vorpX 21.2.0 Released

vorpX 21.2.0 is the second major release for 2021. This time mainly focusing on making vorpX future proof by adding support for the industry wide OpenXR standard. Apart from that there also are two brand new game related features: for one the DirectVR feature family got a new member named Automatic Weapon Hiding, great for first person games without a built-in option to holster weapons. No more ‘gun face’ in games that work with the feature. And secondly hardware cursor capturing, which is mostly helpful for games with interactive cursors.

List of games that currently have Auto Weapon Hide, more to come: Half-Life 2 (+episodes), Portal 2, Black Mesa Source, Titanfall 2, Fallout 4, Crysis, Skyrim Special Edition, Aliens: Colonial Marines

No new profiles this time (booooooh!), the coding stuff ate away all time for that. There will be either a maintenance release or a profile database update with a bunch of new profiles in the not too distant future.

Short auto weapon hide demonstration:


New/Improved

  • OpenXR support added (beta): this is the big addition this time, making vorpX’s technical fundament future proof for the next few years to come. OpenXR is the upcoming industry wide VR API that will – or at least is supposed to – eventually superseed the current vendor specific APIs from Oculus, Valve and Microsoft. OpenXR is recommended now for WMR headsets, works better with vorpX than WMR over SteamVR. For Oculus there isn’t much of a difference, so you can stick to Oculus or try OpenXR if you want. Valve’s OpenXR implementation isn’t quite ready yet (e.g. no 32bit), so for native SteamVR headsets like Index/Vive/Pimax stick to SteamVR for the time being.
  • Auto Weapon Hide/Adjustment: With Auto Weapon Hide weapons are only in view while shooting, reloading etc., otherwise they are automatically moved out of sight by vorpX, even if a game does not provide the means to do that at all. Won’t be possible for all games, but for those that do work with it, it’s frankly just awesome. One of those little things you might never have thought about, but don’t want to miss again once you have them.
  • Improved hooking timing/safety: fixes some DX12 games not hooking anymore since Microsoft split the d3d12.dll into two separate DLLs a few weeks ago. Also improves hooking reliability with some games that initialize DirectX very early in their launch process.
  • vorpX can now grab the icon of the Windows hardware cursor instead of showing a custom vorpX cursor in the headset in games that use the Windows hardware cursor. Improves playability of affected games with context sensitive cursors. If you still encounter games that show the vorpX cursor instead, let me know. I can’t entirely rule out that there may be some unusual cursor format that the grab routine doesn’t handle yet.
  • Custom background images can now be applied in immersive screen mode, not just as background scene in cinema mode as before.
  • Improved immersive screen size/distance default and range. The default values now provide a more natural world scale at typical game FOVs while at the same time you can adjust the screen size/distance even more to your own liking than before.
  • Improved EdgePeek scale behavior: factors in the current user set screen scale/distance in a better way.
  • Catched a few more edge cases where blocking game mouse movement/clicks didn’t work while navigating the vorpX menu.
  • New shader authoring option: shaders can be switched between normal/special based on frame stats, e.g. the number of draw calls. Useful for treating shaders differently during gameplay vs. in menu screens.
  • User profile comments are now displayed in the top left corner of the game window instead of just as tooltip in the config app.
  • User profile authors can comfortably edit profile comments and dedicated start messages in the config app instead of just adding a comment on upload.
  • UI sliders now work in a non-linear fashion when you grab them with the mouse. Makes it easier to finetune settings.

Fixed

  • Fixed an edge case where the DX11 G3D CPU workload optimizations introduced in the last vorpX version caused some flickering objects (e.g. Batman: Arkham Knight).
  • Fixed an issue that could prevent the Steam version of FarCry 3 from getting hooked.
  • Regression fixed where vorpX could lose connection to the headset after ALT+TAB or minimizing in DX10/11/12 games.
  • Bound mouse button hotkeys for buttons 4/5 (X1/X2) work again.
  • Nier: Automata stereo loss after a few frames fixed.
  • Flickering weapon/hands in Bioshock 1/2 fixed
  • Red Dead Redemption II: better menu detection, buttons now properly scaled.
  • Red Dead Redemption II: occasional depth flicker fixed.
  • Quake II (probably some other OpenGL games too) crashed on start.
  • Death Stranding hook didn’t work anymore after a recent DX12 related Windows update.
  • The infamous Far Cry 4 black screen after intro issue that some of you encountered should finally be gone.
  • Arma III could crash when launched in fullscreen mode
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: shader fixes (unwanted temporal blur on some objects)
  • Metro Redux: FOV etc. .ini changes now working with the Epic Store version
  • Various MPC-HC related issues fixed

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