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So several VR communities around the net have very negative opinions on VorpX. Which is a shame, because I quite like the idea of forcing VR onto some of my favorite games, even if it’s janky. After all, one of the first things I did when I got my Vive was play through the entirety of Half Life 2 using it’s original VR code. What a vomit coaster that ride was.
Anyway, I saw a post the other day of someone giving their playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas with VorpX a glowing review. They implied that, with the right set up, Fallout New Vegas felt almost as natural as Alien: Isolation with VR support.
Now, I’ve done a bit of research on VorpX. I have a rough idea of how much tinkering it requires and I have a rough idea and what results I’ll be getting out of it. But I need some first hand anecdotes from people who – presumably – are happy with the software and use it regularly. It’s hard to get any positive opinions elsewhere.
I expect a large amount of the negative opinions come from people expecting an easier or smoother process than VorpX provides, and I’m fine with that. I also have a pretty strong VR stomach, and I’m more than willing to sink some time into tinkering around to get the settings right. But I still have a fair few concerns. Like, how much in-and-out of the headset tinkering do you usually have to do on a playthrough? Am I going to find myself having to bind a lot of extra functions onto a lot of keyboard keys? Have many of you played entire playthroughs of games with VorpX, and if so, what ones? I’m curious to know what the more popular, well supported games are among the community.
Someone sell me on VorpX, so I can live the dream of playing Fallout: New Vegas in VR.
Official answer first, others are welcome to chime in of course,
The amount of ‘tinkering’ required varies from game to game. By now there is a good amount of games that work without any tinkering at all besides choosing a resolution / graphics details setting that fits your PCs performance and then pressing a button in the vorpX ingame menu once you entered the game. That’s called ‘Direct VR’ and is currently true for about 30 games, Fallout 3 / New Vegas included.
For other games there are two things that have to be adjusted for playing games in full VR mode with vorpX: camera field of view and head tracking sensitivity. There are several ways to achieve this or at least circumvent it with varying degrees of perfection if for example adjusting the field of view is not possible at all.
Additionally to full VR mode there also always is the option of playing games in cinema mode, which doesn’t require any setup at all, and in a few weeks something new called “Immersive Screen Mode”, which lies between full VR and cinema mode immersion-wise. That also won’t require any tinkering for any game.
On a personal note I’d like to add that I sometimes can’t help but think that some people simply tweak too much with too little actual knowledge just because they read somewhere that would be necessary – ultimately causing more harm than good in the process. Even with non-Direct VR games it’s not really hard to get going if you invest a little bit of time and actually read the guides in the vorpX help, which can and will save you a lot of mindless tweaking.
DirectVR games always work very well for me tracking wise, It’s just a pain to figure out the 3d scale, which doesn’t get set automatically.
In Non DirectVR titles, not having a proper Y lock is really disorienting (the built in one, doesn’t work when I move my head up and down) but I’ve seen a few people who modified those old ball mice and took out the Y axis from them, resulting in a great experience.
VorpX allowed me to finally achieve one of my childhood dreams, and that is play Left 4 Dead (2) in VR, it worked flawlessly with DirectVR, if you ever really wanted to play one of your favourite games in VR, and they are supported with DirectVR, I’d jump on it right away, easily worth the money I spent on it.
Fallout NV should be a great starting experience! has DirectVR support with proper G3D and FOV, and full positional tracking. I’ve not tried NV but Skyrim worked great in my rift.
I find roomscale VR neat from time to time, but generally prefer to play my vorpX games seated with mouse and keyboard, and it works great! Even though I mainly use mouse input to control my head rotation the traditional way, it is still an immersive pseudo VR experience.
For me, the coolest thing VR adds to gaming is the visual sense of scale and 3D effect it adds to the game world. Mountains look massive and the horizons look distant. Forests feel layered and deep while the trees tower over head. Characters appear lifesize and intimidating as do the weapons in your hands. This is the experience vorpX can add to the way you play many of your standard games. Now that I’ve seen my games this way, I simply cannot go back to my flat 24″ monitor.
For this reason, vorpX is by far my favorite and most used VR tool, the best purchase I have made for my HMDs. While it has default profiles that work fine for many games “out of the box”, it also provides a handy in game menu tool that lets you make adjustments on the fly. Things like image zoom, 3D strength, sharpness, and color saturation. Also headtracking sensitivities, programmable hotkeys, and sometimes FOV increases. And it saves and remembers all adjustments you make to each profile. Again, quite handy, and no need for taking off the headset to edit files.
Some menu settings took a bit of testing to understand initially, but I quickly came to appreciate how each contributes, and the options they provide. It has been well worth the effort to learn, as I now quite enjoy fiddling with each new game I try. Setting them up is half the fun! Most recently for me has been the New Assassins Creed and Star Wars Battlefront games.
Not every game works well without some type of compromise (i.e. resolution vs frame rate, slight letterboxing for increased fov, Z3D vs G3D etc). But over all, the HMD experience tops the monitor for me. I’m currently using a Pimax 4k pushing 4k resolutions at a meager 30-50fps, but it looks good and clear and plays fine for me in the seated traditional way.
