This was found in my inbox today:

"EGOSOFT announces X Rebirth VR Edition

Open letter from Bernd Lehahn

Hi guys,

It's again time for me to wish you all a Happy Christmas and all the best for the new year. It is however also the time of the year when we normally start talking about a new game or expansion.

Last year it was Home of Light, and before that it was The Teladi Outpost. Both of these X Rebirth expansions received a lot of positive feedback and helped us to show X Rebirth 4.0 in a much better light.

This year, there are several really exciting new developments that I can share with you:

We have Update 4.10 of X Rebirth almost ready, as well as Updates for X3AP and X3TC.
There will be a VR game based on X Rebirth: the X Rebirth: VR Edition.
X4 is in development!

X Rebirth 4.10 and other updates:

Everybody who would like to help test the updates can get access to the following beta versions today:
X Rebirth 4.10
X3: Albion Prelude 3.2
X3: Terran Conflict 3.3
All three of these updates improve the games, and include a number of fixes and performance improvements that have come to our attention over the past months. These updates will, of course, be made available to everybody, via all the usual platforms, once the testing has ended.

X Rebirth VR Edition:

X Rebirth VR Edition will be a new standalone game based on X Rebirth Home of Light, completely redesigned and optimised for a Virtual Reality experience.

X Rebirth VR Edition will be released via early access in the first half of 2017, and will be available as a new standalone game. If you own X Rebirth already, you will be able to get the VR edition at a discounted price.

To bring X Rebirth into the VR world, we had to change the game and the universe quite a bit:
Special universe and economy: While based on X Rebirth and Home of Light,While based on X Rebirth and Home of Light, the universe and economy of X Rebirth VR Edition are specially designed for a Virtual reality experience. This is also the reason why the games are not savegame compatible.
New graphics engine: X Rebirth VR Edition will be the first title by Egosoft to utilise our new in-house development, based on the innovative new Vulkan graphics technology.
New content: X Rebirth VR Edition extends the gameplay and universe with new missions to deliver a unique virtual reality experience.
Special UI: The user interface of XR VR Edition was specially designed to work entirely as an immersive first person VR cockpit experience.
Pace and Balancing: All aspects of the game had to be rebalanced to create the best experience for the VR environment.

Final words:

X Rebirth VR Edition is a super-exciting development for us. Playing this with a VR Headset feels like finally playing space games the way they were meant to be played all along.

There is, however, also another project that we are working on and which is equally exciting to us: X4. It is still too early to talk about many details of this, and it doesn't even have a full name yet, but we are making good progress and I wanted to share a few words with you about what we have been doing in the last couple of years.

When we worked on X Rebirth we needed to make a lot of simplifications. We removed some features in order to be able to concentrate on others. But when X Rebirth was released, many fans expected it to be an "X4"; a game with most of the key features of the X3 games and then some. Since then, we have worked hard to make X Rebirth a better game, incorporating player feedback, continuing to develop the engine it is based on, and releasing many updates and expansions. However we also realise that there are still many unfulfilled wishes, some of which would require extensive changes that couldn't be implemented in the existing game. Many of these are things we would also like to see in a space game and these, along with the foundations laid by all the work and feedback that went into X Rebirth, have been the basis for the big project that we have been working on for the last few years: a real X4.

While I cannot say much about its features yet, what I can tell you about it so far is that it will allow you to fly many different ships, it will give you an all-new interface to manage large fleets, and it will give you full freedom when building stations from individual modules.

Please be patient with this and we promise to show some really cool things later in 2017!

Now, everybody, have wonderful holiday and a great new year!

Bernd Lehahn, Egosoft "

More news in more languages here http://www.egosoft.com/community/xnews_en.php

Well, I have to say, that X4 news is very intriguing. I just haven't been able to get into Rebirth. I've tried a couple times, but lose interest quickly. Also, mildly curious as to what the X3 TC &AP updates bring to the table, but not interested in beta testing it. Guess time will tell. Thanks for sharing

So if I have understood right ONLY the new standalone X Rebirth VR will come with Vulkan support.
So, they have any plans to extend Vulkan to Rebirth 4.10 and the expansions too?

Interesting. I remember a patch fix issue thread opened in late 2015 on the Egosoft forums full of documented problems awaiting potential fixes. I even submitted some myself... curios to see what the official changelog is when the patches are released out of beta, but to be honest I don't expect much to be changed.

"X4" sounds interesting, but it still won't be 100% up to par to X3 from what I read so far... there was something about only being able to pilot S and M class ships and not capital ships. Well, only time will tell :).

Yeah, I'm also very curious to see what the changelog updates will be as well. I wonder if they'll be adding in more mod scripts to them, like they have done in the past?.

I wouldn't be happy at all not be able to fly any ship in the game, regarding X4. I'd still be fine if it were a challenge to acquire some of them, like it presently is in the previous X games...but having some of them off limits to us prospective Masters of the Universe??? Wwwwhy, why...that's blasphemy!

A very low number are still denied to us but they are unique ships so that is fine.

If you have an account on the Egosoft forum you'll now be able to see the X3:TC & AP beta patch changelogs.

While they're still actively working on the patch, right now it's not much of a change as I suspected: some code optimizations around the way missions are handled, some extra backend modding support added in and some minor UI changes/fixes. Yeah, same here. Well not ANY ship, but I'd expect to be able to manually fly most ships.

From what I understood, the model they thought out for X4 at this point is that you get to command capital ships and assign crew to them, perhaps even dock with and explore them, but you don't get to fly them personally (which is based on what's currently in place in X:Rebirth).

I'd call it the "Yo no soy capitán, soy marinero" model :).

Hey, thanks for the update Winter. Guess it's rather odd that I am such a big X3 fan and haven't yet joined the forum over at ES yet, huh? But I haven't, probably just due to laziness :P

I have NP really, that we will not being able to fly *every* ship in the game, after all, there are a small number as Themken pointed out in the present game, usually unique, plot related types. That's fine. I didn't even know till he posted here, that ES was even making an X4. So if they really are, and have taken into consideration that quite a lot of the fanbase was disappointed with Rebirth, I am remaining cautiously optimistic they will give us something that will really make us happy (for the most part, that is, lol). At this point, I am just excited they are doing so!

Now we have both the X:Rebirth and X3:Terran War Pack patches here on GOG :-)

Small updates from my end regarding the latest patch(es): while they don't include anything spectacular, I have to say the overall gaming performance has improved - I suspect his is because they fixed some memory and game logic leaks/leftovers from the way missions were handled that previously kept piling up the longer you played a game, eventually becoming a burden on performance.

It's all more smooth and silky now... with all the rest of the usual bugs still there :).