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Elite: Dangerous is an always online single player MMO space sim that works with Vive and Rift.
The gameplay consists of simulation space combat, trading and adventuring. The player is free to make their own choices in order to make their way in this game. One player may try their hand at being a pirate while another at collecting bounties.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Being in the cockpit creates near perfect VR immersion
More so than FPS games, Elite Dangerous achieves incredible immersion by positioning the player where the pilot is. When using a HOTAS (flight stick and throttle), player's arms are positioned exactly as they are in game, and move in game when the player moves them. This puts the player's entire body in the same position as the character, which adds to the feeling of actually being there.
Pro Very realistic representation of space & star systems
Elite Dangerous uses publicly available real world star maps that are available of the Milky Way consisting of 150,000 star systems. Although in the current beta, full access to the entire galaxy is limited, in the final game, it will be possible to visit any of the 400 billion stars in our galaxy on a 1:1 scale. Stars that are known of are properly mapped in place and are of the correct type given the information known about them. Stars that don't have collected data on are procedurally generated which allows exploring any of the 400 billion of them.
Star systems are intelligently simulated using the "Star Forge", a generator that simulates the creation of a star system forming from its nebular cloud to determine what celestial bodies appear and what orbits they have. This feature leads to many varied and unique star systems possibly with planets that can co-orbit around each other, or with binary star systems, and infinitely more possibilities.
Pro Built with future expansion in mind
When Elite Dangerous comes out, development won't stop. To build a game with the huge scope of Elite Dangerous, not all of it can be done at once, so the developers have adopted an approach of incremental improvement. Various gameplay elements are being designed as a foundation for later features. For example, although planetary landings were only added with the Horizons Season Pass, the engine has been designed to be able to support going from lightyears away to meters away.
Pro Exploration at every level of detail
Full exploration of the galaxy is planned, allowing the player to be able to jump from star system to star system, and fly around within a solar system from planet to planet, eventually going all the way down to a planet's surface at a 1:1 scale in a later update. Planetary landings will require a lot of details to be developed and designed, but the player can still see the level of detail shift in action when flying into a planet's rings, where getting close enough show the individual asteroids within, which the player can then interact with through mining, or by having a battle among them.
Pro No VR sickness
In games that have you moving around, it is very easy to get motion sickness from the disjointed experience between the character walking while the player's sitting still. By being a cockpit game, Elite Dangerous provides a frame of reference for the player's mind to attach himself to, preventing motion sickness.
Pro Great Oculus Rift integration
Elite Dangerous has very good integration with the Oculus Rift thanks to its cockpit view only gameplay philosophy. All ship UIs are part of displays that appear on each side of you that appear when you turn your head, so accessing the navigation or ship menus happens seamlessly just by looking in their direction. The game also uses the direction you are looking in for targeting, so your lock on target is whatever your head is pointing at.
By sitting in the cockpit of a ship, you are given a stationary frame of reference that helps prevent motion sickness associated with movement in game when you aren't actually moving.
Cons
Con Really complicated to learn
Looking up FAQs and trade routes from first hand users will be the norm for figuring out many aspects of Elite: Dangerous. On top of this notes will have to be taken, which is made more difficult by the fact the game does not support in-game note taking. So a pad and paper is recommended to remember all of the minutia of the game.
Con Lacks HOTAS presets
You'll have a hard time setting up your HOTAS controls since the game has no presets for those, even for the most common ones like Logitech X52. It will take a week to set the one up properly and another lifetime to understand how to take off or to understand what to do. The lack of a tutorial for such a massive game is a huge downer.
Con Some areas/settings cause judder
Shadows are something that can really help immersion and realism, however the current implementation of shadows in the game makes judder unbearable in a lot of areas, such as inside stations or in some high-density asteroid belts. Turning off shadows is currently recommended for a smooth VR experience, but fixing shadows would be better. There's also some temporary judder issues when entering or exiting hyperspace (though it's better than it was in beta) and occasionally when you get close to a planet. Still not bad enough to stop me playing it for hours, but definitely has room for improvement.