Star Wars: Squadrons is here, the space dogfighter from EA’s Motive Studios. Although it was created primarily for console and PC, the game also includes a VR mode for SteamVR headsets and PSVR which allows you to play both the entire single player campaign and multiplayer component from the immersive first-person view of your VR headset. While it lacks a few of the things we’ve come to expect from a game built from the ground up for VR, it makes up for these design concessions by delivering an awesome full-length campaign, a serviceable multiplayer mode, and graphics so refined that you’d swear you were truly stepping inside the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars: Squadrons Details:

Available On: SteamVR (Steam, Epic Games, Origin), PSVR
Release Date: October 2nd, 2020
Price: $40
Developer: Motive Studios, EA Games
Reviewed On: Quest (via Link), Oculus Rift

Gameplay

It seemed like yesterday when the whole VR community was hyped for the release of Star Wars: Battlefront Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission (2016). It was a modest free DLC to the base game on PS4, but it symbolized a beginning commitment by EA Games to people somewhere in the middle of the Venn diagram of Star Wars fans and VR enthusiasts. Years have passed, and it wasn’t clear whether the studio would make good on its tantalizing first glance at VR.

But now Star Wars: Squadrons is here, and it’s easy to imagine what a big budget—I mean a truly massive budget—can bring to the table in terms of visual polish, voice acting, writing, and just about everything that’s missing in VR now. Despite having dipped their collective toes into the medium early on, EA is a relative newcomer to the scene when it comes to VR games, so I wasn’t sure what to expect going into the VR mode of Star Wars: Squadrons.

Image courtesy EA Motive

I’m here to say: Star Wars: Squadrons is awesome…with a few caveats—minor design gripes that you will probably forgive in the face of the game’s immersive, fully-realized cockpits of the franchise’s most beloved fighter ships, the well-crafted story missions that toss you from Empire to New Republic across 14 levels, and the ranked multiplayer mode that will have you battling anyone with the game, console, PC, and VR headset alike.

Single Player

Booting up in VR is unfortunately a bit of a pain, requiring you to start from outside the headset in order to toggle on the VR mode in settings. You’ll need to forget your motion controllers entirely too, because the only control schemes are keyboard and mouse (on PC), gamepad, and HOTAS flight sticks. I played with my Xbox One controller, although the game is really begging for a HOTAS setup for full immersion. I don’t own one, but even then Squadrons was a joy to play. It’s also exceptionally hard if you’re up for the challenge. More on that below.

Image captured by Road to VR

You’re first kicked into the mandatory Prologue, which gives you some a really basic tutorial on flying and shooting, and also sort of lures you into the single player campaign too where you’ll get a more complete look at what each of the game’s ships have to offer. Don’t be mistaken though, the single player mode isn’t a glorified tutorial like you might have seen in other games, but rather a full eight-hour experience that features a cast of characters on both sides of a galactic game of cat and mouse.

Image courtesy EA Motive

I won’t spoil anything here, but suffice it to say that the story mode is definitely worth playing all the way through, which can be done on four difficulty modes: Story Mode (practically impossible to die), Pilot, Veteran and Ace. The story mode includes a few familiar faces, and and some new ones too. Without reservation, I can say Squadron’s puts some of the new films to shame in terms of writing quality and character development, and that’s even on the ancillary characters who are just along for the ride, who you meet back at the hangars for one-way chats.

Image courtesy EA Motive

Throughout the story, you’re introduced to all of the game’s ships, which include a cast of TIE fighters and bombers on the Empire side, and an assortment of iconic rebel fighters on the New Republic side. About halfway through you’re then given mostly free reign on what ship you want to take and what loadout you want to equip it with.

The UI can be really overwhelming at moments, as you’re fed multiple streams of info, from tutorial info on how to use new weapons, to enemy icons, to selector switches that let you reprioritize your level of speed, firepower, and shields. If you ever find yourself dying too much and being overwhelmed, you can always kick down the difficulty level, which predictably makes enemies both dumber and easier to kill. Story Mode still requires effort, but enemy lasers are less effective, and your teammates rain heals down on you.

