Ever dreamed of being a samurai? (Patreon)

I'm warning you, it can get a little messy, with all the severed heads... but thanks to VR there is no need to mop up any blood from the wooden floor of your dojo!

Release 12.2.0 of the R.E.A.L. VR mod, attached at the end of this post, adds Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR'S CUT (the PC port that just came out of the original PS4 game released in 2020) to the list of titles that we can experience in VR.

And to be honest, I'm just taking a little time off from playing because I need to write this post, but I can't wait to return to Japan and to 1274, as this game looks BEAUTIFUL in virtual reality. Beautiful and bloody. Did I mention the severed heads?

Sorry for those of you who were expecting Watch Dogs 2... but worry not: if everything goes according to plan, this crazy spatiotemporal train will be heading straight back from Tsushima to San Francisco ;-)

[Latest updates are found at the bottom of the post]

Games list

As usual the mod archive is common for all 24 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

• Ghost of Tsushima (new)

• Ghostrunner

• Ghostwire: Tokyo

• Grounded

• High On Life

• Hogwarts Legacy

• Horizon: Zero Dawn

• Horizon Forbidden West

• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered

• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales

• Stray

• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

• Watch Dogs

All games implement AER v2.

Setup

I developed and tested the Ghost of Tsushima 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, always make sure that your video drivers are updated to the latest version.

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\Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR'S CUT" folder. Note that you might need to customize the path if you moved your Steam library or own the game from a different store, but it will always be the one that contains the "GhostOfTsushima.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 Ghost of Tsushima it should automatically display in your VR headset. You're almost ready to immerse yourself in the first Mongol invasion of Japan, but I recommend that you first tweak a few things in-game, in order to get the best possible experience.

Setting the resolution

Unfortunately Ghost of Tsushima offers no resolution control for windowed mode, so I had to implement the same workaround you already saw in 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 actual gameplay. The resolution you choose will be remembered and re-applied automatically across sessions.

Cutscenes

Most cutscenes are fully 3D and allow you to look anywhere without restrictions. There can be subtle black bars above and below, which work correctly in VR and give that "cinematic" look without overly restricting your field of view.

A few short cutscene segments were prerendered by the developers and stored as movies, so there's nothing I can do about them: they will appear as if projected on a virtual 2D screen in VR.

The cinematics quality is mostly very good, but as usual there will be some missing props, invisible horses, levitating characters and so on in the parts of the scene that you were never supposed to see in the flat game.

Game options

You can set all graphics and gameplay options in the game menu according to your liking and how powerful your GPU is, but there are a few settings that you must leave to the defaults preselected by RealConfig in order for the mod to work properly. Specifically, in the DISPLAY menu:

• WINDOW MODE = Windowed

• ASPECT RATIO = Auto

• VSYNC = Off

• HDR = Off

And in the GRAPHICS menu:

• MOTION BLUR STRENGTH = 0

• FIELD OF VIEW = 0

• DEPTH OF FIELD = Off

I only tested thoroughly with UPSCALE METHOD, DYNAMIC RESOLUTION SCALING, NVIDIA REFLEX LOW LATENCY and FRAME GENERATION all set to Off and ANTI-ALIASING set to TAA. Other combinations of these 5 parameters might also work, but if you encounter problems make sure to try the default config first.

Update: I had more time to compare the many antialiasing options that the game offers, and if your GPU can afford it, by all means go with DLAA! It looks sooo much better than TAA, especially for vegetation and objects in the distance []-)

In the GAME> GAMEPAD section, TARGET LOCK and AIM ASSIST should both set to Off, to avoid conflicting with my gaze-based aiming system. I also recommend setting GAME> SYSTEM> SHOW LAUNCHER to Off for hassle-free game startup.

Input

You will want to use a gamepad to play Ghost of Tsushima (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 unreachable with the cursor; thus, in order to have a smooth experience, using a gamepad is highly recommended.

