Elite: Dangerous developer Frontier has confirmed that the game no longer officially supports the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, with the studio focusing on rival SteamVR instead.
In a statement to Eurogamer, Frontier explained that the change was not the result of any deal with a hardware manufacturer. The studio said:
"We've supported VR for a few years now, and Elite Dangerous is arguably the world's leading VR-ready game. We want to give players the best possible VR experience however they play – it's something we talked about with Digital Foundry recently – and that means focusing our efforts. Right now, we've chosen to focus on SteamVR. We haven't cut an exclusivity deal with any VR manufacturer, and we're still working with Oculus on Rift support."
Frontier has used the Oculus Rift to demonstrate the VR potential of Elite: Dangerous more than once over the last two years. The move away from the device was somewhat heralded however, with Frontier ceasing work on Oculus Rift builds after version 0.6.
When pre-orders for Oculus Rift went live earlier this month the studio's community chief Zac Antonaci commented on the game's forums, "With the news that Oculus are starting pre order of their consumer version tomorrow, I wanted to just make a quick post to confirm that we are still actively working with Oculus but currently the only SDK we are able to officially support is 0.6."