Image courtesy EA Motive

Flying is a familiar experience for anyone who’s played arcade space sims before, although you’ll still probably need some time to get used to each ships’ turning abilities and loadout array. I found myself constantly switching back to the controller menu to bone up on button placement due to the number of weapons, shields, and other functions you can do in the game.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer offers ranked matches that divide you into one of four classes: Fighter, Interceptor, Bomber, and Support, all of which are pretty self explanatory for anyone who’s played a modern team shooter. It’s still early days, so you’re likely to find a wide mix of player levels as soon as you boot into multiplayer. Team chat is automatically enabled so you can strategize with other players across multiple mission types, including team death match called ‘Dogfights’ and ‘Fleet Battles’, which include attack and defend on each team’s Capital Ships.

Image courtesy EA Motive

I found myself flashing back to EVE: Valkyrie (2017) somewhat, as the game’s multiplayer is very similar, offering up your standard set of various asteroid fields dotted with pickups like repair modules. If you’re totally content with those two modes, you may be completely happy with multiplayer, although I would have liked to see more game modes to mix things up. Suffice it to say, you’ll never run into a bot since there’s gads of players across Xbox, PS4 and PC. I still think multiplayer will need bigger and better modes to keep people coming back for more.

I’m not great, but I also had the chance to play the campaign all the way through, something that helped me gain familiarity with the ships systems, like boosting firepower on the fly and then escaping with quickly with boosted engine power. I’m not certain I had a leg up on console/PC players though, as the ships FOV is naturally limited and it’s easier to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of info flying at you left, right and center.

Thankfully there’s no pay-to-win component here; the only thing available are ship and avatar skins which you gain as you level up.

SEE ALSO
'Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge' Coming to Quest This Holiday Season, Trailer Here

Immersion

One of my biggest complaints is the lack of motion controller support. Looking at the finely-tuned interior of the ships really calls out for more immersion, and a greater ability to flip switches and mess with targeting computers. I get why it isn’t, partly because it would kill the fast-pace nature of the game, but it’s still something you’d expect from a VR game nowadays.

Image courtesy EA Motive

Still, I can’t overstate just how pretty the game looks. On Oculus Quest (via Link) I ran into constant frame drops and tracking hitches with my GTX 1080, which is above the game’s minimum spec of GTX 1060. Still, this probably had more to do with system-level encoding for Link and not the game itself. Booting up with Rift immediately showed that the game ran smoothly on high settings, which showed off the game’s shadows, dynamic lighting, surface reflections, and massive galactic scale in all its sci-fi glory. EA could have easily dumbed down both the ships’ interiors and exteriors, but the level of detail everywhere is astounding to see in VR.

Cutscenes are all presented in a curved 2D display, which is a bit of a letdown, but I can understand why the studio kept them this way. Still, you’re not losing out on too much, as you’re also given the opportunity to teleport around the hangar and visit crew members, all of whom have unique personalities and dialogue about the results of missions.

Image courtesy EA Motive

Talking with crew members isn’t interactive, like you might see in an RPG, but the fine attention to detail with character mocap, textures, and cloth simulation are all top notch. Characters very nearly push to the other side of the uncanny valley, which is further enhanced in VR since you’re looking at the characters face-to-face. Voice acting is also stupendous, which anyone would be able to appreciate across the board, however it’s a pity players on flatscreen can’t appreciate the game’s characters like you can in VR.

In any case, the test of a VR mode is whether you would stay in VR, or just play it out on flatscreen. If you’ve read this far, you’ll probably know my answer is a resounding yes.

SEE ALSO
'Star Wars: Squadrons' VR FAQ – Supported Headsets, Comfort Settings, Min Specs & More

Comfort

I’ve definitely had a hard time with VR dogfighters in the past due to the tight turning and loop-de-loops that are necessary to get a bead on enemy ships. In general, a cockpit helps stave off nausea thanks to the continual reference point, although I’ve definitely pushed past my comfort level in the pursuit of keeping up with the competition.

The game’s cockpits are heavy and typically pretty enclosed. The worst offender is the TIE fighter, which can be construed as a good or bad thing depending on your comfort level. It’s good because the ship’s tiny front-facing window limits you field of view for more comfort, but it also kills you peripheral, making you depend more on instruments and UI to pursue enemies. I don’t think the developers could do much about this since the TIE fighter is engrained in the universe’s lore since the late ’70s.

Image courtesy Motive

Even the comparatively open X-wing offers plenty of metal to keep you grounded in your flying cage though. Motive does a few other things to mitigate this though by adding in heaps of particle effects to give you more of a grounding in the wide open spaces, something you really shouldn’t underestimate for user comfort. In all, I played for hours at a time with no effect across all of the game’s ships, and I’ve had issue in the past with EVE: Valkyrie.

