Halloween's over, dust your cobwebs!

It's been fun dressing up, right? But enough with the trick-or-treating, there is a whole city that needs to be saved!

Although come to think of it, you'll still be wearing a costume, only instead of cobwebs you'll get web shooters []-D

Yes folks, we're going back to New York, as it's finally time to play Spider-Man 2 in VR!!!

The cobwebs are not just a Halloween reference, alas. It took me almost 3 years to circle back to the series for a new installment in VR. But we did have lots of fun in the meantime, didn't we? Fun all over the world, in the past, the present and the future.

And VR is not dead yet!

[Speaking of which: release 25.0.0 of the R.E.A.L. mod, which you'll find attached at the bottom of this post, also brings back full VR functionality to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, after game patch 1.004 had broken it quite badly. I managed to salvage even my customized LOD slider, which I believe is essential to having a fluid experience playing FF7RB in virtual reality without having to suffer through insane amounts of texture and geometry popping.]

So, to quote Brandon: double the Spider-Men, double the fun! Just a word of caution: the camera in all Spider-Man games is WILD. During both cutscenes and combat, the camera movements and point of view changes will be frantic. In Spider-Man 2 in particular, a very long action sequence in the beginning will make even the most experienced players dizzy. If this is your first time in VR, SPIDEY2 is probably not the game you want to play. You have been warned :-p

Games list

As usual there is only one package to download, which enables all 40 (yay!) VR conversions you can find on this Patreon. All titles support AER v2, which is my own version of frame interpolation tailored for Alternate Eye Rendering (see this post for a detailed description). Most of the games also support DL(S)SS, meaning that I fixed the DLSS implementation for them so that it will work correctly in stereoscopic 3D. And 6 titles even allow for Ray Reconstruction!!! Here's the complete list:

• Atomic Heart [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Cyberpunk 2077 [AER v2 + DL(S)SS-RR]

• Dark Souls: Remastered [AER v2]

• Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin [AER v2]

• Dark Souls III [AER v2]

• Death Stranding Director's Cut [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• DOOM Eternal [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• DOOM: The Dark Ages [AER v2 + DL(S)SS-RR]

• Elden Ring (with its massive Shadow of the Erdtree DLC) [AER v2 + DL(S)SS when NVIDIA DLSS is enabled with a third-party mod]

• Far Cry 4 [AER v2]

• Far Cry 5 [AER v2]

• Far Cry 6 [AER v2]

• Far Cry New Dawn [AER v2]

• Far Cry Primal [AER v2]

• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade [AER v2]

• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Ghost of Tsushima [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Ghostrunner [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Ghostwire: Tokyo [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Grounded [AER v2]

• High On Life [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Hogwarts Legacy [AER v2 + DL(S)SS-RR]

• Horizon: Zero Dawn [AER v2]

• Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered (new) [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Horizon Forbidden West [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (incl. The Order of Giants DLC) [AER v2 + DL(S)SS-RR]

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (incl. the Legacy of the Forge DLC) [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (new) [AER v2 + DL(S)SS-RR]

• Star Wars Outlaws [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Stray [AER v2]

• The Last of Us Part I [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• The Last of Us Part II Remastered (new) [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

• Watch Dogs [AER v2]

• Watch Dogs 2 [AER v2]

• Watch Dogs: Legion [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]

Please note that all trademarks belong to the respective owners, and that no copyright infringement is intended or condoned. And of course, you'll need to have a legit copy of the original games that you want to play in VR.

Setup

I developed and tested the mod for Marvel's Spider-Man 2 using the Steam version of the game. It should work if you get it from other stores as well, but if you encounter issues please upload your RealVR.log file somewhere so we can try to sort them out.

Generally speaking, if you own a game in a different version than the one I modded, or the game just had an official update, it's always a good idea to take a quick look at the log. It's conveniently accessible from the mod overlay itself, with a search function. The usual symptom if a version diverges too much from the one I modded is that some patches will fail to apply (you can search for keywords like "patch", "error", "fail" etc.). If you give me that information, I might be able to fix it quickly.

