The answer to your question was given like a year ago. It was just posted here again.

Actually to clarify in one of the very posts by Jason you linked to above, the word promise was used.

To quote:
<<< Don't insult us. We promised support at some point. That means when we feel it is time for our product to do so. Our focus is on completing our title. We never promised support during early access and it's not our fault OR have been moving the goal posts making support a longer process.>>>

Now I realize things change, goal posts move, etc... but the word promise was used by the developer.

The whole Oculus thing really is old news, the thread bongo was referencing was over a year old..the answers have already been given

"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"

Cheers Dakpilot

This thread should be shot at sunrise !!

Bearcat, it's not enough because it's an outright lie, oculus did not drop support for BOS, it's not oculus's job to support games, they support their own hardware and make SDKs available to developers, if the BOS devs decided it's not worth chasing Oculus's goalpost then it's BOS who have dropped support.
There are probably more people that own an Oculus than people that own BOS.

This thread should be shot at sunrise !!

Different games require different fps rates to play acceptably. 30fps in a game like Call of Duty sucks. 30fps in Total War is fine. 30fps in one of Matrix Games' $100+ strat games is irrelevant.

30fps for a racing sim is too low for precision racing. However, given how many people have been playing DCS and other flight sims for years at around 30fps it's not unacceptable at all. Sure, we'd all love 120+fps in a flight sim, but there's no hard and fast rule that 60 is the minimum you can have in any given game.



The Jedi Master

YouTube is running 1080p/60 now, look how nice that looks. Matt Wagners videos of DCSW 2.0 look super in it.

Bearcat, it's not enough because it's an outright lie, oculus did not drop support for BOS, it's not oculus's job to support games, they support their own hardware and make SDKs available to developers, if the BOS devs decided it's not worth chasing Oculus's goalpost then it's BOS who have dropped support.
There are probably more people that own an Oculus than people that own BOS.

Your suggestion that 30fps is acceptable goes against everything OR have said and what all developers for OR have experienced.
You are correct in saying that BoS has stopped supporting development for DK2 which is a (now out of date) Dev kit and not a consumer product, that will be redundant when OR is released commercially
To say that Oculus do not give support for developers and work closely with those developing within their (Oculus's) guidelines also goes against all info that is freely available
There will be no SDK for developing on DX9 for the Customer CV-1 and no support. It really is as simple as that.
Oculus did not drop support for BoS per se but they DID drop support for DX9, that is not a lie
Cheers Dakpilot

Who said oculus dropped support for BoS? They dropped support for Dx9....

The whole Oculus thing really is old news, the thread bongo was referencing was over a year old..the answers have already been given

"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"

Cheers Dakpilot

You can have a decent experience running a sim at 30fps on a monitor, but trying to do the same on a VR headset would be very uncomfortable experience. Some have suggested VR works great in DCS and WT even with the DK1, and DK2. My experience with the DK2 is exactly the opposite. That said, its easy to see the potential of these VR headsets, but the prototypes are simply not good enough yet. It remains to be seen if the consumer versions are good enough. There is no word yet on how the Vive and CV1 work with FSX, WT, DCS, etc etc. Even if the first consumer versions of VR hardware are good enough for flight sims, it still requires VR optimized software. VR hardware companies are still finalizing their hardware and software SDK's, so nobody is "sure" yet what all the requirements will be for sim software. Its not as simple as some here have suggested. Vilifying BOS for taking a more wait and see stance, especially after Oculus ended DX9 support is quite frankly ridiculous.

I still don't see what the big to do is about... I am sure that when it is time this will be revisited and by then.. who knows oculus may be like betamax was in 89 .. OR is not the only VR device on the market now.. who knows what it will be like in 3-5 years.

Oculus is the only VR that is likely to hit the market anytime soon and has a head start on every other VR concept, they have had a much more open policy on letting their hardware out to developers which means content is being created for the rift right now, any game that is currently giving support for VR is doing it pretty much exclusively for the rift. maybe you are right, maybe by the time 1CGS pull their thumb out of their ass the rift will be obsolete and the rest of the world will have moved on.

Jason William did right here in the post Dakpilot quoted:



Good enough for you? literally from your esteemed leaders own keyboard.