Like many of you, the first game that made me take note of VR’s impending arrival in a major way was Elite: Dangerous. I stumbled upon the game in early-2015 and the repercussions were immediate. Elite at that time was a blackhole-esque vortex sucking in every spare bit of time, money and attention that it could while giving in return the thrill of space adventure that I had always dreamt of.

Having jumped into the Beyond Chapter Four BETA this week, I am feeling a level of excitement and satisfaction with Elite that has been a long time coming. Excitement because with this update and yet another heaping delivery of QoL and graphical improvements Elite as a game seems to have entered a stage of maturity that has been a long awaited. Satisfaction because playing Elite in VR, though an amazing experience, has also always been a game which highlighted the shortcomings of Gen 1 VR. It begged for more resolution to clear-up the text, as of yet uninvented GPU’s to provide the raw power to de-alias the image and (especially in the early days) better optimization to help us make the best of what we had. Although there have not been any drastic, quantum leap level changes in any of these specific areas, for this CMDR at least, it feels like in late 2018 there has been at least enough progress in each area to provide the deep satisfaction I have always sought.

Pre-VR

At first, I built my desktop rig to support 3 monitors, laying them out horizontally for maximum immersion. It was a pretty successful layout for the time and was the manner of play in which I would take my first steps out into the galaxy running the Silk Road rares trading route in my beloved Cobra Mk.III. It was still 2015 and although I had had the chance to try a buddy’s Oculus DK2 a few years prior, I had not yet associated in my mind the idea that VR could change simulator style gameplay in such a huge manner.

Next up, I built out my own Track IR kit using a repurposed Sony Playstation Eye camera and some infrared LEDs. It actually turned out to be quite a successful endeavor. Being able to “look” around my ship’s cockpit with subtle head movements was a big step up, especially in combat (CQC was a brand new and exciting feature at the time). By this time the initial reports of just how amazing the Elite experience was were making their way out and I was excited. April 2016 felt infinitely far away.

In January and February, I experimented with the Tobii eye tracker in Elite after being exposed to it in one of ObsidianAnt’s YouTube commentaries. Again, it was a very neat experience, a lot more streamlined than my own jerry-rigged IR solution. Short-lived though because by now VR was finally right around the corner and as the hype around Elite in VR grew I knew I would not be dissuaded.

VR finally arrives

Spring 2016, VR at long last arrives but all was not well. During the lead-up to VR it was widely reported that Elite could be best experienced in the HTC Vive which made a substantial impact in my VR purchasing decision. Shockingly though, in the early days, it was quite clear that Elite performed better in the Oculus Rift. For those around at the time, this was a controversial issue although over time the differences would be smoothed out and performance optimized on all VR platforms.

Finally, we had the Elite: Dangerous VR experience we had been waiting for so experience it I did. My CMDR took flight with Distant Worlds, explored, fought and traded across the bubble and engineered their way to dominance. I had Elite status in 2/3 career fields and commanded a fleet of specialty engineered crafts for each occasion and it was good.

Unfortunately, in between the moments of completely losing yourself in the VR experience, Elite had a way of highlighting just how my HTC Vive and (later) Oculus Rift lacked the resolution/pixel density to replicate the intricate details and smaller texts of Elite. The 980ti powering my aging desktop and replacement 1070 powered MSI-Titan gaming laptop also fell a bit short of powering the dream of 2.0x or even solid 1.5x SS (supersampling). So, although Elite in VR was great, it was also a constant reminder of just how much better it could be. How much better it WOULD be.

The conflux of progress

Now, on the dawn of Beyond Chapter Four’s launch, I happily find myself at the nexus of VR, GPU and (most importantly) Elite: Dangerous progress.

The new lighting system is a welcome and wonderful change which returns the striking beauty to this universe even for an old CMDR’s eyes which had become accustomed to the already great rendering of space in Elite. Passing through a solar flare, much like the USS Voyager had done 172 times before on the television screens of my youth, brought an unbidden smile to my face.

(Comparison video of lighting by CMDR Plater: here)

Between the Vive Pro and Samsung Odyssey/Odyssey+ (see my initial impressions of the Odyssey+), the latter of which is what I am currently flying in E:D, we are starting to see HMD’s with increasing resolutions allowing the detail of Elite to shine through with increased clarity. With the Pimax 5K/8K on the immediate horizon and who-knows-what to follow even that, our future VR space explorations will only continue to improve.

GPU power continues to progress, albeit at a slower speed than desirable. At the very least though, with the subsiding of the bit-mining craze, the prices of cards to drive our experience have at least fallen back to the realm of the possibly attainable and that is an important step indeed.

When taken together, improvements in these three areas culminate into a nice bump to Elite in VR’s fidelity and experience, coupled with the QoL updates and gameplay enhancements (that I will not even attempt to detail here but has been concisely demonstrated by ObsidianAnt in his many quality video commentaries) also in tow make now a great time to be a CMDR.

If only I could tell 2015 me how Elite: Dangerous in VR would be in 2018…

However, standing at this well-timed conflux and looking back on how far we have come exploring the world’s of Elite: Dangerous in VR I can for the first time say I am truly satisfied with the state of the experience. I will always look forward to future improvements, which I am certain will make the experience of today seem quaint or even antiquated, yet on the spectrum of progress I really feel that we have reached a new plateau especially if you can take advantage or all three area’s incremental improvements simultaneously.

If you took part in Elite’s VR journey up until this point and perhaps put Elite to the side pending a GPU upgrade, an HMD resolution increase or even just some good old gameplay enhancements from Frontier themselves than 2018 is looking like a mighty good time to come back for a quick look. Like me, maybe you can find that satisfaction from Elite that you may have been waiting for without even knowing it.

o7