compart

            Exactly, great analogy.

          • Ken

            Large, AAA MMOs oftentimes take 5-7 years, and no one bats an eye.

          • Dementropy

            That means nothing. CIG has been in pre-alpha for 4/5 years now, which to its credit, is new ground for any game project. If CIG sets dates and they miss them, we should hold them accountable. They had a plan going into this. If they miss dates, I want to know why, rather than leaving it up to their lack of communication and the community to create excuses. For those of us who backed during the kickstarter, do you think the dates for deliverables ending in 2014 are fair for them to move? It’s now 2017. We’ve seen trailers, ship sales, occasional updates, nothing of SQ42, moved goalposts, and reduced expectations. If CIG was overly ambitious, certainly someone with knowledge and history in the gaming industry like Chris Roberts could have let backers know about the stumbling blocks and possible contingency plans way ahead of time.

          • David Compart

            Just because some company states something doesn’t make it legal. Again, there’s a reason CIG has given and will continue to process refunds when confronted…because they know that they are technically offering a product, not a pledge.

          • Ken

            “No, you are buying a ship as defined by U.S. and European law”

            Only by European Law. And that’s only just recently. They made ALL kickstarter rewards purchases. Not just Star Citizen.

            Do a little research on the subject.
            http://eurocrowd.org/2015/11/23/vat-and-crowdfunding-the-eu-rules/

          • David Compart

            I’ve done plenty thanks. Again, there’s a reason every legal suit brought against CIG has been settled with a refund.

          • Ken

            Yeah…they don’t want to deal with the headache and legal fees over a couple hundred dollars. Even if they win in court, they lose financially.

            And there has been no lawsuit, only threats.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            And you don’t think with the money they already had, they could not have done the same game without needing to spend so much money on a single f-ing ship? Just look at the salaries and costs they claim and you’ll see they are just laughing at the smucks who put a lot of money into it.

        • DM

          Its not unethical, but its not value for money either. I would say its unethical if you end up spending money on a game thats never actually released, or you don’t get the ship you pledged for.

      • HotNSpicy

        Such toxic comments from SC “fans” like yourself give the proper Star Citizen community a bad name.

        Elite is one of the best VR games available, and easily one of the most beautiful, so is appropriate to bring up in comments section on this VR news website. EVE Valkyrie is also a good VR space game.

        It’s just a pity that SC won’t have VR support for another few years by the looks of things, although I do hope that the feature is implemented well..

        • Raphael

          Elite is great although visually it can’t match SC, it is built for VR. Eve Valkyrie is stunning and a true AAA title. It’s the best dog-fighting I’ve experienced in a space game.

          I’m not convinced SC will have VR support even 3 years from now. I think it will only come when they see every other space sim supports VR and they look like dinosaurs for not implementing.

        • Master E

          Love me some Eve Valkyrie.. super well done

      • Zetta

        Currently, just a cockpit game.
        Walking in ships, in stations, on planets etc are all coming to the game.

        They built VR in from the very beginning, incorporating it into every aspect, that’s how you do VR if you want to do a good job with it, slapping it on afterwards is where you end up in trouble. Claiming what they did amounts to ‘cheap’ is idiotic.

        • merciful

          this will never come to the game. Unless they break half of the stuff and start from scratch. Good luck with that. Don’t hold your breath.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        Cockpit games are excellent for VR, maybe it just isn’t your cup of thea, but it doesn’t mean “just a simple cockpit game” or “slapped VR on in the cheapest possible way”..

        • merciful

          simple, as in simple fixed POV, no walking no body movement, no narrative, no player interaction, no hands, weapons etc.

          i.e. a simple cockpit game

          • wane-bradee

            Except it’s not a fixed POV, you can get out of your seat and walk around the bridge of your ship, multicrew end of the month will have even more of the player interaction that in your head doesn’t exist. Your hands in game mimic what your hands are actually doing outside of the game when using flight sticks, have you even played the game in VR, or even without the VR? It looks to me you’re just making a whole bunch of crap up to make yourself feel better about spending money on SC.

      • DM

        What surprises me is how many things you can get wrong in a single paragraph.

      • Kalle

        Have you ever tried elite in vr? The feeling is not comparable to anything. It’s really good nomatter the gfx. Just looking around and follow the boogies when they fly around you. And by the time SC is going gold, computer power wont be an issue.

      • Max Cheung

        A game which needs 2 titan x to run smoothly is not “high quality”. It is only poorly optimized.

