Frontier Developments, makers of Elite Dangerous, today announced that the open-Universe space sim will be supporting Oculus Rift on day one of its March 28th launch. The good news: if you already own the game, you’ll be getting Oculus support for free.
It’s no secret that Frontier has been lagging behind in Rift DK2 support with Elite Dangerous for some time now, with official support stopping at Oculus runtime 0.6—last updated circa June 2015. But that’s about to change in one fell swoop on the Oculus’ big day as runtime 1.0 is pushed out with the new headset.
In their blog post announcing launch support of the game, it’s touted as a cross-platform multiplayer where “…you can explore the galaxy with players across Oculus, consoles, PC, and Mac.” Although Oculus hasn’t counted HTC Vive among the list of supported platforms for obvious reasons, SteamVR does and will continue to support the game throughout its development.
See Also: Elite Dangerous: Horizons 1.5 Beta Brings HTC Vive Support
Ars Technica spoke with Frontier Developments’ founder and CEO David Braben and reports that Elite Dangerous will be sold on the Oculus Store as a launch title—the very same ‘deluxe edition’ currently on Steam, and that people who already own the game will also be receiving a free update on March 28th. Along with official Oculus support for Elite Dangerous, the game’s expansion pack, Elite Dangerous: Horizons, will also be receiving the same ‘free update’ treatment for the consumer Oculus Rift.
Elite Dangerous represents one of the first great successes in crowd-funded games built with VR support, and it’s offering sci-fi fans an expansive MMO with literally billions of star systems to explore and dozens of ships to pilot on their quest to trade, fight, or mine throughout the universe. Players hoping to fully immerse themselves into the space sim should note that the game handles significantly different from CCP’s arcade dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie, and a Hands On Throttle-And-Stick (HOTAS) setup comes highly recommended for those looking to master the game’s many controls.
