A snippet on Facebook from the developers…
Another productive week has passed. We achieved a good progress in implementing VR devices support via Open VR API - HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Both devices work in our sim already - visuals work, their parameters are being adjusted and possible performance optimizations are being researched. We used a certain approach to interact with existing user interface in VR environment conveniently. We’ll start beta testing of the VR sub-system in the nearest future and it’s planned to make Open VR support available to public in March.
At the same time, He-111 H-16 and Fw 190 A-5 development is almost finished and we’ll start their beta testing this weekend (they will be released in 2-3 weeks). As we mentioned in our previous Dev Diaries, these planes turned out to be quite interesting. Meanwhile, the next Battle of Kuban planes are entering the development phase - today we can show you our first WIP screenshots of the A-20B bomber. This aircraft is going to be the most expensive in production for us, but it should also be among the most interesting planes.
There is some progress in developing the new Career mode that we announced together with Battle of Kuban. Jason has formed a team of community enthusiasts to help him to prepare text and graphics for this new game-play mode. Alexander ‘BlackSix’ has finished research on squadrons which participated in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kuban and now he prepares their short histories. We hope to show you the first visible results of this work in the coming months.
No smiles icons Tom…
:w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t:
Roll on March, can’t wait to try it and fingers crossed it runs as smooth or faster than DCS.
I’m really impressed with with the way this team is moving this sim forward. It’s turning into the il2 of old. I really still want to fly Tobruk with TF, I just hope they get some help bringing that along and it doesn’t lose its audience or the lads developing it. Clod in VR :w00t:
Hello everybody,
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Today is an important day for the project - we start VR alpha test. It will take 1-2 weeks, then we’ll finalize the functionality, perform the beta testing run and then, hopefully, we will be able to release the update with Open VR support before the end of March.
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VR support turns out to be tricky not because it is complex by itself, but because this technology and API are still relatively immature - there are no beaten paths and in some parts we were moving forward almost blindly. A large chunk of time was spent on finding new ways to optimize performance to make VR experience more fluid, many improvements were made in this field. Another big task we needed to complete was adapting the user interface for VR to make it usable. For a while, we were a bit puzzled how to make optical sights (like Pe-2 lower UBT MG gunsight or tank gunner sight) function in VR realistically, and we decided to show the gunsight only for one eye while another eye should be closed (like in real life). In our opinion, Oculus Rift cv1 has slightly better lenses and more effective usage of the display matrix (pixels in front of you are placed a bit tighter, but overall field of view is narrower). On the other hand, HTC Vive has more advanced tracking tech, slightly wider FOV which feels less like looking through binoculars, much larger possible play area (not like it is useful for a flight sim though) but its lenses have visible peripheral moire effect. In short, both devices have their pros and cons and if you plan to buy one, it would be ideal to demo them both to find out which one suits you better (but be mindful of a possibility of wearing a VR unit in a public place after someone else who may have had red-eye for instance). All in all, we like how VR works in our sim, it’s on par or even better than in other sims.
Hmmmm…we’ll see, literally. Really interested to see what they do with it.
Saw that. Looking forward to it. Like the touch about closing an eye to aim the gunner positions. That sounds like a nice touch. I’m hoping it really changes BoS for me, I’m still not completely taken by it.