This may be asking for too much, but has there been any consideration for VR or AR support? Both the Microsoft HoloLens (see the Minecraft Demo) and the Oculus Rift could be fun platforms for ToS to be played on. 
How would it work with ToS though?
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Idk man, TOS doesnt seem to go well on rift since there is no first person view. And hololens is too experimental right now so i dont see imc implementing it any time soon. I like the hololens idea though. Even though it would be harder for making the game fair for everyone.
The environment is only meant to be viewed from one angle, so itâs only really going to work on a screen.
In my humble opinion, the Rift is rather misunderstood. Plenty of people get motion sick trying to play games in first person. I donât think first person is the ideal use case. What I would really enjoy is being able to perceive depth. Even from a fixed angle. To be able to see the gameplay in true stereoscopic vision would be SO impressive. Same goes for the HoloLens. Iâll play from a fixed point, i just want to be able to see in 3D.
I have a DK2, and if I understand what you say correctly, you would expect that the implementation of the game would look and feel like what they did on Meltdownâs VR implementation (http://store.steampowered.com/app/268220).
The problem in ToS is that, even if ToS uses a 3D Engine, and each one of the 3D Models would look awesome inside the Rift, the game is designed to look good on a fixed camera view (you cant rotate the camera like in RO, this is supported by design on that game).
Itâs highly likely that because of this design choice, there might be graphic optimizations involved in the engine level, so it may not look good on the Rift unless they redesign those things from scratch.
I honestly doubt that it would be a good idea to burn their game with a crappy VR/AR implementation, or to invest the time and resources to make a good one since they still have lotâs of work to make the game stable as it is. But even if they never implement it in the far future, you can still check when ToS comes out if using some auxiliary program like vorpX works.
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No, not at all. I never played Meltdown, but I went and looked up some gameplay videos. Let me try and explain it another way. Imagine youâre playing ToS on a screen but instead of a screen youâre using a rift so that you can perceive depth. Thatâs all. Fixed camera angle, it doesnât respond to head movement. It just lets you perceive depth because of the stereoscopic vision.
VR is just too much hyped these days. Itâs not perfect and it cause various kinds of sicknesses in long gaming sessions (because of mismatched motion, field of view, motion parallax, viewing angle etc.). For a short burst of fun itâs pretty much okay but I canât imagine playing any MMO with the VR headset. For example: Imagine there is a Lag. Some seconds nothing moves. And then⌠Everything jumps somewhere else - or worse - everything move fast as lightning to catch up with positioning and your camera view goes berserk.
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Ok, what you are asking it may not be that hard then⌠but you may have a misconception of what makes AR & VR worth the experience.
If you fix the camera, but implement stereoscopic view, youâll get the same result as in 3D Cinema, 3D TV, Virtual Boy and âthe olâ faithfull View Masterâ, an image that âlooks like 3Dâ, but the effect fades in time. There are already games that do this in the market, you can check GW2 (yes, it works on 3DTVs), but what makes OculusVR (and similar products) immersive is not that you can watch stereoscopic images, is actually the high quality head tracking combined with high refresh rate (+75hz) and low latency (<20ms). To make use of the head tracking you need that the camera view is not fixed in the game, or else youâll get the same result than on a 3D TV.
Maybe more than TOS 
Real3D and other cinema 3d technologies that use color separation donât work for me. My brain doesnât interpret the images very well. Because Rift uses 2 distinct visual images itâs much clearer. And yes, thatâs exactly what I want.
Play many hours on VR will just hurt your eyes.
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Is that true? Do you have a source?
The longest run Iâve done on my DK2 was one long week-end (4 days), l played Elite:Dangerous arround 10 hours per day (with some breaks) without any kind of eye stress.
On the manual it actually says that itâs not recomended for small children to play during long times (I think it was less than 10 years old, but I donât really remember) because they are still developing their eye sight⌠but thatâs it for the warnings. There are also some old studies, but those are on deprecated hardware.
Simply put, VR canât function for ToS because at the moment itâs being fully focused on perception through the protagonists eyes. Once VR is established and successful, it will become more affordable for the devâs.Therefore new innovative ideas will spring up (We would hope). At the moment, nothing with ToSâs unique take on top down, isometic perception has been attempted for VR as far as I know, and on top of that, I donât know of any MMO which is VR compatible. I believe they require a console/disk in-order to run, thereâs no storage within the headgear to direct download onto it (as far as I know). That would require separate technology anyway.
AR could work in theory, however AR is still miles off being viable for gaming in itâs current state. It probably requires very specific parameters at the moment to map out the surrounding area, and costs a fortune. The Microsoft demonstration was done in a wide room on a perfectly square, flat table. Nothing tricky or technically difficult was shown in that sense. If they had done it on a random coffee table with weird dimensions, and managed to just map it out on an uneven surface, then we are looking at something that be used at home. Also thereâs actually not much AR can do in itâs current form. Itâs pretty and can make a game looks cool. However apart from a few voice commands and pointing in a direction commands, it wouldnât do much for ToS. I think people would actually get bored of it after a while, and it would just be a party trick. The only kind of games I could see it work for would be party and strategy games~
Anyway, TL;DR: VR would need some series innovation for it to work, AR needs series improvements generally and both are going to be too expensive to develop for and purchase at the moment to work with a free to play game business model~ (But maybe one day, we can hold out hope!)
