With UEVR, we can now play almost any Unreal Engine 4 or 5 game in VR - here's a quick guide if you're new to UEVR:
- and here's Paradise Decay's much longer guide in case that's needed 🙂
Find all necessary UEVR files here:
Basically you just need to install the current v. 1.04 here:
https://github.com/praydog/UEVR/releases
Then you start your VR hmd, now start an Unreal Engine 4 or 5 game, start the UEVR Injector executable, use the pull down menu to mark the game you just started - now press Inject and put on the hmd.
I did that with System Shock - and here's what I got, screenshots taken while playing the game in VR:
System Shock is not very demanding - most gaming rigs can achieve 90 fps
The game looks and performs awesome in VR - not many real VR games can best System Shock for the graphics
This is Ultra graphics settings - notice the lighting and smoke effects
This is Index res 300% - it looks very sharp and crisp. Res 300% is 27 million pixels per frame for both eyes combined
Argh, I died and got ... assimilated 🙂
As written, System Shock is great because it's not very demanding - owners of RTX 4090 cards may have more fun with Outcast - A New Beginning than I did with my RTX 3090 - it does look ... purdy...:
Good ol' Cutter Slade in VR - graphics even better than Stormland, but comes at a cost 🙂
Met a new dude, not really the friendly kind
The game is great with UEVR also due to being 3rd person
Love the vegetation - which would qualify as very high-poly vegetation compared to other VR experiences
Some close-up details
Beautiful environments
Outcast - A New Beginning is playable using mostly Ultra graphics settings and Index res 200% (18 mill pixels res) in 80 Hz thanks to motion smoothing - with an RTX 3090. You can lower graphics settings, but the game easily looks a lot worse. I might save this game for my upcoming RTX 5090 Ti 🙂
With UEVR, be careful not choosing too demanding games, also if you want to use high graphics settings. Older games like Little Nightmares from 2017 may provide a much better experience than trying to run Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2 with all bells and whistles. Choose wisely, and you may now have hundreds (thousands?) of totally awesome and fully playable VR experience with very high-end graphics compared to most made-ground-up-for-VR games.
Btw, try this one too - it's beyond awesome, Alyx-class graphics and physics 😉
Little Nightmares has been described as a great game for UEVR. I was close to buying the game, and then I thought I'd better check if I already own the game - and, lo and behold, I did already own the game 🙂 What are the odds, lol. It's from 2017, and still looking good:
Even if the game may look slightly dated for 2D, it's way beyond most non-UEVR VR experiences. I was expecting a game where I could use tons of super-sampling and Ultra graphics settings, but Little Nightmares is quite demanding. Using 80 Hz, I could get 80 fps with Ultra graphics and Index res 250% - so not bad, but also not fantastic.
A few screenshots taken while wearing the Index:
The game is 3rd person like Chronos, but I do much prefer Chronos. Little Nightmares is not bad and works with UEVR without making any changes to settings - maybe better to play with a gamepad, it works with Index controllers but placement of buttons is slightly annoying. Still an 8/10 rating from me with UEVR - and about 4/10 without VR.
I've always loved Homeworld 1-2, and seeing this trailer I did feel I was missing out on something important, sigh:
Thus I may have been slightly overenthusiastic seeing that this vid existed:
Without watching the vid - and assuming the game was available with full controller support for XBox and PS5, I bought the game 😃
So my mistakes:
1. I should have watched Paradise Decay's vid first - all of it.
2. Homeworld 3 does not have full controllers support, and is PC only for now (no XBox/PS5).
3, It does work in UEVR, but I need a mouse and keyboard to control the game properly.
😬
So there's that. Had to sit down and watch Decay's long vid - which lead me to my next step in my UEVR evolution 🤗 🤓
Here you can find a profile for Homeworld 3, and here's how to install/use it:
I have not yet tested Homeworld 3 with the profile, but the game did perform reasonably well with for the performance. Still, Homeworld 3 may not exactly be a first choice for hassle-free UEVR even if it can work.
My problem is that Homeworld 3 is dead to me without UEVR, so I need to get it working - I do not care about 2D games.
Another game I've tested and which works great is Jedi Fallen Order. Here VoodooDE takes you through the initial setup - but you really don't have to do much, the game works right out of the box. Just inject and it works, at least with the newest UEVR 1.04. But maybe VoodooDE has some great ideas for finetuning if needed (VoodooDE used an older version of UEVR for this vid):
For now and due to the lack of having properly optimized VR motion controller implementation, I prefer the 3rd person games in UEVR. And I just noticed this upcoming game - it looks quite good:
- and yes, this is Unreal Engine 4, and the current playable demo works great with UEVR:
The game arrives later this year - find the free playable demo here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1582650/Caravan_SandWitch/
For Caravan Sandwitch, devs just recommend a GTX 1050 Ti, so many PCVR users should be able to get great performance using UEVR, at least in theory 🙂
I do see the writing on the wall - normal PCVR games cannot easily achieve such quality, and especially all the extremely poor PCVR Quest ports designed for gpus used in phones (Quest 3 uses the Adreno 740 phone gpu, only about 2 tflops - and about 30% the speed of an old GTX 1060 in real benchmarks) stand no chance at all. Here's the Quest 2 vs. GTX 1060 in GeekBench, GTX 1060 was 6 times faster:
Source: https://www.uploadvr.com/oculus-quest-2-benchmarks/
If UEVR gets much improved, it could lead to a great reduction in already poor PCVR game sales - but we're not there yet. A game like Blade & Sorcery PCVR (full version just released) is much ahead when it comes to immersion and presence - also Blade & Sorcery supports full finger tracking for users of Index controllers and much more. Performance for real PCVR games is also much better than current UEVR user for most games.
Still for 3rd person VR games, also compared to Moss 1-2, UEVR already now is more than a mighty competitor.
