Doesn’t ARMA have native VR support? I distinctly recall getting very nauseous from trying infantry in VR with the DK2 loaner back when.
No, never did. A few test rigs at best, but it never got official VR support.
So as I said last night - A3 is a lot of fun with vorpX and VR. It would be great if there was a way to make the HUD data only show in one eye though. This through the lens shot doesn’t show the doubling of the HUD because it is only taken through one eye. It is distracting, but not game killing. It is focused about 3 inches in front of your face…so you can focus on it and it become clear, but then everything else goes wonky…
Rifles and stuff are really cool. Floating there in 3D in front of you, and you can tilt your head to the side to sight down the optics. Of course, you’ll get optics views of slightly different angles through both eyes, just as in real life, so you may want to pick your dominant eye - or you’ll just have to squint one eye if you are struggling with the realistic depiction of battling eye dominance.
The reason I like Immersive Screen as opposed to full 3D is the ability to look at the edges of the screen to see game overlay stuff.
Helicopters are just so much fun…
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Definitely got this sorted. If you go into the aircraft’s INI file, for instance, the A-1H I’m flying has that file under: D:/ThirdWireMods/Thirdwire/SF2V/Objects/Aircraft/A-1H
Hm call me stupid or at least a noob, but how does SF2 work again with mods?
By default it creates some stuff in your “Saved Games” folder and I managed to point “mods” to a different location. But no “Cockpit.ini” files in there. Just the basic aircraft ini files…
In the installation folder, there are also no such files, just .cat files…
You have to download a file extractor tool (Thirdwires site )which will let you extract them from the the relevant cat files.
Once extracted they have to be placed in the correct folder for the game to pick them up.
Also see here for info.
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Gave Arma 2 a shot this morning. I have Arma 2 and Operation Arrowhead. For a bit, this was a problem - trying to launch OA I was not able to get vorpX to “hook” to the executable. Both A2 and A2:OA use the same vorpX profile, but OA would not launch until I selected “Launch without BattleEye” from the OA Steam launch menu. Then it worked fine.
The preconfigured vorpX profiles do things like change your game video settings, details, and aspect ratio, and I’ve found I generally do not like the recommended settings. I would assume the vorpX profiles are very hardware specific - so different VR headsets and graphics cards are going to have different settings that look good. So yeah, you might want to use the vorpX initial settings as a baseline, but I’ve pretty much always been changing them to up the resolution and gameplay graphics toward maximum.
Arma 2 has a bit more artifacts than A3. The menus work fine, but the graphics behind the menus are attempted to be rendered in 3D, which gives an odd look. In general, the game looks pretty good, but perhaps a bit TOO 3D, which I can probably adjust by changing the vorpX 3D settings…you can actually dampen down the amount of 3D it is trying to accomplish.
You can play either full screen 3D or Immersive 3D. Again, with A2 having an overlay that is somewhat essential to gameplay, you might rather be able to see the edges of the screen using Immersive 3D unless you are doing a mission that doesn’t require a lot of overlay interaction. Good news is, you can always swap on the fly to whatever type you want to use…you don’t have to restart the game to change how vorpX renders.
Helicopters look great. Oddly enough, where you get double-vision of the HUD in A3, you don’t get that effect in A2 - the Apache HUD looks great and is focused just right. I have no idea what changed between A2 and A3 in this respect. Maybe A3’s HUD is projected in 3D even though it was made for 2D, whereas the A2 HUD might just be similar to the game menu overlay in 2D, so it is rendered the same by both eyes. Whatever the case, it works great.
Head motion in A2 is slightly different than A3 in that there is a very, very tiny microsecond delay in head motion and what is shown on the screen. I’m pretty sure that was there back when using TrackIR too. You get used to it fast, and it isn’t a real problem. Definitely turn off HEAD BOB in the settings menu though.
One interesting artifact of rendering in 3D is that the game engine doesn’t really change graphics techniques when using vehicle optics such as tank gun sights. I’m not sure how this works in real life - I don’t know if an Abrams gunner sight is actually stereoscopic or not, but that is what you get with A2. It works fine, but just feels different than what you are used to seeing on the 2D screen. It is actually very cool. It is fun to stay in the gunner’s station and issue drive commands and keep an eye on the battlefield.
