Fun.
[Sorry for wasting your time! Had a thought stuck in my head and needed to rant!]
I was wondering what you think about VR space fighter control schemes?
Just a thought I had playing indie VR flight games as , while fun, They got dull rather fast. Not enough stimulation. Physical! And They don't have the visuals to compensate for just sitting around moving a few fingers. It is not like you can actually feel the Gs too. There was not too much gained from these games being in VR.
At the present, there is basically only 2 control schemes.
1) Just distribute common gamepad control buttons to VR controllers.
2) OR try to emulate real hands using controls for real life earth bound planes.
All basically not made for VR but for conventional games. You used both. There are other VR flight games on itch that do the same thing.
To be honest, this approach do come off lacking. Mapping gamepad onto VR controllers works on a bare bones level but does not really do anything with 6DOF. Emulating real hands do not work. It does not really work with your game or any other game as it is way too sensitive and lacks grounding point. The only way to solve it is to have a joystick socket for you VR controllers. Some gamers have those I think.
Not trying to be critical as you do a great job with these limited approach.
I was just wondering if you put thought into VR specific control schemes. Those with actual more physical movement regarding the controls. It may be a bit blasphemous for traditional flight gamers like yourself but VR games tend to be more used to physical movement at least with your arms. And it is one of VR charms.
An idea that popped into my head was that there was no real reason to keep the traditional real life joystick controls in VR space fighter games. Those were designed for realistic flight on earth after all. In space, a space fighter would be closer to a submarine. Game wise, it is basically a floating transparent ball with the pilot at the center. It is a floating mobile turret basically.
In this case,the gamepad controls work. But how to add more physical movement to get more stimulation? "Minority Report"-ize it! (Movie reference)
Replace a button press with actual VR controller movement. You can have a floating handle inside the cockpit that you could grab and drag on the XZ axis with the right contoller . Rotate the handle on Y axis for fighter rotation. push for acceleration (Y axis), pull for deceleration (Y axis). You can also orientate the controls on the location of the VR controller whenever the gamer "lets it go and grabs it again" Rather than on the absolute position of the handle at anytime. This would solve some of the issues with the limitation of actual gamer movement. Weapons can be handled by the left controller.
Just A thought! Is this interesting?
A similar but not exact control scheme example would be in the movie "Lost in space" (1998)
Here is a link: 1:40 point!
Again sorry for the rant! Had to get the idea out of my head but had no one to rant to.