Easter holidays in the Forbidden West? (Patreon)

In VR maybe? What do you say? []-D

Release 11.4.1 of the R.E.A.L. VR mod adds support for a game that really begs to be played in virtual reality: Horizon Forbidden West!

• Update 1: Release 11.4.2, attached at the end of this post, brings a few improvements to the HFW experience. See the section "Updates and known issues" at the bottom for more details.

• Update 2: Release 11.4.3 fixes native DualSense controller support for Cyberpunk 2077 (Steam Input needs to be off). Sorry it took me so long to get around to this ;-)

• Update 3: Release 11.4.4 fixes gaze-based aiming for weapons that have been detached from machines (before this release they were erroneously treated as mounted guns). Thanks Brandon and Gaz252 for your help in tracking this down!

• Update 4: Release 11.4.5 brings several important improvements to HFW VR gameplay. I recommend everybody to upgrade in order to get the best possible experience. Details in the "Updates and known issues" section at the end of the post.

I know that you've been waiting anxiously for this one (me too), so I spent the last 10 days in a mad modding frenzy in order to be able to deliver this mod as soon as humanly possible.

Head straight down to the Setup instructions if you're impatient, but be sure to stock up on pizzas and chocolate Easter bunnies, because the game together with its Burning Shores DLC offers a whopping 40 to 100 hours of pure visual delight that can now be experienced in VR from start to finish!

Games list

As always the mod archive is common for all supported titles, and the updated list is now:

• Atomic Heart

• Cyberpunk 2077

• Dark Souls: Remastered

• Elden Ring

• Far Cry 4

• Far Cry 5

• Far Cry 6

• Far Cry New Dawn

• Far Cry Primal

• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade

• Ghostrunner

• Ghostwire: Tokyo

• Grounded

• High On Life

• Hogwarts Legacy

• Horizon: Zero Dawn

• Horizon Forbidden West (new)

• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered

• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales

• Stray

• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

All games implement AER v2.

Setup

I developed and tested the Horizon Forbidden West mod using the Steam version of the game; other editions should also work, but if you encounter issues please upload your RealVR.log file somewhere so we can try to sort them out. Also, make sure that your video drivers are updated to the latest version, or HFW will complain and possibly malfunction.

Run the game flat (not in VR) at least once, so that it can generate its config files and you can check that it works correctly. Then quit out of it and extract the mod archive into the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition" folder. You might need to customize the path if you moved your games library or in case you own the game from a different store, but it will always be the folder that contains the "HorizonForbiddenWest.exe" executable file.

Finally run RealConfig.bat. It will perform a few required operations (including the v-sync fix for NVIDIA drivers) and preselect graphics settings that are known to work well in VR. Remember that running RealConfig is mandatory; if you omit this step the mod will not work.

At this point, the next time you launch Horizon Forbidden West it should automatically display in your VR headset. You'll still need to tweak a few things in-game however, in order to get the best possible experience.

Setting the resolution

Horizon Forbidden West offers no resolution control for windowed mode, so I had to implement the same workaround you already saw in a few other games: bring up the mod overlay and in its main "R.E.A.L. VR" tab you'll find a slider that says "Target pixels per degree". Set it to a value approximately in the range 15-25, depending on your GPU, then press the "Adapt resolution" button to set the game resolution to your preferred value. You can do that at any moment, even during gameplay. The resolution you choose will be remembered across sessions.

Note: after being applied, your custom resolution should show up in the mod overlay at the end of the line "Game fps: [fps] Latency ms: [time] VR resolution: [width x height]", just above the Target pixels per degree slider. If that doesn't happen, and the [width x height] indication always seems to revert to a previous value (problem also reflected in the window size getting "stuck" and possibly the game window not being shown in the center of your monitor), the most likely cause is that the Secure Desktop popped up during your gaming session because of a UAC prompt, which interfered with the resizing mechanism. Just restart the game and the resolution should be applied correctly.

Cutscenes

All cutscenes are fully 3D and allow you to look anywhere without restrictions or black bars. There is the occasional missing chunk of scenery or floating character, as well as some near plane clipping especially during dialog interactions, but mostly the cutscenes are just AWESOME. I've actually begun using the opening cinematic (the one that starts with the fox) as a showcase for how incredible AAA flat games can look when experienced in virtual reality!

