EVE Online Oculus Rift support is a dream for many players of the space MMORPG epic. That dream might soon be realized; CCP Games was one of the earliest backers of the Rift Kickstarter and has shown strong support for the virtual reality headset at EVE Fanfest 2013 by unveiling EVR, a 6 vs. 6 space dogfighting game that was made exclusively for the Oculus Rift.
CCP Games is the Icelandic publisher and developer of Eve Online (2003), the space MMORPG that has been running for a whole decade and still entices thousands of players. What’s more interesting for us here at Road to VR: they were one of the earliest and biggest backers of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and have shown the possibilities of the Rift at EVE Fanfest 2013 with their secret internal project, EVR. It’s a space dogfighting game in the EVE Online universe that supports the Rift’s head-tracking, so you can see other spaceships flying by your cockpit and even shoot missiles at them by locking onto them with your head. EVR was developed in Unity very quickly, using assets from the EVE Online universe.
EVR: One of the Best Demos for the Oculus Rift
Unfortunately, there are currently no plans to release EVR as a standalone game, it’s just a quick demo to show off the possibilities of virtual reality in the space game genre. Nevertheless, the quality of the game seems to be very high. According to most of the testers, EVR is one of the best showcases for the Oculus Rift and even videogames in general. “The rush of being launched out of a Minmatar carrier’s hanger into a vast black expanse filled with asteroids, floating spaceship wreckage, and enemy fighters coming at you at high speed is unlike anything I’ve experienced in other space shooters.” writes PCGamesN.com’s Julian Benson. Even higher praise comes from Pamela Horton, Playboy’s ‘Miss of October’ 2012 and avid gamer:
“It is seriously one of the funniest and most immersive games I’ve ever played, and it was only a three-minute demo! (…) I cannot even begin to express how fun and immersive this game is. I sincerely hope the Rift consumer version comes out soon with EVR as a full-scale game. I have never had a demo draw me in so fast!”
The game was built in just seven weeks, according to an EVR background article at digitaltrends.com. A small team of around 10 Rift-enthusiastic developers at CCP coded the game completely during their free time.
“In one week we had something running, and from that point onward the game changed every day, every two days”, says Sigurdur ‘Siggy’ Gunnarsson, a Senior Web Developer at CCP Games. “We just met after work and we had loads of ideas, and then the prototype was working later that night. So it just went really, really fast.”
EVE Online Oculus Rift Support Coming?
To be clear, CCP Games has not announced EVE Online Oculus Rift support in any way yet – and there aren’t any plans to release EVR right now (nevertheless, there’s a petition to release it to the public). However, it’s not too far out to think it could become a reality. EVR is a demo that shows how quickly you can develop for the Oculus Rift. Also, it’s CCP Games’ push to get more publicity for Oculus Rift support in games.
“That’s why we’re doing this,” Gunnarsson said. “We want this done. We want this to become a reality for ourselves, as gamers.” The excitement seems to be palpable at CCP Games, which is further supported by the fact that they were one of the earliest and largest backers of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter. This information comes out of a video interview with Nate Mitchell, VP of Product at Oculus VR Inc, who was at EVE Fanfest to see how well EVR would be received.
With all the Rift enthusiasm at CCP Games and the outstanding reception of EVR, we at Road to VR sure hope that there’ll be full EVE Online Oculus Rift support in the future. If not, there’s always still Star Citizen to cling to. Would you like to fly around in space with the Oculus Rift? Or do you think that other genres would be more fitting? Discuss with us in the comments!
