Feedback on VR, Controls, and Flight Model (Need input from others!)
This some info from my Steam review, but I am posting here in hopes of getting some visibility to devs with either concurrence or disagreement from users.
GOOD
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First, on a positive note, the VR support is excellent. I know some very vocal people had issues getting into VR (And I feel bad for those guys. It sucks when things don't just work), but I did not have any problem. For me, it just worked. And I'm betting for most people it just worked, and they were too busy playing the game to post about it. I had my headset (Rift S) on when I launched it the first time by using the virtual desktop in Oculus Home to navigate my steam library to launch the game. When I clicked "Play," it popped up asking if I want to launch in VR or not.
I left all of the graphics settings on Auto to see how well it would optimize to my system (i7 4790k and 1080ti), and it did fairly well. The game looks great, but I did get some stutters when a lot was happening on the screen. I will probably customize it to mostly medium settings and see how that works out since I prefer fps and smoothness to max eye-candy. I will say VR performance seemed about consistent with most of the fairly well optimized games on my system.
I LOVE that we finally have a space "sim" (more on that later) in VR with a single player campaign and a decent story! This is the reason my review is positive. We need more of this. Every game made to be played in a cockpit should be entirely playable in VR. (Ace Combat developers, take notes!) It also has specific medals per mission and multiple difficulties, so if you're the kind of person who strove for all of the gold medals on Rogue Squadron 64 after beating the game 20 years ago, then it should have pretty good replayability. (I'm only a few missions in, so I don't know what the game looks like once you've completed it or if you can easily go back and play missions.)
CAN BE IMPROVED
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HOTAS support is *passable*, but it should be much better. I'm using TM Warthog stick and throttle, and trying to map all of the controls to my liking took about an hour before I actually started flying. Some inputs simply didn't register at all to the game (no idea why), and others were not allowed to be changed. Because of this, I had to completely re-do my preferred controls scheme, and I couldn't even make it similar to how I run Elite Dangerous, which has a lot of similar controls. For improvement, there should be an option to clear (not "default" -- CLEAR) all controls and set them, including required ones, to whatever input you want. This would have taken 5-10 minutes rather than the hour of trial-and-error I did trying to make a scheme only to find out that an input doesn't work or can't be changed and having to re-think my entire setup.
On the same line of controls, I see now that this is more of an arcade flight game, but it is clearly trying to appear (and was advertised) as more of the "sim" category, so I will judge it as such. While I didn't expect a flight model as comprehensive as Elite Dangerous, I did expect it to at least behave like the ships in Star Wars. For example, the ships in Star Wars don't just yaw to point side-to-side. They roll and then pitch. They do yaw to an extent, but that's not their primary/fastest way to turn, or that's how they would all turn in the movies. I bring this up for two reasons:
The roll function as programmed in Squadrons is an afterthought. Try loading up an X-wing and rolling. None of the controls in the virtual cockpit even move. Now yaw. The stick moves left and right along with your yaw. This is backwards both in real life and in Star Wars (According to the X-Wing book series). Yaw should be controlled with rudders, and the stick controls roll and pitch. I suspect this decision was made to make the game more controller and mouse/keyboard friendly so that gamers who like shooters can pick it up easily. But you didn't have to nerf the roll controls to be so slow that it's nearly impossible to fight without using yaw primarily. If you still want to be more casual-friendly, just make the rolls snappier, keep the fast yaw as an option, and then let us fly as sim-like or as arcade-like as we want. I know the tie fighter controls are different, and I don't know about the rest of the ships... but the X-wing at least is wrong.
This controls discussion ties into the flight model. There should be at least some kind of physics considered. Watch the flying scenes in Star Wars movies, and you'll see even as far back as A New Hope, there is some drift and inertia when making hard turns. (Early in the Death Star assault, right before Luke says, "I got a little cooked, but I'm okay" for example). And it's even more prevalent in the newer movies. It's not full-up Newtonian physics style with thrusters being required to make every turn like in Elite Dangerous -- but it's something. Please add something.
Recap: Positive review, because I'm very happy that a AAA (Star Wars, no less) space fighter game can be played fully in VR. But we didn't want a strictly arcade type flying game. We already have that in BF2! This should have leaned more towards "Sim" to be something new, different, and what enthusiasts have been craving for *Decades*. It's already very close to being a sim with the systems complexity -- just fix the flight model.
Other fans, please correct me if you think I'm wrong with these recommendations or my Star Wars lore is out to lunch! If I'm the minority here, I should probably be ignored lol. But if you agree, please reply! =)
