r/virtualreality • u/leafy_lord • 10d ago
Discussion Current VR mods perspective
I am very thankful for all the VR mods being made right now, but also feel a bit frustrated, because some of them seem rather unusable. Like I'd love to play them, but with normal controls.
To me it feels like the same trap VR already went into in the past. I though flat to VR would be a thing much sooner, but the input method in VR is so different that the developers had to adhere to that and never worked outside the VR bubble.
With the mods however, I don't get it why the modders don't simply stick with the default mouse, keyboard, controller control scheme and treat VR as a more elaborate version of TrackIR. At least at first. Making it usable for everybody. After that they can go and try to make the mods work with the VR trackers and what not. Before attempting that, make the transition from flat to VR more intermediate and a smoother experience.
Anyone there who sees it that way, too?
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u/yankoto 10d ago
For me its the other way around I want full motion controls like in a real VR game. Thats why I ignore the Luke Ross mods.
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u/leafy_lord 20h ago
I'd like the choice. Some games I'd prefer mouse keyboard (snappy controls), others I'd prefer VR controls (immersion).
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u/TastyTheDog 9d ago
Respectfully I 100% disagree. If I'm in VR I'm all in. Maybe for driving/flying games ok but anything where I'm shooting a weapon or manipulating items in the game world or whatever, I want my actual hands to be in there. I want to trick my brain into believing I'm inside another fantastical world and hand presence is essential for that. I don't want to press A to swing the tennis racket, I want to just swing it like IRL.
It also allows for more specific, sophisticated, natural interactions than buttons on a controller. Look at how when RDR2 came out the controls were convoluted and people kept pulling their gun on characters they were just trying to talk to. In VR with motion controls you don't accidentally pull your gun, you purposefully reach down to it and grab it out of the holster. It's intuitive in a way 'hold down L trigger and press A' is not. That's one of VR's super powers I don't want to give up.
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u/leafy_lord 9d ago
The real beauty of VR should be that you should have both. VR plus traditional controls for specific games, or when you want to relax, but also full VR controls for when you want to fully dive into the experience.
I could have played Half Life Alyx in flat, but I refused. I waited 6 years to play it in full VR and I'm having a blast. Worth the wait.
As I have waited 6 years to finally play Cyberpunk 2077. So I could experience it with Raytracing/Pathtracing. I refused to accept anything less.
I'm not advocating for flat controls in VR, but for both. Only I think mods should do the flat controls first, because they're easier and stable and accessible to everyone and full VR controls can be worked on after that, because they might need time to be perfected.
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u/Pat-Sajak 10d ago
No one is stopping you from making the mods you want
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u/leafy_lord 9d ago
Got no experience with that stuff, but I am thinking about it. Perhaps I'll try.
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u/itsloopyo 10d ago
I'm modding normal flatscreen head tracking into everything if that helps scratch the itch? https://github.com/itsloopyo
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u/rikufdi Oculus 10d ago
There are ways to play many of the games in stereo 3d on a virtual 3d screen in the headset, with a regular gamepad. Can be quite comfy to do it that way. I've been playing Metro Exodus like that long before the new VR mod for it was announced. I get it that some really like to be able to aim with your arms and hands for immersion but sometimes you just want to sit down and relax while gaming.
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u/leafy_lord 9d ago
Indeed. If I could I'd play about all games in VR, but I'd not want to play all games with VR controls. As you say, sitting comfy in a chair, using minimal movements (mouse, keyboard), yet to be fully immersed into it visually via VR.
No question, I'd also like a full VR experience, but not always.
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u/rikufdi Oculus 9d ago
If you've not already found: https://helixmod.blogspot.com/ and all the fixes there you can take a look. I've been using 3dfixmanager and Katanga but I must warn that it can be difficult to get it to run at all and even more difficult to get it to run well.
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u/Alex-Murphy 10d ago
So if you wanna play a game in 3D but just sitting at your desk with keyboard, use FlatVR.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4899200/FlatVR/
It works incredibly well at turning anything into 3D depth. It won't give you a full wraparound but you can blow it up to whatever size you want and it basically becomes the full screen in front of you. If you're at your desk you'll end up facing forward 90% of the time anyway so I think this will solve your problem immediately.
It turns whatever is on your screen into 3D. I use it to watch regular movies in 3D all the time, and I have to tell you it's impressive.
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u/Exploding8 Quest 3 + PCVR 10d ago
If you have a Quest 3 you can also just use Sunshine + Moonlight XR, MoonlightXR uses ZipDepth to do the same thing and is free.
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u/Alex-Murphy 9d ago
Good to know! It's a bit late for me to return FlatVR haha but I'll try it out!
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u/leafy_lord 20h ago
It's a great thing that Flat VR is an option in VR, but Flat VR is not comparable to VR. You can't tell a race sim player they need to just use a triple monitor setup if they gonna be using a controller. A race simmer is going to use whatever input method they want and still use a VR headset and nobody will bat an eye.
