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Sorry, I didn’t realise how long that rant was, I’m pulling a late one at work, and I’m a bit wired from the coffee.
Honestly, Ralf, I don’t think anybody can logically complain about paying an upgrade fee for a major version release. With that said, I can understand when people get angry after paying the upgrade fee, and the new version is just a bug-fix release. This is where it gets tricky, the aforementioned anger is understandable on a surface level, but in reality, they are paying for another 12 months of rolling updates.
As you’ve mentioned, Vorpx requires constant updates in order to maintain ‘lights on’ with existing games. So if they stop paying, eventually the games that once worked will stop working, this could be viewed as a bit of a shafting too!
My two penneth:
I’m a firm advocate of the pay-what-you-can philosophy, some people just can’t afford to pay money for software. Acknowledging this and giving it to them for free is a nice thing to do but will also gain you a cheerleader, not only in them but any reviewers that pop along. On the other side, some people will be doing OK at work and want to pay more than the asking price.
I would suggest this approach, pay-what-you-can with the option for one-off donations and/or recurring payments. I genuinely think this will generate more money by simply opening the software to a wider audience. I’m not sure how the profiles are made, could these be created by the community (aside from copying another profile of course). There are loads of people out there that would definitely get involved in creating new content for Vorpx if they can. I digress.
My personal experience with Vorpx has been awesome. In the short time I’ve had Vorpx I have already lined up loads of old games which have been given a new lease of life thanks to VR and/or immersive mode. Deus Ex – awesome. Dying Light 1/2 – yes! Cyberpunk – Judy! Days Gone – eternally grateful. All of these feel totally different now. Thanks to you and Vorpx’s Immersive Mode, my games catalogue has more or less doubled in size. I have some spare cash, so I want to give extra to keep this train rolling. I suggested Patreon because services such as that mitigate any technical limitations.
There are other mods out there that add stereoscopic rendering or VR to flat games, but they all require you to edit the game files or run through some obscure instructions. I think Vorpx could become the one-stop shop for VR/Immersive mods. This would require it to become more community driven though if external developers such as myself could be given the ability to add profiles for new games, we would have Week 1 support for most games.
Just a thought. The bottom line is that Vorpx is great and I, like many others, would like to support you/it.
I sometimes get weird zoom issues with Cyberpunk. I can be playing just fine in Immersive mode, switch to Full VR then it looks like the screen is scaled 200%. Likewise, I can start the game and it appears zoomed.
I usually open the Vorpx menu and toggle between modes, sometimes resetting the visuals section to defaults helps. I’m new to Vorpx so my methods of fixing issues are very much like a sledge-hammer to crack a nut. I’m sure there are more elegant and precise methods.
The first question I would look to answer is “can Vorpx run on Linux using Wine, for example”.
The next question is, are you looking for stereoscopic 3D or actual VR, if the answer is VR then I would suggest that perhaps the Steam Deck isn’t going to cut it. You might even struggle to run stereoscopic 3D.
AMD’s 3D v-cache benefits some situations much more than others. How well does 3D v-cache on an AMD CPU benefit vorpx? Better than an Intel 13900? I doubt anyone has tested to see how well 3d v-cache works with vorpx, but maybe i’ll get some good insight…
Yeah, as Frank already stated, additional CPU L3 cache isn’t really going to give you much in the way of a performance hit here, some games might fair better but they are not Vorpx specific.
The industry is generally GARBAGE and too scared to try other formulas let alone trying something rather NEW and so we have dozens of GTAs, hundreds of CODs, thousands of FAR CRYs, millions of ASSASSINS CREEDs and billions of PUBGs.
The big/huge games companies are like this yes (Ubisoft, Bethesda, RockStar EA) but we have loads of great titles coming out too. These big companies don’t consider games as art, they don’t make to be fun, they make games that tick the most money-making boxes which formula will be the easiest to digest for most people.
Also, people always complain about UBI, but what is actually ROCKSTAR doing so great, besides releasing “GTA Games” every couple of years while improving graphics but sadly not the games, so then you have an open world game with great graphics but repetitive and boring gameplay.
Ubisoft are on a whole new level though. All Ubisoft open-world games are copied/pasted with terrible cohesiveness. They don’t introduce enough mechanics or variations of the same mechanic to fill an open world. FC6 is a perfect example, every single roadblock is exactly the same, the same number of guards, the same patrol routes, the same buildings, and the same rewards. The only difference is that the level designers just rotate the model slightly. RockStar at least put some effort into the filler content, I’m sure Ubisoft just pick the first 3 mechanics they like and then say stick 50 of those into the world, 100 of those, 30 of those. Done – ship it!