Outside of the cockpit back at base, you can teleport around to specific nodes to hear character dialogue. Snap-turn is there, but if you have a swivel chair or a working neck, you probably won’t need it.

REVIEW OVERVIEW
Overall
9
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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • On my Rift CV1 the graphics just look kinda blurry, and the stuff in the distance quite flat. Does this get noticeably better on a headset like the Quest 2 using Link or Virtual Desktop where the resolution is much higher?

    • Engineer_92

      The rift has considerably lower resolution. The OG Quest is much better in comparison, so Quest 2 should blow the CV1 out of the water.

      • Fra FazioxTx

        This is wrong. Try to play Half-Life Alyx on the Oculus Rift CV1. It looks gorgeous despite the lower headset resolution. It is not the headset. It is the game that sucks and a lot.

        • Engineer_92

          LOL i have a CV1 and have played Half Life. No one is dogging on the CV1, but objectively the better resolution WILL look better

    • Tyler W

      I cant comment specifically on this game, but for me the rift s is leaps and bounds above the cv1 for graphical fidelity.

      • mirak

        the blacks sucks

    • exbagboy

      Turn TAA from low to high and increase TAA sharpness. Also, increase super sampling from your Oculus debug tool, increasing resolution % ingame doesn’t do anything for me.

      • chuan_l

        It makes no difference increasing the render scale. Its either a bug , or the assets are baked out like that. You can see the skybox texture is low resolution – that can’t be fixed in the vr compositor.

        • exbagboy

          I am talking about the overall resolution on my CV1, the Origin version of the game default render resolution in the config file is set to 0.8 for vr and 1.0 for non-vr. The skybox does still look stretched out in VR, this doesn’t fix that. The game also has motion blur and TAA built in, hopefully they fix it all.

    • chuan_l

      Nope its ” Frostbite ” and there’s less detail on objects further from the camera. That doesn’t hold up once you increase the headset resolution using something like ” Quest 2 ” or ” Pimax 8k x “. The game looks bad but people are blinded by star wars and all that.

      • Well it doesn’t look bad to me other than being slightly blurry and low res, from what I can tell, so I guess I’ll see when I get a headset where things shouldn’t be slightly blurry and low res. . . .

      • Gonzax

        Looks bad??? it looks amazing! The skybox is a bit low-res, that’s true, but everything else is crisp and great looking, it’s not because it’s SW, it’s because from a graphical standpoint the game is fantastic,at least it was for me on ultra settings and SS at 150% on my Index.

        • Fra FazioxTx

          He is right. It looks awful man. Graphics are blurry and the gameplay is boring. The piloting system (any of the options) is just stupid and why do I have to use an xbox controller ? Why no touch controllers support ?

          • Gonzax

            Graphics are super crisp for me. No touch support is due to lack of buttons. The devs explained the reasons. https://uploadvr.com/ea-star-wars-squadrons-vr-controller-support/

          • Fra FazioxTx

            You can create virtual controls. The lack of buttons is a pitiful excuse. You can create a virtual joystick, virtual throttle and so on in the game. There is plenty of example games, like VTOL or Aerofly FS2 just to mention two.

    • Fra FazioxTx

      One the Oculus Rift CV1 it looks horrible really. Bad.

    • Pablo C

      It look blurry on my Rift S as well, there is no way Quest look better (because of the bandwidth). Try incresing AA sharpness to 100%, and SS to 130.

  • Ad

    In time someone could make something like this with Aardvark for this game.

    https://github.com/dantman/elite-vr-cockpit

  • Kisato

    I’d just like to say Squadrons is not a “VR game”, it’s a “game with VR support” if we were to classify it as such.

    The call by people for motion controller support really seem superficial and very unnecessary to me and would assuredly take development time away from the core game which is more important than a VR-exclusive ability such as in-VR panel interaction.

    • ChasityRMcQueen

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    • Gonzax

      IMO Squadrons is as VR as it gets.

      Regarding the controls, not every game is necessarily meant to be played with motion controllers, most are but not this one. This should be played with a HOTAS, not a gamepad, not kb+m and certainly not motion controllers. I agree with you on that.

      • JakeDunnegan

        I think a joystick works great. (I believe HOTAS implies having the left hand thruster, as well, right?) A joystick with a lot of buttons, a thruster control on the bottom, and a hat, like the one I’m using is awesome.

