Flight and Racing games aren't big. Action and Shooters are and 1st Person Shooters don't adapt to VR very well. I don't know if VR is going to turn this cart upside down.

I hope VR is a sucess and if it is I'll get one. But it's going to be a while.
BoS/BoM is actually fortunate to have missed the embryonic stage of this stuff. If and when it's really viable for flight sims and if the headsets sell enough that it's financially worthwhile then I'm sure they'll incorporate it.
Until then it could just be a big waste of resources. The game would need an entirely new engine like DX12 or +
And that's not happening anytime soon.

You could find another subject to moan about in the meantime.

Flight and Racing games aren't big. Action and Shooters are and 1st Person Shooters don't adapt to VR very well. I don't know if VR is going to turn this cart upside down.

"Action and shooters are..."

Not on computers.

That doesn't look like a sales profile for the computer gaming industry. That looks like a console gaming industry sales profile.

Best-Selling COMPUTER GAME Super Genres by Units Sold 2014

Strategy 37.7%
Casual 24.8%
Role Playing 20.2%
Shooter 6.4%
Adventure 4.8%
Action 2.5%
Other Games/Compilations 1.6%
Family Entertainment 0.7%
Flight 0.7%
Racing 0.3%
Sport Games 0.2%
Arcade 0.1%

Source: The NPD Group/Retail Tracking Service Best-Selling COMPUTER GAME Super Genres by Units Sold 2014

Awesome! That's encouraging. Up to .7% from .1%

I can't believe Samsung, Sony, HTC, VALVe and any of the other hardware companies that have invested billions of dollars in VR technology, not to mention the developers of Unity, Unreal and the numerous other game engines that are supporting VR, along with NVidia and AMD, didn't just ask Sharpe XB for the lowdown.

He could have told them long ago that they're playing a dangerous game and they might lose all their money. He has the graphs to prove it!

Oh, and the porn studios might want to know they can dismantle their 360 camera rigs too.

I'm sure the independent developers who make the linked titles will profit sufficiently, meanwhile the billions invested in VR hardware will make it's own returns from the vast array of entertainment/commercial/military products that drive the sales of the hardware.

The average PC gamer is 38 years old and has an income of $69k. I'll figure the demographic which owns a gaming PC with a GTX970 and buys a $600 VR headset is not an 8-year old girl. And yet the game which comes bundled with the Rift is Lucky's Tale.
That represents some astonishly poor decision making. Gee with experts like that at the helm I wonder how it could fail now?

Well they're not going to bundle BoS with it are they sharp. That would be a waste of time. Then again if they did I'm pretty sure you'd purchase it. The only reason you're so down on VR is because BoS have no plans to develop for it. That's plain as day.

The average PC gamer is 38 years old and has an income of $69k. I'll figure the demographic which owns a gaming PC with a GTX970 and buys a $600 VR headset is not an 8-year old girl. And yet the game which comes bundled with the Rift is Lucky's Tale.
That represents some astonishly poor decision making. Gee with experts like that at the helm I wonder how it could fail now?

As expected, an answer completely out of touch with reality and a very skewed sense of history.
Take VR for example, I got crucified for simply making inquiries with regards to it's progress, they did after all make the claim themselves that VR and flight sims are like 'Borsh and cream', they then create a drama about Oculus dropping support making it impossible and now suddenly as if by magic VR is back on the cards because they pulled their fingers out of their ass and 64bit/DX11 is on the cards.

You are right, it is nothing like the banana boards, over there the moderation wasn't biased and both sides got their fair share of the ban stick, though in other aspects it is one and the same thing, the same money men making bad decisions, a bunch of 777 fanatics making life miserable for everyone else and a product released to the public in a completely unfinished state.

HEHE!!! Bc, I have to give you one thing, you have consistently stuck with the same BS, " future potential" story for both BOS and BOM since the beginning. A true 1C/777 [text deleted] supporter you are. I just updated, went to delete prior recordings, I had none, then exited. Let me know when we hit that "future potential" point so I can try this game again. Alrighty then, I am out for another year.
S!Blade<><

I beg to differ.. I have a very clear picture of what went on.. Just because it does not aling with your view does not make it wrong. I never laid claim to being privy to "the plan" just that the developers had one.. and it was not up to you.. me.. or anyone else to second guess it or dictate it's time frame. I find it interesting that talk of VR resurfaces at the same time that 64 bit options also become available.. perhaps they are related.. Unlike you and some others I just never saw some nefarious agenda to swindle customers or some raging incompetence driven scheme to somehow prevent BoS customers from experiencing VR. I just took the developers' statements on all these issues at face value... from the whole 64 bit thing.. to the DX issue.. to the OR issue .. which if you recall was linked to the DX issue... unlike many others ... who insisted on seeing incompetence or some other reason.. for the direction the sim was taking. From my perspective the developers had a plan and that plan was centered around certain milestones at certain times based on what they wanted to accomplish.. not what the community wanted them to do.

it's reassuring to hear you can take things at face value though because you sure as hell could not do it with anything I said.

I see you were banned a bit longer than I expected. I only banned you for one day along with [Edited] who subsequently earned a more substantial vacation.. I am not sure why the system gave you a week .. I asked other mods if anyone banned you and no one spoke up so I suspect it might have been because you have gotten enough points to have some kind of system set mandatory sentencing.. In any case.. I appreciate that fact that things have calmed down and that you let more crap roll off the back than initially. Sorry for the mix up. As I said I did not expect you to have a one week ban and only found out when I checked your profile for some other reason and found you were still banned some days after the langansen incident.