        Oh…sorry, I forgot it isn’t even a game yet

  • Mane Vr

    I blame this focus on roomscale and those who get sick in vr for this… those two things makes it hard to just add vr into a game… if all they had to do was the rendering which is built into the engine and map the touch and htv controller without having to worry about how to make roomscale work qe wouldn’t be talking about this and we would have far more games

    • Xron

      5 Years in the “making” passed and we dont even know when they will release full version for pc, not even mentioning vr… thats sadening, + this game without vr loses 50% its attractiveness for me.

      • Mane Vr

        it loses all it’s Attraction for me I’m not a fan of space sim but the idea of a full world to wonder around in vr blew my mind I don’t even play in the PU just cause I only wanted to see it in vr now I feel like I wasted my money if they not doing vr

    • Raphael

      Yes this is pretty-much it. The mass hysteria over nausea made many devs either abandon VR implementation or postpone or pander exclusively to nausea players with teleport. Teleport and Star Citizen won’t work. The only hope is that non-nausea gamers are now fighting back and devs like Croteam and a few others are listening.

      Roomscale: There are morons who nag Project Cars to be room scale and have motion controls for steering.

    • OgreTactics

      You have arguments: the initial Oculus DK1 concept was impressive. 4 years after, and the more time passes, the more I think that both the Oculus and Vive are lazy unperceptive greedy piles of shit nowhere near what Virtual Headset and ecosystem should be.

      In fact in order to evolve toward optimised, standardised and stabilised softwares, we yet have to even start: the fact that there’s no inside out tracking, no hand tracking, thus no physical interaction tracking for example…

  • Ombra Alberto

    I given him confidence in Star Citizen thinking of the Vr.

    Them do not betray the expectations.

  • Simbolic

    It’s the thing about kickstarter projects…by the time they pass through development phase someone else has beat them to the punch…in this case, given a “few” years, v/ar will be the norm and if your product doesn’t have it you don’t have a product.

    • David Herrington

      VR/AR is amazing but it doesn’t mean it will always be the “END-ALL” to every game. I regularly get fed up with playing the same “open world” AAA games like GTA, FarCry, Just Cause (my fav), and Watch Dogs to play more simple graphics indie games like Hyper Light Drifter, or Steam World Dig.

      Maybe in 10 years this “VR checkmark” will be necessary for a game to do well but in the near future nothing else will approach the scale that Star Citizen will have when it releases.

      • wane-bradee

        In 10 years we might have a beta build for SC. Get it now?

      • Master E

        It’s a beautiful and ambitious game, but I think them brushing VR aside is akin to the Golden State Warriors having the best winning season ever and losing the championship…

        Makes the whole thing not worth $142 million to some of those backers especially since it was part of the vision early on.

        • David Herrington

          We allow devs the ability to decide how best to utilize their time. If devs say that VR right now is more a hindrance to development and that side stepping it for now will greatly enhance development times then why would you try to force them to do it??

          They never said VR wouldn’t happen, they are putting it on the back burner.

  • NooYawker

    They only have 140 million dollars how much do you expect from them?? /s

    • A planet sized colony in an open world way for each person to have :)

    • VirtualBro

      The cost of adding VR support is proportional to the size of the game and the amount/quality of artwork. Just because an amateur can add VR support to a match 3 game in an afternoon doesn’t mean that a team of experts can cheaply add it into a big game.

      That said, this game is now DEAD TO ME!!!

      • Raphael

        It really doesn’t matter how difficult it is given the funding for this game. It has some never-before-seen features so adding VR although time-consuming isn’t as complex as some of the features already present.

        It’s really more an issue of burying head in sand because they believe they can get away without VR for the foreseeable future.

        • ummm…

          what sort of never before seen features? This game is right in my wheelhouse but somehow they’ve never managed to make me buy in – even after several visits to their site. How much of a “full game” is it? WHERE IS THE SINGLEPLAYER? anyhow – can you help sell me this game. I have elite, which ive even stepped back from recently. this game, however, feels like a disaster.

          • Raphael

            No transition animation going from planet surface to space… No tricks… Detail as far as the eye can see to the horizon. From the planet surface looking up and seeing an orbiting space station that’s not just a skybox animation. It’s the actual 3d space station. When you’re in a building at a planetary installation there is no level loading or scenery switching. So many details like that.

            People are buying and playing SC as it stands now but I won’t be buying unless it gets VR support. I have no interest in gaming on a tiny 2d rectangle.

