Once an outlaw, always an outlaw...

As many of you who have been supporting me and my crazy dream for years will remember, this incredible adventure began with a game about outlaws :-)

Back then we were outlaws in the West, and having a hell of a great time at it honestly, until Take Too (oops, misspelled it) decided that we were not allowed to have fun in VR anymore.

But now we've graduated to being outlaws IN SPACE!

Speaking of dreams, this is one of the greatest I had since my childhood. Not being an outlaw actually, but living in a universe where you can fly to different planets, where you can go to a cantina and meet people from races all across the galaxy, where droids are friendly and polite if a little clumsy, where light from blasters travels so slowly that you can actually follow its trajectory with your gaze and (provided you're a Jedi) deflect it with a movement of your arm.

So, here you go! Release 13.0.0 of the R.E.A.L. VR mod, attached at the end of this post, adds Star Wars Outlaws to the list of amazing open-world (open-galaxy?) adventures that we can now experience in VR.

I wanted you to be able to enjoy the game as soon as possible, so I'm rushing this out with just the bare minimum information you need to play it. A second post will follow, hopefully in a couple of days, with more details about all the improvements I have made to the framework.

[Latest updates for the game are found at the bottom of the post]

Games list

As usual the mod archive is common for all 26 supported titles, and the updated list is now:

• Atomic Heart

• Cyberpunk 2077

• Dark Souls: Remastered

• Elden Ring (with its massive Shadow of the Erdtree DLC)

• Far Cry 4

• Far Cry 5

• Far Cry 6

• Far Cry New Dawn

• Far Cry Primal

• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade

• Ghost of Tsushima

• Ghostrunner

• Ghostwire: Tokyo

• Grounded

• High On Life

• Hogwarts Legacy

• Horizon: Zero Dawn

• Horizon Forbidden West

• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered

• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales

• Star Wars Outlaws (new)

• Stray

• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

• Watch Dogs

• Watch Dogs 2

All games implement AER v2.

Setup

I developed and tested the Star Wars Outlaws mod using the Ubisoft+ version of the game; other editions should also work, but if you encounter issues please upload your RealVR.log file somewhere so we can try to sort them out. Also, always make sure that your video drivers are updated to the latest version.

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)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\games\Star Wars Outlaws" 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 "Outlaws.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 Star Wars Outlaws it should automatically display in your VR headset. You're almost ready to maraud across the galaxy, but I recommend that you first tweak a few things in-game, in order to get the best possible experience.

Setting the resolution

You will need to play in windowed mode. The high resolution needed for VR can be set very easily by bringing up the mod overlay and looking for a slider in the main "R.E.A.L. VR" tab named "Target pixels per degree". Set it to a value approximately in the range 15-25 depending on your GPU (the mod now defaults to 15 the first time you launch it), then press the "Adapt resolution" button to set the game resolution to your preferred value. You can do that at any moment, even during actual gameplay. The target PPD you choose will be remembered and re-applied automatically across sessions.

Cutscenes

Most cutscenes are fully 3D and allow you to look anywhere without restrictions. There can be subtle black bars above and below, which work correctly in VR and give that "cinematic" look without overly restricting your field of view.

Several cutscene segments however were prerendered by the developers and stored as movies (notably the initial one when you first start your adventure) so there's nothing I can do about them: they will appear as if projected on a virtual 2D screen in VR.

The cinematics quality is mostly very good, but as usual there will be some missing props, invisible chairs, levitating characters and so on in the parts of the scene that you were never supposed to see in the flat game.

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 you must leave to the defaults preselected by RealConfig in order for the mod to work properly. Specifically:

In the CONTROLS menu, Aim assist must be Off, and under Advanced Controls I also recommend setting Starship aim assist to Manual aim and Starship horizon auto-align to Off.

In the VIDEO menu:

• Vertical sync = Off

• Display mode = Window

• Cinematic display mode = Fill screen (this is very important, otherwise menus will be borked and your field of view will be severely restricted)

• Cinematics framerate = Unlocked

• Frame rate limiter = Off

• NVIDIA Reflex low latency = Off

• Frame Generation = Off

• Ray Reconstruction = Off

In the GRAPHICS menu you can tweak whatever you like, but I highly recommend that under Advanced graphics you set all the RAYTRACING and VOLUMETRIC EFFECTS to their minimum values. They do little to improve the VR image and eat up a lot of fps. I already killed the super-obnoxious Depth of field and Motion blur (together with the hidden Lens distortion that was making the whole world swim in VR) so you won't have to worry about those.

Finally, I recommend that in the USER INTERFACE you set the HUD icon size to 150%, as world item icons can look tiny in the headset.

Input

You will want to use a gamepad to play Star Wars Outlaws (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.

There is a strange bug with this game where it can complain about the controller being disconnected while you are navigating the mod overlay, although it isn't really disconnected and becomes available again as soon as you close the overlay. I will try to fix this if possible.

Update: remember to disable Steam Input, for the game or globally. It often tends to create problems with my mods, and with this title many of you have reported crashes to desktop each time they open the mod overlay.

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 playing FPS with your mouse, give your gamepad a chance ;-)

HUD

In Star Wars Outlaws, to show all HUD elements in their correct 3D positions (for instance enemy status bars, quest markers, etc.) I used the same technique I employed for the Uncharted and Horizon Forbidden West games.

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 "SWO" tab of the R.E.A.L. VR mod overlay, using the "HUD scale" slider with default at 0.4 (NOTE: I'm not referring to the usual 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 "SWO" tab takes effect immediately while playing, without any need to bump the resolution.

Gameplay

The Star Wars Outlaws mod supports 6 DoF tracking, i.e, the camera will follow your head rotation and movement. You are going to experience the full impact of that when you're traveling and shooting in space, believe me ;-)

In the "SWO" 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. You can optionally bind the 2D virtual screen toggle so that it's quickly activated/deactivated by pressing both gamepad thumbsticks.

Updates and known issues

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

◆◆◆

Thank you, dear friends, for your unfailing enthusiasm, and stay tuned for an upcoming post where I'll tell you more about the general improvements I've made to the framework and to the other supported titles! The new stuff is already available in the attached release BTW, I just need to write the documentation for it ;-)