realvr

Rebirth: Can't stop the classics

Added 2025-02-15 19:57:45 +0000 UTC

And the second game that release 17.0.0 adds to our collection is... Final Fantasy VII Rebirth!!!

I love this trilogy: it just keeps getting better and better. So I couldn't miss the chance of modding the second chapter too, after waiting for so long (it's been two years and a half since I released my VR mod for the first one, back in August 2022).

This is also the first conversion to implement the VRAM Guard. More will be coming in the future, and perhaps if there is a need for it I'll also go back and port the safety mechanism to older but still VRAM-hungry games. Please let me know how (and if) it works for you, as I'm certain that some adjustments will be needed.

[Latest updates for the game will be added at the bottom of the post]

Games list

As usual the mod archive is common for all 30(!) VR conversions. Here is the updated list, complete with information about which special features they support:

Atomic Heart [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]
Cyberpunk 2077 [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]
Dark Souls: Remastered [AER v2]
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (new) [AER v2]
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 (new) [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]
Horizon: Zero Dawn [AER v2]
Horizon Forbidden West [AER v2 + DL(S)SS]
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle [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]
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]

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 Final Fantasy VII Rebirth mod using the Steam version of the game; other editions should also work, but if you encounter issues please upload your RealVR.log file somewhere so we can sort them out. IMPORTANT: Here is the part where I usually recommend that you update your video drivers to the latest version. This time maybe it's better to wait a little, because some users are reporting crashes (playing flat, not in VR) with the new NVIDIA drivers. I am on 572.16 and everything is working fine.

Run the game flat 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\FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH\End\Binaries\Win64" folder. Note that you might need to customize the path if you moved your library or own the game from a different store, but it will always be the folder that contains the "ff7rebirth_.exe" executable file. As usual with UE4 games, be careful about the path! The place where you want to put the mod files is not the root folder of the game (which only contains a small launcher named "ff7rebirth.exe", without the underscore), but inside the Win64 subfolder where the larger-sized "ff7rebirth_.exe" is.

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 FF7RB it should automatically display in your VR headset. Let's move on to the in-game settings that you will want to tweak in order to get the best possible experience.

Setting the resolution

You need to play in windowed mode. As for the first title, here too I modded the square resolutions directly into the game, and they are selectable from the Options> Graphics menu. Do not use the first entry, 1920x1080, for VR: it's there just as a fallback in case you need to switch to flat mode and don't like to play in a square window.

This conversion implements DL(S)SS, and if you wish to make it look even better you can update to DLSS 4, which I fully support. Unfortunately the NVIDIA app doesn't recognize this game, so if you want to force DLSS 4 you will need to use the NVIDIA Profile Inspector. Brandon should have a new video out in the next few days showing you the necessary steps.

Cutscenes

Cutscenes are fully 3D and allow you to look anywhere without restrictions. The cinematics quality is mostly very good, although there will be the usual missing props, feet below the ground, levitating characters and so on in the parts of the scene that you were never supposed to see in the flat game.

From the FF7RB tab of the mod overlay, you can choose whether you want to enable the depth of field effect during cutscenes (by default the mod disables it, since it doesn't make much visual sense in VR). You also have the option to choose which camera you want for the cutscenes. You can have the mod revert automatically to the game's original camera, which will always be in the position the developers meant it to be, but I actually recommend (and the mod defaults to) keeping the same camera that you're using for gameplay, so cutscenes will be more immersive and there will be no distracting transitions.

Game options

You can set all graphics and gameplay options according to your liking and how powerful your GPU is, but there are a few settings that you must leave to the defaults preselected by RealConfig in order for the mod to work properly. Specifically, in the Options> Graphics menu:

Display Mode must be Windowed
Framerate must be 120 fps
Display Sync Technology must be V-Sync
Anti-Aliasing Method must be set to DLSS if you want the new DL(S)SS technology to work!
Dynamic Resolution Scaling (Maximum) and (Minimum) should be set to the same value, which maps to the more usual presets as follows: 33% is Ultra Performance, 50% is Performance, 66% is Quality.

If your video card is powerful enough, and you are not choosing an astronomically high resolution, you can set both minimum and maximum to 100%, which will give you DLAA and an amazing image quality.