A good example of an open world done right (although not without some repetitiveness) would be Horizon (ZD & FW), and my personal favourite Days Gone. The world in Days Gone was much smaller than FC6 but each base was designed specifically for the location it is placed, FC6 just flattens the terrain and plonks the generic base there.
Ubisoft arent just repeating the formula, they are taking the formula and stretching it out to four times its sustainable size, then filling the gaps with repetitive garbage. The world would be better without them IMO.
/rant.
Regarding RDRII
You know, I really appreciated the visuals of that game, the detail of the environment, the thought they put into every single area. However, I could never get into it, it just didn’t click for me. I felt no connection to any of the characters except the horse, I finished because I wanted to finish what I had started, but after the first 4/5 hours I played only the main missions just so it would end sooner.
So INDIES are our only hope, forget those AAA franchises and companies, those titles take 180 hours to complete with 100%, but are actually fun for approx. 3 hours.
Again, I will agree with what you say here. The only difference for me is that sometimes I just want more of the same. If a game style clicks with me I want more of it. Obviously, I would like to see advancements in that formula such as better AI, better branching stories, and so on and so forth. Perhaps a procedural generation algorithm which can produce a meaningful world that can also contain an actual story, I mean we have AI that can produce a fairly decent short story now, surely we can integrate something like that to give us more gameplay in the same world/universe.
I’m going to have to try Far Cry in VR, many people say they play well.
My only gripe is that they are all the same Ubisoft garbage. Copy/pasted buildings, filler content everywhere, and bases magically rebuild until you are given the quest to destroy that one specifically. At the same time, some of my most memorable shootouts have been in Far Cry. I just wish Ubisoft would stop churning out crappy clones (AC Valhalla!).
</rant>
Dark Messiah
Holy ****! I haven’t played that game in ages, it was one of my favourite titles for years. No prizes for guessing what my evening is going to entail.
Can’t you decrease the distance in the settings? After all, pushing a 2.5cm screen right up to your eyeball is the same as having a 2m screen 3m away (resolution permitting).
VorpX runs in OpenXR/WMR mode.
I could never get OpenXR to work on any of my headsets, either way. I guess SteamVR isn’t the culprit this time – I have problems with it every time I use it.
That is a shame about the defective Pico 4 headset, I think you might have liked what they can do if it worked. Don’t get me wrong, they are not without fault but still, they are a really great alternative to the Quest 2. In fact, from what I’ve heard the render quality is better than the Quest Pro.
In regard to the G2, yeah that is essentially what I heard from elsewhere too. It is a shame because they look like a very good wired option, some flight sim enthusiasts are buying multiple units when they pop up on eBay, that is a big stamp of approval. I think the controller disappearing might be a SteamVR problem. I’ve been getting several issues where the game glitches then SteamVR goes into a weird state. If it happens again try killing SteamVR from the task bar, then open Task Manager if you see SteamVR in the process list kill it from there too.
What is the tracking like on that headset? I was considering the G2 in place of the PICO 4 but I saw lots of reviews stating how bad the tracking is.
As others have said, there are some great headsets arriving this year (maybe next year). Personally, I have used the following (I strictly only do PC and PS5 VR – no mobile garbage):
1. Meta Quest 2 – OK, not bad visuals, the FOV feels claustrophobic to me, screw Meta.
2. Valve Index – excellent albeit dated, the tracking is second to none and is a direct connection, so you have zero compression. The screen and lenses are dated though, and definitely not worth the $/£1k price tag now.
3. PS VR2 – absolutely top-notch visuals, haptics, FOV, not PC VR but it is so good I thought it worth a mention.
4. Pico 4 – a better and cheaper Quest 2. The visuals are better, the screen is higher res and comes with pancake lenses so the clarity is better at the extremities. The headset is lighter so is more comfortable for extended sessions. It has a fan which helps with fogging, as a sweaty mong this is a big deal for me. It mirrors the Quest 2 with regard to connectivity, you get WifI and USB (both meh), and finally, Virtual Desktop which is the best option. They aren’t a direct DP/DP ALT Mode so you do get compression but overall the fidelity is very good.
If you want a headset now I would suggest the Pico 4. You can get it really cheap if you go for the lower storage option. They are a much better Quest 2, for want of a better explanation. I’m personally holding out for the Index 2 whenever that arrives.