The initial recap movie is an exception: it is prerendered and will appear as if projected on a virtual 2D screen in VR.

Game options

You can set all graphics and gameplay options in the game menus according to your liking and how powerful your GPU is, but there are a few settings that the mod needs in order to work properly.

In the GAMEPAD menu, you will have to manually set Aim Assist = Off, as this choice is tied to the player profile and I have no way of configuring it programmatically.

The following settings instead will be preselected automatically by RealConfig, but please make sure never to change them. In the DISPLAY menu:

• Window Mode = Windowed

• Aspect Ratio = Auto

• Cinematics Letterboxing = Off

• VSync = Off

• NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency = Off (counter-intuitive, but the game tends to stutter when this is turned on)

• DYNAMIC RANGE> HDR Rendering = Off

In the GRAPHICS menu:

• Field of View = +0%

• Depth of Field = Off

• Motion Blur Strength = 0 (super important as with all of my mods, otherwise everything will look blurry)

• Vignette = Off

• Radial Blur = Off

• Chromatic Aberration = Off

If you need subtitles, I recommend setting AUDIO> Display Subtitles> Subtitle Size to Large, as due to a peculiarity of the technique I had to use to show the HUD in VR for this game, subtitles will appear at the wrong depth and be somewhat hard to read.

Finally, in VR I find that the compass on top of the HUD is annoying and gets in the way, ruining immersion a little, so I also recommend setting GENERAL> HUD Visibility to Custom, and in the Custom HUD Settings submenu that pops up, Compass to Always Off.

Input

You will want to use a gamepad to play Horizon Forbidden West (XInput-compatible controllers like the ones from Microsoft are the best for my mods). Keyboard and mouse sort of work too, but there might be issues, like mouse clicks activating other windows at random or some entries in the game menus being misaligned/unreachable with the cursor; thus, in order to have a smooth experience, using a gamepad is highly recommended.

Don't worry about console-player syndrome: in my mods aiming is gaze-driven and extremely fast, intuitive and accurate, so even if you're used to always playing with your mouse, give your gamepad a chance ;-)

Gameplay

The Horizon Forbidden West mod fully supports 6 DoF tracking, i.e, the camera will follow your head rotation and movement.

Note that HFW is a game designed to be played in third person. As usual though, I find that detracts a little from full immersion, especially because Aloy (your character) is so far away from your point of view that she looks rather small, and you tend to feel like you're not part of the action but instead watching it unfold from a safe distance.

For those reasons, I implemented two additional cameras that can be selected from the "HFW" tab in the R.E.A.L. VR mod overlay. The default one is called "Closer", and as you can imagine brings you much nearer to where the action is, while moving Aloy a little further to the left so that she won't take up most of your field of view. Both the camera distance and the offsets can be adjusted from the overlay.

I also hacked in a "First person" camera, but it has many problems due to the fact that HFW was never really intended to be played in 1st person. For instance the game will hide the character model completely, which means that during combat you won't be able to see either your lance hitting the machines or even get any visual feedback about which direction Aloy is currently facing. Similarly during climbing you won't be able to see your hands and you will get a weird "Half-Life gliding" effect. Short-clicking on Focus to highlight important stuff will work, but there will be no ping sound or visible scanning effect. While rolling, swimming or riding Aloy's body will suddenly pop up and clip through your view... and so on and so forth. I honestly recommend the first person camera only for moments of peaceful exploration, while the Closer camera works in every situation and is actually the one I'm using for my own playthrough.

Gaze-based aiming performs as intended and the crosshair will always be properly aligned. To that effect, whenever you have a weapon drawn 6 DoF will be limited to 3 DoF, i.e., without positional tracking (for even more accurate aiming, remember to set your dominant eye in the "HFW" tab of the mod overlay).

Focus works fine too, in full 3D, and tagging the enemies also follows the direction of your gaze.

In the base 2D game, aiming and focusing will make your view appear more and more zoomed in. In VR you might want to keep that effect (although I don't find it really necessary even for precision archery work), but some people could be bothered by the world-swimming effect that comes from the zoomed-in field-of-view not matching the headset FOV. For that reason, I included in the "HFW" tab two checkboxes called "Allow zoom while aiming" and "Allow zoom when using Focus"; both default to unchecked to offer the smoothest VR experience.

