Elite: Dangerous is one of the biggest, most expansive games to support the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive thus far, and it seems like a perfect fit for Sony’s PlayStation VR (PSVR) too. Sadly, a PS4 version of the game released this week without PSVR support intact. According to creator Frontier Developments, that’s down to quality control.
Speaking in a Reddit AMA earlier this week, series creator David Braben noted that he was a “huge fan” of VR, but it doesn’t sound like the team has managed to cram the game into PSVR in a satisfactory way. “The most important thing is it is a good experience, and we’re not there yet in terms of the quality,” Braben said. “It’s certainly something we’d like to consider, but quality is vital.”
The ‘yet’ gives us hope it may some day happen.
Following up later he noted that framerate was a “key element” in the VR support. Maintaining a rock solid framerate of at least 90FPS is indeed crucial to keeping VR experiences comfortable and immersive for players.
The issue is that the PS4 with which PSVR runs simply isn’t as powerful as the PCs that run both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Those rigs are able to take the stresses of VR support and still offer an experience similar if not identical to the standard version of the game. While Frontier has managed to pull off getting the full game onto PS4, it would not doubt have to make plenty of compromises and optimisations to then add PSVR support on top. Like Braben said, it’s a big ask but it may happen one day.
Keep your fingers crossed; Elite: Dangerous offers players an entire galaxy to explore in their spaceships, and recent expansions have also brought in crucial new elements like landing on planets and exploring them in buggies. All of this is playable in VR on PC with a gamepad.
Some developers have still managed to pull of PC to PS4 ports of VR titles, though. This week sees the release of Vertigo Games and Jaywalkers Interactive’s Arizona Sunshine on PSVR, and it’s definitely made some sacrifices to squeeze onto console.