Infantry action looks great. The 3D look of the gun in front of you is very good, and you can either disassociate your view from the mouse with the double ALT command (so you can look left and right without the gun tracking your head movements) or you can keep it tied to the mouse. You’ll find you want to switch between the two sometimes. I got ZERO VR nausea playing, but I suspect that some of these games might trigger some if you have pretty new VR legs. Double clicking the right mouse button zooms in on the optics and looks fantastic…
Short clip of the optics 3D. Unfortunately, I’m holding my headset in my left hand, my phone in my right hand, and can’t really play the game at the same time…so all of these “through the lens” videos are pretty poor in that I can’t be showing movement and true game action…
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Another older title - Flatout 2 - works awesome with vorpX. It almost feels like a native VR title. Too bad there isn’t a cockpit view, you can only cycle through several external views, but the hood view is pretty darn good. Fun gameplay and the 3D quality is very good…
For this video I kinda/sorta managed to put my phone and my headset in my left hand and drive with my arrow keys…
Take On Helicopters looks fairly good with vorpX - it isn’t as good as Arma 2 in some respects, but the default helo cockpits are very good. Plus you get the additional cool factor of having interactive cockpits. Environments are good, but they seem to not run quite as smoothly as Arma 2, so you have to bump the sliders down a bit. I’d be interested to try the whole campaign again in VR. Take On Hinds helos do not look good. They have a very 2D cockpit for some reason and they don’t look good in VR… Again, apologies for the crappy flying, I’m trying to fly with all three of my hands and hold my phone and headset…not ideal…
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At this point - having tinkered only passingly with vorpX on many different games and sims, I’d stick with my initial recommendation against buying it. If you enjoy tinkering, and can accept that these sims won’t be native VR presentations, I think vorpX is a great tool. I also think it is a very useful tool for people like me that have titles sitting in their library that they’ve never played, but that I’d like to experience in VR.
On a value scale - for me, $40 will represent a good investment if I only even get a handful of titles working like I want. Thus far, that list is well beyond a few titles. The ability to play Strike Fighters and EECH alone are going to be worth the price of admission.
If I were you (the person who hasn’t bought vorpX) - I would continue to lean on the developer to make a 48 hours trial available. I think a couple of days is enough exposure to determine whether it is useful to you or not. I’d also like to mention that I’ve only barely touched on the vorpX settings menus. I’ve pretty much limited myself to the type of 3D rendering, type of presentation, and zoom levels that fit my graphics and game settings. There are pages and pages of additional settings that true tweakers could probably benefit from.
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I had no idea that Rick Wright (Larry Manetti)from Magnum PI was in Baa Baa Black Sheep…!
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I saw that about Robert Conrad @BeachAV8R. 
In between Black Sheep and Magnum he did a stint in space as Giles in Battlestar Galactica too.
Wheels
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OMG - I totally forgot about that character! My brother and I used to yell into floor fans “Cylon Raiders Attack” because it would make our voices sound like them…LOL…
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The great thing about the internet…you can always find someone out there that did the same things as you:
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Lol, that is pretty cool that you have already found an example to cite. 
I never talked into a fan for Battlestar Galactica but having talked through the fan blades just for the heck of it I can hear how it would sound just like the Cylons.
Wheels
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Kids these days have it easy:
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@BeachAV8R, I don’t see myself trying this out only because mod dives usually frustrate me. But you clearly have worked hard and spent a great deal of time sharing with us the ins and outs of the experience. So thank you.
(And you have a spare day, please try F4 BMS. If that works I might seriously need to consider this. I sorely miss BMS!)
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As someone that could do with saving $40 on a VR utility, please DO NOT try and report back on BMS. 
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Wow…I hadn’t even considered that! I wonder which version of DirectX BMS uses…I think vorpX only works with DX9 and newer… 
I have the WHOLE DAY off tomorrow… 
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I think BMS is dx9.
Sigh…
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