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CCP (Eve Online dev) shows off Oculus Rift space combat sim

K

Killthee

helped a brotha out on multiple separate occasions!
Trailer

The Verge:

Sean Hollister said:
If you had any question whether the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset would lead to desirable new games, just ask any of the 1,500 people who attended FanFest 2013 in Iceland this year. There, Eve Online developer CCP showed off "EVR," a proof-of-concept game, which stuffs players into the virtual cockpits of a 360-degree turn-and-burn multiplayer space dogfighting simulation that appears to be set in the Eve Online universe.
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Eurogamer:

Richard Cobbett said:
To be clear though, this isn't actually Eve Online VR, but a Unity powered, 3x3 dogfighting game using some of its assets and put together by CCP employees as a side-project. It's called EVR. It's not a finished game. The official CCP line is that no decisions have been made about its future - whether it gets the resources to become an actual Oculus Rift game/Eve spin-off, is just brought out this time next year as a FanFest tradition, or is never played again. A game only lasts three minutes, most of it spent staring and going "Oooh..." and trying not to make any unfortunate faces for unseen people to cruelly shoot with their camera-phones. This was my first time with an Oculus Rift, and while the experience was naturally a bit blurry and unkind to my glasses-wearing, astigmatic eyes, it was still hugely impressive.
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Penny Arcade:

Ben Kuchera said:
Each round begins with all the pilots secure in their cockpits, held tight by metal launching tubes of lumbering capital ships. You can look up and see the glass keeping you from the vacuum of space. Look down and there is your body, clad in a military flight suit. The game was built in the Unity Engine, using assets from EVE Online. They call the game EVR.

Suddenly the ship shoots forward, shot into combat like a torpedo. The left analog stick of the Xbox 360 controller flies your fighter, and your lasers can only shoot forward; you have to point your ship’s nose at your target to hit anything. You can also move your head and look around, trying to find your enemies, making sure no lasers or missiles are being fired. You can see the light reflecting off your cockpit, and the sense of speed, danger, and excitement are hard to describe.
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Ben Kuchera said:
It wasn’t the most complex game, only a small number of developers worked on it and we were seeing the results of seven weeks of part-time work, but all the elements worked together to make you feel like you were inside a ship, blowing away the enemy fighters while being supported by your team. It's even weirder to watch others play; you see a row of people with VR headsets over their faces, looking around and wincing as they either kill others or explode due to the fire of others.

If you ever dreamed about being inside a game of Wing Commander, this game delivers that feeling. The cockpit is detailed, although the displays don’t share any information with the player. You don’t feel like you’re controlling a ship, you feel like you’re a pilot inside a space fighter, screaming into battle.

I asked about the chances of the game being released, and the developers were cagey. This was a side project. It wasn’t finished. It was just giving them ideas for the future. It was something they were doing for fun. I nodded politely while I tried to hand them 5,000 ISK notes to get them to give me a copy of the game for my personal collection of Rift content.

They weren’t tempted by the bribe.
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Would absolutely love to play this. I can honestly see a partial rebirth for arcades around games like this, since it'd help defer the cost of VR.

Oh, and Nidhogg.
 
This is why I want a rift. Any game where you are seated in a vehicle will be amazing. You don't have the problems with unnatural walking controls.
 
jet1911 said:
The head movement looks pretty stiff.
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Did you not read the article: It wasn’t the most complex game, only a small number of developers worked on it and we were seeing the results of seven weeks of part-time work, but all the elements worked together to make you feel like you were inside a ship, blowing away the enemy fighters while being supported by your team.
 
Oculus Rift IS the next-generation

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If they could get eventually consumer rifts below that $100-$80 sweet spot I could really see this taking off. As it is though, I fear a future relegated to the niche a la the novint falcon.
 
CrunchyFrog said:
If they could get eventually consumer rifts below that $100-$80 sweet spot I could really see this taking off. As it is though, I fear a future relegated to the niche a la the novint falcon.
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$80?! At $300 the Rift is an absolute miracle for the kind of experience it gives. Up until a few weeks ago an experience like this would require tech that costs THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of dollars. 200-300 isn't low enough for you? For an actual convincing VR experience in your own home!? God damn people are cheap. Do people even understand how impressive this technology actually is?
 
