Elite Dangerous, the interstellar space trading, fighting, and exploration simulator, has been teasing support for co-piloted ships for some time, and now a new update slated for the end of February will bring that feature, allowing up to four friends to fly together in VR.
Elite Dangerous is not a VR-only title, but with support for both the Vive and Rift, and its focus on simulator-like mechanics, it does an impressive job of making you feel like a lone pilot somewhere out in a vast and lonely galaxy.
But that feeling of awe isn’t quite as fun when you look around your single-pilot ship and have only glowing instruments and flight controls to share it with.
Thankfully, the Elite Dangerous: The Commanders (2.3) update, due to launch in beta by February 26th, will bring what’s being called the Multicrew feature, allowing multiple players (in or out of VR) to cooperatively pilot ships across different roles. Everyone with access to the Horizon Beta will be able to access the 2.3 beta.
Zac Antonaci, the game’s Head of Community, said in an update on the official forums, that the studio would be sharing more details about how the feature will work, including the new ‘Commander Creator’, which promises to allow players to customize their avatar.
Ahead of those official details, some bits about the Multicrew feature are known, according to Reddit user ChristianM who has been compiling information about the forthcoming feature:
• Players will work together to control the different functions of a ship. One player could fly the ship whilst others would handle the sub-systems and weapons. Or a Multicrew ship landing on a planet’s surface could have one player stay with the main vessel, another patrol in a ship-launched fighter, and another explore in their SRV.
• Multicrew uses the Wing system and has four roles:
• Helm (piloting)
• Fire control (turrets/weapons + limpet control)
• Tactical (sensors, shields, countermeasures)
• Engineer (power distribution, repairs)
• Roles are balanced so that a fully-crewed ship is on par with four commanders in a Wing.
• The crew limit of four may be increased in a future Season. We don’t know how high we would go. Current instancing issues likely make more than 4 unfeasible for the immediate future.
• Enormous range of faces and features available using the Commander Creation “slider tool”. This option will be selected via the game’s interface. In combination with Multicrew players will at last be able to see each other, in game. Although dev-demo shows baldness, hair is confirmed.
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While it’s very exciting that players will soon be able to co-pilot ships together with friends, we’ve yet to see if there will be any issues with nausea if you’re using a VR headset while inside a ship flown by another player. Presently, the cockpit-nature of Elite Dangerous is an effective way of mitigating nausea in VR despite lots of movement, but when the movement of the vehicle isn’t under your direct control, it may not provide the same protection. We’ll have to wait and see once the Commanders 2.3 update launches.
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Source: ‘Elite Dangerous’ Update Will Soon Let You and 3 Friends Co-pilot Interstellar Spacecraft