Everything else can be adjusted according to your preferences, but be careful not to select Ultra for the Background Model Detail! Although it's the only value that looks good, it's not been optimized correctly by the developers and it WILL make your game stutter horribly. Even if you have a powerful card, I strongly recommend that you select High for the Background Model Detail, and then use the "magic" slider that I implemented to get rid of the horrible geometry pop-in (see the Gameplay section below).

Input

You will want to use a gamepad to play Rebirth (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 unreachable with the cursor; thus, in order to have a smooth experience, using a gamepad is highly recommended.

HUD

In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, to show all HUD elements in their correct 3D positions (like quest markers for instance) I used the same technique I employed for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

This has the unfortunate side effects that 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; also, some HUD elements like the subtitles will jitter/double slightly when you look around.

The HUD rescaling can be finely customized, so you won't miss any of the important information that appears at the sides. If the default size I suggest doesn't work for you, you can tweak it in the "FF7RB" tab of the R.E.A.L. VR mod overlay, using the "HUD scale" slider with default at 0.5 (NOTE: I'm not referring to the sliders found in the "R.E.A.L. VR" main tab, which won't have any effect in this title).

The "HUD scale" slider in the "FF7RB" tab takes effect immediately while playing, without any need to bump the resolution.

Gameplay

The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth mod supports 6 DoF tracking, i.e, the camera will follow your head rotation and movement.

You will find my typical three modes for the camera: Game default, Closer and R.E.A.L. close. The game default camera is not immersive at all: it's placed very far away from the characters, making everybody look like distant figurines, and during combat it shoots up in the sky like a drone, especially when you lock on to enemies, which forces you to do most of your combat while craning your neck to look down. So I recommend the Closer camera, which brings you in the thick of action without being uncomfortable. If you're feeling bold and don't mind having a lot of flashes right in your face, the R.E.A.L. close camera is the one for you. There is no first person because combat in this game is impossible without some distance to assess the threats that come from all directions.

In the "FF7RB" tab you can change the world scale, from small adjustments to playing with dolls or giants, the time scale, which controls the speed of the game and will allow you to get some epic slow-motion moments, and the camera type and offsets. Most adjustments will be even easier to make in the Quick Menu, which this game implements: see my previous Dark Souls II post for an introduction to the Quick Menu if you never used it before. Just note that here the gamepad gesture to activate the menu/overlay is pressing both thumbsticks.

In the "FF7RB" tab you will also find a control to adjust the angle at which the surprisingly deep and interesting built-in card game, Queen's Blood, is rendered. It works well in 3D, but you can optionally select to have it render to a 2D virtual screen by deselecting the "Allow 3D for Queen's Blood" checkbox. You can also force normal gameplay to render in 2D in case you should find a section too hard to play in full VR (the toggle can be bound to a key combo).

And finally (fantasily?) some information on the magic sliders!! There are two of them. "Hair/foliage LOD bias" does its job quietly, and you can mostly leave it at its default of 2.0 and forget about it. It will make individual strands of hair look much better and more natural, although the ends will never be perfect because the hair is rendered in a checkerboard pattern.

But the R.E.A.L. magic is in the Background LOD slider. As I mentioned, this game tends to exhibit constant and very distracting stuttering, especially in the cities. There is an in-game setting which is supposed to deal with the issue, Options> Graphics> Background Model Detail, but unfortunately it doesn't work very well. If you set it to Ultra the game will look good, but the stuttering will drive you crazy. If you set it to High/Medium/Low (not much difference among the three) the stuttering will be kept under control but at the cost of unacceptable pop-in everywhere you look.

What I recommend you do instead is: set the game's own "Background Model Detail" to High, then navigate to the mod's FF7RB overlay tab, make sure that the "Override Background LOD" checkbox is selected and set the "Background LOD" slider to around 1.5-2.0 (if you have a powerful card with plenty of VRAM you can go all the way up to 3 or even 4). The pop-in will be greatly reduced or eliminated, without bringing in a lot of stuttering.

Adjust the resolution, DLSS preset etc. to your satisfaction, until the game looks good and plays fluidly. Of course the achievable quality will vary according to how powerful your system is, but to give you an idea, I can run around the Kalm square without hiccups with the Quest 3 at 48 fps, AER v2 set to 1/3 rate, DLSS 4 (preset K) at 66%, and game resolution at 3920x3920. Let us know about your results!