realvr

It's time to go back to the future...

Added 2025-10-02 14:39:28 +0000 UTC

... Even though we've already been there, and even though it's populated with giant machines that want to kill us every step of the way, because the future looks even more beautiful than we remembered!

I'm sure you all guessed (and in case you didn't, Brandon's funny video will certainly shed some more light on the matter): I'm talking about Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered in VR!

So many of you have requested this one. Honestly I was of two minds about releasing another version of a game I had already modded in the past—and OMG how fast time flies by, it's been almost four years! But you were right, the visuals have improved so much, especially now that we can use DL(S)SS to get rid of the shimmering all over the vegetation... and yep, you can finally turn off lens flares [:]-)

As promised, this v24.0.0 release also brings two important fixes:

Kingdom Come Deliverance II: the game was slightly broken in VR after the latest official update. Mostly it still worked, but the user interface (in particular the floating item descriptions) had become glitchy due to some patches no longer applying correctly. Everything should be back to normal now.
Watch Dogs 2: it's really kind of a shame how both Ubisoft and NVIDIA have abandoned this amazing title. Since the introduction of RTX cards, the game has shown an annoying flickering, mostly in the sky but also with some of the world textures. While I was modding the game, I developed a correction for the issue, which completely stabilized the lighting but had some side effects on the game's weather system, for example making sunny/rainy transitions abrupt. Then the community found a brilliant workaround, which I incorporated in RealConfig. But now NVIDIA done gone broke it again :-( On 50xx series cards, the game will crash at start if you try to apply the community fix.
So I had to go back to the drawing board, and I revamped my initial correction with a new version that gets rid of the flickering without messing up the weather transitions in the game.
Remember to run RealConfig as always when updating the mod: it will disable the community fix to prevent the crashing to desktop, and my new fix will be activated by default.

Games list

As usual there is only one package to download, which enables all 39 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 5 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]
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 Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered 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\Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered" 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 "HorizonZeroDawnRemastered.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 Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered 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

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered 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.

Cutscenes

All cutscenes are fully 3D and allow you to look anywhere without restrictions or black bars. There is the occasional missing chunk of scenery or floating character, as well as some near plane clipping especially during dialog interactions, but mostly the cutscenes are just AWESOME.

The movie that only shows once when you first start a new game (baby Aloy) is an exception: it is prerendered and will appear as if projected on a virtual 2D screen in VR.

Game options

You can set all graphics and gameplay options in the game menus according to your liking and how powerful your GPU is, but there are a few settings that the mod needs in order to work properly.

In the CONTROLLER menu, you will have to manually set Aim Assist = Off, as this choice is tied to the player profile and I have no way of configuring it programmatically.

The following settings instead will be preselected automatically by RealConfig, but please make sure never to change them. In the GENERAL menu:

HUD Widescreen Scale = 16:9 (you can also set it to Auto if you wish the HUD to be more square-ish looking, but I find that 16:9 makes top/bottom information like subtitles more easily readable)

In the DISPLAY menu:

Window Mode = Windowed
Aspect Ratio = Auto
Cinematics Letterboxing = Off
Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction = Off (unless the game aspect ratio looks wrong in your headset, in which case you might try turning this on)
VSync = Off
NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency = Off (counter-intuitive, but there seems to be a huge performance hit when this is turned on, at least on some systems)
Dynamic Range> HDR Rendering = Off (it might also show as Unavailable)
Dynamic Resolution Scaling = Off
Upscale Method = DLSS. Make sure upscaling is set to DLSS, and select an Upscale Quality from (Ultra) Performance, Balanced or Quality, so that you can use my DL(S)SS fix to eliminate the shimmering around nearby objects and characters. DL(S)SS should 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). Frame Generation must be Off, like in all other games, because it doesn't work in VR.

In the GRAPHICS menu:

Field of View = 0
Depth of Field = Off
Motion Blur Strength = 0 (super important with all of my mods, otherwise everything will look blurry)

If you need subtitles, I recommend setting AUDIO> Display Subtitles> Subtitle Background to On, which will make them easier to read.

Input

You will want to use a gamepad to play Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered (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 misaligned/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 always playing with your mouse, give your gamepad a chance ;-)

Gameplay

The Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered mod fully supports 6 DoF tracking, i.e, the camera will follow your head rotation and movement.

Note that HZDR is a game designed to be played in third person. As usual though, I find that detracts a little from full immersion, especially because Aloy (your character) is so far away from your point of view that she looks rather small, and you tend to feel like you're not part of the action but instead watching it unfold from a safe distance.

For those reasons, I implemented two additional cameras that can be selected from the "HZDR" tab in the R.E.A.L. VR mod overlay. The default one is called "Closer", and as you can imagine brings you much nearer to where the action is, while moving Aloy a little further to the left so that she won't take up most of your field of view. Both the camera distance and the offsets can be adjusted from the overlay.

I also hacked in a "First person" camera, but it has many problems due to the fact that HZDR was never really intended to be played in 1st person. For instance the game will often hide the character model completely, which means that during combat you won't be able to see either your spear hitting the machines or even get any visual feedback about which direction Aloy is currently facing. Similarly during climbing you won't be able to see your hands and you will get a weird "Half-Life gliding" effect. Short-clicking on Focus to highlight important stuff will work, but there will be no ping sound or visible scanning effect. While rolling, swimming or riding Aloy's body will suddenly pop up and clip through your view... and so on and so forth. I honestly recommend the first person camera only for moments of peaceful exploration, while the Closer camera works in every situation and is actually the one I'm using for my own playthrough.

Gaze-based aiming performs as intended 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 even more accurate aiming, remember to set your dominant eye in the "HZDR" tab of the mod overlay).

Focus works fine too, in full 3D, and tagging the enemies also follows the direction of your gaze.

In the base 2D game, aiming and focusing will make your view appear more and more zoomed in. In VR you might want to keep that effect (although I don't find it really necessary even for precision archery work), but some people could be bothered by the world-swimming effect that comes from the zoomed-in field-of-view not matching the headset FOV. For that reason, I included in the "HZDR" tab a checkbox called "Allow zoom while aiming or using Focus", defaulting to unchecked to offer the smoothest VR experience.

Additionally, in the same "HZDR" 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.

The vast majority of users should not need to tweak this, but if your system appears to display the 3D effect incorrectly (as though distant objects were actually in front of closer ones) try changing the "Frame delay compensation" value step by step until you get a perfectly stable world image, with proper depth everywhere.

HUD

In Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, to show all HUD elements in their correct 3D positions (for instance machine health bars, quest markers, etc.) I was forced to use the same technique I employed for the Forbidden West sequel.

This has a few unfortunate side effects:

the crosshair and the subtitles will always appear at infinite depth (as though they were very distant from the observer), which can make them look doubled when they're aligned with close objects or NPCs;
the HUD will always be headlocked, i.e., following your head rotation, instead of looking as if it was suspended in space in front of you;
HUD elements will jitter/double slightly when you look around.

However, there's good news too: you can rescale the whole HUD, so you won't miss any of the important information that appears on the sides. If the default scale doesn't work for you, you can tweak it in the "HZDR" tab of the R.E.A.L. VR mod overlay, using the "HUD scale X" and "HUD scale Y" sliders (NOTE: these are different sliders than the old ones found in the "R.E.A.L. VR" main tab, which won't have any effect in this game).

If you set new values for the sliders, note that there won't be any immediate visible changes (except in the menus) until you resize the game window using the "Adapt resolution" button.