You will have to walk through forgotten villages, looking into the dark windows of houses and take shelter from the rain in rare stalker camps. Feel the fear in your own skin from the gaze of the invisible creatures in ruins and the risk of vomiting from the “helicopters” after drinking vodka.
In short, the summary of the post:
I found a really working way to go through the original stalker and mods without removing the VR helmet, while having fun 😀 but with reservations:
1. No special knowledge is required for the raw operation of the game – it works out of the box
2. if you want to customize it for yourself, then I have provided for this: at the end of the post there are links to articles on the Internet that explain the details of this or that point and to the software used.
3. you don’t want to spend a lot of money on an expensive VR kit to play the good old games and check out the new ones in SteamVR (yes, it is normally supported on the helmets that I chose)
In the good tradition of blogs –there is a video version of this post, in which I collected all the information into compact 17 minutes. If you are scared by the many books below, then you can safely watch the video – don’t miss anything. Be careful: it seems to be slipping through there mat and a high concentration of a chattering person who does not stop for a second 😀
Everything said below is my personal experience but can be criticized, I look forward to your suggestions in the comments.
— Virtual reality helmet Oculus Rift DK1 or better yet DK2, as well as a driver for it.
— Free program Vireio Perception
– Better video card than some NVIDIA GTX650ti, for example GTX1060
– game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (any version / almost any mod will do)
Why is the list like this??
Vireio Perception. I took this software because it is free, a lot of settings are available right in the game, you can change everything without restarting, without even removing your helmet. True, there is a risk of overdoing it and vomiting, more on that later 🙂
There are disadvantages, such as support for other stalkers. For example, I have not yet been able to launch Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat. They say VORPX works 100% (another software for vr owners – a 2D to VR converter), but it is now under 3 mowers wooden. Well, you get the idea 🙂 However, in general the list of games is quite impressive. Check out the link below.
I take oculuses because of the native support for all drivers (including SteamVR) and the normal fit of lenses to displays. Tracking is normal, minimum collective farm, maximum technology + of course price. Just open any site for selling secondary goods and you will be blown away by the prices!
Naturally, there is a difference between an oculus for 10k and one for 1.5k rubles. Basically, this is the presence or absence of damage to cables and lenses, as well as the kit. Being the owner of dk1 and dk2, I simply have to analyze this junk, but more on that next time. I’ll just say – this thing is very cool for the money, especially because you can just insert it into your computer and it’s already completely ready to play.
Speaking of mobile solutions: It’s probably not worth running VR with delays on a mobile phone with a slow matrix and a crooked lens correction setting. Ruin the whole impression of VR and you will quickly get tired of games. However, I don’t forbid enthusiasts 🙂 I’m sure many of you have already tried these solutions – tell me in the comments about your positive or negative experience, it will be useful to all of us!)
What will be the difference between DK1 and DK2?
Technically, you can look around normally in both places, good volume and immersion, but there is one little thing.
No, it’s not even the pixels themselves that will bother you, but interpixel grid – so-called screen-door effect (SDE) – the scourge of all modern VR devices.
It’s as if you were just playing at a low resolution, but then you got black bars between the pixels.
In DK1 this is very noticeable, but in DK2 it practically does not interfere. Very close in feel to HTC VIVE.
By the way, perhaps, if you have not come across VR closely before, then to understand this topic you will go looking for what it looks like in motion and will come across other nonsense.
Her name is MOIRE (from French – moire).
This effect of very strong ripples on displays is not noticeable to the eye, but is visible through almost any camera. Google this effect, or better yet, try VR somewhere, there’s nothing wrong with it.
Sooooo back in DK1 there is no external control of the helmet position, which means the internal head rotation sensors accumulate tracking errors over time.
I’ll show you a little later how this manifests itself in a stalker
Let’s start setting it up using DK2 as an example!
For the oculus you need a driver and a tool, it’s called Oculus Configuration Utility versions 1.10, also called on the Internet as Oculus Runtime SDK 0.8.0.0.