        The authenticity/feel of the left hand thruster must be awesome, though on the flip side, it’s probably a bit more expensive as well. KB+M with this game was pretty flippin tough, IMO. I’ve played many a flight game with KB+M (some might say “stubbornly played”) but I found this one particularly hard with that scheme, and I personally can’t typical controller/game pads.

        Scary thing is the price gouging that’s happened since June on HOTAS. Something you could get for $50-$60 new on Amazon, etc – now costs $160-$230. It’s insane! Course, a lot of is due to MS Flight Simulator coming out…

      • Pablo C

        IMO the best possible flight experience on a spaceship is on XRebirth VR, and it uses brilliantly the VR controllers.

    • No, its a VR game. The level of immersion in the cockpit is amazing.

    • Wild Dog

      You VR virgins just haven’t played real VR flight games. Go play VTOL VR for a good example.

  • Amazing review, thanks for sharing it! I’m happy this game fulfills all our expectations!

  • MW

    Again – beware. This game is unplayable in VR for me, because VR controllers doens’t work. Game just just displays cockpit in VR – that’s it. It’s regular 2d game with small VR treat – NOT a VR game.
    And it has very complicated control system – it’s just impossible to play when you don’t see the controller.

    Maybe some kind of joystick can work, but I will not be buying special hardware for one game. So good game, but not VR game.

    • Haldir Orlly

      Lmao, so don’t ever touch Elite: Dangerous or Subnautica or any seated VR experience then apparently. lol

      It works perfectly fine in VR if you have half a brain to remember where controls are.

      • Kevin Brook

        Subnautica is not in way optimised for VR yet still managed to be the best VR game I’ve ever played!

        • Rudl Za Vedno

          Yeah, Subnautica in VR is still one of the best experiences in VR. I’m so disappointed Below Zero dropped VR support

          • DanDei

            yes, when they confirmed Below Zero won’t come with VR support I was incredibly dissapointed. Hope some modder will be able to at least restore the shaky support of the original game

      • MW

        Don’t worry I won’t:) Believe me – VR game with hands glued to two sticks is not fun at all. Why you cannot touch controls in cockpit? It looks like it just made for that!So – I prefer to play it in normal monitor. VR should enrich the experience, not make it clunky and frustrating.Subnautica is the same – VR is just gets in the way, not helping at all, to sink in to the history.

        • gothicvillas

          So what the difference with the monitor gameplay then? Your hands are glued to k+m or a gamepad. Same bro, but you are limited to a monitor scale view.
          Somehow I have a suspicion you dont even own a vr headset hehe just trolling here :) otherwise your argument above is a bit strange

          • Gonzax

            This!

    • gothicvillas

      If you think it has complicated control system, you clearly haven’t played Elite Dangerous lol. This is why we love the flying sims, because its not easy. And it is absolutely fantastic in VR, shame on the 2d cutscenes though I agree.

    • 3872Orcs

      When I started with VR with the DK2 I specifically bough a xbox controller and an X52 Pro HOTAS. I still use both in many VR games.

      • Aircar has always felt much more immersive and accurate with my Xbox controller than my Index controllers. The joysticks on the Xbox controller feel precise, responsive whilst the controller feels more like flight yoke with both hands connected.

        • Gonzax

          Try x360ce and use a HOTAS with Aircar, it’s so good!

          Agreed about the Index controllers vs gamepad, by the way, but that’s because the Index joysticks are really bad, too loose for my taste, not precise at all, it’s the worst part about the knucles IMO.

          • Wild Dog

            Aircar isn’t a real VR game, it just has vr support.

            Try a real VR game like VTOL VR for a much better experience.

      • Gonzax

        Motion controllers feel great in Aircar and yet, once I played it with my HOTAS I was like “Oh my God, this is it!” sooooooo much better!!! I don’t think I’ll ever play it again with a controller, it just feels empty now and weird.

      • Wild Dog

        You should try VTOL VR, that’s where the real motion control implementation is.

    • MeowMix

      Many cockpit games don’t include motion controller support. The more important thing is does it support Xbox controller and/or HOTAS support.

      Ironically, having HOTAS support actually makes it a better VR game than having motion controller support.

      • Wild Dog

        That’s not an excuse for laziness. There are games like VTOL VR that include excellent motion controls, but didney can’t afford to make a quality experience?

    • DanDei

      I think by calling it “unplayable” you are rather displaying your own limitations than those of the game. It actually works very smoothly. And motion controllers would be very uncomfortable for flying. This imaginary holding a flight stick that is not connected to anything in real life feels totally weird in No Man’s Sky. I don’t need that for a space combat game.

