Where is my fedora? (Patreon)

Well, you all know where I'm going with that, don't you? No further ado: release 16.2.1 of the R.E.A.L. VR mod supports Indiana Jones and the Great Circle :-D

[Imagine a whipcrack sound effect here ^_^] 

I won't spoil anything for people who haven't played the game yet, but just know that you'll be traveling together with Indy (actually, traveling as Indy, since the adventure is played in first person) to some of the most beautiful and iconic locations in the world. And all the while punching Nazis in the face. I mean, it doesn't get any better than that, does it?

I have a small confession to make about this one. When the game came out and people asked if I would be making a VR mod for it, my knee-jerk reaction was to say no because I didn't want to sink a huge amount of time into extending my framework to support the Vulkan API only for the sake of one game. But after the Christmas break, when I was done with DL(S)SS and things finally slowed down a bit, I went through my repository and saw that the old code I had written to support RDR2 had not rotted as much as I feared, so I decided to check Indy out. In the end, what took me the longest was porting the DLSS stereoscopic fix from DX12 to Vulkan, but it was worth the effort because the vegetation in the game just didn't look right without it ;-)

News flash: Speaking of DL(S)SS, this just in: Cyberpunk 2077 had an official update today (v2.21) to support DLSS 4 and the new Transformers model. I tested it briefly and everything appears to work correctly in VR, yay!

Latest updates for Indy will be added at the bottom of the post.

Games list

As usual the mod archive is common for all my VR conversions (28 are currently available). 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]

• 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]

• 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 (new) [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.

Mod setup and game options

IMPORTANT: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle encrypts both the saved games and the user options files with the SteamID of the player (why a single-player game would do that is beyond me, but that's what the developers decided to do). That means RealConfig will NOT be able to preselect the graphics options needed for VR and you'll have to do everything manually, so please read on and follow the instructions in this section to the letter or the game will not be working correctly.

Before installing the mod, run Indiana Jones and the Great Circle flat (not in VR) and access the in-game menus to set the following mandatory options:

In CONTROLLER > AIM ASSISTANCE:

• Aim Assist = Off

In VIDEO > SCREEN SETUP:

• Display Mode = Windowed

• Aspect Ratio = 16:9 [Native]

• Window Size = 1920 x 1080 [Native]

In VIDEO > GRAPHICS SETTINGS:

• Picture Framing = Fullscreen

• Field of View = 110

• Vertical Sync = Off

• FPS limit = 1,000

• Edit Brightness & HDR > Enable HDR = Off

• Motion Blur = Off

• Chromatic Aberration = Off

• Depth of Field = Off

• Depth of Field Anti-Aliasing = Off

In VIDEO > ADVANCED VIDEO SETTINGS:

• Upscaling = DLSS

• DLSS Frame Generation = Off

Then under ACCESSIBILITY > CAMERA you might want to turn Camera Stabilization on and Screen Shake off, just for comfort's sake, because this game has so much head bobbing that it makes even flatscreen players nauseous.

Under VIDEO > GRAPHICS QUALITY, mind that your Texture Pool Size is not set too high, as if you go overboard with the pool size VRAM might start thrashing and performance will absolutely tank, to like 5 fps, and it will be hard even to navigate the menus to put things back to normal.

As usual Path Tracing should be off, as the beautification in VR is not worth the huge performance hit.

At this point you can finally quit to desktop and start installing the mod. WARNING: in case of crashes, at this moment or anytime later, do not follow the recommendation to run the game in safe mode (start it normally instead), as safe mode would reset all the options to their default values and you would have to repeat the setup process from the beginning.

Expand the mod archive into the game folder where "TheGreatCircle.exe" is (for example on the Steam version, which is the one I developed and tested the mod against, the default folder will be C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\The Great Circle), then run RealConfig.bat. Even though for this title RealConfig cannot preselect the game options, it still performs some crucial installation steps without which the mod will not function.

Non-Steam editions should also work, but if you encounter issues please upload your RealVR.log file somewhere so we can sort them out. Also, always make sure that your video drivers are updated to the latest version.

The next time you launch Indiana Jones and the Great Circle it should automatically display in your VR headset and you can proceed to adjusting the resolution you want.

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 15-30 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 actual gameplay. The target PPD you choose will be remembered and re-applied automatically across sessions.

Cutscenes

Cutscenes are fully 3D and allow you to look anywhere without restrictions. The cinematics quality is one of the worst I've ever seen though, because the developers really went out of their way to optimize everything that would not be visible from the forced camera! There are missing chunks in the world, vanishing or duplicate characters, the usual feet dragging in the ground, frozen or wrong animations, levitating props... you name it. That's a pity because it detracts a bit from the narrative tension in the cutscenes and gives them an unintended comical effect.

Input

You will want to use a gamepad to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (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.

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 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, to show all HUD elements in their correct 3D positions (like quest markers for instance) 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 "INDY" 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 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 "INDY" tab takes effect immediately while playing, without any need to bump the resolution.

Gameplay

The Indiana Jones and the Great Circle mod supports 6 DoF tracking, i.e, the camera will follow your head rotation and movement. However, full 6 DoF is only enabled in cutscenes and other moments when you don't have control of your character, because during actual gameplay this title is in a constant "aiming" state, meaning there's always a crosshair or dot displayed where you are aiming (for example where your whip is going to strike). So during gameplay the mod will restrict you to 3 DoF, or rotational tracking only, as enabling positional tracking would get your aim out of alignment. [UPDATE: Due to popular demand, I added an option to the "INDY" tab so you can keep 6 DoF active even in gameplay. If you turn it on, you might need to recenter more frequently to keep the crosshair from drifting out of alignment.]

In the "INDY" 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 to a hotkey, which might turn out handy in case you are bothered by the weird cutscenes and prefer to experience them in the original 2D rendition.

Updates and known issues

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

The game uses 3D models for your journal, maps, books and the like, showing them as actual objects that you hold in your hands instead of flat renderings on the HUD. While an immersive choice, that could even hint at an official VR version having been considered at some stage of development, it has the unfortunate problem that the papers are drawn very close to your eyes, to the point where they become a little hard to read. To work around that problem, make sure Indy is standing (not crouching) and just crane your neck forward and down. The booklet will be pushed to a much more comfortable position, and it will also move left/right as you turn your head so that all information will be visible.

Graphics options (except for the mandatory ones that I listed in the setup section above) can be tweaked in many ways, both from the game menus and by manually setting cvars in config files, so you should have a lot of freedom adjusting the tradeoff between image quality and performance to your liking. Soon Brandon will have a video on his channel with some helpful hints on how you can do that and the kind of results that you can achieve.

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"You can't just run away from your problems, Indiana."

"Watch me."