For a good life, I recommend adjusting the profile, such as height and interpupillary distance, or don’t touch anything if everything looks fine in the demoscene
Using the same demoscene, make sure that the camera is aimed at you and in any position you do not fall beyond the boundaries of its vision.
Next, grab the Vireio Perception program.
I have a version 3.0.1 dated November 6, 2015. You can download it from the off-site, there it is in the links below. Unpack it wherever convenient into a separate folder, run Perception.exe in the bin folder. Next in the program, in the drop-down list, indicate the oculus in direct fashion.
By the way, if you have more than one monique – I recommend turning it off through the Windows parameters or pull the cable, because the stalker does not know how to keep the mouse cursor inside the window, hence the random collapse and other inconveniences if the mouse runs to the second screen.
Also, in advance without a helmet in the game, it is better to set the render type to static lighting, and the resolution according to the helmet – for example full hd.
Why static?
First of all, if you run it on the speaker, it will either freeze or have bugs. Secondly, in vanilla PM the sun behaves obscenely – in Viara it walks across the sky slightly random regarding the rotation and tilt of the head.
Dynamic shadows do pretty much the same thing. And in the statics, the shadows are already baked into the textures on the models and they don’t jump anywhere. In some mods the situation is a little better, try it yourself.
The resolution can, of course, be set higher, for example, to improve the situation with anti-aliasing, but then you will end up with too small, unreadable fonts and performance degradation.
In the meantime, our main motto for Viar is:
I don’t care what it looks like, the main thing is that it doesn’t slow down and moves normally 🙂
We launch the game, watch the black screen and wait. If the wait is prolonged, there is a problem.
Drop the game through the dispatcher and try again. If it doesn’t work after several attempts, restart the software.
You can also try putting these dlls from the driver folder into the folder Bin next to executable *.exe games:
-d3d9.dll – hijackdll.dll – libfreespace.dll – VRboost.dll
With the first oculus, all this was more the rule than the exception. For some reason everything is more stable with the second one.
It also happens that strange windows with a bunch of text fly out and block everything.
Solutions:
– Close the program whose name is visible in these windows, t.To. it pops up in the background and VP tries to get into it.
– Google the error text or go to the VP forum
If something doesn’t work, write in the comments, let’s try to figure it out.
So the game has started. Please immediately keep in mind that the 3D driver and videos in Stalker poorly compatible. That is, the menu, screensavers and credits will slow down at first, and then go slower and slower. What is it connected with I don’t know, but in the gameplay itself this is not observed.
Before dealing with in-game nuances, let’s understand some hotkeys.
Home combination throughout the game for DK1 and everything once required for DK2 is the left shift R or ctrl R — image calibration to the center.
This is exactly what the driver requires from us – click.
Calibration is required for normal positioning in modes of which there are only two (by the way, you can switch between them by clicking on the mouse wheel).
The first is the VR mode already known to us.
In it, the image is stretched across the entire screen and tries to resemble virtual reality. Quite successfully by the way.
Immediately after some manipulations, the mouse and the head are a single whole, that is, you can look around with both the mouse and the head.
The second mode is the so-called cinema.
The image looks like a hefty one virtual screen in front of the player. The picture inside is voluminous, but does not cover the entire display. Control like on a regular computer.
Used for picking texts, inventory, etc. In DK2 If you wish, you can lean closer and read what is written there. Just Here and problems of accumulating errors in tracking emerge first oculus.
It appears like this:
Sat up straight, calibrated, ran for a while. You switch to cinema mode, and the screen is somewhere to the side. Shift+R 🙂
In the second oculus, of course, such No.
Next comes customization.
https://moheganpacasino.co.uk/bonus/ />Let’s turn it on NumLock, click ctrl + Q and first let’s go to Overall Settings using the buttons on the numpad. We enable the tricky function “Force Mouse Emulation HT”
Great! Now we have head control! But don’t rush to move it. Make sure that the mouse sensitivity in the game is set to normal and comfortable and that you are comfortable aiming with the mouse. It’s better to do this right away, then it will be inconvenient to change everything, since the driver settings will be based on this parameter.
