nVidia VR Funhouse (Verdict: Great Fun)

Good morning, afternoon, evening and night my VR followers,

If you have been reading my blog, you'll know that my opinion of the VR software market is that you have to pay a lot for not much at the moment. As a result I'm still very much tied to looking at the free or low cost games and experiences you can play.

Actually, I'm spending most of my time in Fallout 3 using VorpX. It's really great fun, slightly tarnished by the instability of the game, but fast and easy quicksaving means you only need a bit of patience for that.

So on the side I'm still trying other things out, and I recently discovered that the nVidia VR Funhouse is free on Steam. So here is a review!

What is it?

nVidia VR Funhouse serves 2 purposes

1. It is 9 funfair style mini games of varying types.
2. It is a tech demo of nVidia VR graphics

The Games

The games are based on either a throwing, shooting or hitting mechanic.

Clown Painter

1. Clown Painter - You have to shoot paint into the mouths of clown heads in order to pop the overhead balloons. The guns have a paint cartridge that only recharges when not being used, so part of the game is managing your 2 guns so you are not wasting time.
2. Fire Archer - Basic shoot the target game, but the flame arrows means it doesn't matter where you hit the target, score is based on target difficulty.
3. Balloon Knight - You are in a circle where balloons starting inflating from around you and you have to pop them with the 2 swords you have. Slashing the balloons doesn't work because the sides of the sword are dull, you have to pop them with the tip, which adds to the challenge.
4. Basketball - Standard fairground game to get as many balls in the hoop as you can.
5. Wallwalker - You have to fling jelly octupuses (octupi?) at a target and make sure they permanently stick in order to keep your score.
6. Whack-a-Mole - Standard fairground whack-a-mole with 5 targets.
7. Mole Boxing - The same moles return. They spring towards you and you have to punch them back.
8. Shooting Gallery - Shoot all the pottery in the allotted time.
9. Cannon Skeet - Similar to shooting gallery except this time the pottery is being fired up in the air by a moving cannon.

Whack-a-mole

The games are actually pretty fun. There is a good variance in the different types of play and if I did badly in a round, I found myself wanting to do better before moving onto the next game. Wallwalker is one of my favourites because as well as throwing the octupus at the target, you have to do it in such a way that you get a good splat with as many legs as possible. If only a couple of legs stick then there is a good chance it will fall off the target and you will lose your score.

And that sums up one of the things I like about these mini games, to get the best score possible, you are thinking about the physics in orders to get the best score, whether it is throwing the octupus using a certain technique or trying to find the easiest way to throw the basketballs.

The other thing I like is you can think outside the box a bit and cheat to gain a small advantage. For example, with the basketball game, the balls are halfway up the machine on a platform that only retracts when the timer starts, but actually you can lean forward and grab a ball in each hand before the timer starts to get that extra second for the best score.

Balloon Knight

Also, I discovered, there is the odd achievement for doing silly stuff outside the immediate game mechanics. After a game of whack-a-mole I casually decided to throw my hammer into the fairground outside of your arena just because, you know, why not? I got a Steam achievement that suggested I was teasing out my frustration for having a mundane job.😊

Well... I think testing is a mundane job, and I work in IT.😛

As a Tech Demo

nVidia VR Funhouse is actually quite a cool tech demo as well. The graphics as far as the general environment go are to a good standard, but the real point of the demo are the special effects. Flame effects, water stream and splat effects, very high particle confetti and the general physics. All the effects are very convincing and cool. The confetti in particular is something that might pass you by unless you take a second to stop and admire it, literally 100s or 1000s of confetti particles around you, all with their own depth relative to you, spinning and blustering around, and all being individually rendered very smoothly, it's actually quite impressive.

Cannon Skeet

The downside to this is that the software does put quite a high spec requirement on you. It is higher than the GTX 970 which is the base HTC Vive spec, and which I have. It says the minimum requirement is a GTX 1060 and when the game first starts you might get frustrated with that. Why? Well, when the game first starts, you are wondering if it's going to be a load of crap because it's jerking around, the SteamVR empty world pops in a few times, frame rate drops to single figures, etc. So first thing you'll do, or first thing I did anyway, was go to settings and put them on minimum. However, I found changing the low-medium-high graphics setting didn't make a whole lot of difference.

