It's very saddening, but the studio behind some of the very best VR experiences ever made was just shut down by Meta, more info here:
https://www.roadtovr.com/meta-ready-at-dawn-lone-echo-vr-shut-down/
https://www.androidcentral.com/gaming/virtual-reality/ready-at-dawn-studios-closing
https://www.uploadvr.com/ready-at-dawn-horizon-sunset/
It's hard to imagine why Meta would do this - but Ready At Dawn were masters of PCVR, forcing them to work with extremely slow phone gpus, like the Adreno 650 and 740 gpus inside Quest 2 and 3, may be the equivalent of wanting the Ferrari Design Team to start making new bicycles.
I might add that before RTX 3080 you could not play Lone Echo 1 with all settings maxed in solid 90 fps even using a Rift CV1. The RTX 2080 Ti was close, but still was not fast enough when using 4xMSAA and Lone Echo's built-in resolution 2.0 (= ss 2.0 = 17 million pixels per frame combining both eyes).
Today Lone Echo 1 is not old, it really has just become playable for the masses where you now can experience the game as the devs wanted in 2017.
Back in 2017 there were no lcd hmds, and Lone Echo 1 did suffer from SDE (did gain from oled though) - with hmds like Quest 2-3 and even using Revive with Index, PSVR2 and BigScreen Beyond, Lone Echo 1 shines like never before:
And my Lone Echo 1 review from the Meta Store - posted more than 6 years ago:
"Sometimes games arrive that revolutionize a genre. To me that happened with Doom in 1994, 3dfx Voodoo Graphics Tomb Raider in 1996 and now Lone Echo in 2017 (ok maybe Outcast in 1999 too 😉 Lone Echo is the first VR game to get top rankings on Metacritic: to me true VR gaming was born the minute the first native VR game reached such heights among reviewers. Thus true VR gaming was born with Lone Echo, and I can't express in words what I've felt playing this game. Lone Echo is an experience, I'm thankful to Oculus and the Lone Echo developers for making such visions come to life. I've been running the game using a i7 7700K cpu, 16GB 3200 Mhz ram and a MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X 8GB (factory overclocked). I've set the supersampling to 2.0 in game and deactivated MSAA (couldn't see any changes without MSAA). The game has run flawlessly, even outside the station. This is a game that'll push your hardware to the max, you'll need 3 sensors, and do increase the resolution (=supersampling) all you can, it makes the game so much more beautiful! This isn't a 5/5 rated game, it's 10/5 😉 I've completed the game and there's no doubt it's the best computer game ever made - the game is so far ahead of everything else that currently there is no competition. Completing this game was worth every $ I payed for the Rift - and more."
Note that my point about MSAA being of litte importance primarily goes for the Rift CV1, where TAA is sharp and you may not need more - you'll need the MSAA for lcd hmds. But another way is to use TAA for lcd, disable MSAA, and then try to reach about 27 million pixels per frame combining both eyes to greatly reduce the TAA blur. TAA still is a friend, it removes all jaggies, but causes a blurry image if res is low.
My settings in Lone Echo 1 with RTX 3090 and the Index (Revive 2.1.1 as 3.x causes bigger performance impact): All settings maxed, but use 2xMSAA. Use 80 Hz with no motion smoothing. Set SteamVR res to 300% (27 million pixels combining both eyes, note the in-game resolution scale is disabled with Revive, you must use the SteamVR res scale). This will make Lone Echo 1 look jaw-droppingly awesome. Now for those with RTX 4080 - 4090, I'd go for Index res 400% (36 mill pixels) or even 500% (45 mill pixels) before I'd start increasing to 90 Hz or 120 Hz. So - as you can see - the RTX 5090 can easily find its use with Lone Echo 😉
With the Rift CV1 and RTX 3090 I just max out everything and play in solid 90 fps 🙂 This really is the Way It's Meant To Be Played as everything in Lone Echo 1 was made for the Rift CV1. You're not using the right controllers, the right tracking or getting the right sound if you use anything but the Rift CV1. That said, I do prefer the high res of modern panels in Lone Echo.
Btw, without Lone Echo I might not be here - or my arrival would have been delayed until March 2020 😉
Lone Echo 2 is a giant - if you want to find everything. And complete all sub-quests. I think I have about 30 hours in the game, and only have about 60% of the upgrades, they are extremely difficult to find (and you easily die) - but you do not need these upgrades, you can complete the game without them.
There are so many small caves and things to discover in Lone Echo 2, it really is a much bigger game than Alyx - for completionists 🤓
I've been stubborn - for years I've insisted on completing all quests, but some of the action quests are extremely hard. And the game crashes every 30 minutes on my rig - but I'm lucky, many cannot even play the game due to crashes (DBurne, who is no longer among us, could not even start the game with his RTX 3090, but had similar troubles with Lone Echo 1). Clearly Lone Echo 2 needs many more patches, but Meta cut funding for PCVR shortly after Lone Echo 2 was released - and only 1 or 2 Lone Echo 2 patches were released. For many, Lone Echo 2 is a broken and unplayable game, but I can do much in my 30 minutes before the crash, just need to reach another save point every time 🙂
Maybe time to complete the game - and then maybe time to replay it. Even with its flaws, Lone Echo 2 has no competition apart from Alyx. And Alyx had no npcs looking just half as good as Lone Echo 2 🙂
For long I've really been saving Lone Echo 2 for my next gpu - I can do Index res 200% now in 80 Hz, but that game looks so much better with res 300% - or 400% 😮
Btw, Lone Echo 2 crashes just as much if I use the Rift CV1, so it has nothing to do with Revive. Pyroth also used Revive and Index, and completed Lone Echo 2 with his 3090 with no crashes at all - but he'd forgot to overclock his mem, maybe that's key... Devs do recommend to disable XMP, I've so far refused to do so as that'll reduce my cpu speed with about 10% in all games, but maybe worth a try...
