Welcome to the August 2022 edition of VR Modding Monthly, keeping you up to date about all the exciting things going on in the wonderful world of the Flat2VR Modding community!

For VR enthusiasts, the idea of picking up a brand new AAA flat game, pressing a button and then ‘magically’ being able to play that same game in full 6DOF VR natively-in-the-engine if they wanted to seems more like a thing of science fiction than reality. I would certainly thought that until master modder Praydog started to make the seemingly impossible a reality.

This has been a huge month for VR modding and in this month’s issue, we’re going talk about one of the biggest breakthroughs in Flat2VR modding history that will open up a whole new world of VR ports, and we’ll take a look at some incredible new mods that have come out or have taken steps forward in development.

If you’d like to learn more about the Flat2VR modding community itself, check out our last issue where we introduce ourselves, and if you want to get involved, check out the official Discord server.

Join the community at the Flat2VR Discord

Praydog’s Universal Unreal Engine VR Injector Mod

Okay, now this is a big deal. This mod opens the door for VR enthusiasts to play heaps of AAA games in VR (here’s a list of just a few of them) by making it easy to add initial VR support to games built with Unreal Engine.

For the longest time, we’ve been mostly limited to adding full VR support with motion controls, etc. to only certain game engines. The Unity engine for example, always ships with the VR code in a flat game and that code can be re-enabled and a modder can then start building out VR mechanics on top of that with powerful Unity modding frameworks.

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Unreal Engine on the other hand, strips out all of the VR code if a game doesn’t build with the VR plugins still in it. For some of our Unreal Engine VR mods, we asked the game developers and they were kind to add the plugins in the shipping builds so that we could make a full VR mod for the game (Mechwarrior 5 and Deep Rock Galactic with full motion controls are two examples of the developers doing this for us). Larger AAA games however, like Jedi Fallen Order are already completed and the developers have moved on and there’s no easy way to even build a new version of the game even if they wanted to with the VR code. Praydog’s VR Injector changes this limitation for Flat2VR modders.

The VR Injector is added to a game by just dropping in a few files in the game directory. You then just need to launch the game and it adds back all of the engine’s native VR code and launches the game in VR.

Normally, when you activate basic VR on a flat Unreal Engine game with the VR plugins in it (if it was built with them still in), a lot is broken with the experience. Any UI that was made to overlay on top of your monitor’s screen doesn’t even show for example or it sits only in one eye at a weird angle. The VR camera often doesn’t follow the player character so that when you move the player, you might see a headless body run away in the distance. There’s a lot of other issues like these.

Praydog’s mod automatically works through all of these common issues and correctly fixes them directly in the game engine for VR since they’re all using universal functions. This makes it not only a great place for a modder to start working on a full mod with motion controls, etc. but it makes most Unreal Engine games quite fantastic to play in VR out of the box! This could even be a powerful tool for developers to try their game in VR and to help them decide whether they want to do a full VR port or not.

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Loading up a racing game like Gravel, for example, feels just like playing the new Unreal Engine racing game F1 2022 that just released (and which has its own official VR support); Ace Combat 7 feels just like playing Microsoft Flight Simulator; Everspace 2 feels like playing Star Wars Squadrons, etc. I used these examples because they’re all game which don’t use motion controls and work almost identical to these official releases.

For first person shooters out of the box, you can use VR controllers like a gamepad or keyboard & mouse input, but modders will most likely want to build onto the mod with game-specific motion controls. Praydog does plan to add in a sort of universal motion control option that allows a motion controller to essentially point the mouse exactly where you’re pointing it in 360 around you. This should still be a fun way to experience many games until full motion controls have been modded in by other modders for a specific game.

Let’s take a look at just a few of the games we’ve tested so far with Praydog’s VR Injector mod.

Stray

For this game, I assigned a button to switch between first person and different distances in third person and just exploring that world was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever seen in VR.

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Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order

I did the same thing for this one, switching between third and first person cameras with a button. For saber fights, you’d probably want to stay in third person and play the game like you’re playing Moss or something, but for just exploring the gorgeous detailed environments, first person is absolutely fantastic. It’s incredible the details that you notice when you see the game in VR.

Grounded

This survival game feels amazing in VR and feels like a real life “Honey I Shrunk The Kids”. It was incredible (and terrifying) walking through that world from the eyes of a person the size of an insect.

Satisfactory

Praydog’s mod when it publicly releases will allow players to see and experience hundreds of amazing game worlds in a completely new way, give players full 6DOF roomscale abilities to walk around the game, lean down to look at things, and more. In some games, players will want to play the games fully out of the box in VR with the mod. For others, players might want to wait for other modders to do additional work to them.