Have patience, however, because actually, if you give the game 30-60 seconds to settle down, it goes back to being a very smooth VR experience, even on my GTX 970. It seems the game just needs some time to finish loading itself up when it first starts and then it is basically fine. It's a bit odd, really, because you'd expect a company like nVidia to do better than creating such a poor initial experience, but nonetheless, patience is well rewarded. Maybe this issue is only because I have a less than minimum spec GTX 970 for this game, I'd be interested in knowing how other peoples' experience are.

To Summarise

Well it's free, so the price is right. The graphics are good, the games are good fun. There's the issues with the game being choppy right after startup but really it is no big deal.

nVidia VR Funhouse is one of those games where you think this would make a great party game with a few friends round. Trouble is, of course, you only have the one headset.

My final point, if you are a hard working career person and don't get nearly enough exercise (I'm giving away my secrets) then you'd do well to play this game just because actually it will warm you up when you are waving your swords around or whacking or punching moles! Play it once a day, spend 5 minutes getting your blood flowing (or do some proper exercise instead).

I highly recommend nVidia VR Funhouse. Free and good clean fun for all the family.

Mobile VR vs Full VR - How Does it Compare?

Hello everyone,

Buying a full-on PC/console tethered VR headset is an expensive proposition. If you are like me then you need to be really sure you are going to get your money's worth when you drop several hundred pounds on a full-scale VR system. And there are plenty of options out there, some of them quite cheap.

So this article attempts to answer the question "Why drop several hundred on a full-on VR system when you can get much cheaper VR solutions?"

First, you need to understand today's VR market. You can categorise the market in several ways.

Is it VR/AR/MR?

An example of Augmented Reality - virtual on top of real.

The key categories here are VR and AR. VR (Virtual Reality)
really means a completely artificial world. Everything you are seeing is being drawn by a computer. AR (Augmented Reality) means that a computer is drawing artificial objects on top of a view of the real world. The most widely known example of AR is Pokemon Go, which had millions of people across the world wandering around the streets with their smartphones (and occasionally walking into traffic). People were chasing Pokemon that were drawn on their phone screens over a camera view of the world.

You have MR (Mixed Reality) as well. Technically, MR consists of Augmented Reality (Artificial objects overlayed onto the real world) and Augmented Virtuality (Real world objects that can interact with a virtual world). If you brain is starting to explode then I invite you to forget the term Mixed Reality because of the next question.

Is it available today?

There are loads of VR/AR/MR technologies out there that are still in development. Microsoft, Intel and other companies are all working on their own versions. The future is exciting, but it is also full of marketing, pipe dreams and frankly, wishful thinking. If you are interested in what you can buy today, then you can buy VR and that is about it.

Mobile vs Tethered VR

Google Cardboard - Ultra cheap

As a basic definition, mobile VR means a fully mobile device you can chuck in your suitcase and take with you. Tethered VR means a unit that has to be either physically or wirelessly coupled with a main unit that does all the processing needed to create and manage the artificial world.

Today, the definition of "mobile" goes a bit deeper as well, because it currently literally means VR on your mobile phone, which you then turn into a VR headset with a headset accessory you put your mobile into.

So to summarise what is available?

Mobile-phone based VR and full-on "tethered" VR, it really is that simple.

So how do the 2 types compare?

There are several major points of comparison between mobile and tethered VR.

		Mobile VR		Tethered VR
Display Resolution		Similar to 1080p		Similar to 1080p
Effective Resolution		720p		720p
Field of View		A little restricted		High
Refresh Rate		Moderate		High
Relative Cost		Inexpensive		Really expensive
Quality of Experience		Okay		Good
Feeling of Immersion		Poor		Excellent

Let me explain these ratings:

Samsung Gear VR - A controller doesn't improve mobile VR.