      • Wild Dog

        It’s buggy and they lied about full VR support.

        You’re a noob if you haven’t tried a VR flight sim with good motion controls yet. Try VTOL VR and come back.

    • Yeah, it does require a gamepad, mouse and keyboard or HOTAS.

      I guess they really should try to at least as some kind of motion controller support, although I can see why it might be an issue due to almost every motion controller having a few less inputs than those other options, particularly for how they’d map switching between engine, weapon and shield priority.

      • Wild Dog

        The motion controller is supposed to be the input, like pressing buttons and grabbing the joystick.

        VTOL VR is the golden standard, Hotas boomers go bonkers on the forums hating for the lack of native hotas support.

    • Gonzax

      You’re kidding, right??

    • Wild Dog

      They lied about full VR support too.

  • Unfortunately this seems clunky and poorly optimised, using latest Nvidia drivers and 8086K/RTX2080Ti. Had to remove my overclock to get it to run without crashing. Graphics are stuttering and blurry, Index at 90hz and streamvr on auto resolution, motion smoothing off.

    Reminds me of Assetto Corsa having to use keyboard to enter game with headset lifted to see monitor. Using Xbox controller, it asked me to use keyboard too many times to recalibrate headset and launch game.

    steamVR IPD digital display not working in headset and headset button does not work. Tried launching in “steamVR mode” caused crash, had to start desktop version and then toggle into VR mode in game. The Y button on my Xbox controller seems to toggle VR mode, I’ll need to remap the controls if possible.

    Started in tie fighter, not a great flight model, FOV felt very restricted, so far unimpressed with graphics/performance in VR

  • Frédéric Ilbaize

    Pretty on an oculus quest and link…

  • MeowMix

    I’m glad to hear it reminds you of EVE:Valkyrie, probably my fav VR dogfighter game back in the days (too bad the player base died). Other games like Elite were never able to scratch that same itch, so I’m glad Squadrons is able to deliver on that point.

  • Rudl Za Vedno

    How can this game get 4.5/5 stars? It’s implementation of HOTAS is plain awful. My X52 pro has 50% dead zones on X-Y axis and I’m far the only one with this problem. Reddit is full of ppl complaining about it.

    • DanDei

      Because dead zones can be corrected with a patch easily and the core gameplay is great.

      • david vincent

        Games reviews never taker hypothetical future patches into account.

    • chuan_l

      There’s a lot of ” awful ” with this game.
      — Though its being overlooked for being ” star wars “. The art direction is just plain bad as compared to something like ” Everspace 2 “. Let’s hope they can patch and fix some of these issues.

      • Pablo C

        apparently Everspace 2 wont feature VR option

    • Gonzax

      Because the reviewer said he didn’t use a HOTAS so how could he know? also, that’s a problem with certain hotas but not all of them. I had zero issues playing with mine, a T Flight 4, which is a cheap one.

    • Fra FazioxTx

      This game is so bad I have requested a refund immediately. Very disappointing I agree.

    • Steven C Williams

      I feel your pain. I have returned many games lately for crazy immersion breaking bugs. Red Dead Redemption 2 flat out wouldn’t produce sound on my steel series gaming headphones. Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order stutters like a nightmare at all graphical settings on a high end system.

      I am getting the impression that ported games and multisystem release games are getting worse and worse PC quality control. Still I am not certain this is a reason to review otherwise good games.

      I think I got lucky though or my tolerance for sketchy VR performance is high because I am able to play this game without any major pains in VR.

      • Pablo C

        Check your PC man, it might be a malware issue. I don´t have a top notch PC and Jedi FO works like a charm at 60 fps.

  • mepy

    A mess trying to get it to work with Saitec X56 joystick and throttle, absolutely not plug-and-play.

  • Caven

    Booting up in VR is unfortunately a bit of a pain, requiring you to start from outside the headset in order to toggle on the VR mode in settings.

    I didn’t have this problem. At least on Steam, with my headset already booted up but still sitting on my desk, from the Windows desktop I was given the option to start the game either in normal mode or VR mode. I just selected VR mode, put on the headset, and the game booted right to VR mode as expected. The only complication I encountered was the need to use the keyboard to sync my Steam account with Origin, but as far as I can tell that’s a one-time login.

    Next time I may try launching it from within SteamVR to see if it automatically launches in VR mode.

