One of the greatest features of Elite: Dangerous is the ability to set your own pace and theme. If you want to wander around and explore the stars, delivering packages from time to time to pay for upgrades for your ship, you can do it without problems. If you want to fly around and show everyone what a great bounty hunter you are by leaving wrecked ships in your path as you sail, you have everything you need. As a player, you can choose your experience which is amazing.
You also have some control over the level of immersion in the game. You can play on a laptop in a coffee shop with a gamepad, on a widescreen desktop with joysticks, or get completely immersed in a VR setup and everything will move with your head. Here’s a quick guide on how to enable that last part!
Do not install with Frontier
If you’ve never played Elite: Dangerous before and are going on day one via VR headset, it couldn’t be easier. Instead of downloading the game through the Frontier website, you are going to download the game through the Oculus Store or SteamVR.
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Once installed, Oculus Rift users will see the Elite: Dangerous icon in their library, clicking on it will launch the Elite: Dangerous launcher. Don’t put on your headset yet, there are a few things you need to do on your computer first. From this launch, you will need to create a Frontier account. This allows you to sign in from almost anywhere and play the game, but it’s an extra step you don’t often see in Oculus games. After creating an account, click «Play» in the lower left corner of the launcher and put on your headset. By default, this version of the game uses the Xbox One controller included with the Rift. To change this, go to Options > Controls from the main menu.
HTC Vive owners will install the game from SteamVR, and clicking the game on Steam will prompt you to choose between releasing a 32-bit, 64-bit, and VR mode version. If you want to play through Vive, you’ll want to select VR from the list and hit OK. This will launch the Elite: Dangerous Launchpad where you will create a Frontier account and sign in. When the game starts, you won’t be using your Vive controllers, instead the mouse and keyboard will be used by default. To change this, go to Options > Controls from the main menu.