Just thought I’d add this perspective in case it was of interest to you.
Since you seem to have an open mind with expectations in check, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with vorpX.
I’ll just chime in and add that I absolutely love playing games in cinema mode. 3rd person, 1st person, they are both great. You can zoom in the screen so it fills your FOV, and with the stereo 3D, its quite immersive, much like playing games like Edge of Nowhere, or Elite Dangerous.
The negative reviews are from people who are stupid, impatient, or are expecting a full “made for VR” experience to be magically transforming their non-VR games.It sounds like you are the kind of person who would enjoy Vorpx. To me the amount of tinkering is minimal in the best supported games, but I always end up tinkering more throughout my playthroughs to get it just a bit better, but it’s not actually needed. Right now I’m playing Oblivion and it’s amazing. Runs well even though I’ve modded it fairly heavily and honestly aside from having to use edge peek to zoom out, when in dialogue and using menus, which is definitely a design choice native supported games would solve, it feels like native support on par with RE7 on PSVR. And so does Fallout NV (especially with mods), Bioshock Infinite and Dishonored.
Biggest issue I’ve had is performance issues, even on a i7 4790k and a GTX 1080 Ti I had to somewhat compromise in Fallout 4 for instance. But some games just run well on any system and especially older games look better than you’d think and run great in VR. Second issue is big hands in some games, which I think bothers me more than most.Well, I thought I’d let you guys know you gave me that final push I needed to finally buy it, and wow, I’m pretty damn impressed so far. I have to wait for my coveted New Vegas to download, but I gave it a shot on Black Mesa and it works better than I could have expected.
I was absolutely blown away by how easy it actually was to just slap on the Geometry setting and get a very convincing VR experience. I’ve owned my Vive for a year and got completely wowed by Black Mesa’s tram as if I had only just used the headset for the first time. Must be an effect of playing a (remake of a) childhood classic.
It runs amazing, too. I mean, not Geometry necessarily, but that’s another thing – The Z-Normal/Adaptive modes are where I was really impressed. Maybe I’m easily pleased but the frames I was getting on those modes with my humble outdated graphics card got me really excited to try the program on more games. When I was looking into VorpX, I was really worried about not being able to run Geometry and thus not get a worthwhile experience due to my lower end rig, but Z-Normal/Adaptive is more than enough for me…assuming I can’t run Geometry, anyway.
Basically just wanted to gush because, from the one game I played, this is a really nice program that has some serious misconceptions/unnecessary hate around other VR communities on the net. I can’t believe I waited this long to try it out. Thanks everyone, I can’t wait to get completely lost in the Mojave Wasteland.
Glad you like it. It is such a personal thing. If you are one of the people who thinks Z-buffered is more than enough you have a truly vast library of games to check out. Check out my list of VR mods to make Fallout NV a smoother experience.
It’s from before Direct VR, but most of it is still relevant. Here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/5f4sj4/new_vegas_in_vorpx_looks_and_plays_gloriously/If your smart, buy it, If you love Bethesda games, buy it, if your not a pussy, buy it…
If your smart you’ll be able to figure out what does what and how to get what you want out of the software. It has come a LONG LONG way. The Bethesda games are jaw dropping in Direct VR. Almost no tweeking is required. Of course you can mod it up if your clever and don’t over do it.
If you love Bethesda games then this is a no brainer. BUY IT. I have tried many Direct 3D games, they work good… But the Bethesda games aren’t just ‘good’ in Ditrect VR. They’re damn near perfect. The UI and HUD are the modified as best as vorpX can. The Worlds Bethesda crafts have always been more immersive then other games and that makes for great VR. The settings, characters and activities always sucking you into a world you love exploring. With vorpX shits about to get ‘real’…
If your a fresh fish when it comes to VR then maybe play some VR games until you get your big boy pants on. Vorpx works great, but it needs some serious grunt for a rig to push the 3D and have high frame rates. So alot of time you may run into slow downs or judder that can make a lesser man feel sick. Say your in downtown D.C. and your in a big open setting with lots of rubble and 10 guys all shooting at you then yup your going to have slow down, and yup if your not hard as nails your tum tum will get sicky.
After hundreds and hundreds of hours spanning Bethesdas major hits I can say that vorpX is more the worth the money, and the effort to get to know its functions. It is maybe the singular greatest thing I have ever done in video gaming. Thats not BS, vorpX lets you transport yourself into Bethesda games like I never thought possible.
If you love these games, then buy it and say goodby to reality for a few months.. hell you might not want to come back at all ;)
In Non DirectVR titles, not having a proper Y lock is really disorienting (the built in one, doesn’t work when I move my head up and down) but I’ve seen a few people who modified those old ball mice and took out the Y axis from them, resulting in a great experience
What a good idea. I use a trackball mouse and have 3 of them NIB. Time to modify the one I currently use for VR.
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