Iâm sorry but a lot of what you said isnât based on the information that is available, for both the Rift and the HoloLens.
Simply put, VR canât function for ToS because at the moment itâs being fully focused on perception through the protagonists eyes.
What do you mean?
Once VR is established and successful, it will become more affordable for the devâs.
The dev kit for Rift is like $300-350 - Thatâs cheap.
At the moment, nothing with ToSâs unique take on top down, isometic perception has been attempted for VR as far as I know, and on top of that, I donât know of any MMO which is VR compatible.
Also see my description above explaining how I imagined the implementation.
I believe they require a console/disk in-order to run, thereâs no storage within the headgear to direct download onto it (as far as I know). That would require separate technology anyway.
No.
AR could work in theory, however AR is still miles off being viable for gaming in itâs current state.
Unity (industry standard game engine) is currently working with Microsoft to fully support game development. I imagine the Unreal Engine will also be engaged. Iâm not sure which engine ToS is using (I imagine itâs proprietary?), but integrating the HoloLens SDK is not an unreasonable feat.
Nothing tricky or technically difficult was shown in that sense. If they had done it on a random coffee table with weird dimensions, and managed to just map it out on an uneven surface, then we are looking at something that be used at home.
Also thereâs actually not much AR can do in itâs current form. Itâs pretty and can make a game looks cool. However apart from a few voice commands and pointing in a direction commands, it wouldnât do much for ToS. I think people would actually get bored of it after a while, and it would just be a party trick. The only kind of games I could see it work for would be party and strategy games~
- It has several microphone sensors and is EXTREMELY accurate
- You wouldnât use your voice or hand gestures to play the game. Youâd still use a (wireless) keyboard and mouse. The only difference is you would have a fixed directional â3dâ view of your game.
Anyway, TL;DR: VR would need some series innovation for it to work, AR needs series improvements generally and both are going to be too expensive to develop
No.
and purchase
Yes, this is a more likely reason.
(But maybe one day, we can hold out hope!)
Sooner than you think. 
It would take extra development time, and when youâre trying to put out a mature software product you have to focus on having all the critical features polished so that you can push it out the door in a timely manner. I asked, knowing that it was a (very) long shot. However, not for the reasons you believe. It can be done and it is reasonable. But I donât think very many people share my enthusiasm. This game seems like it wasnât meant to be AR or VR. Despite that, I was curious if there had been any considerations.
I havenât read most of what has been said, but I just thought Iâd add. Goint back and seeing how the game simulates depth. How the terrain âmovesâ ect, could probably be used to create a depth type of experience in VR but I wouldnât imagine it would be much better than a 3D glasses type of experience as far as what you actually see.
Its something to think about I guess, though I couldnât see much development being focused in that area unfortunately for all you VR ppls.
Donât underestimate third person games on VR. There are several titles announced on the rift that are not actually played from the eyes of the main character, like:
Luckyâs Tale:
Edge of nowhere:
Iâve played some demos (this is one example) and they are immersive enough even if you are not looking through the eyes of the character because you are still inside the world.
To play with the Oculus Rift DK2, you just need a PC (a beefy one by the way), but that is just a dev-kit. The only headset that i know that needs a console is âProject Morpheusâ for the PS4. The commercial version of the Rift and Valveâs headset are both set to launch as PC accessories.
Even if the headset costs that, you still need at least an âOutstandingâ PC. If you donât already own one, youâll need to spend at least 1100 USD or more to build one.
Bla bla Hololens bla bla Microsoft bla bla
IMHO, Hololens tech is way too young to consider anything about it, there is no development hardware (just a prototype) nor available libraries to work with⌠maybe in the next 2-3 yearsâŚ
I also believe that what @michaelhartmayer wants shouldnât need any weird library, cos 3D stereo vision is something that is already supported in current hardware (just check the list of games that implement NVidia´s 3D Vision tech. But in my experience, playing games that donât implement head tracking in a headset is not comfortable enough to consider it against playing on a normal screen.
Even if the headset costs that, you still need at least an âOutstandingâ PC. If you donât already own one, youâll need to spend at least 1100 USD or more to build one.
I was pointing out that to DEVELOP for the Rift is not expensive.
You still need a proper PC if you want to develop a game, normally youâll need an even better PC than the one you are aiming for so you can run all the dev-tools besides the game during development, and there are other kind of costs to consider when adding features in the later stages of development.
But what I wanted to point out is that you donât need any of that hardware if you are not going to implement head tracking since 3D stereo vision can be implemented in most of todayâs modern graphic libraries and game engines.
As one of the indie game developers out there and a gamer, I can only say that I agree with your opinions. Why do I agree? Thereâs a LOT of explanation and Iâm too lazy to type them down. Most of them have been explained by this guy.