You need to stop baiting [Edited]. We all kow that the guy is very full of himself and his facts are often if not wrong... skewed.. but there is a pattern of you and him going at it on these boards and I am sick of it. There are some on the mod team that think you are more trouble than you are worth.. I would prefer that everyone just played nice.. so stop baiting the guy. If you disagree with him then just state your case but it almost seems as if just about every post you make concerning him has an invisible "YOU DUMB ASS!!" tag behind it.. and that needs to stop. It really really does. I get PMs about you from a lot of folks man.. and I am not the only mod who does so... a word to the wise.. You may or may not be smarter than everyone else around here .. but you sure as hell can't keep acting like it much longer.
Thank you for your cooperation.

You're still a pain in the @ss at times but I have to admit you have not been as big a pain as you were initially... FWIW ... We are all trying to adjust to this and with the new mods we have and considering that there are over 9000 members here.. it gets kind of dicey at times and things won't always be fair...

I missed that post.. I meant to hide the entire exchange.. it was not just your posts that were hidden.

Look guys I know that you both are very passionate about your simming and flying.. but when your posts start to devolve into back and forth tit for tat digs at each other it makes our jobs harder and acts as an open call for more of the same from others. Please try to not let this stuff get personal with each other or other members .. just keep it civil without the closet sarcastic jabs at each other..
Thanks I appreciate both of your cooperation.

I saw what everyone else saw bongo.. blah blah blah

Guys,


I know it's fun to ridicule us, but you have no idea how Oculus operates and our experience with them. Loft has every reason to not be thrilled with his experience with Oculus. I'm not too happy with them either. Google translating his words from Russian is not going to tell you the whole story either.

We tried very hard to support their devices as they grew and introduced new units and we did build support for them to the best of our ability (it wasn't perfect but it worked) when we probably should have been focusing on other stuff. They also seemed interested in working with us as I live not far from their offices, but the harder we tried to support and work with Oculus the more difficult it got. This was even before Facebook and before them dropping DX9. I can't say too much in detail due to NDAs, but basically they tried to tell us how we should make our game and unless we made it how they wanted it, they wouldn't work with us. Essentially, their hardware could not run a hardcore sim like ours in 3D with what they deemed acceptable framerates (their level of acceptability, not ours). And the Oculus team seemed puzzled why we had built a custom engine or why we needed a custom sim engine that requires large environments which does not run at a constant 100 FPS like a shooter. Our customers also do not want to necessarily see a human body in our cockpits as they demanded. So we decided to wait a bit until their hardware and software was a bit more mature before we spent any more man hours supporting something that is not even a final product.

However, based on the vibe from Oculus we felt that the final retail Oculus product (or at least their first retail unit) was imminent and their would be no real hurdles to using it with BOS since we had already built initial support. This is why Loft made such comments about our planned support. But then a few things happened - 1. They got bought by Facebook and they no longer cared to talk to us about technical issues. 2. Something changed in their software concerning 32 bit vs. 64 bit which broke our implementation. But we were hopeful a solution could eventually be found. 3. They simply dropped support for DX9 games which ours is one.

So that's the progression from initial support to none. Not our fault and now we are in a tough spot because we do not have the right requirements since they changed them and we don't have the budget to build such support at the moment. There was zero intention by us to not have support. Just a string of unfortunate events. It has nothing to do with us not willfully supporting our users or any other motive.

Oculus seems to work really well with off the shelf engines that most other developers use for shooters and whatnot. We have a custom engine and huge environments and complex physics that suck frames so this is a difficult situation for us developmentally because Oculus is 3D and everything needs to be drawn twice. There seems to be two kinds of developers who have success supporting Oculus. The first is large mega-teams like you find at EA or Valve who can stick a team of people on the implementation task. Then there are tiny teams with super talented individuals who make super niche games that use some off the shelf engine that already works well with Oculus and where meeting budgets or deadlines is not a huge priority for them. We are in a different situation entirely. We are a small team with a super complex product, small budgets, a custom engine and a plan we are in the middle of implementing. Any deviation from that causes major disruptions to planned updates.

Oculus also really seems to want to "change the gaming industry" with VR by changing the requirements for gaming such as only supporting DX10 and above. This puts smaller teams like us in a bind. Oculus is not the cute little startup it once was, they are aiming to be THE VR company and with it comes big corporate policies and choices that affects teams like ours. You can argue coulda, woulda, shoulda all day long, but Oculus has not made it easy on us to support their product and they pulled support for BOS, not us. It's disappointing, but that is the situation.

I am hopeful something can change in the future where we have enough money to build new support for Oculus and make whatever changes necessary to get there. That of course requires more sales.

The VR revolution looks promising and many companies are now involved in this space. It's got a long way to go before it completely supplants your monitor. Maybe it will come fast, maybe not. Time will tell. We have nothing personal against VR and we did give it a go, but when it becomes simpler to add it to our titles I am sure we will support it. VR does not need sims to make it big and whether we need OR support today or tomorrow as some here claim to make it remains to be seen. People have counted us out more than once before and we're still here creating stuff. There are other things I'd like to work on before we worry about OR support again.

The perils of being a sim developer never ceases to amaze me.

Jason