• Display Resolution - Both mobile and tethered VRs have similar pixel resolutions on the displays, a little higher than what you would get on a full HD TV, but of course on a very small display.
• Effective Resolution - The problem with these displays is that they are centimetres from your eyeballs. When viewing VR worlds, the actual resolution appears more like 720p i.e. if you watch a movie on a virtual screen in the game and have it a large but comfortable size, it will be around 720p. The effective resolution is probably the single most obvious limitation of today's VR technology.
• Field of View - This means how much to the left/right and up/down can you see. Mobile VRs have quite restrictive lenses on them, which means it feels like you are looking through a small tunnel. Tethered VR doesn't have this problem and has a very natural feeling Field of View.
• Refresh Rate - Basically, mobile is 60Hz and tethered is 90Hz. The human body is much more sensitive to refresh rate in VR than it is on a display like a TV screen or a monitor. In particular, research suggests low refresh rates are a key trigger of motion sickness and immersion breaking, so a high refresh rate is essential for the "feels like you are really there and not about to be sick" experience.
• Relative Cost - The cheapest mobile VR solution is Google Cardboard, which costs a few pounds/dollars. That's assuming you already have the right mobile phone of course, but most people have something that will work (Samsung or iPhone). There's no escaping that tethered VR costs a lot, always several hundred even for the cheapest solutions like PSVR, and that doesn't even include the PC or console itself.
• Quality of Experience - This is very subjective of course, but personally I think that mobile VR is quite limited an experience. The 360 videos are okay but you can only have so much fun with that. The interactive VR experiences are okay but again, I got bored of them quickly. Probably the most mileage I got was turning my phone into a 3D cinema, but the drawback with that is the movies are quite low resolution once you cram them into the right format. Tethered VR is much better across the board, in particular the head tracking is way way better on tethered VR for better immersion and the technology allows for much deeper experiences as well then stupid rollercoaster or just plodding around underwater. See the Everest VR experience, for example.
• Feeling of Immersion - In my opinion, it's just not there on mobile, not on anything I tested anyway and I've tried both iPhone and Samsung based tech. It's fun, and you might like it if it is all you've tried, but tethered VR competely craps on mobile VR for immersion. When you try tethered VR it will be the first time you really feel you are there, to walk around objects, look at them and feel like you are completely there in the virtual world, to be able to judge distance, speed of objects, depth all the same as in the real world.

So back to the question then...

Why drop several hundred on a full-on VR system when you can get much cheaper VR solutions?

Because, quite frankly, mobile VR is rubbish today. I tried it for a few months before I bought the HTC Vive and I have not used it since buying the Vive. You might argue that mobile VR has progressed a lot in the last several months or last year, I'm sorry, but I don't believe it has caught up. What's more, over the next year, maybe mobile VR will progress a lot more still, but tethered VR will have moved ahead.

Mobile VR is great if you just want to spend a few pounds or dollars on something fun, view a few 3D movies, try the rollercoaster or underwater apps. But the whole tech is limited by the fact that you are doing all this on a phone - limited battery, limited processing power, limited experience.

Tethered VR is not perfect, but the limitations there are real bleeding edge technology limitations. You're not hampered by processing power, your limited with how many pixels you can cram onto a really small display. You're not hampered by battery, you're hampered by a physical cable you have to drag around with you. You're not hampered by the technology having to trade off processing power vs battery life, you're hampered by the fact that the technology that drives the unit (i.e. your PC) costs a lot on top of the VR headset (unless you are lucky like me an just happened to have a VR capable PC).

With mobile VR, you're limited by problems inherent with it being mobile-tech based on mobile phones. With tethered VR, you are limited by the forefront of the technology.

If you are serious about VR, you'll buy a tethered unit. The different is night and day!

No Wonder Game Are Struggling

In my very first post I said that I would write about Game at some stage. My motivation for doing so was off the back of a ridiculous situation that came up when I tried to buy my HTC Vive from Game, apparently they didn't want my business!

Who Are Game?

Game used to be an international operation, although I'm not sure they ever operated in the US and I'm not sure if they operate outside the UK today. So for all you guys from all over the world, let me describe who they are.

