VorpX - First Impressions (with Borderlands)

Hello everyone,

I've mentioned VorpX a few times in my blogging journey through VR land. In fact I originally intended to post on it before now, but the awesomeness of Doom 3 in VR blew that away (if you haven't read my previous blog post on Doom 3 then you need to go read that now!)

So anyway, moving on..

What is VorpX?

The VorpX software advertises itself as a 3D Driver, that turns legacy monoscopic 3D games into VR experiences. In some ways, it is not dissimilar to nVidia's 3D Vision software, that turns monoscopic games into steroscopic games, although VorpX also adds game fixes needed to make the game world look sensible from right in front of your eyeballs rather than on a monitor, as well as adding head tracking, controller tracking and other features.

In short, VorpX does it best to take old games and turn them into VR-like experiences. I deliberately say VR-like experiences rather than VR games, read on to understand why.

Before buying VorpX I wanted to find out more about the continuity of the software. There are many defunct softwares out there, especially when you are used to working with open source software like I am. VorpX isn't free and so I wanted to make sure I knew where my money was going before I bought it (much like when I bought the HTC Vive)

The VorpX "team" outwardly appears to be just one guy, "Ralf." However, Ralf does seem very dedicated, he is frequently posting in response to technical issues on the VorpX forums and the most recent release of the Software is only 1 month old, so I am guessing Ralf is doing this full time to try and make a business out of it (and apparently successfully so).

VorpX currently costs £28.99 (or $39.99). A lot of people claim this is expensive for "experimental" or "broken" software. Also a lot of people bitch about the licensing scheme, which on the surface seems quite archiac: you pay your money, install the software, email a special code to VorpX and then get your licensing key, it's all very turn of the century stuff. However, I think the setup makes sense if you figure Ralf is a one-man show. Even if he isn't one-man, it's clearly a small team, and I think the setup is reasonable to help him manage his demand.

Before You Buy - The Big Catch

Not this kind of big catch

This harks back to one of the first things I said about whether you should buy a VR headset, it does not just work out of the box and, again, a lot of people complain about this with regards to the price.

To use VorpX, you do need to be technical, you need to be prepared to learn what various settings do, scour the internet for setup guides, and be prepared to put some work into setting things up the way you like them.

But, there is a lot of help out there, the VorpX forum itself is very useful and really once you get embedded into trying stuff out, it's not really rocket science.

Should You Buy VorpX?

The answer is no if:

• You are someone that buys stuff without research.
• When you encounter problems, you like to complain about it before trying anything to fix it.
• You are a technical novice. Either you need some familiarity with 3D terms like Field of Vision, anti-aliasing, stereoscopy, etc.. or you need to be prepared to learn as you go.
• You expect a "works out of the box" experience in return for your cash. 
• You are expecting full immersion VR experience for your money.

The answer is yes if:

• You want to try your old favourite games in your VR headset
• You are prepared to put some work (mainly research) into it.
• You are not necessarily expecting full VR immersion but are more in the spirit of just giving it a go and seeing what results you can get.

Is it worth the Money? 

Subject to the buying criteria above, and based on, so far, only trying out Borderlands, I would say it is absolutely worth the money.

The fact remains that there is still not a lot of triple-A VR experiences on the market today, I would say the only one I have experience so far is Doom 3 VR. VorpX doesn't give you 100% full immersion, but it does give you the ability to enjoy your favourite triple-A games in your library in a new way with your headset.

In my opinion VorpX is very much good enough to give you more value out of your old games library and is a good return on investment for the many hundreds of hours you can get out of it. Plus, it is still improving.

Give it 3 or 5 years and a world with a bunch of triple-A titles (Fallout 4 VR cough cough can't wait cough cough), then maybe VorpX is not such a great investment, but today, there's not enough options on the made-for-VR market for VorpX to be dismissed.

A Bit More on Borderlands

Borderlands was a bit of a random choice for me. I started off by watching a YouTube post focussing on the experience of Borderlands in VorpX: [VRH] SteamVR HTC VIVE - Borderlands / VorpX. For me, the video is overly long and explanations long winded (which is why I prefer text blogs to video) but still it was a good insight into what to expect and it was enough to convince me to buy VorpX. In particular, the presenter does give you some recommended starting setting for VorpX Borderlands, which I did use.

The second great reference on how to play Bolderlands in VorpX is from a VorpX forum member: Borderlands 1 working great and FOV 120 howto.

But actually, both of these references, whilst great, seem to pre-date the DirectVR function in VorpX. DirectVR is mostly good with a little bad. The "mostly good" is that DirectVR uses pre-determined settings to make the gaming experience as VR-like as possible. When I first successfully enabled VorpX, it was after I felt reasonably good about my settings and I'd already put in about 20 hours into Borderlands with those settings, then I managed to successfully enable DirectVR for the first time and it improved the whole experience another 100%. In particular, DirectVR really smooths out the entire head-tracking experience, turning your head is a lot more fluid and full head-tracking within a small space is enabled. There is still no room-scale, and indeed the VorpX software complains if you start moving around too much, but DirectVR is a huge improvement on the non-DirectVR experience.

The "little bad" is that enabling DirectVR in Borderlands is like a roll of the dice. What you have to do is run the game and get to the point where you are in full control in the game world (i.e. loading a save game or after trundling through the very long opening videos to the point where Claptrap starts talking to you). Once you are in the game properly you then bring up the VorpX menu and select Enable DirectVR. The trouble is, you have to do this every time you run the game, and it probably works about 1 in 3 times. There are 3 components to enabling DirectVR that flash up when VorpX is doing its things, and typically 1 or 2 out of the 3 fail. All you can do is try again to get it working. I typically find that 1 in 3 times it will work straight away, and then you can have your gaming session for however long you like. But, the other 2 out of 3, you'll click try again in a the vain hope it will start working but it will eventually crash your game and then you'll have to load it up again.

I find the best chances for success literally are to touch nothing and keep your head still as much as possible until you manage to hit the Enable DirectVR button.

To Summarise

This is what I was talking about in my very first blog post in needing to be technical. VorpX has a lot of potential and it still being improved. I think £28.99 is a good investment to get even more value out of your old gaming favourites, but you do need to be prepared to play around.

Even now, Borderlands in VorpX is not a fully immersive experience, it doesn't feel like you are really there in the game world when you are looking around, the graphics are fairly low-res and blocky and it requires some patience to get working. However, it is fully in 3D, head tracking works very well and it is a really fun way to take a run through Borderlands again.

I should also say that, in restrospect, Borderlands was probably a fairly poor first choice of game to try VorpX in. It seems that the likes of Skyrim, Fallout 3 and 4 and the Bioshock series are better choices, based on people's reviews and posts. I'll have to reserve judgement on that until I try them for myself.

I think Bioshock 1 will be my next VorpX adventure..... Stay tuned!