Far Cry 6! (Patreon)

[See "Updates, known issues and troubleshooting" at the end of this post for the latest news. If you're still on 10.3.0, also see the "Setting the resolution" section below which has been completely rewritten, after I found a way to inject a custom resolution directly into the game without jumping through hoops.]

You have been asking for it since, like, forever, and finally it is here: a R.E.A.L. VR conversion for a game in the mythical Far Cry franchise.

There are so many of them, and after much thought I chose to tackle the latest entry in the series. The first one is already in development by fholger. The second one, though really beautiful with its African setting and quite VR-oriented in its interaction model, feels quite dated in terms of gameplay nowadays. As for the subsequent entries, well, they all kind of follow the same formula with different settings, so in the end I decided to go with the most recent. Also, Giancarlo Esposito! (Yes, I was a big fan of Breaking Bad.)

I won't lie to you: this has been a very painful birth. It is the first time I try my hand at modding the Dunia Engine, and getting the mod in playable shape took me way more time and effort than I had expected. I'm releasing it now because It Works For Me (TM), but expect to deal with a bit more tweaking and annoyances than usual. Some issues I might be able to solve in further releases down the road, hopefully [edit: the resolution ordeal has been fixed!]. However, despite the somewhat rough state of the mod, the feedback I've been getting from people who tested it (and my own gameplay impressions) tell me that this is a game which really deserves to be experienced in VR. FC6 FTW!

Games list

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
• Far Cry 6 (new)
• 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.

Additional fixes

Apart from adding support to Far Cry 6, release 10.3.3 (attached at the end of this post) resolves a few issues with Stray that were introduced by the August 10 official update, especially regarding custom resolutions. Also, I discovered that AER v2 support for Dark Souls: Remastered had been broken for some time. Although I don't think that anyone noticed, since on most systems DS:R doesn't need alternate eye rendering because the engine is very old and can run at full frame rate, I fixed it anyway, which should have beneficial effects on other games rendering with DirectX 11.

Setup

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

I developed and tested the Far Cry 6 mod using the Ubisoft+ 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.

Make sure to 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)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\games\Far Cry 6\bin_plus" folder if you have the Ubisoft+ subscription, or "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\games\Far Cry 6\bin" if you bought the game from Ubisoft directly but without the subscription; note that you might need to customize the path if you own the game from a different store, but it will always be the one that contains the "FarCry6.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 Far Cry 6 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

[Note to those of you who tried version 10.3.0: the custom resolution injection has been completely redesigned and it works so much more smoothly now, so you'll need to read this section again].

As usual, the default resolutions offered by the game are unsuitable for VR. Therefore, I had to implement the same workaround you already saw in other games. You'll need to bring up the mod overlay (for Far Cry 6 that is done by pressing both thumbsticks on the gamepad at the same time). Then, in the 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 inject a custom resolution into the game. The resolution will be automatically calculated to fit your headset requirements as tightly as possible, so that you can get the best compromise between image quality and performance.

A prompt will appear, telling you what to do; the custom resolution that has been injected into the game needs to be selected and applied manually from the game menus (OPTIONS> VIDEO> MONITOR> Display Resolution). Be especially mindful about one thing which is different from the usual behavior of my mods: the Window Mode needs to be Borderless. The custom resolution won't be available either in Fullscreen or Windowed mode.

If for some reason the game doesn't let you access the newly injected resolution, use the LB and RB shoulder buttons on your gamepad to cycle the options tab; that will force the game to refresh its internal list of available resolutions.

Apart from being so much more convenient than the trial/error trick you needed to use in the previous 10.3.0 release, this "official" way of setting the resolution leads to improved stability and performance during gameplay, and I've also found that the issues which were present formerly when antialiasing was not set to TAA are no longer there. But perhaps most importantly, the "Ignore window focus loss" workaround is not needed anymore, so you can Alt-Tab to other windows at any time without problems.

Don't go overboard with the resolution. Even on a 4090, with Ultra settings, past about 3000x3000 pixels performance will rapidly fall off a cliff. As a rule of thumb, you'll want to make sure that your 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.

Window focus

Version 10.3.0 of the mod was released with an "Ignore window focus loss" workaround. That is not needed anymore due to the new way I found of dealing with injected resolutions, so the control has been removed from the mod overlay.

Cutscenes

Cutscenes have top/bottom black bars, which I didn't disable 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.

You'll definitely want to install the third-party "Uncapped Frame Rate for Cutscenes" mod. Without it, the game will artificially limit the frame rate for cutscenes to 30 fps (why, oh why?) which looks terrible in VR, as though everything in motion was stuttering. To install third-party mods like the Uncapped FPS, you'll first need to download the Far Cry Mod Installer. All credit for those brilliant tools goes to the original creators, and I'm not incorporating them in my mod as that would be against their license, so you'll need to download and install them separately.

Graphics options

You can set all Graphics Quality options in the game menu according to your liking and to 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:

• Window Mode = Borderless (note for 10.3.0 users: this used to be Windowed but has changed now due to the new custom resolution injection technique)
• Motion Blur = OFF
• V-Sync = OFF
• Enable Framerate Lock = OFF

The following settings are preselected by RealConfig but it's possible that different values would still work correctly, although I'm not sure because I couldn't test them thoroughly:

• EXTENDED FEATURES = OFF
• Adaptive Resolution = OFF
• Resolution Scale = 1.0
• FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 = OFF

The game was sponsored by AMD, and unfortunately offers no support at all for NVIDIA DLSS :-(

Input

You will want to use a gamepad to play Far Cry 6 (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 the 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.

