How does Vorpx work?
It’s basically a neat hack that can hook into many pancake games and make them 3D. It does this either using a geometry-shader hack (best results) or a couple of stereoscopic hack (lesser quality, lesser performance hit).
What it does really well is presentation - you can run it in a big 2D theatre mode (…), an “immersive mode” (I find this most useful - think big theatre mode, but with 3D), or a full-on headtracking 3D mode (least useful to me so far, but it probably works with FPS games). I play Skyrim in immersive mode.
There’s lot of settings and trickery-buggery to play around with in the settings to get things to look good. The overall 3D effect is pretty good - pure native VR apps (Alyx, Alien w/VR mod, etc.) look better, but VORPX is really the only one-stop solution for pancake games. And I’m kinda interested in trying out ArmA3 in full-3D with the built-in head-tracking. And I’ll be using the big 2D screen mode for WOFF since the head-tracking is built in - no having to mess around with FreeTrack any more.
There’s also touch controller integration but I have no interest in that.
The bad: no trial, no refunds, licensing is manual (but doesn’t take long), everything under the sun is not supported - you can try copying and modifying profiles for supported games (there’s a generic Unity 5 profile that works great, for example).
There are free Reshade hacks that do the stereoscopic stuff, but I find they don’t handle presentation or GUI handling even close to nearly as well. Plus Reshade doesn’t do headtracking.
That sounds really cool. if you confirm it works with WOFF I’ll buy it.
It should, but WOFF doesn’t do 3d of any kind, VORPX or not. I’ll just be playing WOFF in the big screen mode for the head tracking (TrackIR support in WOFF.)
Huh, it’s tempting.
I stream Half-Life: Alyx wirelessly to my Quest. I don’t notice any difference in latency or graphical quality from wired. That said, the Quest doesn’t have quite the resolution of something like the G2. But its ease-of-use trumps any other consideration easily. Wireless is how VR will be.
Counterpoint: in my experience (I bought a license and tried many games too) VorpX is not good and I would have refunded it if I could have.
I’m trying hard to be gracious about it, but IMO there’s a reason they don’t offer a trial version, so buyer beware!
Diego
No suggestion of wireless, all they’ve said is that it will be a single wire to the PS5, with no need of the break-out box. It’s widely assumed this will connect to the USB C in the front, which is either Display-port enabled or will be patched with firmware.
For the PSVR version 1 with the mid-cable connector, I’ve seen in videos of people’s set-ups with the Kiwi & similar that some have the first half of the cable always in place suspended from the ceiling, and you can connect & disconnect the headset as required. (Version 2 doesn’t have this mid-cable connection to allow this, unfortunately.) Example:
My non-gaming sister got a Quest 2 a few weeks back and she’s a total convert. She plays tons of stuff including Beat Saber, Eleven Table Tennis, The Room, Supernatural, and a bunch of other fitness titles. We played Zork and Ultima IV together back in the day but she hasn’t been much of a gamer in the decades since, so I am very surprised by this turn of events. I think this new thread is very well-timed based on her getting so into VR!
Thanks again for sharing. I actually have PSVR v1, which has been annoying due to the missing HDR pass through. It’s the reason I’ve been leaving my PSVR disconnected even though I just downloaded the awesome free PSVR titles offered with the latest Play at Home event.
Now that I know there’s an actual advantage, perhaps I’ll hook it back up to my non-HDR TV in the basement that’s got my idle PS4 Pro attached to it and consider those Kiwi hook thingies. My basement ceilings are lower and less likely to annoy my wife if festooned with cables and hooks!
Sounds ideal! Also if you haven’t already got it, Ace Combat is on sale for US$15 from the PSN store atm. Only 3 VR missions, but for that price it’s worth it :)
Because there are only 2 HOTAS compatible with PS4/5, and the one with rumble/haptic feedback (Hori) is more expensive & has reviewed poorly compared to the one without rumble (Thrustmaster), I decided to splurge on a Buttkicker for my chair, using the audio minijack from my TV.
Anyone else here using one? Or other Haptic solutions?
(Mine is just the regular Gamer 2, clamped to the centre post of my Gaming chair)
Dr Smith added that while developing this technology, researchers have discovered an interesting fact: the simulation of touch doesn’t have to be 100 per cent.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect to deliver usable sensations. The brain fills in a lot of those gaps”
I have a quest 2, but haven’t really used it much beyond what I did when I got it, and the first month.
Very much the same way I understand most people used their Wii and now Switch.
While I enjoy quite a few of the games, there are quite a lot of caveats. The games that are purely headset based are still relatively simply, and rely on the same kind of tricks early gaming did - repetitive graphics and gameplay reused in creative ways because of hardware limitations.
This is not neccesarily a bad thing - it can lead to rather amazing use of what resources exists, but it IS noticable. (Who doesnt remember when C64 games suddenly could go beyond the “Border”).
Those games that aren’t thusly restricted, i.e. pc games played on the headset, still require some sort of connection to the PC, and a very powerful PC. That means enthusiast pc’s , like many of those of us here have.
I guess what I am saying is that while VR has succeded beyond ANYTHING I thought possible a few years ago, its still very much a young technology, and still an enthusiast technology.
Quest 2 is the closest we’ve come to a general use VR, based on ease of use and how well the games and the VR itself works, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
What will end up deciding the fate of this round of VR (Something that pops up every decade or so) will be the financials for developers. As I understand it, right now facebook is financing a lot of development, and we still get mostly minor games (Natively) - I suspect they will not keep doing this is the numbers don’t add up. Its not enough to sell the hardware - there has to be a solid amount of continuous software as well.
(shrug) It’s worked for me nicely in the bare handful of games I’ve played with it on. That being said, you can cobble together 66% of what it does, free, with Superdepth3D, OpenTrack, and the like. The downside with the combo being a real right hassle to all get running together. YMMV.
One of the games I’d only play in VR, but the developers have indicated they’re probably not going to port it, running in VorpX…
Some VR offers
Any of those you’d really recommend? I’ve heard of Superhot, the Batman one, and Serious Sam, but none of the others.
I’m a fan of the Escape Room/Puzzle Genre. Red Matter and the 2 Escape Room games are on my list so far.
I can recommend
Superhot
Blaston
Eleven Tabletop
Vtol is also very recommended but I’ve never played it.
Thumper
To the Top
Down the Rabbit Hole
are decent games.