- Updated Voice Chat, now available again on Mac OS X! (Intel only) Voice Chat quality should also be better, and use less bandwidth, thanks to a new codec (Opus 20kbit).
- Improved pre-release Oculus Rift VR implementation, with new VR ship-cockpit and VR space-station hangar. Please understand, this experience and related graphics are still in development. VR-specific tutorials and other features are still missing.
- Background Detail settings improved, now with Off, Low, Medium, High. The "Medium" setting is similar to the previous "Highest" setting, but uses higher resolution textures. The new "High" setting is similar to the previous "Super High" setting, but is faster to render thanks to some engine optimization. Because of these changes, the Background Detail setting will now reset to the new default for your particular hardware.

gasp! voice chat!

Awesome!

What happened to that big announement that was due to happen by the end of last month? Did I just not see it or did it not happen yet?

lol what do you think

I find it interesting that VR implementation appears to be resolving some canonical questions that players could previously turn an agnostic eye toward: are we really flying our ships? What happens when a ship docks with a larger entity?

...not necessarily. Just because we see a cockpit view doesn't mean it's real. It could just mean that so many pilots have rigidly useless minds that the engineers of our remotely operated craft decided to add a virtual cockpit to the virtual display just to make them stop whining. Which is pretty much literally what is happening. :P

(Not that I'm a subscriber to the "we pilot remotely" view. I'm in the "we pilot in person and then clone ourselves back to life" camp.)