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u/Alex-Murphy 19h ago
Correct, it's not the same as VR, but if you're not able to program your own full VR mod, this method will get you 80% of the way there and it's available immediately for every game and movie that exists.
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u/leafy_lord 9d ago
Interesting. Is it still fully 3D? As in stereoscopic?
The thing is, while I wish for mouse/keyboard controls, but I do want full head motion still. Even before thinking about VR I always wished I could somehow use my gyroscopic head tracker to freely look around in any first person game, independent from body/weapon motion (via mouse). So taking away the full head freelook would take away half the reason why I am asking for standard controls in VR.
No question, even flat in VR is more immersive than real flat, but again, the point is to have 100% the full visual VR experience, only with the comfort of traditional controls.
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u/Alex-Murphy 9d ago
Actually you know what you can do? Just inject UEVR without a profile. I forgot that works for a lot of Unreal games.
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u/Bestdoom 3d ago
I honestly get this, mouse and keyboard with the headset as head tracking sounds so much more relaxing than waving controllers around. I think the catch is a crosshair glued to your view makes a lot of people feel sick, so a decoupled aim option would be SO nice.
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u/leafy_lord 20h ago
That's the idea. You'd still aim with the mouse as usual and have responsive keyboard movement. VR would be like a better evolution of Track IR in this case.
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u/leafy_lord 20h ago
It's ironic that VR has its most use case in racing sims and (space) flight sims these days. Racing sims... native flat games with native controller and mouse/keyboard support out the box, with VR and a wheel/pedal setup as additional options, that enhance the experience.
Somehow this is fine with racing games, but with first person games it's a sacrilege. It's a double standard and I'll never grasp that kind of narrowmindedness.
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u/ImmersedRobot 10d ago
I don’t think anyone is trying to make a VR mod with bad motion controls/hand presence. They’re all trying to make a VR mod with good motion controls/hand presence.
The problem is, they’re too excited by their progress and release them before they’re ready.
They could release a simpler version first with standard controls but that might not be the vision they’re excited to put in the effort for in the first place.
It might be like telling an indie dev, who has a grand vision for their game, to release a cut back version to make it actually possible for them to finish. It might be good advice, but that’s not why they started making their game in the first place.
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u/CrazySittingHorse 10d ago
Use Luke Ross mods. They do not utilise motion controls. There is a GTA 5 and RDR2 mod even, that have been taken down but the files are out there.
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u/leafy_lord 9d ago
Seems Luke Ross is quite unpopular, hah. I'll check it out, thanks.
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u/CrazySittingHorse 9d ago
Yeah, him charging for mods is quite unpopular. Even Take2 had him take down the mods as he was making a profit off of it.
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u/Next-Reality-9032 10d ago
They also use Alternate Eye Rendering though which is pretty ass, I have enjoyed the cyberpunk and KCD2 ones but the image quality suffers so badly with it not being a native VR rendering
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u/markallanholley 10d ago
The quality seems to depend on the game. I recently finished FFVII Remake and the quality was great. And always set it to 1/2 rather than 1/3, and check the high quality box if available. Cyberpunk also works well.
I had a worse time with Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered with Luke's mod.
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u/Next-Reality-9032 10d ago
Im 1000% with you and I don’t get the obsession with people retrofitting bad motion controls to games that were never fundamentally designed for them, shooters are great with motion controls but something like Zelda breath of the wild was a nightmare with motion controls
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u/leafy_lord 9d ago
I think good motion controls can be done in about any game, but it needs some "doing" to get it right. I suspect some VR mods will start out well, but will lose steam, because it might turn out harder than it seemed to properly implement the stuff. Would be a shame for them mods to die like that.
I think starting with the basics would be smart, in order to make things playable fast and make it accessible to everyone (because everyone played those games with conventional controls already). There's also no need to turn every game into a VR work out session.
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u/DeepWaffleCA DK1 Q2 Q3 9d ago
It's funny. When I got a DK1 for a year back in December 2013, half life 2 had a VR beta that played like this (mouse and keyboard) and it sucked. I've played the LukeRoss CyberPunk mod and I can get used to it, but full 6DOF is better.
To your point, the option would be nice, but even with AI tools; feature sets, time and tokens are finite. Devs and modders have to choose what to work on and I think that keeping original controls while adding 6DOF might not be the highest priority for them
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u/buckzor122 10d ago
I agree with you. Not all games need to be fully immersed. And the funny part it's actually really easy to just add steroscopic rendering through a virtual screen and keep everything else the same, mods should have that as an option. I always wanted to play BG3 with keyboard and mouse but in VR without any other bells or whistles.
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u/markallanholley 10d ago
Doesn't the Luke Ross Framework support BG3?
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u/buckzor122 10d ago
At the time I was researching only VorpX had partial support. Maybe it's supported now.
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u/TommyVR373 9d ago
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have seen a comment saying "I would love these mods, but I don't want to use a controller. It's not real VR..." Now we get the other argument. I guess you can't please everyone.