Additionally, in the same "HFW" tab you can change the world scale, from small adjustments to playing with dolls or giants, and even force the game to render to a 2D virtual screen in case you should find a section too hard to play in full VR.

If your system appears to display the 3D effect incorrectly (as though distant objects were actually in front of closer ones) try changing the "Frame delay compensation" value step by step until you get a perfectly stable world image, with proper depth everywhere. The vast majority of users should not need to tweak this.

For an explanation of the "Horizontal sensitivity" slider see the following Aiming notes section, and for the "HUD scale" slider see the HUD section below.

Aiming notes

When aiming (right mouse button or left gamepad trigger pressed), the game changes the way the camera gets turned around, and I wasn't able to achieve a perfectly smooth control over it yet. This might get better in the future if I can come up with a better technique, but for now you'll find that the camera turns less smoothly when you're aiming compared to when you're just exploring. I recommend using AER v2 (the default, with 1/3 rate) instead of Legacy to alleviate this problem.

Also, while aiming for some reason the game uses a completely different sensitivity scale for mouse versus right thumbstick control, and I'm currently unable to determine automatically which scale is in effect at any given moment. So, I was forced to expose a manual control in the "HFW" tab of the R.E.A.L. VR mod overlay, in the Camera section, called "Horizontal sensitivity". You will want to set it to about 0.1 if you're playing with a gamepad, and to about 1 if you're playing with KB/mouse. As you know I always recommend using a gamepad anyway, so the default value for the slider is 0.1.

HUD

In Horizon Forbidden West, to show all HUD elements in their correct 3D positions (for instance machine health bars, quest markers, etc.) I was forced to use the same technique I employed for the Uncharted games.

This has a few unfortunate side effects:

• the crosshair and the subtitles will always appear at infinite depth (as though they were very distant from the observer), which can make them look doubled when they're aligned with close objects or NPCs;

• the HUD will always be headlocked, i.e., following your head rotation, instead of looking as if it was suspended in space in front of you;

• HUD elements will jitter/double slightly when you look around.

However, there's good news compared to the Uncharted games: I found a way to rescale the whole HUD, so you won't miss any of the important information that appears on the sides. If the default scale doesn't work for you, you can tweak it in the "HFW" tab of the R.E.A.L. VR mod overlay, using the "HUD scale" slider (NOTE: this is a different slider than the usual ones found in the "R.E.A.L. VR" main tab, which won't have any effect in this game).

If you set a new value for the slider, note that there won't be any immediate visible changes until you resize the game window using the "Adapt resolution" button.

Updates and known issues

[Latest entries first]

Release 11.4.5: I urge everybody playing HFW to upgrade to this new release. Don't forget to run RealConfig after unpacking! v11.4.5 introduces the following important improvements to the Horizon Forbidden West VR mod:

• Game HUD size: The latest official update to the game changed the way the HUD is drawn for non-standard resolutions, and that made it impossible to read with most VR headsets. The problem can be alleviated by reducing the "HUD scale" in the "HFW" tab of the mod overlay, but I actually recommend reverting to the former behavior of the game by setting "HUD Widescreen Scale" to "16:9" in the GENERAL menu (RealConfig will do this automatically for you).

• Aiming and Focus: It turns out that the game deals with several aiming/focus scenarios in non-standard ways. For example weapons detached from machines, Ballista cannons, guns that are supposed to have been detached but cannot be lifted from the ground... all get special-case treatment by the game; so does the forced focus during specific actions like overriding Tallnecks, and so on and so forth.
  In order to accommodate this variety of different situations, the mod will now closely monitor the game camera during aiming and focus. As soon as the camera starts to shake or spin, the mod will temporarily disable gaze-based aiming until you let go of the trigger and exit aiming mode. This means that you will need to swivel your weapon around using the mouse or right thumbstick, with the crosshair being shown in the wrong place, and you will need to aim based on where the previous bullets have landed. That's much better than having an out-of-control camera though, and luckily these special behaviors are limited to specific points in the game.
  The "Turn off gaze-based aiming when camera issues are detected" checkbox in the "HFW" tab of the mod overlay controls this new automatic self-monitoring; you can deselect it in case you run into any kind of problems.

