Release 3.1.0 (the weapon update)

New Patrons: please see the main post for full instructions and lots of details. This is only a heads-up post to announce the new update and to provide a place for discussing it in the comments.

As promised, this release fixes several important issues, above all the excessively zoomed-in weapons that unfortunately Cyberpunk 2077 forces on all players due to its console heritage.

If you have a "normal" VR headset with parallel displays (basically every headset out there except the Pimax family, the Valve Index when used in a raw projections mode that almost no one knows about, and the Reverb G2) you'll now be able to control everything about your weapon. An image is worth a thousand words, so please refer to the screenshot above depicting the "CP2077" tab of the mod overlay, which can be shown at all times by pressing the Pause/Break key on your keyboard (or by pulling both triggers on your gamepad only when the game is paused in the menus).

The new section begins about halfway down, with the header "Tweak aiming camera". You will find four separate ranges there, by means of which you can customize the behavior of the different weapon types in CP2077. Zoom=1 means normal size, while zoom=20 is the foreseeable maximum (it should be enough for everybody, as the highest weapon zoom I've seen used by the game is around 10).

As you can see, my defaults set a range of [1, 1] for pistols, rifles/shotguns and other weapons like blades, which means that those weapon types will always be drawn at normal scale, while my recommendation for sniper rifles is to allow the full zoom-in range [1, 20] so you can see the scope information magnified as the game intended.

For tinkerers: you can customize those ranges as you please. For example, let's say that you choose a range of [2, 4] for pistols. That means that whenever the game draws a magnified pistol in V's hand, the magnification or zoom factor that the game wants will be compared against your selected range. If the zoom factor is less than 2, it will be forced to normal size. If the zoom factor is between 2 and 4 it will be honored, but no magnifications of the gun model larger than 4x will be allowed.

All of the previously described ranges are for weapon scaling: in the "Extra aiming tweaks" section, there is another range which instead controls world scaling. If you already played at least some of the game in 2D, you might have noticed that CP2077 enlarges the world every time you aim down the sights, with much higher levels of magnification when you use scopes. The "Aiming camera zoom range" allows you fine control over that mechanism. As you can see, my default kills all small, distracting magnifications up to about 2x, while it allows larger zoom levels so you'll still be able to use magnifying scopes properly. If you are a VR purist and always want your world size to be perfectly stable, select a range of [1, 1] and all zooming while you aim will be disabled.

Finally, ticking the "Free aiming camera distance" allows you to move your head IRL closer or farther from the sights, for a very natural way of dealing with different weapons and scope types. If you prefer a static offset, use the slider just below, before the "GPU Throttling" section.

So, what about VR headsets with canted displays? I'm happy to say that after much brain squeezing I managed to sort of bend the laws of optics a bit, and achieve a satisfactory zoom mode with perfect sight alignment even for those. There's only so much bending that physics will allow, though, so here's the catch: if your headset has canted displays, in order to maintain proper weapon line of sight even while zooming, the mod will mandate that weapon magnification and world magnification be identical (the game normally considers them independent). That means that if for instance you are running the mod on a Pimax headset, the "Extra aiming tweaks" will be grayed out and unavailable, and the four weapon zoom ranges will also control the world size when aiming with the respective weapon types. Also, there will be no special "Free aiming camera distance" mode because with tilted displays it would be impossible to keep your line of sight correctly aligned with the weapon.

A couple of annoying problems (which I might be able to solve in the future, but no guarantees) with canted-projection headsets remain: while your weapon is drawn or you are using the scanner, some objective HUD markers in the world will appear doubled and the minimap will jitter between the two display angles.

Other issues that this update fixes (thank you all for the detailed reports and the savegames you sent me, they helped a LOT):

• sniper rifles are correctly recognized and activate the headlocked HUD, so it's now possible, and in fact great fun, to aim properly and snipe away to your heart's desire;
• the crosshair that appears when you're using some special body modifications (no spoilers, but I'm sure everybody knows what I'm talking about!) will also automatically headlock and allow you to aim;
• the mod overlay will now appear in a safe area no larger than 1920x1080 pixels, even if you select super high resolutions that overflow your monitor, so every control in the page will always be reachable even when using the mouse;
• RealConfig will no longer overwrite your RealVR.ini file when you tell it not to (sorry for the regression, it was due to modifications I made at the last minute to accomodate the upcoming support for Virtual Desktop!)
• Mar 7: thanks to patron Maichevsky I realized there was another problem with RealConfig.bat that might make it fail to locate your game profile if you log in to Windows with a limited user account. I refreshed the zip archive attached below with the corrected batch file. The mod is unchanged so I didn't bump up the version number, and there is no need to update unless you were getting the "game appears to never have been run" error.

Issues Q13 (shooting from vehicles) and Q16 (TAA/DLSS shimmering near close objects) from the Troubleshooting post remain open for the moment, as does the issue with turrets not being recognized by the mod. For both vehicles and turrets, you'll still need to rotate your gun with the mouse/stick in order to control where you shoot.

Enjoy your VR dystopian world in bright neon colors, and tell me what you think of the new gun implementation in the comments!!!