Back in the day, probably 20 years ago, the main video games shop on the high street I remember were Electronics Boutique, a very oddly named store that I didn't initially realise was all about computer games. Whilst Electronics Boutique was still going, the Game shops started to appear and then at some stage, Game bought out all the EB stores.

Remember these guys?

This led to some oddities, like in my local town for example, there used to be a Game shop and an EB shop competing against each other, and you could see one shop from the front of the other. You'd think once Game bought out EB they would have shut one of the shops, but no! Both stores continued to operate until Game went into administration a few years ago, and then apparently someone started making some sensible decisions and closed one of the stores down.

So, just to make that point again, you had 2 Game shops almost literally within spitting distance competing against each other for years, possibly a decade.

Really, the pattern of questionable business practices was established then.

So Are/Were They Any Good?

Amazon - cheaper than everyone?

Game genuinely was a good store at the time. Prior to the days of Amazon pretty much being the cheapest for everything, Game was a good place to go to get all the latest games, consoles, gaming peripherals, etc. I recall them being very competitive on price and they had decent sales and I would often just go in a Game shop and have a look whenever I was out shopping for something.

The trouble is, even after they went through a period of administration, they don't really seem to have worked out that the world has moved on. They streamlined some of their sections, the PC one particularly (having utterly failed to compete against Steam for years), shut down some of their shops, and basically made a bunch of business decisions they should have made years ago.

So They're Good Again Now, Right?

Well.... kinda.... not really.

I think the only reason Game still exists at all is because of the convenience of their trade-in service, that is, getting some cash for your old games and hardware. They have a system where you get a pittance if you want cash, but they upgrade that to a "low but more like it" offer if you take store credit. You can definitely get more money if you sell the games yourself on eBay, but then you have the hassle of doing it all, making sure you have padded bags, having to mail it, dealing with potential idiot customers, etc.. so the convenience goes a long way.

Game's games prices (did you get that) tend to be on the expensive side these days, but I build up my store credit over time and then wait for a January or summer Sale and do okay out of that.

So Where Does the HTC Vive Come In?

So the situation was that I basically had 2 places I could buy my HTC Vive from at the best price, Amazon not being one of them this time. It was Game or PC World.

At the time, I had about £20 of store credit build up, plus another £7 left over on a gift card I received as a present. Plus Game were doing a deal of double points on the purchase of the HTC Vive so I would have got about £30 worth of store credit from the sale as well. So about £27 off the price and another £30 credit back again.

Except Game rejected my business!

I actually found out what happened from my credit card company. They said that due to the nature of the transaction i.e. a high value purchase from a store normally associated with smaller purchases, they asked the merchant (i.e. Game) some additional security questions as part of the standard transaction process.

Game didn't bother replying at all, so the credit card company cancelled the transaction. They then phoned me up to explain what happened, which actually I thought was good service from my credit card provider.

So I placed the same order with PC World and received my Vive 2 days later.

Game Astounds Me

I really really don't understand how Game continues to thrive with such a long track record of poor business management. There was nothing to single me out from any other member of the public with this transaction, so I can only think Game are also pushing away other customers like this. The HTC Vive is one of the most high value items Game sells, and yet they don't even have the process in place to ensure they complete the transactions, it's unbelievable.

I continue to use Game because of the convenience of the trade-in service, and will probably continue to do so until they die as a business. Because I'm sure they will die as a business at some stage. They are so completely out of touch with the customer it is ridiculous...

• They are relatively expensive these days, still charging full list price for games you basically always can get for cheaper on Amazon.
• They just about give enough money for trade-ins, but their second hand game prices are stupid expensive also. But a second hand copy of this game that came out 2 weeks ago for 50p less than brand new, and still more then you can get the game brand new on Amazon. What an amazing deal!
• Their choice of hardware peripherals these days is extremely limited. For example, their genuine Sony PlayStation peripherals range seems to be mainly limited to just the controllers these days. I bought my PS4 dual charging station and Move controllers online because Game didn't have them.
• Even their game selections for the latest consoles is not what it used to be.

