New mod coming out! And an important Quest 2 tip

As you know, when I'm mostly silent for a few days it's because I've been crunching hard to put out a new release :-)

Version 6 of the mod is coming soon! In one or two days, unless a showstopper bug is found during final testing—but I don't really expect that to happen, because it's been working reliably on my system for some time now.

The upcoming version 6 will support a new game that many of you have been requesting, and I'm pretty sure that even those among you who never mentioned it or don't know about it altogether (must've been living under a gaming rock, hehe) will find the title a worthy addiction to our growing collection of full-blown, deep VR experiences.

Speaking of that, let me tell you again how grateful I am to all of you for your continuing support, and for the countless words and actions of solidarity that came from many of you after the DMCA notice issued by Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., which forced me to remove support for some of the earliest games that we had explored together "from the inside" in VR. I'm still trying to open a communication channel with them in order to negotiate an agreement BTW, although I have to say that they really can't seem to be bothered to reach a solution that doesn't leave their own customers hanging out to dry.

Anyway, as I was saying it's time to be moving on and thinking of the bright future! In keeping with tradition, I won't yet reveal the new title, but I'll give you a few hints. First thing you wanna know: it's going to hold you in its virtual embrace for about 30-90 hours of gameplay, depending on how fast you rush through it. But for most of us VR makes games so much more immersive that it invites us to slow down the pace quite a bit, to be able to take in the wonderful detail that the artists put into their virtual worlds, so I'd say that more than 100 hours of gameplay are not out of the question. Also, not just the world building is wonderful and deserving of a close look or two in this game :-)

Another hint: this is going to hit you with the force of a speeding steel train. Among all my conversions, this is the ultimate VR legs tester. The camera movements are so wild, even I am left breathless every now and then. Elden Ring in comparison had a steady-cam slowly gliding on rails through thick molasses :-P

Quest 2 and AER

As most of you already know, all my mods use AER (Alternate Eye Rendering), because it's the only available technology that allows for perfect stereoscopic 3D while at the same time making it possible to run extremely demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 in VR. Let me quote a brief passage from one of my previous posts (if you wish you can read it in full here, scrolling down to the "AER vs R.E.A.L." section):

"If your system is configured and running correctly, the only disadvantage of AER is that objects/characters in strong lateral motion exhibit a sort of border doubling that we call ghosting. It's an illusion (in fact it cannot be captured on video, not even through the headset lenses) caused by the double flashing of the same image, when the brain would expect a smooth frame-by-frame movement. Most people learn to "unsee" it pretty quickly, and as with all visual defects, it will bother you the most if you dwell on it. If you concentrate on enjoying gameplay (and again, unless you have some other problem on your system which is making the renderer work incorrectly) it should rapidly fall below your threshold of perception. That said, it's important to understand that the issue is not an intrinsic fault of alternate eye rendering: it is strictly caused by the game engine not being able to sustain a high enough frame rate."

I always told everybody who asked that the ghosting artifacts could be alleviated by increasing the refresh frequency of the headset. However, I was mostly thinking of improvements like with the Valve Index moving from 90 Hz to 120 Hz (quite visible, but not a game-changer) so I did not stress the importance of this nearly enough, and for that I am deeply sorry.

The reason why I was essentially oblivious to this all-important fact turns out to be a random circumstance: as soon as I got my Quest 2, a long time ago, after testing it for a short while I immediately switched the refresh frequency from 72 Hz to 90 Hz, and after that I always left the setting untouched and basically forgot about it.

This past week, while testing [REDACTED], I was experimenting with different game frame rate settings and at some point happened to switch my Quest 2 down to 72 Hz. The impact was so huge that I wondered if something was broken, but then after a lot more tests I finally had to admit that it was not a software bug. Quite simply, the default low refresh frequency of the Quest 2 makes the ghosting MUCH more visible (really annoying to be honest), and for me at least it also appears to worsen considerably the TAA halo around nearby objects/NPCs.

At that point I thought "why not go all the way then", and tried with 120 Hz. It does look even better, but unfortunately the 120 Hz mode seems to be very demanding on the video encoder and to make VR rendering somewhat unstable, especially with very high resolutions and GPU usage levels. That could be why after all these months they still call it "experimental".

TL;DR For my mods, if you have a Quest 2 or any other headset with a low default refresh frequency, always set it to a minimum of 90 Hz. It will make AER look SO much better, and it's a good compromise between visual fidelity and resource consumption. You can also try 120 Hz, if your system allows for stable operation with it, but don't expect the same huge improvement that you get moving up from 72 Hz to 90 Hz.