Cyberpunk 2077: a brief tutorial to fly in VR (Patreon)

Thanks to various Patrons who brought this to my attention: in 2077 we'll finally have flying cars! Take that, Elon Musk :-)

You'll need to use the new, awesome Let There Be Flight mod by Jack Humbert. Huge kudos to him and all the other modders who created the tools on which LTBF builds.

Please note that apart from this post, I won't be able to provide any kind of support for a multiple-mod configuration. I'm writing this tutorial because the combo is just TOO good to pass up, but many little things can go wrong when you start putting together mods from different sources.

I'll be considering 3 scenarios. 1: you never installed the game; 2: you already have the game working well in VR with my mod, but NO other mods installed; 3: you have other mods, or you're not starting from scratch.

Scenario 1: you never installed Cyberpunk 2077. You'll need an original copy of the game of course: for instance you can buy it from Steam. Install CP2077 and run it once flat (not in VR) so that it can create your user profile. Once you're satisfied that the game runs correctly, go to the game root folder.

If you bought the game from Steam, your game root folder will be something like "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Cyberpunk 2077" (the first portion will be different if you changed the default Steam library position, or if you bought the game from another store). To double check, verify that you're in the folder which contains the subfolders "archive", "bin", "engine", "r6" and so on.

Now you need to install my mod: from the game root folder navigate to bin\x64 and extract the "REAL_mod_by_LukeRoss_vX_Y_Z" zip there. Don't flatten the archive, don't move any files around, and don't create a subfolder: "RealConfig.bat" must end up at the same level as "Cyberpunk2077.exe". Finally complete the installation of my mod by running RealConfig.bat from the "Cyberpunk 2077\bin\x64" folder where you just extracted the files, and make sure that it gives you no errors.

Connect your headset and launch the game: you should now be able to play in VR. Check that everything works correctly. If you find the game too jittery, enable the "Show FPS" checkbox from the "Overlay" tab and verify what fps you are getting during gameplay. At least 50-60 fps are needed for a playable VR experience, and things start looking really good from 70-80 fps. If your frame rate seems too low, decrease the resolution from the game menus and/or activate DLSS.

Scenario 2: you already have R.E.A.L. VR running correctly with no other mods. Navigate to your game root folder, as described in scenario 1. Again, you want to be where the "archive", "bin", "engine", "r6" subfolders are, and NOT inside the bin\x64 subfolder.

The Let There Be Flight author has two release types: the normal one, without requirements (for experts or people in Scenario 3), and the "packed" release which contains all the dependencies and it's much easier to install for beginners. We'll be using the packed version for this tutorial.

Download the latest packed release from https://github.com/jackhumbert/let_there_be_flight/releases (currently it's let_there_be_flight_packed_v0.0.10.zip) and unzip it into the game root folder. Just like with my mod, be careful not to flatten the folder structure of the archive, don't move anything around manually, and don't extract the packed archive into a new subfolder.

Note that by installing the packed release from Jack Humbert, you'll have added 5 mods/tools to your game: RED4ext, TweakXL, Input Loader, Redscript, and the LTBF mod itself. The well-known CET (Cyberpunk Engine Tweaks) is not required for Let There Be Flight and thus not included in the packed release. However, it's compatible with both: see the end of this post for a brief discussion.

Aaaand...

That's it! Your car can fly! In virtual reality!! I mean, it doesn't get any better than this
[]-D

Scenario 3: you already have other mods beside R.E.A.L. VR. I cannot really support this scenario, so you're basically on your own. You could try adapting the steps outlined in scenario 2 to your configuration. If you don't know how, or you get stuck, you can check out the comments below to see whether any other user was in the same situation as you and can help.

If all else fails, my recommendation is to start from scratch: go to your game root folder for CP2077 (see Scenario 1 for how to find it) and delete the folder completely.

Don't just uninstall the game, as that usually won't get rid of mods because the official installer doesn't know about them: you need to delete the whole folder from Windows (you won't erase your saved games of course, as they are in a totally different directory).

At this point have Steam, or the store you bought the game from, verify the game files: it will tell you they are missing and start downloading them again. At the end of the process you will find yourself with a pristine copy of the game and you'll be ready to start afresh from Scenario 1.

Cheat Engine Tweaks (CET). As mentioned above, CET is not needed for Let There Be Flight. However, it's compatible with it and with my mod, in case you want to install it for any other reasons.

Just be mindful of one thing: CET has its own overlay based on ImGui. It doesn't conflict with mine, but unfortunately it's injected later in the rendering chain and thus doesn't show up in VR. The CET overlay does show up in the game window on the desktop, but at VR resolutions (like the one that my own RealConfig tool preselects, 2432x2432) it will likely fall outside the portion of the window that's visible on the monitor. Some users have been tricked by this into thinking that the CET overlay is incompatible with my mod.

In order to get the CET overlay to show up (let me stress again that none of this is necessary to get the Let There Be Flight mod working: this is purely in case you need CET for different reasons) you need to do a simple edit. Quit the game, and open the "Cyberpunk 2077\bin\x64\plugins\cyber_engine_tweaks\layout.ini" in Notepad. Delete all its contents and replace them with the following lines:

[Window][Cyber Engine Tweaks]
Pos=1216,1216
Size=670,400
Collapsed=0

The most important line is the one beginning with Pos. You should select two values that are more or less half the resolution you're running CP2077 at. So for 2432x2432 just use my values, but if for instance you changed the game resolution to 3920x3920 replace them with Pos=1960,1960, and so on. Save the file and run Cyberpunk 2077 again.

With that change, the CET overlay will show right in the middle of the game window on the desktop (not in VR) and you'll be able to interact with it!

Modding is fun!