I no longer wander into Game if I happen to be on the high street because... what's the point? They never have anything interesting. I only go in there now if I've got something to trade in or I've built up store credit to the point where I really need to spend it. I bet their foot traffic has dropped massively over the last few years.

If the people in charge of Game had any sense whatsoever, they'd be doing 2 things.

1. Understand why they still survive today, the trade-in service is a part of it, and work out how they can maximise bringing customers into the shop on that basis. More special deals for extra cash on your trade-ins are needed. Or trade-in your old Skyrim to get the new Enhanced version for half price, things like that.
2. Work out how they can sell games at better rates, or with better deals. The only time anyone should buy from a Game shop is when they want a game literally right away. You can even get release-day games from Amazon these days, for less price than Game! It's insane, they need to work something out.

Thanks for Reading This Post

My genuine thanks to you for reading this far. This blog post is a bit of a rant I guess, I swore to myself I'd write it when the whole business with buying my HTC Vive went down, because it is just so silly. So thanks for being prepared to read something a bit different to my normal technical posts about using the Vive itself.

Game's future is limited, mark my words.

Fallout 3 in VR Using VorpX

I said I was going to try BioShock as my next VorpX game, and I did indeed start going through the motions of getting it all set up. However, I got frustrated with trying to create a decent control scheme for BioShock, and I don't find using the mouse and keyboard satisfactory when using the headset, because you can't see the damn keys on the keyboard, so I put BioShock away for now and switched to Fallout 3 instead.

Fallout 3 in VorpX is Actually Pretty Good

As with so many things in life, there is good news and bad news when it comes to getting Fallout 3 working well in VorpX. The good news, really good news actually, is that Fallout 3 does look really really good in VorpX. In fact it looks good enough to give you full immersion and feel you are actually there.

Really the main thing which stops this being a VR experience as good as Doom 3 VR is the control scheme. Unfortunately, the way the VorpX seems to utilise the Vive controllers is either to mimic a mouse or a gamepad, and actually neither is any good in my opinion, but I'll talk more about that later. Still, using the gamepad, as I was with Borderlands, is still great and I'm now about 20 hours in and looking to finish the game and DLCs playing this way, assuming the game lets me.

This brings me to the second thing stopping full VR immersion, you are still at the mercy of Fallout 3's bugs. I've had a few crashes and this is nothing to do with VorpX I think, it is in line with my memory of playing Fallout 3 previously.

Fallout 3 in VorpX is Really Tricky to Set Up

Fallout 3 in VorpX - A lot of work, a lot of reward

This is the bad news, it was the trickiest title yet to get just right. This is due to a combination of the game core problems (bugs basically), the fact that VorpX, although looking great in Geometry 3D mode, really does tax your graphics card, and the really odd way VorpX messes around with physical and virtual controllers.

The Bugs and How to Deal with Them

The saving grace to Fallout 3's bugs is that there are mods to fix most of them. If you are setting up Fallout 3 to run in VorpX then you want to install a bunch of mods right after you install the game.

I recommend you do not use the Fallout 3 Mod Manager (FOMM), or the Nexus Mod Manager (NMM). Even when they were maintained they were temperemental, and I found it buggy as hell trying to use is this time. If you are running Fallout 3 in VR you want to avoid all the texture and graphics upgrade mods anyway because they'll bog your system down, which is going to be taxed running Fallout 3 in Geometry 3D mode. Installing the relatively small number of mods you need to fix bugs isn't rocket science, some of them are straight installer executables anyway, and the ones that aren't have instructions.

Sadly, these aren't the type of bugs I am talking about

You want the following patches installed.