For almost every VR enthusiast though, the ability to put on their headset, and experience a game world (even if you just use a godmode cheat and walked around in it like a walking simulator) is a treat and is potentially game changing for VR. I’m personally very excited to experience the upcoming Unreal Engine Hogwarts Legacy game in VR and walk around that castle to take in all of the details.

Continue on Page 2: More VR Modding Updates Since Our Last Issue »

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  • Sofian

    Scorn would be spectacular in VR.

    • Brian Elliott Tate

      In case the last post doesn’t get approved (it doesn’t like links on this forum) youtube dot com/watch?v=lFmKMmzS-Rs

    • david vincent

      Only 3 more days for the launch of Scorn !
      I hope they fixed the boring gameplay since the alpha demo 5 years ago…

    • Sven Viking

      I had some problems with Scorn, but the artistry is incredible.

  • Tommy

    This is THE best mod and is HUGE for VR!
    Can’t wait for Praydog to release the Injector mod!!

    • Bumpy

      I hope this does truly end up working and be free but this all sounds too good to be true.

      • Tommy

        That fact that they already have so many working gives me great hope :)

      • Lowgarr

        I doubt it will be free.

        • Brian Elliott Tate

          Just like Praydog’s RE Engine VR mods, it’ll be both free and open source.

        • Tommy

          It will probably cost you $4, which is a one month sub to Praydog’s Patreon. That is a steal for all his mod access. Download all the mods you want and then cancel the sub, or keep it going and retrieve great support and bug fixes for said mods :)

  • Tommy

    I doubt most of these would run on Quest. I have a 1080ti and these mods about fry mu GPU.
    Tie Fighter would be amazeballs!

    • Brian Elliott Tate

      There’s a VR mod for Tie Fighter already out

      • Yep, but, again, THAT’S NOT WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.
        I, along with MANY others I’ll wager, want a NATIVE Quest 2 version.

        • Brian Elliott Tate

          Yeah, natively on Quest would be awesome! One hope is that the work we do will encourage more devs to make those official ports.

          Btw, if you haven’t checked it out already, DrBeef’s new Star Wars Jedi Outcast VR mod is fantastic natively running on Quest! It released in early access on Sunday.

      • Tommy

        It’s an older code but it checks out.

        I still want the Praydog treatment :)

  • I’d absolutely love to play DMC 5 in vr if that is possible.

    • Brian Elliott Tate

      That VR mod is already out!

      • I know about the current mod, but it’s 3rd person and played with a controller. I want to play in first person with motion controls.

        • Brian Elliott Tate

          Ahh, okay. That one would be hard to translate to first person without majorly changing the gameplay and combos, etc. But all Praydog’s mods are open source and has a great example of adding motion controls on the same framework (for the RE games), so definitely prime if you were interested in jumping in and modding that!

      • VR5

        About that… that mod breaks traditional controllers. I ranted about it on Twitter and also asked for help on discord but didn’t get a reply.

        On first run, the controller works and it’s great. I got 2 hours of gameplay out of it which I enjoyed a lot.

        But when I shutdown the game and run it again (or on the next day, for that matter), the controller doesn’t work anymore. It also stops working for other Steam games until I go to controller settings and use Identify to make it rumble. That restores the controller for other Steam games but it breaks again when running DMC5.

        Seeing your exchange here about DMC5 I saw the chance to address the issue to someone who might actually respond but to make sure, I tried again if the controller started working again. And on first run it did. But I had to restart for a different annoying PC not working as it should issue and now it’s back to controller breaks when starting DMC5 with VR mod.

        I tried a Dualshock 4 controller connected over USB over AirLink, which works fine for other games, and DMC5 on the immediate first run. And I tried a wireless Xbox controller over Virtual Desktop, which also works for other games.

        Apparently something in the mod breaks traditional controllers on my side, which makes the game unplayable. Which sucks because it is actually great when it works.

  • 3872Orcs

    Huh! I did not know about a lot of this stuff! Neat!

    Besides this, any word on System Shock 2?

    • Tommy

      They already have a video with the Injector mod working in System Shock :)

  • Torsten Balle Koefoed

    I fear playing Antichamber in VR will render me a vegetable but I have to try…

    • david vincent

      Sorry but this VR injector only supports UE4 games.
      I would have loved to play Antichamber and RenaissancE in VR too…

  • Foreign Devil

    Looking for an easy to install VR mod for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto 5.. . also one for cyperpunk 2077 would be nice. All these games I haven’t played yet and would like to play in VR.

    • Tommy

      Good luck with Rockstar games. They made Ross pull the VR mods off his Patreon

      • Foreign Devil

        Yeah I just read that when I searched for a VR mod. Makes no sense since it would probably help their game sales and definitely boosts replayability.