If everything is ok, we return to the menu, but we will change these values:
“Yaw/Pitch/Roll multiplier”.
The first is responsible for turning the head left and right, the second for up and down, the third for tilting the head to the side. You don’t have to touch the third one, usually the slopes are correct.
Our task is to achieve comfortable head rotation speed.
Let’s say we look at the wall on the left and slowly turn our head to the right, look at the wall on the right. We correct it to normal values so that the movement in the game and in reality coincide.
For example, it’s more convenient for me to move slightly faster, I’m so lazy 😀
And there’s also one problem here – insufficient responsiveness if you turn your head very quickly. Whoever tells me how to fix it will get it from me Class And thanks from the entire community)))
Holy shit, everything looks as if we are looking through binoculars!
Let’s quickly go here:
“3D Reconstruction Settings”
Here you can configure viewing angle and the so-called “size of the world”
Let’s start with the first point:
Turn on “Projected FOV” and use the arrows to change the fauve as we like. With the shift key held down, things will go faster.
It is better, of course, to achieve such an effect when, when you turn your head, objects around are not distorted in the center of the image and along the edges, that is, their geometry looks normal wearing a helmet. Play around with it. The better you set it up, the more immersive and less mutilated later 😉
The second important point here is the point: “World Scale”. Responsible for feeling the size of everything around you. Fuck explain it ok. Roughly speaking, the function expands or shifts the image for both eyes towards the nose or towards the edges.
For example, with this setting (4.000) – in order to focus on the object in front of me, I need to slightly squint my eyes towards my nose.
In the real world, this usually happens when the object is very small and close to that very nose. The brain receives information that we feel like we are crawling on our bellies through a themed children’s amusement park following a stalker.
The sense of volume in the background increases greatly, but realism suffers :))
The opposite effect will occur if the value tends to zero. Then I have difficulty distinguishing the volume of distant objects, since my vision does not allow me to look at them from both sides at the same time and therefore they seem huge. Objects closer still feel quite large and real, I no longer need to squint my eyes.
Briefly speaking themselves you’re stumbling, a very amusing joke.
On my own behalf, I can only recommend that you carry out the adjustment near such objects, the size of which is well known to you. For example – people, cars, fat salesman behind the counter 🙂
One more menu item left. The most controversial one here.
Position Tracking Configuration
What is it and how does it work:
We all know what it is modern viar – now you no longer need to sit still and look straight. You can bend over, jump, run, etc. – your head will be in the viara where it should be. This function does the same.
But we’re in stalker!(sarcasm)
Honestly, I can’t convey the normal feeling of how this happens in the game on a flat picture of your screen, but I can tell you 🙂
Everything dynamic is drawn for known coordinates – location points one player cameras. The developers have adjusted everything for a regular monitor in beauty and norms.
Then I fly in with my Viar, I turn on the software that forcibly adds a second camera and everything goes along the beard, but the most noticeable thing is skybox. In other words – a cube with the sky. He literally hangs tied to the camera in Stalker very close with the character and cunningly set up to render only behind visible objects.
So here it is. This doesn’t really interfere with life, if you set the world to an adequate size, then the sky won’t be conspicuous, everything will be more or less normal. But provided that you can move around the world only using the keyboard.
But here we are sitting in the menu with terrible head tracking so that we can bend over there and so on! (sigh) Well, actually, we turn on the tracking and now we can see that this little crap is hanging very close. Hence the drug trips, t.To.
here are the trees – they are far and high. But the clouds – they seem to be behind the trees, but in fact they are closer than the trees! (the image shows a large multiplier of movement in space, you can’t easily get out of the cube in the game, but it’s clear)
In short, this can probably only be fixed by changing the model of the box with the sky to something very huge, so that it is far away and not an eyesore.
Let’s talk about the tracking itself – it’s awesome.
Now you can live lean towards objects, look out of a window or around a corner. Head turns are especially realistic, you canaim through the front sight in arms and in general looks more effective than simple tracking.
There is only one minus – you move inside the scene with a skybox and other junk attached to it, which causes inconvenience.
