Flieger, grüß' mir die Sonne, grüß' mir die Sterne und grüß' mir den Mond. Dein Leben, das ist ein Schweben, durch die Ferne, die keiner bewohnt! - Hans Albers, F.P.1 antwortet nicht (Adaptation in the 80s: Extrabreit)

Wednesday 5 August 2015

Elite: Horizons announced at Gamescom

This of course is a kind of "re-tweet", since the big unveil has been today on the GamesCom in Cologne, Germany. Frontier has again done a right step in the right direction and finally tackles the long awaited planetary landings! Wohooooooooooo! This game is shaping up to be the immersive world I had hoped for.

I wasn´t sure if they wouldn´t first do walking in ships and the whole first person stuff. But considering that Elite: Dangerous is one of the best possible experiences for the Oculus Rift, it is a wise step to stay first in cockpit environments only. Add also the session based combat zones, lebelled QCQ, and you have a little leasure as a sideline, when you don´t feel like embedding yourself in something so huge as 400 billion accessible stars... [edit: geez, initially wrote 40, but it is 400 billion, hard to grasp that mind staggering numbers]

Thus, we will not be able to actually walk on a planet, but drive with rovers, which you have to bring along in your cargo hold. Combat between rovers, as well as air-to-ground and vice versa is said to be possible. I am very excited, since this is a feature which I am waiting for since I have first heard of Elite: Dangerous on kickstarter. The amazing thing is, they are going to bring this feature out still this year. I really thought pessimisticly that this would take a lot longer. They also stated that the name of the expansion "Horizons" does not only refer to the landing, but some more things are going to be implemented soon after. In the twitch chat today, Sandro Sammarco ominously said, "loot", and David Braben added a phrase wherein I heard the word "crafting". I am *very* curious!

With this announcement, I think my musings from just a few blog entries ago are obsolete; I am sure there will be plenty of new adventures to write about for this blog from within Elite: Dangerous; thus I have no need to worry about finding another fitting VR game anymore.

Maybe also a litte side note on the necessary VR hardware; a good article in the current German C´T magazine holds a test of no less than five VR goggles. What surprises me is that, according to their description, not the Oculus Rift is the most promising, but a model from Valve and HTC. Well, competition can be only good, it will make the stuff cheaper and better for us customers!

A little addendum: While browsing through the news, I found this; a web comic about Elite: Dangerous, and I think this particular one is very well done!

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