        • Tommy

          Exactly

      • david vincent

        Even Vorpx doesn’t support GTA V anymore… ☹️
        I bought Vorpx only for this game (because there was a great VR mod to go with it)

  • Tommy

    My mistake.
    #rude

    • I understand your reaction, but allow me to explain ….
      I WAS NOT being rude to you.
      Wayyyy too many times to count, I’ve said stuff plainly & clearly.
      Only to have it 101% misunderstood either deliberately or sincerely.

      In order to “keep the peace” as it were, nine times outta ten I’d let it slide.
      No more: my patience for stupidity and assholery has finally reached it’s limit.
      If someone can’t understand a simple declarative English sentence,
      then I’m coming down hard on them.
      “Oh, but what if English isn’t their first language?”, one might say.
      Then go contradict somebody on a forum that IS your first language.
      Unknowing’s no excuse.

      • Tommy

      • MosBen

        So, you are being rude. You just think that being rude is justified and/or good.

  • Tommy

    Speaking of flat to VR mods, there is an emulator you can install to play all the 3DS games in VR. There’s an article over on VRScout if you’re interesed.

    • david vincent

      Thanks for the info. I wonder how the low-tech 3DS games look in a VR headset…

      • Tommy

        Haven’t tried them yet myself but from the article they say they look good, especially in Bigscreen Beta.

  • Dominant

    I’ve never tried one of these mods, Does this stuff actually work well or there a terrible performance hit or something? Sounds great but my brain can’t handle 45 fps.

    • david vincent

      It usually works well with old and/or small games. With recent big games like RDR2 or Cyberpunk 2077, not so much…(except if you ike flickering)

      • Jeremy LePage

        RDR2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are Luke Ross mods using Alternate Eye Rendering. Praydog does not use that method. Beyond that, Rockstar has blocked RDR2 VR mods.

        This will actually work for UE4 games, but I’d expect you’ll need a beefy PC to run with high settings and reasonable framerate. 3080 and 5800x is about right for RE2 remake, for example.

  • Derek Kent

    I’m glad there are options available, but I’m personally not interested in playing a “VR” game where my arms are sticking out of my face. either I have real hands and interact with the world, or this is just 360 camera gaming. I don’t really know why this should be called VR if it’s essentially the same as Vorpx.

    • Brian Elliott Tate

      As the article mentions, full motion controls can also be added and that a universal motion control solution is also being worked on.

      Even now though, it’s very much full 6DOF VR done natively in the Unreal Engine with roomscaling support, detached head look from aiming, etc. VorpX fakes a sort of “VR-like” experience by sticking the flat camera on your face. This is an actual VR camera in the game. (Would be happy to go into details about how that’s different if you’re interested!)

      • Derek Kent

        Again it’s super cool and I’m not complaining. Its just that VR isn’t a camera type. it’s the way you interact with the game world. Unless you have full motion controls, it’s not a VR game. I appreciate the amazing work all these folks do, but I think it’s a bit sensational to call a game with an injected camera mode a VR game. It isn’t Alien Isolation’s Mother VR mod doesn’t make it a vr game. you still just have arms sticking out of your face. you press a action button to grab things, etc etc. Nvidia 3d vision isn’t vr. Youtube 360 videos aren’t vr.
        etc

        • Brian Elliott Tate

          That may be just a matter of your personal definition then and that’s fair. Remember though, the Oculus CV1 didn’t even come with motion controls. Lots of even more recent official VR games like Star Wars Squadrons or F1 2022, MS Flightsim, etc. don’t even have any motion control support.

          I’d still personally say Alien Isolation’s Mother VR mod is still 100% VR without motion controls. If you’ve played that, you should fully know what to expect here out of the box currently (though look up our Deep Rock Galactic VR mod for an example of an UE4 game we also added modded in motion controls to too). That’s also possible for all these games.

          • Derek Kent

            ok.

        • david vincent

          “the game world. Unless you have full motion controls, it’s not a VR game.”
          Nope, just a screen strapped to your face with headtracking is enough to be qualified VR

  • david vincent

    VR modding is really booming nowadays ! Who said PCVR was dead ?

  • Rosko

    Most VR mods are not that great & is it going to be any better than vorpx?

    • Tommy

      Yes, it will be much better than Vorpix. We are talking detached head and arm/hand movement. Full 6dof with motion control support.

  • Max-Dmg

    Can we have a Prey VR mod? The VR dlc is a pathetic implmentation, but thegraphicss are gorgous. I’d love to play ths game in VR (With the usual sensible locomotion settings in the other mods you guys have made).

  • thelodofall

    My heart breaks with every ending.