Hey! Big chunky update this week! The stand-out feature is VR / OpenXR support! Launch the game with -vr, use F11 to recenter your view and make sure you're rocking an iron stomach. This has been a mega pain in the butt to get in so I'm pleased I got it in early. The main things that had to change were all UI panels requiring custom mouse handling, shifting into world space and resizing to accommodate actually being in the cockpit but it's an awesome experience now it's all done.  

To compliment VR mode, a whole host of THOROUGHLY EXCITING graphics options have been added - turns out quite of few of those options were hard-coded to be pretty high so hopefully more people are able to play. Sorry about that!  

This update brings some pretty big changes to flight mechanics and how thrust is distributed and a subsequent rebalancing for agility purposes -- see the changelog for more details on that.  

Finally, this update brings a big change to the boost mechanics and how time trials are initiated - there's now a countdown at the start of time trials and you are able to boost up to 1 second before the timer starts - this allows you to start at practically full speed. The button may be held down and logic occurs in fixed timesteps so everyone starts on the same frame.  

This change to boost (being able to hold the button down) occurs after the countdown too and therfore changes the meta of time trials away from "how frame-perfect can you press boost in straight lines". As such, a boost charge mechanic has been added - successive boosts eventually get penalised so now you have to think a little bit about when to use it.  

Let me know if there's any issues, I'm sure there are a few and I'll usually do a minor patch over the weekend if there's anything serious enough! Next up is basic multiplayer and them hopefully some *actual content*.  

Peace!  

- Juki ❤

Changelog:  

ALPHA 4 (v0.2.0)

New:

    * VR Mode: Set the `-vr` flag parameter when launching the exe to use OpenXR. Do this either with steam or by making a shortcut to the exe.

        * Added HMD recenter binding - this is F11 by default.

        * NOTE: VR moe uses OpenXR - it is WINDOWS ONLY at the moment until Unity adds Linux support!

        * Custom cursor drawn in-scene on the UI canvases - this allows mouse operation in VR.

    * Graphics options!

        * Resolution [Applied instantly]

        * Screen mode (borderless / fullscreen / windowed) [Applied instantly]

        * Camera Field of View

        * Render scale

        * MSAA

        * SSAO

        * Various terrain settings

    * Boost now has a recharge mechanic - holding the button will always boost when available, but repeated boosts are punished with drained capacitor.

        * Added values to dev options

    * Throttle no longer effectively max under boost - there is up to 40% draw back which can be achieved by pulling back.

    * Ship lateral thrusters no longer act on independent max thrusts - they share the same max thrust pool and therefore may be bled off.

        * Some ship agility re-balancing has occurred due to this change, see Changes below

    * Time Trial start timer with sound

        * Counts down from 2.5 seconds (beep on 2, 1, 0)

        * Boost is available 1 second before start, holding the button beforehand works

    * Added thrust + boost indicators

    * Added binding to use lateral vs rotational flight assists

        * Toggling both will defer to default preference (e.g. if usually on, will enable both if only one is active and disable if both active)

Changes:

    * Buffed ship agility

        * Mass decreased by ~20%

        * Max available thrust increased by 10%

        * Boost thrust multiplier increased by 40%

        * Vertical thruster multiplier increased by ~12%

        * Horizontal thruster multiplier increased by ~30%

    * Removed placeholder display UI elements in cockpit and replaced them with ... absolutely nothing ^_^

    * Renamed input option "flight assist on by default" to "prefer flight assists on" (now multiple assists)

Fixes:

    * Timer no longer displays when restarting a free roam session

    * User preferences are now applied on startup by the Game class rather than User in-game

    * Track name is now serialised when copied to json

    * Fixed some binding options not displaying device name

    * Fixed SSAO shadow artefacts

    * Possible fix for loading terrain on Linux (MM C++ Native loader is windows only :|)