Remember when we were cowboys? (Patreon)

We're coming full circle now.

In this deluge of AI-generated VR conversions, some masterfully executed, others... ahem, less so, many of you have been loudly asking that we go back to the West.

We were pioneers back then, remember?

Ah, those were simpler times. We software engineers assumed we had secure jobs that would carry us all the way to peaceful retirement. Mathematicians thought that spending their lives working on a few almost impossible-to-crack problems was noble and worthwhile, not to mention fun. Interpreters devoting something like twenty years to master a foreign language, with all of its beautifully absurd subtleties and complexities, believed they had found purpose and meaning.

Today all of that seems to be gone. So far gone that we get chastised if we so much as ask for a little more RAM for our personal computers (ew, personal! That sounds so terrible). All hail AI!

So yes, let's go back. Let's just pretend for a little while longer that sanity will prevail. Even though we have allowed all the power in the world to concentrate in the hands of a tiny group of people who speak and act as if sanity was a cockroach they will stomp on in their march toward success. A minuscole group of people who define success as something that's so insane, normal folks need special tools to even wrap their heads around it.

I hope that nothing bad will happen to our little community of VR friends, if we try to enjoy this wonderful masterpiece again for a while:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1174180/Red_Dead_Redemption_2/

Much has changed, and much more is going to change very soon, with a speed no human can fathom. Let's just sit around the fire for a while, sing a few songs, put down a few beers, reminisce about our glorious past.

Let's just be our best selves, our happy and carefree selves.

🔥

The game-specific post with the installation instructions and recommendations for RDR2 is here, while the early-access archive can as usual be found on this page.

Release 2611.5.2_early_access of the R.E.A.L. VR framework also has fixes and improvements for several of the other games it supports:

GTAVE

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3240220/Grand_Theft_Auto_V_Enhanced/

I reworked the injection code so that now it's fully compatible with Alexander Blade's ScriptHookV, and in particular with his ASI loader for GTAVE, xinput1_4.dll, which you can find in his distribution at https://www.dev-c.com/gtav/scripthookv/

That should make compatibility with the immense number of 3rd party mods MUCH easier, with no more need to rename files, download special launchers, resolve conflicts and all that jazz.

I'm especially interested in hearing from you if the Manual Transmission mod is now working correctly in VR with GTAVE. I did test it, and the only hitch I noticed was the need to select Native Input in the Manual Transmission mod menu so that my Xbox gamepad would be recognized for gameplay and not just to navigate the menus. But since I don't have a wheel I wasn't able to carry out a proper, full test, so please let me know in the comments!

Another improvement to GTAVE that you'll find in this version is for people who can't or don't want to use DLSS in the game (I respect you, even though I can't say that I understand you). There should be no more frame pacing issues, like FOV glitches, swapped eyes or flashing back and forth from 2D to 3D.

CD

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3321460/Crimson_Desert/

The new release is fully compatible with the latest version of the game and with the DLC that just came out. They have changed a gazillion of tiny things though, so you might want to go back to vanilla and then reinstall any 3rd party mods you're using with the game.

In particular, you'll need the No Letterbox and Better Subtitles mods to view the cutscenes properly, without ugly black bars.

Thanks to Brandon, I can also suggest that you install the DLSS Noisy Clothing Displacement Fix: it will magically get rid of the ugly pixelated borders that the characters have always had in the game, even at the highest levels of quality.

It is my impression that the two most recommended mod managers for CD, Crimson Browser and JSON Mod Manager, don't work correctly anymore. Maybe there are some tricks to make them behave, but they're no longer being maintained and they're rapidly becoming obsolete. My favorite solution at the moment is the Definitive Mod Manager. I especially like the "Fix Everything" button! It's right down my alley.

Brandon is also cooking something special for CD... It should be ready SOON(TM) ^_^

ELDEN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1245620/ELDEN_RING/

There's been some amount of bit rot there, due to official game updates, my own regressions, and new conflicts with the important ERSS-FG third-party mod that implements much-needed DLSS compatibility. I really don't get FromSoftware with this one, honestly. Why wouldn't they implement official support for upscaling? It's not as if the ELDEN engine is capable of reaching high resolutions natively, due to some extremely poor design choices (what ever happened to the brilliant developers who wrote the engine(s) for the Dark Souls games?). So why refuse the upscaling help?

Anyway, I fixed VR support and now it works correctly again, but if you want DLSS you will need a specific version of ERSS-FG, namely "ERSS-FG-v4.16.2-ReleaseSE". It can be downloaded from the author's Patreon page. He also has a more recent version 5 there, but it shows severe rendering issues with VR that I haven't been able to solve for the moment, so stick with 4.16.2.

If you want to check it out, you'll see that the archive contains the mod itself, ERSS-FG.dll, with its library folder named ERSS2 and two loaders, D3D12.dll and ERSSReShadeStub.addon. For VR play both loaders need to be removed, as they would interfere with my own hooking. Just drop the ERSS-FG.dll file and the ERSS2 folder inside the "ELDEN RING\Game" folder; R.E.A.L. will load them automatically. Also remember to add the line "ImGuiUseGamepadNav = true" (without the quotes) to the initial section of the ERSS2\ERSS-FG.toml file, otherwise the ERSS mod overlay will not be navigable with the gamepad.

Until the next time!!