    • Shy Guy

      Only Steam has the option to launch directly in VR mode. With Origin and Epic, which is through Origin, it starts up on the monitor, and you have to toggle the VR mode on through the settings. It’s not a big deal though, just open settings, VR, click toggle, click on the game window to regain focus from all the SteamVR popup windows, and press space on the keyboard to confirm, before it times out after 30 seconds. Then put the headset on at your leisure, and get going.

  • Gildahl

    Haven’t decided whether to keep this one. I’m using an Index and graphics are generally great (and I’m ok with HOTAS rather than motion controllers); however, the huge round smudges that one might mistake for stars are a huge put-off and completely remove the immersion for me. It really is very, very bad.

    • chuan_l

      ” Prepare for hype jump “

      • Raphael

        It’s not getting VR support. Devs have abandoned their VR supporters.

        • Pablo C

          really? what a bummer! I was giving VR as a fact!

      • StarLightPL

        And now 3 years later you can, with the help of praydog’s universal UEVR mod :-)

  • Karol Gasiński

    There is one caveat for Valve Index users. Game is not supporting headsets with canted displays configuration, so if user had SteamVR configured to expose Index displays in “raw” or “canted” mode (to reduce size of rendered viewports, optimize game rendering), you will end up with terrible stereo disparity, when looking at any object further away than few meters. For e.g. fighter cockpit will still look ok, but all the spaceships in front will be “doubled”. In such case player will need to restore “parallel” rendering mode in SteamVR config file (to emulate displays being side by side like in other headsets).

    • chuan_l

      Works just fine on ” Index ” ” Pimax 8k x ” ,
      — Though yes it requires parallel projection on.

    • Gonzax

      I use Index and didn’t find any of those issues with my default Steam configuration. I didn’t even know you could change those parameters.

      Is it worth doing it for other games?

    • Ad

      How do enable “canted mode”?

  • chuan_l

    The graphics are ” psvr ” optimised —
    Its telling that ea motive made you use all these pre – rendered shots. The game looks nothing like that – and its actually quite disappointing. The draw distance is bad , skybox is low resolution and color space clamped. The emporers new clothes !

    • Gonzax

      Well everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, of course, but I deeply disagree, I find the visuals great.

    • mako482

      Agree, it looks horrible in PS4 VR.

    • I think it looks amazing. But I’m old and don’t mind the skybox as much as the detailed cockpit around me and the overall feel…

  • david vincent

    “An awesome full-length campaign”
    7-8 hours long is far from being “full-length” (compared to the +20h campaign of XW Alliance) but well, at least that’s longer than a big tutorial…

    • Gonzax

      It took me 13 hours to finish the story, I was actually surprised it was that long so unless you’re playing on the easiest setting it should take you more than 6-7 hours. It’s a full-length campaign indeed. Even without the multiplayer side I would have happily paid for this single player mode.

      And let’s not forget it’s cheaper than usual, which didn’t need to be as it’s totally worth it.

  • david vincent

    Since Track IR is not supported, haven’t us VR users an unfair advantage against flatscreen players ?

  • Adrian Meredith

    Really enjoying this so far however I would class it as a VR minimum effort kind of game. The lack of immersion outside of combar, the frequent flatscreen cutscenes, lack of locomotion outside of gameplay etc. Won’t complain though this is the kind of game VR needs. I also have a 1080 and it performs like a dog v poor framerate and its not obvious how to make it better (e.g. why does the resolution scale slide not work?)

  • Ace of Spades

    Not going to support a game with “pronouns”, the dev outright tweeted it like its some ingenious idea to support the crazy SJWs

    • Nina_W

      Wow what a snowflake. Why are you so offended by something you won’t use?

      • Ace of Spades

        Woke Deference is in full force, shilling hard.

        • Wild Dog

          They flat out lied about full VR support too. It’s on their website.

      • RangerOne

        Right? rofl

      • Filipe Charrua

        Chill out tribal butterfly. Want some help from ONU?

  • Gonzax

    I finished it yesterday on my Index and it was fantastic. The visual quality, the dubbing, the long single player, the incredible immersion. I couldn’t be happier with it. I bought a HOTAS just for this game and I don’t regret it one bit, it’s so much better with it that I don’t think I will ever play another flying game with a controller, kb or motion controller.

    • Wild Dog

      I guess you’ll never get to try VTOL VR then, I’m sorry to hear that. It’s a really good VR flight sim, really addictive but it only uses motion controllers.