Really good impressions in this write-up too:

http://themittani.com/news/fanfest-dogfighting-eve-oculus-rift

"I also went into the experience with low expectations for the level of polish on display. I was skeptical about how well the Oculus rig would work and whether it could provide a seamlessly integrated VR experience. I also expected the graphics on display to be unpolished, perhaps even untextured.

Then I strapped the Oculus rig to my face and had my expectations blown out of the water. I was sitting in a fully rendered cockpit with holographic displays floating in front of me. The Oculus tracked the movements of my head perfectly as I looked down and saw my own virtual 'body', hands on throttle and stick in the cockpit."

"In practice, the Oculus head-tracking system worked flawlessly and with surprising smoothness. I could look up, down and around at my environment with zero delay. The environment even stretched a good ways behind me, so that I felt truly immersed in my Templar's cockpit. Targeting missiles by turning my head felt natural and completely intuitive; in fact it was probably the easiest and most accurate targeting interface I've ever used in a video game."

"As I played, I was on the lookout for symptoms of motion sickness, which has often plagued me when playing FPS games. Between the extremely high framerate (well over 60 FPS, according to Mr. Lander) and the perfect synchronization between my head movements and the changing field of view of the Oculus rig, I felt like I was really there in that cockpit, and there was no trace of nausea or vertigo.

Another fun note about the Oculus rig: it projects things in stereoscopic 3D. The holographic controls in my cockpit were really holographic, and I had a strong sense of depth and space in my cockpit and with the objects outside of it. Overall, it's a really impressive piece of kit, and this was just with one of the developer models. The actual consumer device will have higher resolution."

Sounds absolutely amazing. And if this is from a crude demo, I can't even imagine how cool a serious production like Star Citizen will be.
 
YuShtink said:
$80?! At $300 the Rift is an absolute miracle for the kind of experience it gives. Up until a few weeks ago an experience like this would require tech that costs THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of dollars. 200-300 isn't low enough for you? For an actual convincing VR experience in your own home!? God damn people are cheap. Do people even understand how impressive this technology actually is?
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The technology is of course impressive, but the question is is it $300 impressive? The Chevy Volt is pretty damned impressive, but at $40k, no matter how relatively good a deal it may be, it's just not a terribly appealing pricepoint. As cool as this is, I really can't justify spending that much money on something with so little support at the moment. Like I said earlier, I think the comparison to the Novint Falcon is particularly apt. For 3D haptic feedback there was a lot of potential, but at an entry price of $200+ and with little actual software support it's been relegated to a confined but still living niche. I would hope something like this could get to the point where it's at least as ubiquitous as 3D monitors are nowadays, but as it stands it's a hefty price point for something so limited in application (almost entirely game related), at least at the moment. Rest assured, though, this tech will get cheaper, and considering it's using fast-developing mobile parts that price will drop quite quickly within the next 2-3 years. I'd bank on it being down somewhere in the $120-$150 range by about 2015, if not lower.
 
CrunchyFrog said:
If they could get eventually consumer rifts below that $100-$80 sweet spot I could really see this taking off. As it is though, I fear a future relegated to the niche a la the novint falcon.
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I was ready to pay $300 for this. At that price this piece of hardware is a steal.


Is this going to be marketed to next gen consoles also? I really don't see Oculus Rift performing well with "cinematic" laggy framerates.
 
I'm sure the thing that really makes this work is the fact that you're in a cockpit so there's none of the disconnect that comes about by walking around via a stick on a controller. That's been the one thing that's seemed to be a drag about the Rift, people having a hard time coping with looking being so natural and movement still being confined to the gamepad. This'll make for great racing/flight sim/mech games.

Also, I think the things that they could do with the HUD in a game like this have the potential to be breathtaking, whether they put it on the cockpit dashboard or have it imposed over your vision, as if you were actually in a cockpit wearing a helmet/visor with a full readout displayed through it.
 
So it's a space shooter?

I wonder if they can use it on EVE Online itself.
Instead of having a three monitor set up, just have all the screens as a part of the ship UI with HUD pop ups in 3D.
 
YuShtink said:
$80?! At $300 the Rift is an absolute miracle for the kind of experience it gives. Up until a few weeks ago an experience like this would require tech that costs THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of dollars. 200-300 isn't low enough for you? For an actual convincing VR experience in your own home!? God damn people are cheap. Do people even understand how impressive this technology actually is?
Click to expand...