More colorfully conveyed in the video 🙂
By the way, positioning can be used in gameplay.
In the menu “Duck-and-Cover Mode” you can bind button presses to different positions of the body (head).
When I lower my head lower, I crouch in the game, this could be healthy during the passage and it looks good.
How to play is up to you. I would recommend hotkeying this when you are in rooms and dungeons – there where the sky is not visible, but there is something look at. (hotkey to enable this tracking mode F11 or ctrl+P)
By the way, if when you turn on tracking, the speed in the game does not correspond to reality, you can adjust the values in the same menu to normal.
Or you can catch hellish trips and then vomit in your helmet, it’s optional 🙂
The rest of the set of menus and submenus relates rather to officially supported games, such as Skyrim, Left 4 Grandfather and others
The list of games is on the software website.
Since we started talking about bugs, here’s a little chatter about bugs and generally regarding the construction of a picture in our case.
Lighting
Static models in the game look like awesome. But with dynamic objects there are a number of problems:
They may be lit slightly differently for the left and right eyes, which can make them look a bit odd.
In the worst case, they just turn black in one eye until you shine a flashlight on them. By the way, this is a “Night Before Christmas” mod, everything there is white because of the snow lol
Tolerable but affects the atmosphere)
Further on the interface:
This crap can show different things in different eyes.
From what I myself have noticed, health and other scales can lie.
For example, in one eye you have health ends, and in the other off the edge of the screen scalite.
Always believe what is less!)
Next is the main map and minimap.
Everything is clear with the main one – it stupidly climbs beyond the boundaries of the interface in one or the other eye. but in principle you can dig deeper. You don’t use it all the time.
But there are more serious problems with the minimap.
It costs her nothing to penetrate beyond the boundaries of the field and get in your eyes when you don’t need it. This is probably the most infuriating thing on the entire list. And since I don’t understand a damn thing about modding – I stupidly removed it from the gamedata configs.
About where to do this is written in the article about HUD, which I will attach below.
Meanwhile, you sit and look at some crap that is happening to my interface))
Everything is fine, that’s how it should be, because it’s no good to constantly switch to cinema mode to shoot what is it and where is your leak?, the edges of the screen then not visible while you’re wearing a helmet))
Hmm, looks like it’s time for
Let’s figure out what can be done first.
For good measure, there is actually a convenient tool to move the interface closer to the center of the screen.
For the first oculus you need to move it very close to the center, for the second you can move it further away.
The whole point is how it will be seen through lenses. If everything is soapy around the edges, or it’s just annoying to constantly squint your eyes to the side – move closer to the center.
Akhtung! The tool will help you move vanilla elements, but if you need to move dynamic news in a fashion, pick the configs manually. For example, I didn’t master it, but there is some basic information on the Internet and at the end of the post in articles. There is also a link to the software.
Some players will also notice missing textures and models at the edges of the screen.
It especially bothers you when you go into a dark house during the day. It’s so scary there, you can’t see anything..
and then the missing ceiling blinds you, because according to the game it doesn’t need to draw it!
This is where magnification comes to our aid FOV in the game itself.
I recommend reading about this in more detail on the Internet, but usually players and modders use fov switcher. I often see this setting in mods and change it through the configurator or directly in the game without any additional software.
After changing the in-game fov, you need to tweak the same item in place in Vireio Perception settings.
As fov increases, it happens that either the fps drops like hell, or everything flickers and everything disappears in one eye – lower the settings, especially smoothing. You won’t see much less in a helmet anyway, but overall it will feel better (remember the VR motto)
If everything slows down even at minimum settings, install msi afterburner and see what’s choking you there
and solve the problem at the hardware level, by replacing the video card, for example.
If you need more clarity right in the game, there is a key combination ctrl+F
What it shows:
Your fps. Everything is clear here.
Next Async-Timewarp FPS.
What is this in a global sense and how is it used in VR? I advise you to read in detail on the Internet or follow the link below, I cited a good article from Habr.
In our case, everything looks like this: If the FPS drops below what is necessary for a normal game, then this thing starts smooth camera movement, using fewer frames and waiting for a response from the video card.