            SC is far from disaster. When you see the talent that’s gone into the design.. real talent in terms of coding and artistry. It’s just a shame they’ve now back-tracked on previous statements and are abandoning VR.

            Single player will be squadron 42 whenever it comes.

          • ummm…

            ive been tracking 42, and it never seems to come. so all of the stuff in the first paragraph are already in the game? I mean, evochron legacy does a few of those things! I bought evochron legacy over SC, so maybe im just too far away from that commitment.

          • Raphael

            Evochron doesn’t support VR so it’s no-go for me. Why would I choose to stare at a tiny 2d rectangle when I can be in the cockpit in a VR space sim like Elite or Eve? :)

          • ummm…

            evochron does support vr.

          • Raphael
          • ummm…
      • JWrenn

        Not sure I agree on this. From a programming stand point once the 3d models are in there…you don’t go back and redo all of that to put it in 3d. You redo the engine that shows those models to support a dual rendering, 3d geometry approach. The problem would be the testing of something this size.

        I think this is why people are pissed. You offer this people fund it then y ou don’t work on it from the start. They are already taking so long that people are not happy so dropping this now….not great for p r

      • Dan Toose

        Just letting you know as a dev, that’s not true. Adding VR support is systemic, it doesn’t inherently affect your asset production. You don’t model and texture things extra times for VR, etc.

        It’s extra reason to be pissed at the developers.

  • Raphael

    Well it’s simple… I only buy if SC has VR support. Elite does VR well. I get that the nausea thing and first person shooters has screwed everything up but if u take out the shitty head-bobbing then it will be ok. We have VR games with full locomotion as an option from some devs now including croteam. But I understand the code isn’t VR compatible. They switched to Amazon engine didn’t they? Anyway… I thought a game that looks that good would have a catch.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      The amazon engine is just an enhanced CryEngine, nothing more, nothing less. So it didn’t take them a lot of time to switch.

    • Master E

      The motion sickness is so blown out of proportion.. especially for well developed programs. And you’re right… it’s those quick level changes and certain features that some people can’t handle. Take out head bobbing for Christ sake… no one cares about it anyway

  • Gordon Westbroek

    Just took a look at the actual crowdfunding goals and the 12 million target only said that “The Hangar Module will feature Oculus Rift support.” That sounds a lot different than “Game is getting full VR support”.

    • HotNSpicy

      From the Kickstarter: “Virtual Reality is here! We have backed Oculus Rift and will support it in Star Citizen / Squadron 42. Who doesn’t want to sit in their cockpit, hands on your joystick and throttle, swiveling your head, to track that enemy fighter that just blew by?”

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Well, that’s false advertisement then, and that’s illegal in some countries (which kickstarter supports).

  • wuhwuhwhat?

    Good. Glad they realize that VR is still currently a niche thing… I’m waiting for the next gen of VR, but I appreciate the early adopters.

    • kalqlate

      So agreed. I’m thrilled with the VR experience, but I haven’t personally invested in any of the tech just yet. Perhaps in three to four years, there will be ear, vision, and brain-related solutions that make VR so much better and eliminate motion sickness. It might then be simpler for game producers to include VR rendering without much concern for planning or special limited scenarios to avoid motion sickness.

      • brain related solution already exists that gives you the feeling of movement :)

        • kalqlate

          Yes, I know. However, as such technology advances, perhaps game engines will have it integrated such that making a game compatible with VR would be nearly just a matter of setting a property.

      • mile

        With that kind of thinking, I would never buy a mobile phone in 2002. I would wait for color screens, and after that smartphones, and so on…

        • kalqlate

          Hahaha… depends on the type of person you are. I was indeed one of the people late to jump on the smartphone craze. Currently, I’m in year four of my Nexus 5, my first and only smartphone. So far, it has served me excellently, and I don’t feel any need to upgrade until features like Project Tango and combo mobile AR/VR are standard and ubiquitous. The beauty is that you are free to do similarly or differently as you please.

  • NooYawker

    Kick starter is full of people with good ideas that rarely have the skill or know how to follow through. If Facebook didn’t buy oculus it would never be where it is now. The pebble is the only campaign to see anything kind of real success and even they came to an end.