• UPDATED Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - This one patch fixes a huge list of the game's bugs.
• ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated - This is just a tool that makes it easier to install other mods, but it is essential, don't forget to include it.
• Games for Windows LIVE Disabler - The Windows Live overlay is a massive pain in the arse. Believe me, you want rid of it.
• Fallout Script Extender (FOSE) and Enhanced Camera - FOSE is required by Enhanced Camera. Enhanced Camera does 3 good things which aids the VR experience. 1) It renders your body even in first person mode, I like this because it means you see your shadow as you move around moodily lit areas. 2) It stops the game switching you to third person mode during certain actions, like sitting down, also aiding the VR experience. 3) It has a setting which minimises the automatic zoom when you talk to people and use the Pip Boy, which is actually critical for Pip Boy use in VR (explained in further detail later). Fallout 3 defaults to putting people right in your face when you talk to them, which is really annoying when you are in VR.
• Purge Cell Buffers - I'm not sure if this one is strictly necessary, but it basically automates the flushing of buffers in the game, which is meant to reduce the build of lag when you play the game for a while. I installed it to maximise the game's stability.
• Large Address Aware Enabler for FO3 - This lets the game use more than the old-school 32 bit limit of 2GB of memory. Again, meant to enhance stability.

The above is what I recommend for VR. You are free to install other mods as you like, but I recommend keeping it to a minimum, you don't know how some mods might affect the games stability. Also, just to repeat, you should specifically avoid texture and graphics upgrades, you don't want to reduce performance in this game. I did install a few additional mods myself, I like to install the body changer mods to improve the default game bodies, I install a basic armour replacer to match the body changer and I put in a few texture replacers for books, posters and billboards. Plus a few other small mods like map enhancers and things like that.

Enhanced Camera - An essential tool as well as cool!

When you run the game for the first time, it will auto-detect your PC's power and set you to a graphics level. If your PC is VR capable then you are going to get the "Ultra-High" settings by default. I have an nVidia 970 GTX and I find using High instead of Ultra-High seems to give good enough performance without really making any noticeable difference in-game. I'd also recommend going through the LOD distance sliders for various settings i.e. people, objects, grass, etc and pulling those down to the mid-way point. The reality is that VR is not high resolution enough to see much in the distance anyway so there is not much point reducing performance to draw stuff you can't see anyway.

DirectVR Does the 95% of the Job

Having gone through the chore of all the above, you'll be pleased to know that if you fire up the game, get to the point where you are in control for the first time (as a baby) and enable DirectVR, the game takes care of most of the settings for you. I adjusted the depth and size of the HUD for my preference.

DirectVR Screws the Controllers

This is the second to last problem to solve. It seems that VorpX tries to do a lot of fancy stuff with physical and virtual mice/keyboards/gamepads, etc, I am guessing to try and enable the use of the Vive (or Oculus) controllers. But it is unusable for me.

The problem is that VorpX tries to turn your Vive controllers either into a mouse or gamepad, and the problem with that is it locks the right controller to controlling the game's camera.

If you are looking to use the Vive's controllers then it should be because you want to stand up and duck and look around for yourself, and I ask you, what use is having a controller dedicated to moving the camera around when you can just look around by turning your head? It's insane to me, and unfortunately, the VorpX software does not currently let you reassign the controls of the right controller, so the feature is basically useless.

(Actually, I'm not the only one to think this way. A couple of folks have requested to be able to remap the right controller in the VorpX forums and the VorpX developer Ralf says he has added it to his list of change requests).

The real downside is, in order to do all this fancy stuff with the Vive controllers which is unusable for me, VorpX does crazy stuff with the mouse and gamepad drivers, to the extent where it disables your actual physical gamepad. Basically, you need to make sure your Vive controllers are switched off, disable the Vive Controller settings in the game, and you should be able to get VorpX to give you your gamepad controller back.

This does leave you in the situation, however, where enabling DirectVR screws around with the controllers and pops up a dialog box in the game telling you your controller is disabled. If you don't OK the dialog, then it stop DirectVR from working. It's maddening! The solution is to enable the DirectVR scan and then makes sure you OK this dialog straight away, so the DirectVR scan succeeds.

What a pain in the arse just to use your frigging gamepad like you normally would!

In Your Face Pip Boy

This is way too close in VR, but there's a trick to move it back

This is the very last problem to solve. When you bring up your pip boy, the game puts it right in your face, and I mean RIGHT IN your face. It's so close you'll go bog eyed trying to focus on it.

