Totally Realistic Space Combat Simulator for Oculus Quest by BaronBoese
I always wondered why there is no X-Wing vs. TIE-Fighter alike simulation for the Oculus GO, GearVR, Daydream or even Cardboard. After all, 3dof tracking should be sufficient for these kind of games. Totally Realistic Space Combat Simulator is my first attempt to fulfill my dream. It has pyhsics based spacecraft mechanics, dogfights, and intuitive controls. A version for Go and GearVR can be found here.
But what 3DOF lacks is intractable cockpit elements and a some more controller-buttons and analog sticks by default. So I experimented with some mechanics to interact with the touch controllers and present you this game on itch.io! Obviously this has to do with the fact that this game would never make it into the official Quest store but I still think this can be an interesting experiment for anyone who plays space games in VR and owns a Oculus Quest, Rift, GO.
Input Schemes for Oculus Touch
I am actually aiming for a bigger, more complete game, but for that I need to switch over to Entity Component System on Unity3d, as well as the new Universal Rendering Pipeline. New, assets and a completely new Approach, with that I might get trough the Oculus-Quest submission process. But until then you can support me by buying this game here.
I plotted this game with House of the Dying Sun and my dream game in one of those famous radar charts. It should portray how the game feels compared to others, and also give you a sense for what you are buying:
- Homeworld: The overview and control over a bigger fleet of vessels is intense in that game. With proper hand tracking/ tracked controllers, the control over aircraft could be so much more immediate.
- X-Wing: Its relatively simplistic flight mechanics without real momentum, drag or an insane amount of depth to the flight mechanics. But it gets the job done, there is skill you need to acquire to master this game -> thus it can be quite entertaining. It’s a bit of the opposite of what I put under “NASA”.
- FTL: Yes, it would be cool to have a ship you can run around or command crewmen to fix stuff. A game machanic where you redistribute energy between systems and utilise some thermal management to not overheat your systems, would be a weaker form of it.
- NASA: Good old physics. Everything behaves like real physical objects where thrusters, explosions, impacts etc. need to apply forces to change the inertia of an object. This can be boring, especially since combat as we know it from Star Wars or WW2 simulations would be made impossible. I wouldn’t want to lean too much towards that.
- DCS: I put this here to represent any game where you want to control your craft by interacting with cockpit elements:You want your missiles to lock onto some specific enemy? Go ahead press the touch screen! Disable active radar so you won’t be visible in their long range scanners? Flip the switch!
So what would my next game be if I would have the resources (thanks if you are still reading)?
Combat stays mostly like it is in House Of the Dying Sun since I like the way how you can drift with your space craft but also have behaviour similar to WW2 aircraft. Small hyperjumps would give combat some more speed and allow you to be where you need to be.Management of thermals, energy and sensors/stealth would occupy you as player and gives depth to combat.
Since small craft can’t possibly bring down big capital ships you would have more control over your fleet. In the end you should more be like the commander, that can choose to stay on the bridge of a bigger ship or go in with his fighter to clear a path for a squadron of bombers.