Happy holidays in VR with Far Cry 5!!! (Patreon)

Updates and known issues: scroll down to the end for the latest information.

As I anticipated to you some time ago, I'm trying to work my way backwards through the Far Cry series, and today is Father's day (if you never played this game before in 2D, you'll get what I mean after just a couple of cutscenes!).

Release 11.0.1 of the R.E.A.L. VR mod, attached at the end of the post, adds Far Cry 5 to the list of titles that we can play in VR. It also solves the remaining issues that were present in Cyberpunk 2077 since the latest official update (see the "Additional fixes" section below).

While I was modding Far Cry 5, I found out a few new ways to coax the Dunia engine to behave properly in VR. I backported (forward-ported?) those improvements to Far Cry 6, and now both games play much better in Virtual Reality than FC6 did when I first put out release 10.3.0 in early September.

Jump to the Setup section a little further ahead if you're impatient to try Far Cry 5, or check out Beardo Benjo's gameplay video above for some laughs (as usual don't forget to like and subscribe because he's doing awesome work, to the point that he won the award for best VR content creator of the year!).

Whatever your favorite holiday is, enjoy it with your dear ones, relax, and I wish you'll be able to find lots of time to spend in VR because virtual worlds are so amazing []-D

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 5 (new)
• Far Cry 6
• 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
• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

All games implement AER v2.

Additional fixes

Cyberpunk 2077

Release 11.0.0 (and later) gets rid of the remaining issues with the HUD which I had already fixed in the past, but which official update 2.1 brought back to the game when playing in VR. Specifically, the phone menu and subtitles to dialogue and cutscenes will no longer get stuck in headlocked mode after interacting with NPCs during missions, and danger/alert markers above NPC heads will be fully visible again.

Far Cry 6

This release extends to the game a few important improvements that I could only come up with after studying and modding FC5. In particular:

• Using vehicles will be much easier and more intuitive. Freelook in VR when driving/piloting is now completely decoupled from the game's own camera, so the game won't constantly try to realign your gaze with the vehicle's direction. More specifically: the final camera direction in VR will be a composition of the angle given by the game camera (which is controlled by the right thumbstick) and the orientation of your head. If you use your head to look around, the game camera will not be influenced, and you can freelook without any annoyances. If you rotate the game camera with your right thumbstick, what happens depends on the rotation amount: if you tweak the direction just a little, the game will "helpfully" realign the camera with the vehicle's direction after a couple of seconds. If instead you use the right thumbstick to rotate the camera by a large amount, then the game will not interfere with your decision. All of that is true when not holding a weapon: if you're shooting with a pistol from a vehicle, you will get gaze-based aiming and the game camera will simply follow the orientation of your head.
• I implemented a new detection system for weapons like mounted guns that disables gaze tracking completely. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no way to move mounted guns in Far Cry games according to where the player is looking at, so I believe it's best to disable gaze-based aiming completely in those situations. At least it won't be a confusing mix of left/right controlled by the thumbstick and up/down controlled by your head: now mounted guns will just be fully controlled by the thumbstick while the camera has freelook. The crosshair won't be in the correct position, but it doesn't matter much because mounted guns give you a pretty clear idea where you're shooting at, just by watching where the bullets go ;-)
• Binoculars should now be zooming in correctly even for people who have the Steam version of the game.

Setup

I developed and tested the Far Cry 5 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. Also, make sure that your video drivers are updated to the latest version, even though FC5 is an older game.

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 5\bin_plus" folder if you have the Ubisoft+ subscription, or "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\games\Far Cry 5\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 "FarCry5.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 5 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

The most annoying thing with this FC5 conversion is setting the resolution at startup. A few steps are needed to make Far Cry 5 run properly in VR:

• boot up the game, which will most likely start in fullscreen mode;
• put on your headset and watch or skip the intro movies;
• once you get to the main menu, bring up the mod overlay (for Far Cry 5 that is done by pressing both thumbsticks on the gamepad at the same time). There, 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;
• the new custom resolution will have been injected into the "Borderless" category, but due to a quirk in the engine that I haven't been able to sort out yet, it won't be immediately available;
• in game, go to OPTIONS> VIDEO> MONITOR, choose Borderless mode, and select the first available Borderless resolution (typically 1920x1080): apply it and confirm;
• then go all the way back to the main game menu, and once more select OPTIONS then VIDEO then MONITOR. The injected resolution will finally be available in the Borderless category and you'll be able to select and apply it.