The quick and dirty solution is to use the Edge Peek feature of Vorpx when using the Pip Boy, but I don't like this because it breaks immersion and you use the Pip Boy all the time in the game.


Thankfully, there is a trick you can do to pull the interface back a bit and eliminate the need to use Edge Peek. It's still very close but it makes it way more usable and you just need a second to focus on it rather than going bog eyed like before.

This forum post on the issue solves the problem, and it makes use of the Enhanced Camera mod to do so. Basically you need to manually edit the mod's .ini file to change a setting, and it reduces the zoom when using the Pip Boy and when talking to people without affecting the rest of the game.

Enjoy!

So, after all this hard work, I think it would be very rude not to put some serious hours into playing Fallout 3, at least until the game's bugs make it too much of a chore. I will update you all in a later blog post to let you know how far I got, and whether Fallout 3 in VR is playable to the end or not.

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!

Doom 3 VR (Verdict: Top Quality)

My original plan when I created my first blog post, was to spend this one talking about VorpX. However, having spent a week and a half tinkering around with VorpX, looking up videos on how to set it up, and playing Borderlands with it and having a reasonably good time, I kept seeing references during my general internet research on how great Doom 3 was in VR using the VR mod. So I thought I'd try it out....

And actually I haven't touched Borderlands since (although I will go back to it soon). There is a very good reason for this.

Doom 3 VR is Frickin' Amazing!

Doom 3 VR is not difficult to set up, much easier than using VorpX, and it is a fully immersive VR experience throughout the entire game. You are truly transported to running around inside the Doom 3 game, you feel the walls around you (not literally), you are nervously shining the torch into every dark corner, tip-toeing and peeking around corners trying to get the jump on the bad guys for a change.

It really is a true VR experience and, unlike so many other made-for-VR things on the market, it is not just a demo, you can play it from start to finish, and also it is not short, it is the full Doom 3 experience and as a guess I probably put about 50 hours into completing it.

The Installation

The game is on Steam, which is very handy for us HTC Vive owners. You may well own it already in some previous Steam Summer or Winter sale. Actually I assumed myself that I already owned it, but I didn't. Regular price is only £14.99, which might ordinarily be seen as not great for such an old game. However, compared to other made-for-VR titles, for the amount of time you'll get out of it £14.99 is a bargain.

Step 1 of the installation is to buy Doom 3 BFG Edition on Steam (it has to be the BFG Edition specifically) and install it.

Step 2 is to download the VR mod for either the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive headset and install it. I can provide the link for the Oculus Rift mod here but obviously all my experience is using the HTC Vive edition. Installation of the mod is very easy, it installs like any other application.

• Doom 3 BFG VR: Fully Possessed (HTC Vive)
• Doom 3 BFG VR (Oculus Touch)

Step 3, to run the game, make sure Steam is running (SteamVR doesn't have to be, it will auto-start) and then run the Doom 3 VR shortcut that you get on your desktop. When the mod first runs it will give you the option of Doom 1, Doom 2 or Doom 3. Doom 1 and 2 are not actually VR, they are the games set to run in virtual desktop, which is a nice touch because you get Doom 1 and 2 with Doom 3 BFG Edition, but we don't care about that because we want to run Doom 3 in full VR, so select Doom 3 accordingly.

That's it, you are now in Doom 3 world in VR. You can use the Vive controllers to do everything you need to do, from any settings you wish to change from playing the game.

Actually, I think there is a step 4 here. I am not a great fan of how the default controls are mapped out and I did modify them extensively. I had:

I danced in front of the mirror. Does that make me tragic?

• Normal run movement (not blink) set to my left touchpad, because I don't suffer from motion sickness
• Sprint set to left touchpad press (it's very natural when you are panicking in the game to press the touchpad harder)
• The torch set to the left controller squeeze buttons.
• The PDA set to left controller top button.
• Reload on the right controller squeeze.
• Next/previous weapon set on the right touch pad up and down
• System menu set on the top button.
• I removed any mapping to blink movement.

