vorpX 0.9 Release Date and Additional Features

vorpX 0.9 is nearly done, so it’s time for an official release date which was set to October, 23.

Due to the heavy changes necessary to support the direct driver mode in the Oculus runtime 0.7 this will be mostly a tech update – a few new games will be added too, of course. This is easily the most feature packed vorpX update ever. In addition to everything already announced earlier here, this is what vorpX 0.9 will have in store:

Asynchronous Timewarp

To fully leverage the new possibilities that come with direct driver mode, vorpX 0.9 will have Asynchronous Timewarp. Much time went into making this work even with demanding games that normally consume your GPU entirely by themselves. This was not an easy task. To make it possible vorpX got its own frame timing mechanism, totally disregarding the system vsync options, offers several direct to hmd thread sync modes and let’s you optionally cap your game framerate at exactly half of the headset refresh rate so that every second frame is done by timewarping. A great way to get a smooth experience even in demanding games.

Too much tech gibberish? These settings are accompanied by easy to understand direct mode performance presets, making it a snap to find the right combination for your hardware and game.

Crystal Image

Crystal Image provides you with the sharpest and clearest image you have ever seen in injected VR, which traditionally suffered from being more blurred than most native VR applications. Costs about 10-20% GPU performance but is easily worth every one of it if you can afford it.

Windows 8/10 vorpX Desktop App

As Windows 8 or Windows 10 user you will have the option to use a high performance vorpX Desktop app that allows you to surf the web, watch YouTube videos etc. in your headset. This is well integrated with vorpX, you can also launch your vorpX games directly from the vorpX Desktop app.

Dedicated Video Player Mode

vorpX now has a dedicated video player mode including the ability to watch side-by-side and over/under 3D-movies. Two of the most popular free video players have according profiles and gamepad emulation presets for the most important playback functions: VLC and MPC-HC. This takes full advantage of Asynchronous Timewarp, Crystal Image and vorpX’s unmatched high quality dynamic lighting in Virtual Cinema mode. Image quality wise easily one of the best ways to watch videos on your headset, especially with VLC and Win8+. Many other video players can be used with the desktop mode mentioned above, but this is superior to simply grabbing the desktop in many ways. So if you care about image quality while watching videos, do it this way.

Basic OpenGL support

This started out as being an unofficial, experimental add-on, but is now mature enough to be mentioned here. vorpX 0.9 let’s you experience classic OpenGL games ranging from the beginning of the PC gaming 3D era to about the time of the Quake 3 engine in VR with full Geometry 3D. A few newer games like Amnesia also have 3D, other new OpenGL titles do inject but show in 2D. Head tracking and most other VR related features still working, of course.

Full Mirror Window support

This let’s you select what is shown on the main screen while you are playing. You can either display nothing (best performance), the original non-distorted game, the image displayed on the headset (game has to run windowed for this), or even both if you wish.