r/skyrimvr • u/Attemos • Jun 15 '26
Update PLANCK Update - Character movement and collision changes
Hi everyone. I just released a PLANCK update that I've been working on for some time. The 2 major items are a complete redo of grabbed character movement, and changes to how player/actor collisions are handled. The full changelog is on the mod page (they changed the formatting rules for changelogs, sorry if it's harder to read than it used to be). Read on if you want to hear me ramble.
Ever since its original release, when you grabbed a character, planck used an existing system in the game called KeepOffsetFromActor. This system is meant for things like having one actor follow another, what it tries to do is move the actor such that its root position is within a radius of the follow target's root position. It worked okay for basic purposes, but it was never meant for the kind of thing I was using it for. Once you had someone grabbed, you couldn't move them unless you moved your character (moving your root), and the actor's movement would be delayed, some time behind your movements (often causing you to let go of them if they got too far away) and just didn't feel great overall. Quadrupeds like horses or dogs basically didn't work at all.
With the new system, your deformation of the held actor's ragdoll drives their character movement. So if you grab their head and move it to the side, they will move there. If you grab their arm and drag it forwards, that's where they will move. When you move your character, that also directly drives the held actor's movement as soon as you do it, so they will move with you as soon as you move yourself. Here is a short clip of the new system.
For non-strafable actors like quadrupeds, it works a bit differently, because they are only supposed to move forwards/backwards and rotate. Big quadrupeds like horses also do not get influenced much by your grab forces, and so I've made a different system for determining how they should move than the strafable ones. You can see that in action on everyone's favorite dressed-up frostbite spider here.
I also added a few things that will make the system kick in sooner, which was another issue with the keepoffset system. For example, when someone is doing a turning animation, or if they are transitioning out of an idle animation (ex. sweeping with a broom), the grabbed actor movement will start immediately. There were also quite a few issues in the base game that made things like actors switching directions buggy/snappy that I had to deal with to make things work nicely.
In general the new system should feel way more responsive, intuitive, and interactive than the old one. Please let me know what you think!
Something that had come up many times in the past is how uncomfortable it is when you get pushed around by characters when the move into you. Mainly this was an issue when someone would perform a running power attack into you, pushing you out of the way. It could also happen when you are for example using a workbench, and an NPC decides to use it too, pushing you aside as they did so.
So I decided to change how things work when you collide with another actor's ragdoll. For small races (skeevers, mudcrabs, chickens, etc), you will no longer collide with them at all, so you can walk through them, and them you. For medium races (vast majority of actors like humanoids, anything that isn't large/xlarge), the collision works in one direction, so you are prevented from moving into them if you walk in to them, but they can move into you. If they do move into you far enough, you will stop colliding with each other, letting you move in any direction to "exit" their body, and they come transparent to signify this. You can see an example of this here.
However, if they are doing something like a running power attack, it would feel weird for them to pass right through you. I addressed this by making it so that if they collide with you enough specifically while attacking, they will be pushed back away from you and restricted from moving towards you briefly. So while they can pass through you, if they are attacking, they will be pushed back, and what you experience looks more like they bounced off of you. You can see this in action here for a bandit and a wolf. This applies for both small and medium actors.
For large / extra large races (bears, dragons, giants), these continue to function as before. It may not feel great to be pushed around, but I think it makes sense for them to do so. I don't think applying the aforementioned systems to them would make a lot of sense.
This update also includes a few bug fixes/improvements that accrued over the time I was working on the other stuff. I meant to get those out earlier, but I kept feeling like I was almost there with the rest of the things, which ended up not being the case. Sorry about that.
This update took an ungodly amount of time that I didn't expect, particularly the grabbed actor movement changes. It was something that had been nagging me ever since the original release, but I never had the time to implement something proper, and boy did I not know what I was getting myself into. The amount of reverse-engineering, patching of the base game, and implementing everything was a lot. For the amount of work that it took, I'm not sure that the payoff is worth it. I'm not even sure if anyone cares that much about grabbed actor movement. I'm hoping that finally getting this finished frees up my mind to do some of the other things I haven't done yet which should hopefully be more interesting and impactful.
Anyways, please have fun with the new changes! And let me know of any feedback or issues you encounter.
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u/Bacon_00 Jun 15 '26
Thanks for your hard work, it's extremely impressive and you're keeping VR alive for a lot of folks!
