Oculus VR snags Elite: Dangerous as Rift launch title

Facebook-owned Oculus VR has confirmed that popular crowd-funded space-'em-up Elite: Dangerous will be a launch title for its Oculus Rift headset, as it looks to build up hype in the face of strong competition from rival HTC.

A follow-up to the classic space-faring open-world Elite series by David Braben and Ian Bell, Elite: Dangerous was an early supporter of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. The launch of the latest software development kit (SDK), however, saw support vanish - and with both developer Frontier and Oculus VR silent on the matter, fans of the game were left wondering whether or not the commercial version of the Oculus Rift headset would be compatible with the title.

Thankfully, those worries are a thing of the past: Oculus VR has confirmed that a Rift-compatible build of Elite: Dangerous will be launched on the 28th of March. Interestingly, however, this won't take the form of a patch for the game but as an entirely separate build - likely including optimisations for virtual reality use.

The Oculus Rift build of Elite: Dangerous will be made freely downloadable for all owners of the game's Windows port, as will those who have purchased the Horizons expansion pack for the base game, with all existing content ported across. Saved games and progress from the non-Rift build is expected to be carried across without loss when users switch between builds.