The path forward is... Uncharted! (Patreon)

[See the end of the post for updates]

Hey guys!

Release 10.1.1 of the R.E.A.L. VR mod (attached at the end of this post) fixes an annoying problem brought about by the latest official update to Cyberpunk 2077: specifically, tooltips in the inventory screens were appearing way up, out of alignment with the objects they described, and in such positions as to be mostly unreadable. All of them should now be back in their proper place.

I also fixed a few minor issues with the framework that affected a few old titles.

But most importantly... this release introduces support for two new games! I'm talking about the remastered versions of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which are available together as a package under the name "Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection".

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

• Atomic Heart
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Dark Souls: Remastered
• Elden Ring
• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade
• Ghostrunner
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Grounded
• High On Life
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Horizon: Zero Dawn
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Stray
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (new)
• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (new)

All games implement AER v2.

Setup

Always important: make sure that your video drivers are updated to the latest version.

The Uncharted mods were developed and tested using the Steam version of the collection; other versions might also work, but if you encounter issues please upload your RealVR.log file so that we can try to sort them out.

Make sure to launch the collection flat (not in VR) at least once, so that it can generate its config files and you can check that it works correctly. It won't hurt to let it finish building its shaders, so you'll get less hiccups during actual play. Then quit the game and extract the mod archive into the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection" folder; note that you might need to change the path slightly if you have moved your Steam library from its default location, or if you own the games from a different store.

Finally run RealConfig.bat. It will perform a few indispensable 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 the collection it should automatically display in your VR headset.

The resolution will be set to an initial value of 2048x2048 pixels, with a Render Scale of 50% (so the games will actually render at 1024x1024 pixels). This is a very conservative setting, meant for laptops or desktops with not-so-powerful GPU cards. If you're lucky enough to own a beefy graphics card (and I believe that to be the most important investment you can make when it comes to VR gaming), you should set the Render Scale in the "Display" section of the game menus to 100, maybe adding some DLSS or FSR upscaling. Make sure that you don't change the other display options from the values preselected by RealConfig; in particular you must leave Display Mode on Windowed, Aspect Ratio on Auto, and everything starting from V-Sync downwards set to Off.

The most important setting that will influence your VR image quality and frame rate is the render resolution, so that's the first thing you'll want to increase if your graphics card is powerful enough. Higher resolutions will also mean less visible artifacts from TAA.

Unfortunately Uncharted 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 across sessions.

The game graphics options ("Advanced Graphics" section) should be manually set to a level suitable for the GPU you're using. As a rule of thumb, try to make sure that the game frame rate never drops below 60 fps, or only occasionally. AER v2 will make things look smooth (as smooth as possible at least) but it can only do so much. If your system is overloaded and cannot maintain at least 60 fps your VR experience will be janky and you might even get crashes, depending on your hardware and drivers.

The game options menu helpfully shows a bar with your VRAM usage; make sure to always keep it well below the maximum, otherwise you will get VRAM thrashing which takes a huge toll on frame rate. The most important factors impacting VRAM usage are texture quality and render resolution, so if your GPU is good but doesn't have a lot of memory try scaling down on texture quality first.

Gameplay

I know that I often say this (I am a VR enthusiast after all), but these Uncharted games look and play just like they were made to be played in VR. They are intense experiences, with a continuous flow that really makes you feel like you're the hero in an action movie. It's so hard to quit playing them, even when your head hurts from the weight and pressure of the headset []-D

Both games fully support 6 DoF tracking (the camera will follow your head rotation and movement). Gaze-based aiming works and the crosshair will always be properly aligned.

Cutscenes have top/bottom black bars, which I didn't remove because they work correctly in VR and sort of preserve the "cinematic" effect. There is no forced camera though: you can still look anywhere and the frame will follow your gaze. In the same way, when your character in the cutscene is looking through binoculars, you can actually look around freely and the binoculars will track.

I disabled depth of field effects (which were super annoying during cutscenes and when looking at nearby objects like your journal) because usually they have no place in VR. However, since I always believe in keeping as faithful to the original gameplay and design as possible, the "ULOTC" tab of the mod overlay will allow you to restore them if you so wish. Also, from the same 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.

Photo mode works correctly, as usual with all my VR mods, and it's 3D (except for the resulting picture of course). I think the best use of photo mode in VR is actually not to take pictures, but to explore the scene without being bound by the camera constraints and without being hassled by your companions prodding you to move forward with the story ;-)

Climbing, which is a HUGE portion of the Uncharted games just like in the Tomb Raider series, again looks just like these games were meant for VR. The camera is always in the right position, and though certain sections are by design puzzling, the increased spatial awareness brough about by the increased FOV and 3D effect help a lot with path finding.

The performance of both games is very good, and if you have a high end video card you'll be able to get awesome visuals at rock-solid 90 fps. With older GPUs you'll probably need to dial back the render resolution a little, especially with the second game, which has incredible amounts of detail in the scenery but is of course somewhat heavier.

Known issues

After you change the render resolution using the "Adapt resolution" button, the game might run at a reduced frame rate until it's restarted. Also, occasionally you might get a black screen. Both problems seem to be more frequent on laptops and/or GPUs with low amounts of VRAM. I haven't been able to reproduce either issue on my system, but both of them can be fixed simply by restarting the game after setting the resolution.

When you select a 1:1 aspect ratio (which is recommended for most headsets except those with a huge horizontal FOV), subtitles will appear in the middle of the screen instead of their usual bottom position. Personally I believe that actually kind of works better in VR, since the only easily readable part of the screen is the center area anyway.

In the Uncharted games, the mod overlay is best navigated with a gamepad. KB/M also works, but due to the weird way the games are reading input, all keypresses taking place while the overlay is open will also leak through to the active game, possibly triggering unwanted actions.

When you pause a game (entering the menus), the mod will automatically switch to its 2D virtual screen mode, so all UI elements will be readable. However, during actual gameplay some information displayed in the periphery will be hardly visible or even completely outside your FOV. There is no solution to that at the moment. Maybe a third party mod will appear, allowing you to move those elements toward the center of the screen. For now though, if you want to peek at the full screen to read the hints appearing on the periphery, you can bring up the mod overlay and from the "ULOTC" tab select the 2D virtual screen. I only found like 3-4 moments in the game when that is really necessary to move forward.

After some cutscenes, there might be a short interval when the game looks 2D because the camera is unable to sync to the headset. Just move your character around a little and/or wait for a few seconds, and the problem will go away on its own. Also (but for a different technical reason) sporadically the camera will get "stuck" looking in a certain direction, especially after the game has taken control of it to force-show you something interesting. I found that those instances can always be solved by opening the journal and then closing it again, which will reset the camera to normal.

Update 1: I had the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something when I was packaging the release. 10.1.0 didn't list AER v2 modes for the two Uncharted games :facepalm:
It's fixed in release 10.1.1, sorry!

Update 2: Some users have been encountering a weird issue with the controller mappings (for some reason the game chooses a totally unplayable mapping with multiple actions on the same button, other actions unmapped, ...) If you experience this issue or feel that the commands are awkward, just use the game options menu to reset the controller mapping to default, which seems to take care of the problem.

Enjoy exploring the world in search of ancient treasures, in two of the most VR-friendly games available today! Let's show developers and publishers that VR gaming is BETTER and needs to be made available out of the box!!!