This year’s EVE Fanfest is without a doubt in full swing. Amidst a torrent of EVE Online update news, fascinating anecdotes about the MMO’s development and not just a few pictures of developers with liquor in hand, CCP, the game’s developer, showed off their latest project.
EVR, as the devs are calling it, is a space-based dogfighting simulator in the vein of Wing Commander running through the now oh-so-enticing Oculus Rift VR headware. The behind the scenes demo shown at this year’s Fanfest apparently featured three-on-three team battles, with players duking it out using a fairly traditional arsenal of space-sim standbys, including forward-facing lasers and lock-on missiles.
Tilting one’s head around after being subsumed into the Rift headset equates to actual head movement as the pilot inside of the game. That means you can scan around the void, searching for stray missiles and enemy vessels. You can also fix your gaze on moving targets for a automatic missile lock-on.
The current build of the game was developed in just seven weeks in the Unity engine by a handful of EVE creators in their spare time. CCP affords its developers 20% of their time to work on anything they like, and this is a result of that luxury.
Despite the absolutely stellar trailer shown during today’s keynote, I wouldn’t get too excited. CCP has a tremendous talent for showing off promising features far ahead of time (walking-in-stations, flying over planets, etc.) and there’s no guarantee this pet project will ever be released at all. Still, if the EVE Online developer really wants to get the action-oriented crowd invested in its universe, this is an impressive thematic companion piece for their first-person shooter, Dust 514.
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