Also, always make sure that your video drivers are updated to the latest version. That's especially important for NVIDIA due to a flurry of regressions in driver releases since the RTX 50xx series came out; we are now at the point where new games refuse to launch if they detect that the driver version is not the specific one they were tested against :-(

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)\Steam\steamapps\common\Marvel's Spider-Man 2" folder. You might need to customize the path if you moved your games library or in case you own the game from a different store, but it will always be the folder that contains the "Spider-Man2.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 Marvel's Spider-Man 2 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

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 offers no resolution control for windowed mode, so I had to implement the same workaround you already saw in many other games, including Horizon Forbidden West: bring up the mod overlay and in its 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 15-30, depending on your GPU, then press the "Adapt resolution" button to set the game resolution to your preferred value. You can do that at any moment, even during gameplay; the resolution you choose will be remembered across sessions. The recommended aspect ratio for most headsets with SPIDEY2 is 1:1, but you can select a different one in case your headset has a wider horizontal FOV.

Cutscenes

All cutscenes are fully 3D and allow you to look anywhere without restrictions or black bars. So much better than 2D prerendered videos! However, this is one of those games where artists only cared about stuff that would be visible from the scripted cutscene camera, so if you turn your head around expect to see Spider-Man freezing in the air or clipping through walls, NPCs glitching in and out, and so on :-)

Game options

Although you are free to set most graphics and gameplay options in the game menus according to your liking and how powerful your GPU is, there are a few settings that the mod needs in order to work properly. They will be preselected automatically by RealConfig, but please make sure never to change them. In the DISPLAY menu:

• WINDOW MODE = WINDOWED

• ASPECT RATIO = Auto

• VSYNC = OFF

• NVIDIA REFLEX LOW LATENCY = OFF (counter-intuitive, but there can be a huge performance hit when this is turned on, at least on some systems)

• HDR = OFF

• FRAME GENERATION = OFF (never turn this on as it doesn't work in VR due to driver limitations, and it will crash your game or even take down your whole system)

• UPSCALE METHOD = DLSS. Make sure upscaling is set to DLSS, and select an UPSCALE QUALITY from (ULTRA) PERFORMANCE, BALANCED, QUALITY or NATIVE, so that you can use my DL(S)SS fix to eliminate the shimmering around nearby objects and characters. DL(S)SS might also work with this game if you are running on an AMD GPU thanks to the voodoo magic of OptiScaler (see my previous post for details on how to install and configure it for VR).

• DYNAMIC RESOLUTION SCALING = OFF

In the GRAPHICS menu:

• RAYTRACING PRESET = OFF. This mod implements my latest fix for Ray Reconstruction (see https://www.patreon.com/posts/126664750 for more details). Despite that, my advice is that you keep all ray-tracing related options to OFF, because full RT (here and in many other modern games) has a huge impact on frame rate. Yes it's fun for a few seconds to look at a perfect Spidey reflection in the window he's sticking to, but I believe that in the larger scheme of things fluid gameplay is much more important. In case you want to check out RT for yourself, make sure to set DLSS RAY RECONSTRUCTION to ON to gain back some of the lost performance.

• WEATHER PARTICLE QUALITY = MEDIUM or LOW. Don't set this option higher than MEDIUM because it will kill your frame rate without any appreciable benefits.

• DEPTH OF FIELD = OFF

• BLOOM = OFF (recommended, as it will improve image clarity a lot)

• CHROMATIC ABERRATION = OFF. Lenses in VR headsets already introduce some annoying chromatic aberration, no need to add another fake layer on top of that!

• MOTION BLUR STRENGTH = 0 (super important with all of my mods, otherwise everything will look blurry)

• FIELD OF VIEW = 0

Input

You will want to use a gamepad to play Marvel's Spider-Man 2. XInput-compatible controllers like the ones from Microsoft are generally recommended for my mods, but in this game you will definitely get the best bang for your buck from a PS5 DualSense connected to the PC via USB. The greatly improved haptics, adaptive triggers and built-in speaker will give you a much more immersive experience.

