Star Citizen\u00a0promised to include VR support as a core feature more than a decade ago\u2014long before it scope-creeped its way into becoming the MMO of today. Now, Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) says they\u2019re actually going to put VR support to the test, but you still probably shouldn\u2019t hold your breath.<\/p>\n
As first reported by UploadVR<\/a>, CIG is going to internally test whether it can bring VR support to Star Citizen. For those counting, that will be 13 years since the studio promised it in the game\u2019s 2012 Kickstarter campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have backed Oculus Rift and will support it in Star Citizen \/ Squadron 42,\u201d\u00a0CIG said in the game\u2019s Kickstarter.\u00a0\u201cWho doesn\u2019t want to sit in their cockpit, hands on your joystick and throttle, swiveling your head, to track that enemy fighter that just blew by?\u201d<\/p>\n In a recent interview though, CIG\u00a0Senior Director Sean Tracy says the studio still has plans to bring VR support to the game, and briefly touches on some of the challenges.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously we\u2019ve talked about [VR] a million times,\u201d says Tracy in the interview, seen below. \u201cIt\u2019s something we want, we just don\u2019t prioritize it ahead of everything else. We\u2019ll still be coming back to that [\u2026] I think there are some tests even going on in the next month or two.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And while Tracy says Star Citizen\u2019s\u00a0Star Engine\u2014a derivative of CryEngine 3\u2014can actually support VR, there are two main issues: the game\u2019s renderer no longer supports VR, and the studio will need to engineer a solution to dual render for left and right eyes at an acceptable frame rate, which is a tall order.<\/p>\n Granted, a small portion of the game did include support for the Oculus Rift DK1 for a brief time in 2013, which allowed users to walk around a ship hangar and visualize a purchased ship. There have been other internal tests since then too, and even feature releases that suggested that VR support was still on the studio\u2019s radar, like its UI update in 2017<\/a> which was supposedly made with VR in mind.<\/p>\n Meanwhile,\u00a0Star Citizen\u00a0has essentially become synonymous with \u2018scope creep\u2019\u2014when a developer promises more and more features beyond anything initially envisioned for the game\u2014making it doubtful we\u2019ll ever see VR support at this rate.<\/p>\n Beginning as a relatively modest space sim crowdfunded in 2012 with a goal of $500,000, Star Citizen promised a deep space combat and trading game in the spirit of Wing Commander and Freelancer.<\/p>\n It has since ballooned into a\u00a0persistent MMO-style universe and a\u00a0cinematic single-player campaign (Squadron 42), also integrating first-person shooter gameplay,\u00a0planet landing and procedural generation,\u00a0complex economic simulation, NPC AI ecosystems, realistic physics and damage modeling\u2014the list goes on.<\/p>\n And with over $800 million raised\u2014by far the most crowdfunded entertainment project in history\u2014the game remains in alpha over a decade later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Star Citizen\u00a0promised to include VR support as a core feature more than a decade ago\u2014long before it scope-creeped…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":108354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[158,67,132,68,729,730],"class_list":{"0":"post-108353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-virtual-reality","13":"tag-vr"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114949568911131803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}