For short-term friezes and jams, this method works just fine. This is especially noticeable when loading the game. But this will always interfere, because.To. twitching will be noticeable in dynamic scenes.
In the case of a stalker, I recommend playing with the “vertical sync” in settings, t.To. For example, for me this item locks FPS on 60, whereas a helmet requires 75 and I raked these same twitches.
If you press ctrl+F again, we see Frame time. This is the time spent on drawing one frame.
Roughly speaking, if it lights up green, it means everything is fine.
By the way, at the beginning I mentioned the video card NVIDIA GTX650ti. This is my previous video game and on it I used to try to play stalker and other projects in Viara. There Async-Timewarp showed itself in all its glory – you could even play a little, but of course it looked stupid due to stuttering and motion compensation.
Now I have GTX1060 and of course there are drawdowns, but not always and in principle playable. You can even record videos and stream them.
For observation from the outside, the driver has a special function mirroring to the external screen of what the player sees inside. Switches key combinations ctrl + Home. There are two types of display: exact match and mono mode.
In the first one you can see exactly what the player sees, but there are disadvantages – low image resolution, barrel-shaped distortions, which are corrected inside the helmet by lenses
and special effect chromatic aberration, which is just needed for normal display of pixels along the edges of the screen, i.e.To. the lens distorts them greatly.
More details about this effect are at the end of the article.
The second mode is the usual gameplay with a mono image.
Here the resolution is normal and distortion is only due to the high viewing angle. Everything seems to be ok, but when switching to view from the cinema, He not shown on external display.
The disadvantages are subjective – it may not be entirely obvious to an observer that the player is in virtual reality, because everything looks like a regular game.
This may be relevant for streams on the same Twitch, where the choice of who to watch happens more by preview icons which are generated from the video series, than the name. Well, it’s everyone’s personal business.
There will be no problems recording video using the same shadowplay. Turn on the type of mirroring you like, turn on recording and let’s go. But with streaming it’s getting more complicated.
For example, OBS classic when capturing a game running in Viar, it sees only one mode – mono.
OBS Studio Stalker does not see it at all when it is launched through V.P. Normally captured only if you stream directly through Shadowplay, but I hope, no need to explain, why is this terribly inconvenient. Switching with hot keys does not help. I don’t know how to make it see a stereo image. If you’re wondering, tell me)
There are a couple more words about multiplayer:
I even played it DK1. Damn, I’ve been playing it for many years now (not as often as I’d like, but it’s been a while), but you can’t fight against dudes with snipers, they’re stupidly invisible from afar :). In principle you can have a laugh.
Especially in full locations from the single player game, where you can crawl and sneak around.
In dynamic wall-to-wall battles there is no time for viara at all, the so-called tunnel vision kicks in and you squeeze into a chair and fuck without even moving your head – there’s no time for it. But I recommend everyone to try it, it’s a new challenge.
That seems to be all.
I had the idea for two years, I was too lazy to put everything I know into proper order, I hope it worked out.
By the way, if we move away from the Stalker topic, my main kit at the moment is DK2 + Razer Hydra. To play the same Skyrim VR I’ve had enough, I hope I’ll try it soon Half-Life: Alyx 🙂
Please note that my knowledge may be out of date or incorrect. If you have something to say, be sure to say it, because this will help all visitors to the site! And I can help you with some small details if you ask 🙂
Oh, and by the way, what did it run on:
Windows 7 sp1, Intel i5-4460 3 processor.20 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6gb video card, 8 GB RAM
Useful links below
I suggest everyone who liked it subscribe to my YT channel 🙂 I will be glad to see everyone!
p.s.: I really wanted to get into Mr. Loev’s history of the series, but then it still didn’t work very well and that’s why I got lazy. I hope that he will be able to play stalker in VR on one of the next SG streams, it would be fun and interesting to listen to a person who is really knowledgeable and interested in the topic 🙂
P.P.S.:
If you have dragged the post here and are unable to read it, then I really recommend that you watch the video 🙂 Everything is really quick and straightforward there 😉