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 misaligned/unreachable with the cursor. 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 always playing with your mouse, give your gamepad a chance ;-)

Gameplay

The Marvel's Spider-Man 2 mod fully supports 6 DoF tracking, i.e, the camera will follow your head rotation and movement.

Spider-Man 2 is often CPU- and storage-bound, especially when traversing the city, so if you have an NVMe SSD make sure that you install the game on that. With a 4090 or 5090, you should be able to set all graphics options to insanely high values; but if you have lesser cards, scale back accordingly. The camera in Spidey is so wild that you want all the fluidity and framerate stability you can get!

There is no first-person implementation. The combat system requires full spatial awareness (you always need to know where the next hit is coming from if you want to survive) so third person is a must. Actually, if combat becomes too frantic for you, there's a "Time scale" slider in the "SPIDEY2" tab of the mod overlay that you can use to slow down action sequences; this is particularly recommended if your VR legs are not 100% robust yet, or if you just want to enjoy the beautiful animations and special effects to the full.

From the same tab you can change the world scale, either for small adjustments or playing with dolls or giants, and even force the game to render to a 2D virtual screen.

Since the game is very complex, with a myriad of side missions, there might be circumstances in which completing a mission becomes impossible in VR because of some quirk like a misaligned object or whatnot. When that happens, I find that the quickest solution is briefly switching to the 2D virtual display using the gamepad combo D-Pad Left + Left shoulder button, which can be activated from the "SPIDEY2" tab.

HUD

The UI in Spider-Man 2 is very complex, with hundreds of elements and special cases.

I believe I managed to split most of it correctly ("splitting the UI" is what I call the operation where I sort out which elements should be displayed on a virtual screen because they're part of the HUD, like for example subtitles, game hints or the minimap, and which elements should instead be pushed into the 3D world because they're associated to a world object, like icons over NPCs' heads or the round markers that appear on building ledges where you can land).

But there will be some occasions in which the heuristics I devised to split the UI will fail. If you get stuck during gameplay because some UI elements are not visible, just briefly turn on the 2D virtual display using the gamepad combo D-Pad Left + Left shoulder button (again, this combo can be activated from the "SPIDEY2" tab in the mod overlay).

Scripted events where you must press or mash specific buttons can be a challenge sometimes, because the button prompts tend to appear in unexpected places (they may be off to one side, or all the way above or below you). You will die many times, though never so frequently as in Dark Souls games! But if you're really stuck, the 2D virtual screen can help here too.

Updates and known issues

• Some HUD elements might be misplaced, flickering or invisible when using Pimax headsets in OpenXR mode. It is unfortunately a problem in their runtime that I cannot fix on my side (this is confirmed by the fact that the same user interface elements can be seen correctly with other headsets in OpenXR mode, and also with Pimax headsets in OpenVR mode).

• SPIDEY2 is another VRAM-hungry game, especially when raytracing is enabled, so if you tweak the settings many times in a row the game might become instable or crash. Select a lower resolution when you want to experiment with the settings, so as to avoid memory overallocation; when you have found the right combination you can dial the window resolution back up. Also make sure to never run other memory-intensive applications like Chrome together with the game.

• Occasionally the camera might start to spin (it was observed during testing but only in one specific spot). Moving the right stick a little should immediately fix it.

• Some minigames and/or tutorial sections might fail to start in VR. When that happens, just briefly switch to the 2D virtual screen (see the end of the "Gameplay" section above).

• Here and with other games, you might experience crashes if Steam Input is turned on. It seems to be highly system-dependent, and some players reported the opposite behavior (crashing when Steam Input is turned off). YMMV, but if you have this issue please try both configurations and report back which one works for you.

[I'll post new information here as it becomes available.]

See ya swinging around the city!!!