Update: remember to disable Steam Input, for the game or globally. It often tends to create problems with my mods, and with this title many of you have reported crashes to desktop each time they open the mod overlay.

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 playing FPS with your mouse, give your gamepad a chance ;-)

HUD

In Ghost of Tsushima, to show all HUD elements in their correct 3D positions (for instance enemy status bars, quest markers, etc.) I used the same technique I employed for the Uncharted and Horizon Forbidden West 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 above mentioned games: the HUD rescaling can be finely customized, so you won't miss any of the important information that appears at the sides. If the default positioning I suggest doesn't work for you, you can tweak it in the "GOT" tab of the R.E.A.L. VR mod overlay, using the "HUD scale X", "HUD scale Y" and "HUD elements scale" sliders (NOTE: I'm not referring to the usual sliders found in the "R.E.A.L. VR" main tab, which won't have any effect in this title).

Not 100% of the HUD elements are rescaled correctly by the game though, so you might occasionally need to resort to the 2D virtual screen (see the following Gameplay section).

The "HUD scale" sliders in the "GOT" tab are hot-wired and take effect immediately while playing, without any need to bump the resolution.

Update: Since many of you are using the Quest 3, I experimented some more with it and the best combo I found for that headset is something around HUD scale X = HUD scale Y = 0.5 and HUD elements scale = 0.75. The subtitles are still a bit on the large side , but there's nothing I can do about that at the moment.

Gameplay

The Ghost of Tsushima mod fully supports 6 DoF tracking, i.e, the camera will follow your head rotation and movement.

All weapons I could test are working correctly. Note that as with the Spidey mods, there is no first-person camera implementation. The game relies too much on you being able to see the full area around your character for 1st person combat to be feasible.

In the "GOT" 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.

Since every now and then some elements in the UI can be a little hard to read or even chopped off to the sides, you can optionally bind the 2D virtual screen toggle so that it's quickly activated/deactivated by pressing both gamepad thumbsticks. Merchants for instance tend to need that.

Updates and known issues

Antialiasing: RealConfig defaults to TAA, but if your GPU can afford it, by all means go with DLAA! The image is much more stable, especially in the distance, and the artifacts are less distracting.

Crashes during gameplay: on my system, one of the flashback cutscenes crashes to desktop with a DXGI_ERROR_INVALID_CALL (without spoilers, you'll recognize it by the uphill walk). The workaround is to temporarily set GRAPHICS> LEVEL OF DETAIL to High or lower, as for me the crash only happens with LOD set to Very High.

Crashes when opening the R.E.A.L. overlay: disable Steam Input, either in general or for the game. This title polls gamepad input in a weird way, and when I cut it off during overlay navigation to avoid button presses leaking through to the game, Steam Input freaks out.

HUD not visible: I cannot repro this issue on any of the headsets I tried. Please read the HUD section above carefully and experiment with the 3 new sliders in the GOT tab of the mod overlay. Apart from the few special cases mentioned in that section, like for instance interaction with merchants, it should always be possible to bring all of the HUD into view. Also, maybe try resetting the HUD-related game options? There could be some specific combination of settings that prevents the game from resizing the HUD correctly. Additional notes: I experimented more with the Quest 3 and the best combo with it seems to be HUD scale X = HUD scale Y = 0.5 and HUD elements scale = 0.75. Just mentioning this since it's a very common headset nowadays. The subtitles look a bit too big for my taste, but the rest is mostly OK.

Attack prep circles: when you get ready to attack something like an enemy fort, the game will show you hints in the form of circles that must be collimated by moving the camera. When properly aligned, the circles will turn into a button prompt. On my system for some mysterious reason this only works for the first circle, after which the others will no longer lock on. There is a simple workaround luckily: just use the Start button to quickly toggle the game menus on and off, which will reset the camera system so that another circle will be ready to lock. Rinse and repeat.

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Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your unfailing support, guys!!! Together we're going to bring all of those magnificent open world games to virtual reality, one at a time... or at least as many of them as we can :-D