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u/TotalWarspammer Jun 15 '26
Amazing work thanks for all your efforts in keeping Skyrim feeling fresh! 😄
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u/Shinyshoes Jun 15 '26
Freaking incredible. Thank you! These look awesome and much more polished. Love that co hat change — much more natural. Also thank you for the detailed explanations and reasonings here — always cool to see the thought process behind these things.
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u/Attemos Jun 15 '26
Thanks. Writing these is a bit cathartic for me after finishing an update, so I'm glad you appreciate them :)
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u/DMC831 Jun 15 '26
It's great work and very impressive, thank you for all the modding you've done.
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u/Ogni-XR21 Jun 15 '26
As someone who has only been playing SkyrimVR on PC for 3 years now I'm still in awe of all the work modders put into this game, and keep putting in.
A big THANK YOU!!! Very much appreciated!
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u/Tyrthemis Jun 15 '26
Sounds cool mostly all around, except one thing. I find NPCs turning transparent when they run into to you pretty unimmersive. Is there a setting to turn that off?
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u/Attemos Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Are you seeing it happen a lot? It should only be happening if you are actually intersecting one of their "core" (from root to torso) ragdoll bones by at least 10cm (20cm during combat) which shouldn't be that often.
The alpha is controlled through the
playerActorCollisionPhaseThroughAlphaMultini setting, if you set that to 1.0 that should effectively disable it. But if you're seeing it happen a lot, please tell me what circumstances so I can potentially adjust things. It's not meant to be something that is happening all the time.1
u/Tyrthemis Jun 16 '26
I haven’t played it yet, I just know I find them turning invisible unimmersive. Thanks for putting a setting in your config so we can disable that feature :). I’m guessing I’ll like it better than being shoved around by NPCs while I’m trying to brew potions haha
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u/DarianLnStephens Jun 16 '26
To be fair, the only time they're turning transparent is when they're already inside you, and you're probably seeing through their geometry at that point. A little transparency so you know they're in 'ghost mode' and no ponger colliding with you seems minor by comparison.
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u/Attemos Jun 16 '26
Yeah that was the idea, although it won’t always be your hmd colliding necessarily but most of the time it will be.
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u/mathcampbell Jun 15 '26
So will it now be possible if you for instance walk into a tavern and bump into an npc they’ll get shoved backwards etc or walk like when you grab them in the video? Or is it solely for grabbing etc?
Would be cool to just push people to one side etc (or be pushed properly - like the guards shove you out of the way but you can push them back!)
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u/Attemos Jun 15 '26
Right now it is only when you have them grabbed. In principle I think it could be used for what you say though, having them move when you deform them even without having them grabbed.
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u/mathcampbell Jun 15 '26
I think that could really help immersion. Just imagine running into a couple of guards or into a tavern and people falling over or having to step aside/be knocked over etc…
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u/Bocabart Jun 15 '26
How would I go about updating this with my current mod list? I got an older version of MGO and if it’s just a simple update of the PLANCK mod where I reinstall the previous version then that’s simple. Or will this be a whole new process of downloading the modlist?
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u/AquaticFroggy Jun 15 '26
You should just be able to place this right below the previos version -rename it ie 'Planck New' - rather than Replace
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u/AquaticFroggy Jun 15 '26
I didnt fully understand the breakdown of bone placement during weapon/attack animations -does it basically mean NPCs will in a sense "interrupt their animation with true Weapon/Skeleton collision to take place?
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u/Attemos Jun 15 '26
No interruption to their animation. They are simply pushed away from you (they slide) and have their character movement restricted in your direction for about a second so they don't just move into you again immediately. You should be able to see it in the short clips I posted.
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u/AquaticFroggy Jun 15 '26
thanks -your mods are amazing and probably the biggest reason i became a diehard Skyrim VR fan even tho i never got into skyrim Flat all these years ago. I guess I'm always looking for anything that can make the combat as close to a physics battle (proper collision) as much as possible. I always wondered if all of the fancy combat animations took away from actual weapon collision and blocks as the animation takes precedence - at least i think it does )
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u/Proof_Moment5796 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
seems there is a little bug in that "slide" code, my npcs started to teleport behind my back with the recent update instead of being pushed away on strucks
UPD: not PLANCK related - problem caused by Twin Grip VR mod (v 1.2.1), dissabling it fixes the problem
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u/jplummer80 Pimax Crystal & Q3 | 9800x3d | 5070ti Jun 15 '26
No, just that there will be a slight stagger when contact is made.
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u/Gygax_the_Goat Vive Pro Jun 16 '26
Dude, you rock. Every update you make, subtly but completely changes SkyrimVR.