You'll know that the correct resolution is set because the window on the monitor will appear squashed vertically, but in the headset the aspect ratio will be correct. Also the R.E.A.L. VR overlay will report it as the current VR resolution.

The resolution will remain valid until you quit the game. On the next gameplay session, Far Cry 5 will remember your injected resolution, but it won't be automatically activated for some reason. What I do to get it back is quite simple (a little tedious, but you only have to do it once per play session):

• boot the game up;
• put on your headset and watch or skip the intro movies (the window on the desktop will be cut, but in VR everything will be visible);
• when the main menu finally becomes available select OPTIONS and then VIDEO. Make sure that Borderless is selected and your custom resolution will be shown (although inactive). Temporary switch from that to the standard one (1920x1080) and press B on the gamepad. The game will apply 1920x1080 and ask you if that's okay. Answer no (another B) and the game will finally apply the custom resolution, which will result in a squashed image on the desktop monitor but a correct one in VR.

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.

The game is not heavy on cutscenes (most gameplay is based on combat and free-roaming, without too much handholding), but when cinematic portions are present, they are really intense and well implemented, with very few artifacts like missing props or broken animations. The intro sequence in particular is truly something that you'll want to add to your personal collection of "OMG did I really experience that in VR?"

Game options

You can set all graphics and gameplay 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:

• Reticle Position = Offset
• Window Mode = Borderless
• Aspect Ratio = NATIVE (16x9)
• 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:

• Dynamic Resolution (target frame rate) = Off
• Resolution Scale = 1

I also recommend setting "HD Textures" to On unless you card is really low on video memory.

Input

You will want to use a gamepad to play Far Cry 5 (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.

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 ;-)

Gameplay

The Far Cry 5 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 "FC5" 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 because usually they have no place in VR, and in Far Cry games they make weapon models look all blurry, especially when you aim down the sights. However, since I always believe in keeping as faithful to the original gameplay and design as possible, the "FC5" tab of the mod overlay will allow you to restore them if you so wish (game restart needed). Also, in 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.

Some animations look weird in virtual reality, like entering ladders or reviving allies.

All kinds of vehicles (ground, sea, air) work pretty well, with a new system that I also ported over to my FC6 mod. Freelook in VR when driving/piloting is completely decoupled from the game's own camera, so the game won't constantly try to realign your gaze with the vehicle's direction. More specifically: the final camera direction in VR will be a composition of the angle given by the game camera (which is controlled by the right thumbstick) and the orientation of your head. If you use your head to look around, the game camera will not be influenced, and you can freelook without any issues. If you rotate the game camera with your right thumbstick, what happens depends on the rotation amount: if you tweak the direction just a little, the game will "helpfully" realign the camera with the vehicle's direction after a couple of seconds. If instead you use the right thumbstick to rotate the camera by a large amount, then the game will not interfere with your decision. All of that is true when not holding a weapon: if you're shooting with a pistol from a vehicle, you will get gaze-based aiming and the game camera will just follow the orientation of your head.

I implemented a new detection technique for weapons like mounted guns that disables gaze tracking completely. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no way to swivel mounted guns in Far Cry games according to where the player is looking at, so it's best to disable gaze-based aiming completely in those situations. Mounted guns will just be fully controlled by the thumbstick, while the camera allows you to freelook. The crosshair won't be in the correct position, but it doesn't matter much because mounted guns give you a pretty clear idea where you're shooting at, just by watching where the bullets go.

Updates and known issues

Release 11.0.1, Dec 24: This hotfix should solve the problem of Far Cry 5 not entering VR for AMD graphics card users. Apparently the game has two separate code paths according to the GPU it runs on, and I had only fixed the one used for NVIDIA cards.

Steam Input: Some users have been encountering a bug where the game does not recognize certain inputs, like for instance braking while taxiing in a plane. Disabling Steam Input (globally or for the game) should take care of the problem.

Widescreen monitors: Just like with Far Cry 6, if you are using a desktop monitor resolution which is not 16:9 and the game appears to be using the wrong FOV (which results in the world distorting as you look from side to side), make sure to set your desktop to a 16:9 resolution before starting the game. Maybe there is an easier solution to this issue, but for now that's the only workaround we have found.

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Enjoy, and thank you all for an incredible 2023!!! Except in the case of updates that cause major disruptions to any of the mods in our collection, I'll be seeing you in January!