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.