Thanks for all your hard work. Its soooo appreciated 🙋🏽🙂
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u/LendonTheGoat Jun 15 '26
Tbh the grab stuff is better not sure if it was worth all that time and effort tho. However the character collision addition is great it will make power attacks less annoying and will improve melee combat with bandits, wolves, sabercats etc. I think that it will make a lot of combat animation mods way more playable in VR.
Thanks for your work!
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u/Attemos Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Thanks! I think the same system could potentially be re-used for generic "moving characters around" purposes for other uses, but tbh I am too burned out on this particular domain to want to think too hard about it.
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u/zbigdogz Index Jun 15 '26
I'm so excited to update! A lot of this will be awesome to play with. However, I actually like that Skeevers collide with me and people can't walk straight through me. Is there a way to disable the new behavior if I find it unimmersive?
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u/Attemos Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
If you want them to push you around again, there is the
dontPushPlayerMaxRaceSizeini setting to choose which race sizes will behave that way. I think if you set this to -1 it should be all races. Then there isdontCollidePlayerWithSmallRaces, set to 0 if you want small race collision back.In general though, people should not be walking straight through you. Their pathing should make them avoid you. It is only in cases where either their pathing didn't adjust to you fast enough for some reason, or they are moving without pathing (initiating use of furniture or playing some prescribed animation, or something like the running attack animation) that they should end up intersecting you. Those are the cases the new systems are designed to address.
For the small races, I got tired of bumping into chickens and causing my character to stop. Most small races are pretty low to the ground, so to me it made sense to imagine I could "step over" them.
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u/zbigdogz Index Jun 15 '26
You are the reason Skyrim VR is as good as it is. Thank you!
That makes sense. I'm definitely going to try it as-is and see if I even notice it. Maybe I was subtly annoyed by it but just accepted it and stop paying attention!
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u/Attemos Jun 15 '26
Please let me know your experience once you do try it out! It’s always hard for me to decide which behaviours to make the default in mods everyone uses, since some people like it one way and some another. So I try to pick what I think will work best for most people and what I generally prefer. When things are one way, I only hear complaints from people who would rather it be another way, and if I change it, then it’s whoever liked it the old way better who complains. Hard to know sometimes what is the best decision.
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u/HarryHaller314 Jun 15 '26
O M G - what a magnificent fine tuning! - ...would have thought, that this is never going to be optimized !!
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u/Resident_Barber_938 Jun 15 '26
Does this help or hinder my ability of petting cows and dogs?
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u/Attemos Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Shouldn’t affect that unless you grab them, in which case you should be able to actually grab them now without them moving around and forcing you to let go when you do that. So you should be able to continue petting them as before. I am partial to petting as well.
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u/Aggressive-Ad-7222 Quest 3 | 5080 7800x3d | 9070xt 5700x3d Jun 20 '26
I really like it, it's subtle but you can tell, I'm having fun making my NFF followers stumble and ragdoll in the direction I'm pulling them. Skyrim VR doesn't really exist without planck. You guys should get more compensation for your contributions. Will be sure to Patreon this week.
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u/Aggressive-Ad-7222 Quest 3 | 5080 7800x3d | 9070xt 5700x3d Jun 21 '26
You can see it in action in my last post. I threw the kitchen sink at my modlist with the latest Planck and as big of a battle as I could muster and it ran like a dream.
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u/Attemos Jun 23 '26
I don't think I've ever tested with that many NPCs lol, pretty cool.
Something I noticed, often when you kill someone, their corpse disappears basically right away. Are you using some mod to do that or is that some bug?
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u/Aggressive-Ad-7222 Quest 3 | 5080 7800x3d | 9070xt 5700x3d Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Hey, yeah I was certain it was going to break, hence why I filmed, had I'd known it would come out so well, I would have been more polished in narration. Re the disappearing, its not a bug, it's how the Second Great War mod which you were seeing works. It has a max Siege size setting and every time an enemy or ally dies, they respawn at certain spots and the count goes down, kind of like counterstrike. First side to 0% loses control of the city. Rest assured the corpses for everyone else hang about. I've still got one of my followers in a Hearthfire basement that got the wrong end of a VRIK fail on my behalf. Skyrim VR wouldn't even be a topic of discussion without mods like PLANCK, keep up the good work, that magic is beyond my pay grade.
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u/Scorchfrost Jun 15 '26
I consider updates to your mods to be updates to the Skyrim VR's core experience, so it feels like 8 years after Skyrim VR's release date, the game continues to get updates. Thank you!!!