  • Dennis Hearn

    Honest to God…the other day Tony said they were still working on tools for Ai sub sumption…this game is far from finished…everything is just tech the whole time…SQ42 was promised in 2016 on their website ..nothing came..cause they have nothing to show…Erin gets paid 250 k which is too much..chris got married to porn actress “mae demming” (sandi gardiner)..yip changing names to hide her past….yip thats right..cant act to save her life…just to pump back money to themselves…and shes Vip? Bigger mansion new ferrari and a boat…where has your backer money gone too?..Too many lies and deceit…everything just gets stalled the whole time….never seen any real gameplay from sq42..the rest to download now is just buggy tech demos

    • Jason

      Please point me to where they PROMISED sq 42 out in 2016. I’ve seen them post several estimates but never have they promised any release.

      • Zetta

        All of last year it was on their website by virtue of the “Answer The Call” video which clearly stated 2016 (it’s now been changed to 2017), there was also Bishop’s speech video where it stated 2016.

      • wane-bradee

        They actually first promised an end of 2014 release for SQ42.

      • Dennis Hearn

        It was a big header on their website as when the page loaded it was written on the top in big fat letters there for a long time….also until they coudnt show anything at that event it got negative complaints from people..they removed it cause they only put it there to sell to make more money..but there is no game to show

  • VR Geek

    I am sorry, but $142M and no VR at this point…not even a little teaser is nothing short of robbery. I am so done with Kickstarter.

    • David Herrington

      They had a form of VR working at one point but it breaks when implementing other things so they decided to leave it out until they get other key aspects in place then they will reintroduce it and work out the bugs.

      • VR Geek

        I am sorry. $142M is a ridiculous amount of money and they could easily have a large dedicated VR team ensuring they meet their promises.

        • Max

          I’m pretty sure that if it were THAT easy, they would’ve already done it instead of wanting to give bad news about VR being delayed.

    • Ken

      They had VR for a little bit. It gets broken every time they update though, so they decided to shelve implementation until the game is ready to be released, so they’re not having to redo the same work over and over again.

    • Master E

      I’ve been following this game since it was an idea and was always under the impression VR was part of the vision. Why they didn’t think to use an engine capable of VR so they could essentially flip the switch I don’t know.

      I think a lot of developers didn’t think VR would be as absolutely bad ass as it is. This isn’t 3D tv folks… this is an alternate and futuristic way to play games… it’s the best step towards the holodeck we’ve ever had.

      • Max

        They clearly state that VR is never just flipping a switch in any engine. All gameplay is designed with animations in mind and a real camera with a real body and a real helmet around you. Imagine how troublesome it is to fit VR into all animations without having it glitch like it already does on Cryengine. And VR isn’t even the primary focus of the game, which gives even more reason as to why they didn’t choose an “engine capable of VR” but rather an engine with already established grounds for triple A titles.

  • Da Mo (JFlash)

    As it runs at 25fps on hi end hardware its no wonder they dropped VR

  • Peter Hansen

    Guys, what’s all the hickup?! StarCitizen isn’t meant to be played
    anyways, only to be developed. It’s a just job machine for a bunch of
    economical geniuses…

  • Sam Illingworth

    To be honest I don’t see how this could work with current hardware. For one thing the environments in SC are so vast and detailed, running it at VR resolution and framerate would be an immense job for your graphics card – I’m guessing you’d need a 1080 minimum. More importantly, I just don’t think the resolution of the current headsets is good enough. How would you read all the little screens around your ship, for example?

  • why06

    I understand why everyone is upset about this, but what Ben Parry says is true. At least he understands what it takes to implement properly. Of course the readers of “Road to VR” are going to be disappointed at the lack of VR support, but as an avid follower of the game and an VR enthusiast I knew VR would be very difficult to support in this game for a long time. This is not a sudden revelation, but something I saw coming for years.

    I don’t think it’s fair to look at $140 million dollar budget and say they could not implement VR with it. Of course they could, but proper support would be difficult to implement with the rest of the game due to the nature of the game itself. I think anyone with a proper understanding of VR and Start Citizen current scope would know combining the two properly is no easy task.

    This is a high fidelity networked MMO first person game, with fps combat and zero-G combat. All things that will make you barf in VR. How to get around those with out implementing features that would basically look like cheats from none VR players perspectives. (i.e. teleporting etc) It’s not easy.

    I feel like at the time SC was kickstarted VR was the buzzword in the industry and a lot of people promised it without truly understanding all of the complications and difficulties with the current state of VR. At the time this feature was promised the DK2 didn’t even exist. They thought it would work for a first person game you could walk around in and they were dead wrong.

    They could easily technically implement it to check the box of the list, but it would still leave a lot to be desired. So at least they are planning to delay it and attempt to do it properly if ever. Even if that is in 5 years when VR optimization and GPUs can allow for high frame rates in a highly detailed game I’d be okay with that.