His point is that mass market adoption of a $300 accessory is not going to happen, no matter how compelling the device. If the Rift was a self contained device (able to play games without external assistance) it might take of at that price. I don't believe he's discounting the technology, or the fact it's as cheap as it is. Also, it wouldn't have cost "thousands and thousands" a few weeks ago, otherwise it would still cost thousands and thousands :p
 
CrunchyFrog said:
The technology is of course impressive, but the question is is it $300 impressive? The Chevy Volt is pretty damned impressive, but at $40k, no matter how relatively good a deal it may be, it's just not a terribly appealing pricepoint. As cool as this is, I really can't justify spending that much money on something with so little support at the moment. Like I said earlier, I think the comparison to the Novint Falcon is particularly apt. For 3D haptic feedback there was a lot of potential, but at an entry price of $200+ and with little actual software support it's been relegated to a confined but still living niche. I would hope something like this could get to the point where it's at least as ubiquitous as 3D monitors are nowadays, but as it stands it's a hefty price point for something so limited in application (almost entirely game related), at least at the moment. Rest assured, though, this tech will get cheaper, and considering it's using fast-developing mobile parts that price will drop quite quickly within the next 2-3 years. I'd bank on it being down somewhere in the $120-$150 range by about 2015, if not lower.
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Early adopters are used to pay so a LOT more than $300 for new tech! $300 is a bargain when you consider it's the starting price for something so unique and so revolutionary. I remember when HDTV tuners were over $500. Blu-ray players were $1000. And that's with almost no content available for either ... Honestly, such a low price right from the get go is what really gets me excited about the rift. It'll get really good adoption, really fast!
 
CrunchyFrog said:
The technology is of course impressive, but the question is is it $300 impressive? The Chevy Volt is pretty damned impressive, but at $40k, no matter how relatively good a deal it may be, it's just not a terribly appealing pricepoint. As cool as this is, I really can't justify spending that much money on something with so little support at the moment. Like I said earlier, I think the comparison to the Novint Falcon is particularly apt. For 3D haptic feedback there was a lot of potential, but at an entry price of $200+ and with little actual software support it's been relegated to a confined but still living niche. I would hope something like this could get to the point where it's at least as ubiquitous as 3D monitors are nowadays, but as it stands it's a hefty price point for something so limited in application (almost entirely game related), at least at the moment. Rest assured, though, this tech will get cheaper, and considering it's using fast-developing mobile parts that price will drop quite quickly within the next 2-3 years. I'd bank on it being down somewhere in the $120-$150 range by about 2015, if not lower.
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I think it's definitely "$300 impressive". But then, it may only be so for the hardcore at the moment. As with all things, the tech will get better and cheaper, it's early days yet (heck we haven't even got consumer units yet). I don't think you can compare the promise of the Rift to haptic feedback. The Rift has the potential to not just change how we play, but the kinds of experiences that are even possible across a wide range of applications much broader than gaming, or even just entertainment.
 
Chris_C said:
His point is that mass market adoption of a $300 accessory is not going to happen, no matter how compelling the device. If the Rift was a self contained device (able to play games without external assistance) it might take of at that price. I don't believe he's discounting the technology, or the fact it's as cheap as it is. Also, it wouldn't have cost "thousands and thousands" a few weeks ago, otherwise it would still cost thousands and thousands :p
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Well true that the tech was there to make this possible, Palmer was just the one who realized that. But until Palmer put 2 and 2 together before everyone else, there were no other HMDs in the world that offer this kind of experience for less then 10s of thousands of dollars.
 
CrunchyFrog said:
If they could get eventually consumer rifts below that $100-$80 sweet spot I could really see this taking off. As it is though, I fear a future relegated to the niche a la the novint falcon.
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The first developer kit of the Rift probably already sold more units before it started shipping than the novint falcon ever did.

Really, "mass market" is of course a different matter, but if it works (it does!), generates enough publicity and gets enough software support I can see the first consumer version shipping 6 figures at $300. And that's more than enough to guarantee future development.
 
Ceebs said:
I would rather pay 300 bucks for a Rift than that sort of money for a new game console.
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Amen.

To people who think this won't appeal to a casual or non-gamer audience, just watch the reactions of these norwegian journalists:

http://www.dbtv.no/?vid=2328907978001

Something so simple, a free, crude demo made in a couple weeks, that requires NO controls, causing full grown adults to scream and giggle like school children.
 
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