  • Fra FazioxTx

    I bought it, played it 40 minutes the single player mission on the Oculus Rift CV1, trying to understand why people like this. It is bad. Bad graphics, bad piloting system, bad gameplay and last but not least boring af. I have request a refund from Steam immediately. Very bad title.

    And why do I have to use the XBOX gamepad and there is no support for the Touch controllers ? Seriously ?

    • Shy Guy

      The Origin / Epic versions support the Oculus runtime. Not sure why the Steam one doesn’t, as Steam supports the possibility.

  • Tom

    There are a ton of issues being reported for VR, including forced framerates causing asynchronous reproduction to kick in. There are a bunch of settings in a config file like VR motion blur that you can’t turn off without the anti-cheat resetting it back to default. I wonder why most reviewers don’t seem to have this issue. I don’t play a lot of VR, but it’s very obvious. Reviewers also don’t seem to notice the dead zone issues with HOTAS either. Did they review on a pre-release copy or something? WorthABuy on youtube seems to be the only reviewer that points out these issues and calls the game broken. https://youtu.be/pqBy9xUImTA

    • Wild Dog

      They just didn’t care cuz didney money. Lied about full VR too.

  • JakeDunnegan

    Originally played it on my desktop. Found the mouse movement extremely difficult to play. (I played SW Battlefront2 using the same setup and that was fantastic.)

    I then dug out my very old Logistic Extreme 3D Pro joystick. (Surprisingly, seems to be the defacto joystick being used by folks these days.. go figure! When I went searching for joystick keymappings for Squadrons, they all featured this exact joystick…) I looked up my order on Amazon – and, I apparently bought the thing in 2008 for $29.99 plus tax. ;)

    In any case, it was a LOT better with a joystick. I finally figured out how to set up my Rift-S with it (for some reason, I kept hearing to use Steam with it…don’t.) Just plain old Oculus running and then toggle VR in the game. I also got the joystick working with it.

    IT WAS AWESOME. HOLY CRAP. Not only was it so much more intuitive, but the entire set up worked great. I found myself wanting ear buds, b/c the sound without them was a bit too faint, but man, the space flight is jaw dropping. And the way the various communications from the AI just jumped out of the screen at you.

    And, one can tell that b/c they narrowed the focus of the game to being like 90% cockpit, (and not worrying about VR cut-scenes) they were able to make that one part REALLY well done.

    And, I went ahead and went searching for another joystick…I have a used one on the way to my house right now (so my son can play with me at the same time) – was $54 shipped. Don’t be surprised if you don’t find it that cheap, but they can certainly be found for less than $100.

    That particular model is awesome because they have a “hat” on top of the joystick, that allows another 8 or even 12 functions (left/right/up/down and then hold for same, and double-tap for same, in some cases). The only setting I changed was switching the yaw, b/c I’m someone who basically has to push down to point the nose down, and.. yeah, I’m not very good the other way. ;)

    If you enjoy flight games, or space flight games in VR.. do not pass this one up.

  • mako482

    PS4VR looks like ass, really disappointed.

  • Filipe Charrua

    Complete wokeness indoctrination takes you away from the universe. besides 80% of the chars are african or asian? Some male pilots have male husbands. You cant have a rebel WHITE pilot? Why this inverted racism product? Games are games not a propaganda agenda for making the world a lawless UGANDA. Horribely and completely off the mark.

    • Pablo C

      Most of the world population is african or asian, and the game DID include your race (you just don´t know it): you are caucasian, white is not a race. There are several caucasian characters in the game, male and female, just, they might not be as white as you like it.

      • Filipe Charrua

        Any african country went to space? are you for real? In SW universe were there 80 % afros around? Are a biased moron?

        • Pablo C

          Any first person game should include the pletora of humans. I´m caucassian as well, I´m just not an ignorant one.

          • Filipe Charrua

            exactly. humans. Not chimpanzés.

        • Pablo C

          Any FP game needs to include all possible type of humans. This does. And yes, SW is full of african people, since all humans are africans. I´m caucassian, I´m just not an ignorant.

        • Pablo C

          Well, it´s a good thing the SW universe is trying to fix an old, rather racist tendency. I´m caucasian, I´m just not an ignorant.

          • Filipe Charrua

            Hey pablito, have you been drinking tequilla and eating tamales?

          • Pablo C

            Men, you racism only shows your ignorance, to everyone. First, not all spanish speaking people lives in Mexico. now you know.

