Science fiction, double feature (Patreon)

Who wants to be a cat? Everybody wants to be a cat! Because a cat's the only cat who knows where it's at :-P

For the first time, the new release attached below (8.0.0) supports two additional games! The idea for one of them was put in my mind by Brian Tate of Flat2VR. A few weeks ago, when I mentioned to him that I was going to mod Ghostwire: Tokyo, he quickly replied: "[...] Can't wait to do some wall running in VR soon!"

I thought: "Mmm. Wall running?!" I never knew there was any wall running in GW:T. Walls disappearing, or catching fire, or oozing psychedelic paint? Check, check, and check. But no wall running. After a quick Google search I realized that he was in fact thinking of Ghostrunner, a game I had never heard of before that. I looked it up and saw that it would be a great fit for VR: first person ninja-like combat, hyper-speed, beautiful futuristic environments, trippy music, and sure, wall-running! []-D

So that's the first game that this new release supports, and you can thank Brian for the inception.

I developed the mod on the Complete Edition (including the Project_Hel DLC) which is currently 20% off on Steam, but it should also work against the base version which is now on sale at 60% off for a couple of days.

And as you might have guessed from the beginning of this post, the second game is Stray!!! Meow ^_^

This time, the idea for the mod came directly from you guys. Several people had already requested the game, and when we did the traditional guessing rounds before the release of GW:T so many of you guessed/hoped for Stray that I couldn't help but take a stab at it.

Quick Setup instructions for Ghostrunner

The steps are the same as with my previous mods; if you're a returning user, you'll only need to be careful to extract the mod into the correct folder.

• Make sure that the game was run flat (i.e., not in VR) at least once, so that it could create your user profile.
• Unzip the archive attached at the bottom of this post into the folder where "Ghostrunner-Win64-Shipping.exe" is. On a standard Steam installation the folder will be at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Ghostrunner\Ghostrunner\Binaries\Win64". When you extract the zip, be careful to preserve the folder structure. In other words, don't move anything around manually, don't flatten the folders, and don't put the mod into its own subfolder: RealConfig.bat must end up at the same level as Ghostrunner-Win64-Shipping.exe. If you are returning to this post to update to a new release, you might be asked whether to overwrite existing files, in which case you should answer yes to all.
• Run RealConfig, which will automatically select graphics settings known to work correctly in VR and finish installing/configuring the mod for you. NOTE: if you omit this step or ignore any errors that the batch file reports back to you, the mod won't work correctly, even if you are just upgrading from a previous release.
• Note that there is another folder, three levels up, which contains an executable called Ghostrunner.exe. That is not the main executable, it's only the launcher (you can see it's less than 1 MB in size). The folder you want is the one with a path ending in "Binaries\Win64", with an executable of about 85 MB.

Resolution and additional notes (Ghostrunner)

After running RealConfig, you will find that the game starts for the first time with a resolution of 2432x2432. You can change that according to your specs, remembering that you want to keep a frame rate of at least 70-80 fps for a good VR experience. The game is very fast-paced and requires lightning-quick reflexes and decisions, so you might want to sacrifice some image quality to make the combat as fluid as possible. Do not select the common 16:9 resolutions (1280x720 and 1920x1080) unless you want to play pancake.

Fortunately the game offers lots of scalability options, and they should all work correctly in VR (except for motion blur, which I hard-disabled in the renderer). In particular I found DLSS to be very well implemented in this title.

You will also get a prompt at start from Steam, asking you to select either the DX11 or DX12 renderer. I implemented both and they should work equally well in VR, but of course depending on your system you might find that one of them performs better than the other, so you'll want to experiment and monitor your fps at least once to select the optimal path for your PC.

Quick Setup instructions for Stray

The steps are the same as with my previous mods; if you're a returning user, you'll only need to be careful to extract the mod into the correct folder.

• Make sure that the game was run flat (i.e., not in VR) at least once, so that it could create your user profile.
• Unzip the archive attached at the bottom of this post into the folder where "Stray-Win64-Shipping.exe" is. On a standard Steam installation the folder will be at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Stray\Hk_project\Binaries\Win64". When you extract the zip, be careful to preserve the folder structure. In other words, don't move anything around manually, don't flatten the folders, and don't put the mod into its own subfolder: RealConfig.bat must end up at the same level as Stray-Win64-Shipping.exe. If you are returning to this post to update to a new release, you might be asked whether to overwrite existing files, in which case you should answer yes to all.
• Run RealConfig, which will automatically select graphics settings known to work correctly in VR and finish installing/configuring the mod for you. NOTE: if you omit this step or ignore any errors that the batch file reports back to you, the mod won't work correctly, even if you are just upgrading from a previous release.
• Note that there is another folder, three levels up, which contains an executable called Stray.exe. That is not the main executable, it's only the launcher (you can see it's less than 1 MB in size). The folder you want is the one with a path ending in "Binaries\Win64", with an executable of about 83 MB.

Resolution and additional notes (Stray)

Usually for my mods I coax the games into accepting square (1:1) resolutions, like 2160x2160 for example, because it's the aspect ratio that best fits the most commonly used headsets. For Stray however I had to fall back to 5:4 resolutions (same as I did with GW:T), because below that aspect ratio the game's HUD breaks and becomes unreadable. So, after running RealConfig, you will find that the game starts for the first time with a resolution of 2700x2160. You can change that according to your specs, remembering that you want to keep a frame rate of at least 60-70 fps for a good VR experience. Do not select the common 16:9 resolutions (1280x720 and 1920x1080) unless you want to play pancake.

RealConfig also takes care of preselecting the correct options for the game to run in VR (those you find in the "GRAPHICS" page of the "SETTINGS" menu). You can change most of them, but be sure to leave untouched:

• FULLSCREEN = WINDOWED
• MAX FRAME RATE = UNCAPPED
• V-SYNC = off (unchecked)
• MOTION BLUR = off (all the way to the left)

In the GAMEPLAY page instead, you'll need to change a few options manually:

• SHOW RETICULE = off (unchecked)
• SHOW HUD = on (checked)
• AUTO CAMERA = off (checked). Leaving it on also works, but it can be a little disorienting when you move in circles, so I recommend turning it off.

Speaking of camera, I offer three to choose from: the original one (quite far away from your cat, as sadly is pretty much the norm these days with 3rd person games), the "Closer" camera which is at a comfortable distance and the one the mod will use by default, and finally the "R.E.A.L. close" camera which, as the name says, gets really up close and personal with your feline furry friend. Please note that at some point in the game you will start getting floating screens (not saying more to avoid spoilers) and if they get too close to your eyes for easy reading you'll want to dial the camera distance back a little, either by changing the camera preset or fine-tuning the offsets. All of that as usual can be done in the Quick Menu provided by the mod.

To celebrate our first time playing as cats, I implemented a special function in the mod: it's called "Cat-I", and it will set the distance between the virtual cameras to the same IPD or inter-pupillary distance as your furry character has. A cat's eyes are closer together than a person's, and that means that the world looks proportionally bigger to a cat. The "Cat-I" mode will default to on for maximum immersion in the feline life: should you want to turn it off and see the world at normal scale, however, you will find a checkbox for it in the "STRAY" page of the main mod overlay.

Happy VR's to all of you!!!