Another one bites the dust (Patreon)

[Update Jan 20: the posts that contained (older versions of) the mod have been temporarily locked. I will need to go through them one by one and "sanitize" them. It's probably gonna take me a few days, so please be patient if you can't find the instructions for your favorite game right away. While I'm at it I will also check if the information is still up to date (broken links, workarounds no longer needed, and the such) so that it's not just a horrendous waste of time.]

Many of you have noticed that two of my recent posts disappeared about a week ago. I apologize that I could not comment personally about the fact, because there was an ongoing legal exchange.

Now that the dust has settled, I'm even more sorry to announce that we are leaving behind an adventure that so many of you deeply loved and enjoyed. CD PROJEKT S.A. decided that they would follow in Take-Two Interactive Software's steps and issued a DMCA notice against me for the removal of the Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod.

At least they were a little more open about it, and I could get a reply both from their legal department and from the VP of business development. But in the end it amounted to the same iron-clad corpo logic: every little action that a company takes is in the name of money, but everything that modders do must be absolutely for free.

As usual they stretch the concept of "derivative work" until it's paper-thin, as though a system that allows visualizing 40+ games in fully immersive 3D VR was somehow built making use of their intellectual property. And as usual they give absolutely zero f***s about how playing their game in VR made people happy, and they cannot just be grateful about the extra copies of the title they sold because of that—without ever having to pour money into producing an official conversion (no, they're not planning to release their own VR port, in case you were wondering).

The bottom line is all that matters, and gamers be damned.

Am I a little bitter about all of this? Yeah, you bet I am. Especially in the same week when Meta pulls the plug on three major VR studios. Especially after four years during which I (together with other modders) spent so much time keeping our mods alive in spite of CDPR's constant breaking updates. Especially when they never even knew or cared during all this time that the VR conversion was there, and are only knee-jerk reacting now because somebody reported to them that it existed and it was not free.

What really irks me is the duplicity with which the corpo mind thinks and reacts.

—"Are you considering an official VR port of your game?"
—"HAHAHA, you must be delusional, why would we spend our precious money building something only because gamers yearn for it, when there's no clear return on investment".

—"Are you allowing developers to be at least supported financially while they do the work you refuse to do?"
—"ABSOLUTELY NOT, we are okay with it if they give all their time and expertise for free, but it's downright shameful for them to ask for money".

Anyway. Dear Cyberpunk 2077: I've got one less problem without ya.

I'll republish here the content of the posts that were taken down, edited to keep the true money-makers and their lawyers happy. An amended mod release will follow later in the day.

But stay tuned!!! Despite everything, I really want to end this on a positive note, so I'll jump the gun and just release today the new conversion I have been working on, without going through the ordinary testing cycle. Maybe it will be a little rough around the edges, but we'll take care of that, as we always do ;-)

What game am I talking about? Well,

Gimme a B...

Gimme a G...

Gimme a 3!

Baldur's Gate 3!!!

See ya later []-D

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[Original posted contents follow, edited to account for CDPR's DMCA notice]

Release 26.3.0 of the R.E.A.L. VR mod, attached below, [There will be a new release soon with CP2077 support removed, which] aims to fix a few long-standing problems that in various degrees have affected some of you when playing our VR conversions.

As you know, my goal has always been to allow us to experience all those beautiful virtual worlds "from the inside", but with a focus on preserving the original gameplay flow and making it possible to do a full playthrough in VR.

Sometimes a game lends itself to the conversion smoothly, with a uniformity of behavior that makes modding it a pleasant journey (in other words, "if the tutorial level works, the whole game works"). But most of the time there are dozens of quirks and corner cases that require special attention and demand much longer hours to fix, test, fix again.

Here are a few of those cases. You can expect more to come in the following months. Very special thanks to Brandon and to all of you who tested early access mods and wrote detailed bug reports; this kind of iterative, continuous improvement would be impossible without your help.

Days Gone: the fix I published for the twitchy "aiming with throwables" camera, while working perfectly for most people (including us during testing) still seemed to be only partially effective for some others. I have investigated further, and made more profound changes that should insure a smooth behavior when the throwables arc is displayed, no matter what version of the game you're using (Classic or Remastered) and even in cases when your frame rate is too low and irregular. Feedback always welcome!

Cyberpunk 2077: since official update 2.0, where vehicle combat was first introduced to the game, the VR mod has allowed you to shoot accurately from inside your vehicle. Actually, the precision and speed achievable with gaze-based aiming in VR was way higher than what you could get with gamepad alone, as happens with all our conversions. However, the animation of your character's arm and gun didn't follow the crosshair, which for some of you was a little immersion-breaking. I rewrote the in-vehicle shooting code from scratch, and now the animation should be correct at all times, making for a fun and seamless experience.
[The previous v24.2.0 R.E.A.L. VR release] also improves Photo Mode for Cyberpunk 2077. The camera is now completely decoupled when Photo Mode is active, which means that you can freely look around without disturbing the shot, but the position of the grid (which can be rotated independently with your KB/M or gamepad) will determine the actual framing of the screenshot.
So long, and thanks for all the fish :'-(

Elden Ring: I didn't change anything with this one, but Brandon put in the time to test the Reforged mod (a free, extensive overhaul of the game) and it seems to be working flawlessly! So if you needed an excuse to start a new playthrough of the game in virtual reality, there you have it []-D
Additional instructions from Brandon: to get the overhaul working in VR, after installing the mod, rename RealVR64.dll in the ELDEN RING\Game folder to dxgi.dll. Then you'll be able to start the game from the Reforged launch options. You will need to create a new character and go through the tutorial section, which was redone to teach Reforged mechanics.

Far Cry 5, Far Cry New Dawn, Far Cry 6: these three games offer co-op multiplayer, which has always been a sore point in VR because the multiplayer mode has just enough differences in the character rotation code that playing co-op in VR was basically impossible. With this release of R.E.A.L., all important issues should be sorted out: your view will no longer randomly become headlocked after loading a level or fast traveling, and the map in Far Cry 6 multiplayer will work as expected and no longer be all black. There might still be some jank when using the Ubisoft overlay (the chat for instance has a tendency to become headlocked and too big), but that can be worked around by temporarily switching to the 2D virtual screen. Chatting while playing co-op in VR is best done via mics anyway instead of textual input.