          • Wild Child

            Were all racists, we are from diferent races, moron. Stop living in pink disney world.

          • Pablo C

            NO. Just you and a decreasing number of parasites.

          • Pablo C

            NO. Just you and a decreasing number of parasites.

          • Wild Child

            Youre caucasian on the outside. But inside youre total woke.

          • Pablo C

            your kind (the racist) is disapearing, but it´ll take more years because a lot of racists are also spoiled rich.

  • Ace of Spades
    • Wild Dog

      They lied about full VR support.

      • Charles

        “They lied. TERMINATE THEM IMMEDIATELY.”

  • Pablo C

    (campaign) flying my Xwing looking all the time around to see where all my enemies are, running from the Destroyer but at the same time looking back, visually preparing my counterattack…. This is a dream come true for all of us that grew watching the old Star wars movies. Despite some bluryness, I am inside my Xwing fighting for the rebels, no doubt about it.

    The game is so immersive, that is actually very hard to switch to the parts of the game where I´m an Imperial. It feels ackward, it´s not like in the Flat, where this is happening to someone else. This is happening to me.

    • Filipe Charrua

      Sure imperium is full of primitive tribals and women in macho roles.. that didnt happen in the films universe. Funnny how this forced indoctrination allways is a sales flop. Devs just dont learn we dont like phony ideas. :)

      • Pablo C

        Whaet?

  • Steven C Williams

    I am running an Oculus CV1 and performance is good enough to enjoy being in an X-Wing in VR. As a successor to prior Star Wars flight sims, this is objectively a very good game. Close up flybys of capital ships and your cockpit all look really good in VR. At least as good as anything else on the Oculus. However sims in general really suffer from the low resolution as distant models look like pixel blurs. And I agree some of the space back drops look shitty.

    I do also notice some jerkiness on occasion that is probably due to framerate issues when I try to render at 150% res for better visuals. But generally I have been playing with everything maxed out at 120-150% res and all the major assets really really good. Distant assets in space can be a bit of a mess until you get close, but I haven’t seen a game that doesn’t have this issue in VR so not sure what you are all comparing it to. Possibly a better flight sim I haven’t tried on CV1.

    This game feels 100% made for VR and I think it would have been challenging but possible to make VR controllers work, some of the buttons would have had to be diverted to real cockpit toggles. But pretty sure it just feels better with a joystick since touch controllers cant replicate that feel. ( Been playing with an xbox control because I am lazy and its good enough)

    For those saying CV1 looks bad, I assume you have been using a newer better headset which is making you say that?

    At this point I assume CV1 has among the worst starting resolution as well as pretty intense visual artifacts from the lenses trying to smooth out the screen door. It looks like the Quest 2, Index and G2 are all big step ups in visual quality but not necessarily game changing. The low res on all the headsets means stuff looks best when it is either simple or up close and big, which is not most of what you see dogfighting tie fighters.

    I haven’t tried this game outside of VR to just see if it looks pretty good in general. Maybe there are some assets that look bad not just because of VR.

  • What a wonderful fanservice this game is! The detailed cockpits, the lighting and flying amongst a fleet are unprecedented.
    Would buy any DLC in a heartbeat!

  • The lack of VR controls is an insta-kill for me :'(

    • Wild Dog

      Preach it brother. They lied about full VR support too.

      • Actually, I got the game for free in the xbox game pass so I ended up playing it. I’m not too far into it yet, I may replay it, I don’t know yet.

        So far I like it, but it would be so much better with proper VR controls. Also, since I don’t own it on Steam, I can’t play with my Steam controller so I’m stuck with keyboard and mouse which I cannot see :D

        • Wild Dog

          Well, at-least we both know where it’s at.

  • Dart

    The hate that some people have for Squadrons completely baffles me. While I agree that it is far from perfect visually, overall game play is quite fun. Sadly it has two distinct requirements that make or break the game.

    1) VR. On a screen its just meh. In VR it’s a whole new experience.
    2) HOTAS. A joystick and throttle are almost a requirement and a set of rudder pedals isn’t a bad thing either. Mouse and keyboard or gamepad are just not fun.

    I am not a huge fan of fleet battles because it feels more like a tug of war than anything. Dogfights on the other hand, that mode alone makes the game worth it.

  • Wild Dog

    … Has this “reviewer” even tried VTOL VR?

  • Wild Dog

    Wake me up when it gets motion controls like real VR dogfighters.