• Erratic camera after aiming: During normal VR gameplay, the rotation of your head only influences the direction of the camera; to steer Aloy and/or her mount you need to use the mouse or right gamepad stick. However, as soon as you enter aiming or Focus mode, the rotation of your head will begin to control the crosshair and thus the direction Aloy is facing. In previous versions of the mod, returning to normal (non-aiming, non-Focus) mode could leave the camera in a weird state where your viewing direction was not aligned with Aloy's. I made the heuristic detection algorithm more robust, so the problem should occur less often now (if you still prefer the former behavior, just deselect the "Delay resetting direction after aiming" checkbox in the "HFW" overlay tab).
  Even after this improvement however, for best control of your character, please note this: when you aim, Aloy doesn't turn her body immediately, but with some delay instead. If you let go of the aiming button too soon, it might still happen that Aloy is not aligned with your viewing direction when aiming/Focus mode ends. If you want to avoid that, keep aiming for a little while longer, or make Aloy take a step or two before you let go. That will give the game time to bring her model into alignment and will reduce post-aiming issues to the minimum.

• Infinite loading: Having VR active while loading a saved game could lead to very long loading and/or shader compilation times. The problem should be fixed from release 11.4.5.

• Machine Strike: The detection algorithm for the Machine Strike special camera is now more robust and should work when playing against all opponents, not just the first one who teaches you the ropes of the board game :-)

Release 11.4.2: This is a maintenance release. Remember to run RealConfig after unpacking the archive! v11.4.2 introduces the following improvements to the Horizon Forbidden West mod:

• Custom cameras: You can now press both thumbsticks on the gamepad to cycle among the three available cameras (Game default, Closer, First person). If you find yourself accidentally activating the combo during combat, you can disable it from the "HFW" overlay tab of the mod.

• Clipping of nearby objects and characters, especially during dialog cutscenes: There is a new "Fix near clipping" checkbox in the "HFW" tab that enables a correction for that. You can revert to the previous behavior by disabling it, if you don't like having stuff too close to your face ;-)

• 2D virtual screen: From the "HFW" tab, it is now possible to assign a keyboard shortcut to toggle the 2D virtual screen.

• Machine Strike: I fixed the camera so that the board game can now be played in full 3D. The fix works correctly with the first NPC you encounter who teaches you the rules of the game; if you find that it doesn't kick in with other adversaries later in the adventure, please provide a savegame for the place where it doesn't work and I will try to make the fix more general.

No launcher at startup, or settings keep resetting, and you are using SteamVR: Make sure that SteamVR is NOT running before you launch the game. The mod will launch SteamVR itself at the right time. For some reason if SteamVR is already running it will prevent the launcher from showing, and some users have also reported that graphics settings will get reset (this last problem might actually be caused by other 3rd party utilities: see below "HFW always wants to run fullscreen"). Big thanks to user Miguel Plylar-Moore for finding out about this!

Mounted guns: As with the Far Cry games, I had to disable gaze-based aiming for turrets/cannons. This means that you will need to swivel the mounted gun around using the mouse or right thumbstick, with the crosshair being shown in the wrong place, and you will need to aim based on where the previous bullets have landed :-D Luckily until now we have found only one such mounted gun during testing, so it's not a big issue.

Skill tree menu: The HUD behaves erratically while in this menu, alternating between headlocked and stationary. Please use the 2D virtual screen option if that's bothering you too much (since v11.4.2 you can set a keyboard shortcut to do that).

HFW always wants to run fullscreen: Make sure that you have disabled or removed any utilities like GeForce Experience. They can really mess up VR mods, because they insist on blindly applying their preferred settings at every launch of the game.

Crashes at startup: If you can't seem to get past a crash to desktop every time you launch HFW, the first thing you should try is disabling Steam Input for the game (kudos to Sven Hilbert for the hint!). If that is not enough, rename or delete the file "sl.interposer.dll" in the game executable folder. Also make sure that your game is updated to the latest version (v1.0.43.0 at the moment of this writing).