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 ;-)

Anti-Aliasing

I advise leaving Anti-Aliasing set to its default mode which is TAA. The halo around nearby objects and NPCs is minimal and there is very little shimmering.

There used to be issues with the other two settings (Off and SMAA) in my previous 10.3.0 release, but they are fixed now, so you're free to experiment.

Gameplay

The Far Cry mod fully supports 6 DoF tracking, i.e, the camera will follow your head rotation and movement. When your weapon is holstered, the HUD will float in space in front of you, so you can just look around in order to be able to read its full information, even the hints appearing on the sides and in the corners.

Gaze-based aiming works 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 accurate, intuitive ADS (Aiming Down Sights), remember to set your dominant eye in the "FC6" tab of the mod overlay. Binoculars work too, and tagging the enemies also follows the direction of your gaze.

I disabled depth of field effects (which are really over the top, especially during cutscenes) 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 "FC6" 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 is usable, but not 3D when in 3rd person mode. It becomes fully 3D if you switch to first person. BTW I have reports of a section of the game where the camera is forced to 3rd person during gameplay, which is causing issues in VR. I haven't reached that section yet in my playthrough, as lately I'm all modding and no playing :-( And Far Cry forbids swapping save games between players (go figure), so until I can play up to that point I can only recommend using the 2D virtual screen from the "FC6" tab of the mod overlay.

Machete kills have an animation that tends to spin the camera around. It's great fun, very cinematic (!), but be warned if you tend to suffer from motion sickness. I found that not looking down during the animation mitigates the spin effect for some reason.

Vehicles and horses work fine. Driving/riding is mostly intuitive, but sometimes you may notice that the world seems to rotate in the wrong direction if you use the right thumbstick to turn the camera at the same time as you look around with your head. Just don't do that: when on a horse or in a vehicle, either use the right thumbstick to look around while keeping your head stationary, or turn your head IRL and try not to touch the right thumbstick. The same can happen with fast vehicles: for some reason, past a certain speed the game automatically realigns the camera with the vehicle direction after a couple of seconds, which can have the same effect as manually turning it around with the stick.

A nice workaround (thanks Brandon!) for vehicles like helicopters where the world always appears to stubbornly rotate with your head is to keep your left shoulder button (LB) on the gamepad pressed. That will coax the camera into behaving properly.

Update: Tanks are fun, so I added special-case support for them. The cannon will follow your gaze now when aiming, and the FOV will be set properly so that the front window with the crosshairs will appear in its correct place. Note that the game severely limits vertical camera movement when in a tank, so if you look too high or too low the tank window will stay behind and no longer give a realistic effect. Mounted guns (either on vehicles or on the ground) also work, but they need a mixed control which is not immediately intuitive: you move the gun left/right using the right thumbstick of your gamepad, while the vertical direction is controlled by your head.

Updates, known issues and troubleshooting

1. At least on my system, the game will sometimes hang before even starting. You'll recognize that because the splash screen will not go away. Normal behavior is that after a few seconds, the splash screen should show a "Warm up PSO cache" message, counting down the number of shaders that still need to be compiled. If that message doesn't appear, you'll need to terminate the process from Task Manager or to force quit the game from the launcher before you can try again.

2. If you notice during gameplay that there is extreme color banding (like the game was using an 8-bit palette), or if some textures appear very blurry and missing all detail, your shader cache has likely become corrupted. For some reason that happens often with this title. Luckily there is an easy workaround: quit the game, navigate to the "Documents\My Games\Far Cry 6" folder, and delete the one or two files there with weird names like "31-42-39-43-39-35-32-37-46-44-33-41-30-36-43-43_pipelines.bin". After that you can launch the game again, wait for it to rebuild the shaders in the splash screen, and everything should look okay afterwards.

3. I just discovered that there are two slightly different executable paths for the Ubisoft and Ubisoft+ editions :facepalm: Thank you Gaz252, Olivier Home, Tomo and others! I have updated the Setup section of this post accordingly.

4. Release 10.3.2 improves the placement of world markers in the HUD when your own health bar is displayed (normally during combat), adds custom support for shooting from tanks (see the end of the Gameplay section above), and implements a specific workaround for people who had problems with eye swapping in the Uncharted games (FRC, "Frame delay compensation"). If the stereo image doesn't look correct in Uncharted, i.e., you feel that the images for the two eyes are swapped, try setting FRC to -1 or +1. Choose between positive and negative by turning your head left and right and observing which value makes the world look stable.

5. Release 10.3.3 fixes a problem with WMR headsets (like the HP Reverb G2) where the HUD of the game would not appear during VR gameplay. Huge kudos to mbucchia (and the rest of his team at Microsoft) for working closely with me on this one. It turns out that there is a gray area in the OpenXR spec, which was interpreted one way by Microsoft in their WMR runtime and a different way (the one I was expecting) by Meta and Valve in their own implementations. Hopefully Khronos will clarify in the next revision of the spec, but for the moment I just put in a workaround to steer clear of the corner case and make the HUD visible even on WMR headsets.

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Sorry for the long post (long even for my standards!), and I hope you'll enjoy our first VR mod for a game in the Far Cry series!!! If you like this one, I might try to work my way backwards through the rest of the franchise in the future []-)