    That being said I think a experimental VR mode for cockpits should be implemented. With the warning that you prbly will barf

  • iUserProfile

    Now that we live in a time in which Duke Nukem Forever, Final Fantasy XV and even The Last Guardian are off the table I think it’s upon these brave men to postpone the dreams of thousands indefinetly so that we may have something to wait for (besides Half-Life 3).

  • OgreTactics

    Well fuck this crook anyway. But then most publishers (except Bethesda surprisingly) are holding their “breath” for VR, not only to wait for a consequent gamer adoption but most importantly because they’ll be able to sell yet another “special deluxe remaster legendary VR edition”.

    Which is both a stupid idea for pricing right now, and a comprehensible marketing conception: the cognitive perceived value of a VR game is higher than a flat screen game, like buying an actual spatial 3D world to evolve in rather than a flat interactive moving image.

    That’s why I’m glad Vorpx exists although I haven’t seen much development recently.

  • Raphael

    The more people who tweet to star citizen about “no VR no buy” the more they will have to wake up…

  • Master E

    Why we desperately need someone to make a VR optional game engine so developers would develop for both and it won’t take a significant amount more time for resources.

    Sigh

  • Nairobi

    Surprising? Why was this surprising for you? A game that bit WAY more than it can chew, a game that had to REWRITE the engine it uses several times to say “fuck it” and just went with Lumberyard? It’s like SC was your first Kickstarter campaign. Wake up people.

  • Dennis Hearn

    they keep postponing to keep selling to get more money from you…and there is nothing to show but the tech demos you download as it is currently 2.6.
    Stop giving them your hard earned cash..they have more than enough..but they are filled with greed to keep their tummies full and their ferraris in the garage and to keep their boats afloat..there is companies making great games with a lot less cash

  • mrtexasfreedom

    Very disappointing. Backed the Star Citizen project expecting this would include VR support.

    I agree with the other commenters… They’re delaying this so long that the mainstream gaming industry might be immersed in VR by the time Star Citizen is released. Might be that people look at Star Citizen as a quaint artifact of some previous generation that was extracted from a time capsule.

  • Morality_Mortality

    Sometimes I think Chris Roberts & team are spending too much time in the limelight showcasing the making of Star Citizen instead of actually making Star Citizen. The notion of creating a game (even with the scope of Star Citizen & Squadron 42) without a release date or any kind of deadline is anathema to supporters and non-supporters alike. Very sad to think some backers may have (and will continue) to pass away before they can ever see a finished product.

  • Joshua Phillips

    your pretty much making the game all over again when adding VR:

    Every single ship, every single wall, every single beer can you can bump into has to be tested and verified to not bug out with the VR Camera Perspective – bump ur development time up by 2X and get ready for one hell of a time getting that in while you are still adding features to the game

    also they would have to figure out what they would do with this in VR:

    http://kotaku.com/star-citizens-first-person-view-is-based-on-birds-1787021141

  • Jona Adams

    They don’t have time to fit in VR, but they have time to fit in an intergalactic economy, planetary base building, and entire online multiplayer shooter arena that will no doubt die out in 6 months, as if we don’t have enough of those already.

  • towblerone

    Hmm, considerably less enthused for SC now.

  • Joe_Blober

    As usual there are a few troll that take pleasure by shooting scm, con, vaporware or give name to Chris Roberts… A guy who gather 142M$ on his name because, of course, he is a plain idiot followed by +500.000 even more idiot that can not think by them self :) oh my god.

    For educated people here is a link about all those trolls comedy:

    Truth is a bit different:
    https://sctrollsdump.wordpress.com/

  • Zack57

    morons! They certainly have the funds to put the efforts in… if it doesn thave proper VR support I will just pass…

  • Basic

    “it’s clear Parry has taken onboard the by now dominant view that VR support isn’t something you duct tape to the back of a project, it needs care and attention. This at least is an attitude that should be applauded.”

    Yes but his position is “VR support adds a time tax for lots of features”, so we’re not doing it yet. In short… tacking it on at the end.

  • JWrenn

    Without vr….I don’t know that I will ever bother to play the game at this point. It was one of the key reasons I was interested in it.

  • Robin Doran

    They got there money, OUR money, they need to provide us with VR and show some ambition for it, without it I won’t play this discarded game. If No Man’s Sky gets VR first then it’s C ya forever Star Citizen I don’t need your trash.