There are many other settings you can change as well, like how much of your body
is rendered. You can render the entire body, which is not 100% ideal because you do see the top of your chest sometimes, but it is a distraction you can get over. You can set to render forearms and weapons only, or just weapons. I set the whole body to render because it looks better against all the light sources and shadows in the game, as well as the few mirrors you come across.

After setting the full body to render, I must admit, the first time I saw a bathroom mirror, I actually started dancing with my character in front of the mirror. 😁

The Overall Experience

There's definitely a new intensity to playing Doom 3 from within the world rather than just seeing it on a screen. I'm a seasoned First Person Shooter player and also I've played Doom 3 before, so I'm well used to baddies jumping out of nowhere and having to have the right gun ready for the right situation. But playing Doom 3 in VR feels just so much more real. I was slowly walking around rooms making sure my back was against a safe wall so no-one got the jump on me, I was constantly using my flashlight to make sure I knew what was in that dark corner, and I was often moving up to a corner using the touchpad and then physically walking to the edge of it and peering round using room-scale.

Imagine this thing actually coming for you

The way you interact with terminal is pretty cool as well. When you step up to a terminal you can interact with, the gun in your right hand disappears and your character extend the index finger. So you can then use you hand (Vive Controller) to actually touch the screen buttons yourself. It's a very nice feature that works well for the most part. Sometimes it is a little glitchy but you can just step back and step towards the screen to fix most issues.

Doom 3 VR is what a proper triple-A full length VR game experience should be, not bad for a game that first came out 13 years ago (3rd August 2004).

On the flip side, the shortcomings of the original Doom 3 game do come out after a while. At the time it was originally released, a lot of original Doom and Doom 2 fans were not so enthusiastic about Doom 3. This is because in the first and second games, there was a lot of fast-paced action where you could get chucked in a room with 10 or more baddies at a time that you had to dodge and gun down. Also, the action was much more straightforward, you didn't have to check every corner and be so constantly on alert for the next trap to be sprung. In Doom 3, the wall behind you dropping down for an imp to jump out gets a bit boring after the 10th time it happens. Most of the action happens in confined spaces unlike the first 2 games and finally, you will rarely get 3 or more baddies coming at you unless they are the cannon fodder types like the spider-like things.

Once I started getting towards the end, my only mission was indeed to get to the end to say I'd done it, it turned into a bit of a chore.

But do not let that put you off trying this game because it is a revelation if this is your first proper-length VR gaming experience. Even if you play it until you get bored, it will take a while for that to happen I think.

Other Observations

Playing this game made me realise I have absolutely no issues with motion sickness. I chose to use traditional movement controls the whole time and did not have any sickness.

There is a blink teleport system in the game if you suffer from motion sickness, but I have no idea how that can work in an action game with imps chucking fireballs at you from 2 angles. Good luck with that if you try it, let me know how it goes.

Bizarrely, the main problem I found with this game was with balance. For the first 30 minutes I found myself tilting over slightly due to the characters fast movement unbalancing me. I got used to that fairly quickly, but it took longer for the same thing to stop happening to me when I was crouching. The way you duck in this game to go through vents is to physically duck. I'd lean down on one knee, move forwards into some duct and nearly fall over. Very odd. However, I have had the odd balance problem in real life so maybe this is just a manifestation of that.

Finally, there are a few bugs in the game. Right up towards the final few levels of the game, the only time I died was when I was jumping out of vents in the floor and the game decided that not quite jumping out of the vent 100% meant getting squished on the corner of it, that happened probably 2 or 3 times. Also towards the end of the game, I had a few game crashes as well. Most of the time these bugs were not much more than a minor blip because the game does autosave often. However, there is one room near the end, where you have floor tiles dropping from underneath you to dump you into a chasm, and baddies coming out of nowhere, and the game liked crashing in this room. It took me about 8 attempts to clear that one room, very frustrating, but it was the only time I ever got frustrated.

So, Just to Repeat...

Doom 3 VR is awesome, despite the issues. If you have a VR headset, you owe it to yourself to play it even if just for a short while!

I can't wait for Fallout 4 VR!