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Star Wars: Squadrons (Impressions)

Zenbane
MVP
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As of now, I've spent over 3 hours in SW:S, and I'm really enjoying the heck out of this flight shooter!

I won't be attempting a comprehensive review (yet) since I haven't finished the full single story campaign, but I do want to call out some great first impressions.

In particular, the character models and realism is rather amazing and rare in VR. Some of the character models are convincingly realistic.


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Experiencing VR's "presence" with these characters is quite the special treat. I go out of my way to engage in one-on-one dialogue with each character (as available).

Now, if I had a complaint, it would be that there is no free-form movement. Everything is fixed in place, with Teleportation to predetermined areas. Very much on par with Wilson's Heart (another personal VR favorite). However, there are multiple areas that open up for exploration, and there are quite a few times where I truly felt like I was in a Star Wars universe (or on the set of a Star Wars film).

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Note that all of these images are coming straight from my machine, and I'm playing this on the classic Rift CV1, with a mere GTX 980.

One of my favorite aspects of this game are the nuances. I love how they load an R2 unit in to the back of your ship. And this droid is very vocal and animated. You can turn your head behind you any time to see the droid being fully animated.

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Other minor details include the use of the Holo-comm inside the ship; where your Commander can pop in to give you orders in classic Star Wars fashion.

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As for the flight combat itself,

I would simply compare this more directly with Eve Valkyrie. It has a strong "flight arcade shooter" feel to it; with a heavy emphasize on arcade-style. But once you get the hang of the controls, taking out enemy fighters, blasting turrets off huge ships, dodging missiles, and taking on larger than life vessels feels like this title is well worth the price of admission.
145 REPLIES 145

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Zenbane said:

I'm on mission 5 or 6 right now, and the story is getting mighty good. I love that you get to play both Factions.

It just switched me back over to the Empire, and I'm really liking the diversity between all the fighter plane options, as well as the customization allowed per vessel to adjust to your playing style.

And those character models continue to impress me. This one character was in the right lighting to where I could see reflection in her eyes.

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Running the Steam version using a 980 must be like flying the Millennium Falcon, but seems it still gets nicely from A to B 😉
Actually it's really impressive that the game does work well when reading about 2080 Ti owners having great problems. Could of course be due to some driver or software issues. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

MowTin said:

I turned TAA sharpening and TAA to their lowest possible setting. 


I did the opposite, I increased TAA sharpness from 35% to 100% - and I'm sure it made the textures look so much better. 
Tried to set TAA to low instead of high, but shadows now looked much more grainy - high seemed to work much better. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

saami81
Rising Star
There is a bug in fleet battle tutorial. Star destroyer stops at 1 health point and cant be destroyed. Just letting you know, before someone spend hour in that mission like i did.

Multiplayer is absolute blast. It is so much fun and you can really tell that you are getting better. I started with 2 to 3 kills per match and now im doing 7 to 10 kills. That is in 5 v 5 dogfight. I have not tried fleet battles with humans yet.

Digikid1
Consultant
Can you tie in Origin games with Steam?  Only reason why I am considering not buying on Oculus is due to their stupid FB policy....so it is either Steam....which appears to have problems galore....or Origin.

nalex66
MVP
MVP
The Origin version works with SteamVR, and in fact requires it for all headsets except Oculus. 

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

nalex66
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RuneSR2 said:


MowTin said:

I turned TAA sharpening and TAA to their lowest possible setting. 


I did the opposite, I increased TAA sharpness from 35% to 100% - and I'm sure it made the textures look so much better. 
Tried to set TAA to low instead of high, but shadows now looked much more grainy - high seemed to work much better. 


I didn’t like TAA sharpness turned up to 100%, it made things look weirdly grainy. I set it to about 50% and turned up Resolution Scale (in-game menu) to 150%, which helped with image quality. Automatic graphics settings were mostly Ultra with a few things at High, so I left them as they were, and the game performed smoothly. 

I also tried it with Quest Link, which looked great. This game suffers a bit from god rays, so the better lenses helped. The higher resolution versus my CV1 also improved clarity for distant ships and readability of cockpit instruments. I really can’t wait to get my Quest 2 for that additional resolution bump. 

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

Anonymous
Not applicable

Digikid1 said:

Can you tie in Origin games with Steam?  Only reason why I am considering not buying on Oculus is due to their stupid FB policy....so it is either Steam....which appears to have problems galore....or Origin.


I think the main issues it is having is not exclusive to Steam version.
Just pick your poison.
 😉 

After struggling with it most of the day Friday ( mainly configuring my HOTAS) , I finally got it running nicely yesterday and am enjoying it now. There was a point though Friday I was ready to either trash it or try to get a refund. 

My main gripe now with it is no mouse cursor in VR. Hoping they address that quickly in a patch. I am able to use my X-Box controller to navigate the menus ok.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP
@RuneSR2
Running the Steam version using a 980 must be like flying the Millennium Falcon, but seems it still gets nicely from A to B 

Me playing SW:Sq on my Rift CV1 and 980...


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YoLolo69
Trustee
For those who bought on Steam do you confirm the Steam version don' t include the native Oculus SDK version like I read on forums, and only the Epic/Origin shops deliver the Oculus SDK version? People complain about performance difference when they have a Rift running on Steam versus the Origin/Epic version...

“Dreams feel real while we are in them, it's only when we wake up that we realize something was strange.” - Dom Cobb

"Be careful, if you are killed in real life you die in VR too." - TD_4242

I7 10700K,  RTX 3070, 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz, Oculus Rift CV1

Zenbane
MVP
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YoLolo69 said:

For those who bought on Steam do you confirm the Steam version don' t include the native Oculus SDK version like I read on forums, and only the Epic/Origin shops deliver the Oculus SDK version? People complain about performance difference when they have a Rift running on Steam versus the Origin/Epic version...



Yeah, the only option when launching via Steam is SteamVR. Usually when native Oculus is supported, that comes up as a 2nd VR launch option. But that's not available (yet) for Squadrons.

It wouldn't surprise me if the dev's end up adding native Oculus support soon. However, I've had zero performance issues whatsoever.