‘Myst’ VR Remake PC Release Date Revealed Alongside New Trailer

By
Ben Lang
-
36

Myst (2020) developer Cyan Worlds announced today that its VR remake of the game is finally due to launch on PC later this month.

Update (August 17th, 2021): The Myst VR remake is officially set for an August 26th release date on PC, Mac, and Xbox. The PC version will support both VR and non-VR modes. A new trailer with footage from the PC version shows how the graphics have been enhanced over the Quest version (which already looked rather good given Quest’s limited power).

A price hasn’t yet been announced but we expect it to mirror the $30 price point of the Quest version. On PC the game will be sold on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG, and will support VR no matter which storefront it is purchased through.

Original Article (June 22nd, 2021): The VR remake of Myst launched initially on Oculus Quest late last year. At the time it was clear that the game would eventually come to PC as Cyan Worlds had already published a Steam store page for the game. Granted, it wasn’t known exactly when the game would actually launch on Steam.

Today the studio answered that question on Twitter when it announced that the PC version of Myst will see a release date in Q3 (which means at the end of September at the latest).

The PC version will include both VR and non-VR modes, and if you’re still eyeing VR from the sidelines with your Mac, the game will support MacOS too (though only in the non-VR mode).

'Myst' PC Screenshots
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Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds

The VR remake of Myst hasn’t been priced on Steam yet, though we’d expect it to mirror the $30 price point seen on Quest.

While the original was played as a point-and-click game, the VR remake of Myst reimagines the world in an interactive form, complete with books to pick up, levers to pull, and doors to slide open.

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In our review of the game on Quest, we found the real-time presentation to be a breath of fresh air compared to the static frames of the original 1993 version. The game also sticks closely to the original source material, which is nice for nostalgia, but if you’re a newcomer to the iconic game you may find its puzzles rather obtuse for the modern age.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Ad

    It sucked that such a landmark PC title was remade first for quest and now after so much time is coming to PC, even flatscreen suffered the same delay. How different do the versions look?

    • 3872Orcs

      Well at least it was not a permanent exclusive. And another advantage it being developed for Quest leads me to believe it will have good performance on PC, this means I could run it well on Index at 144hz and have it be relatively crisp looking with some amount of supersampling on top.

      • Zerofool

        It’s not a direct port of the Quest version. The PC version has more complex material shaders, higher resolution textures and meshes, volumetric fog/haze effects and vastly superior lighting overall. You can spot these differences in the published screenshots. These changes are partly to blame for the delay, the other reason being the flat 2D version is also part of the PC release…

        With maxed out graphics, I fear it won’t run smoothly even at 90Hz on anything but the highest-end GPUs, if at all :/

      • Zerofool

        I just watched a presentation from Mysterium 2021 and they showed some comparison screenshots between the Quest and the PC version. The difference is huge:
        https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1095804826?t=0h21m11s

        I’ve also posted screen caps in my latest post.

    • 3872Orcs

      You downvote me I downvote you.

      • Loopy

        Ad is a self proclaimed basher. i dont even think he/she likes playing VR-Games :P

  • david vincent

    If I was told 30 years go that one day I would be able to play this game in real-time 3D and in VR !

  • markringoyt

    A little some extra puzzles or Easter eggs (like an extra hidden Age in realMyst) or anything that can expand the original storyline could be nice, otherwise I just can’t simply purchase another same content with just VR add-on or improved graphics, for Myst it happens so many times and I’ve already spent hundreds on it.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Well, I also have some Myst versions, bought them in bundles, but I’ve always believed Myst was best played as a VR game, so I’ll definitely will buy this version (even though I have a lot of versions, I still haven’t played any of them, haha).

    • NotMikeD

      How could anyone who likes Myst enough to justify spending hundreds of dollars on it POSSIBLY expect us to believe they’ll take a pass on exploring that world in VR over just $30? No way, this seems like BS Trolling to me.

      • markringoyt

        Mike, you don’t even know what currency I’m using do ya? BTW I didn’t tell you I got somewhat motion sickness playing VR, and I’m still happy to try this out in non-VR mode, if there would be ANYTHING new to this version, that is probably just a few extra days’ work for Cyan. Why do I want to spent yet another $30 on LITERALLY the same game content I’ve played through countless time for the last 20 years, with just an add-on that gives me dizziness?

        • NotMikeD

          Extra content for Myst is “probably just a few extra days’ work for Cyan?” What could you possibly be basing that assessment on? This is not a company that moves quickly, and no idea how you could claim to assess the relative level of effort to generate net-new content for such an important part of their portfolio.

          And of course you shouldn’t invest in a VR mode if it makes you sick, but then why on Earth are you commenting on an article on a VR site? Know your audience! It’s not at all strange to assume most people here are coming from a VR enthusiast POV.

  • Je veux Myst VR pour mon anniversaire le 9 aout ! J’ai fait 10 fois le jeu en normal.

  • Jane Smith

    I love Myst but it’s been remade to death at this point. When will Riven get some love?

    • Zerofool

      When will Riven get some love?

      At some point. It started as a fan project many years ago (first in Unity, later switched to UE4) and in 2019 Cyan officially joined the project in some capacity. Not much info has come out since then (haven’t watched the Mysterium 2021 videos yet, I’ll update my post if they mentioned something).
      In any case, it will be years after Firmament is released, which on itself is still some way off.

      You can learn more on their site: http://www.starryexpanse.com/

    • Cdaked

      You are lucky, they said that a VR of Riven is in the works.

  • Cdaked

    I haven’t played Myst.
    I’m a backer of Firmament, mostly because Cyan sold me that they were struggling financially to continue and I decided to be a backer.
    Now I find that they took money from Firmament backers to make all these versions of Myst and since there are so few developers, obviously, the Firmament project has been drifting away in time. They haven’t shown anything new apart from the initial presentation video or some paintings of locations.
    Honestly, I hope they don’t keep delaying the project by making releases of all their old glories as I think Firmament is years behind schedule and could be several more. Before that they would make versions for Nintendo DS, Gameboy, Amstrad and Spectrum.
    And not very well adapted to virtual reality, according to fans of virtual reality and the old Myst.

    • User_Name_24601

      In recent talks, Mysterium 2021, Cyan explained that they’re trying to diversify their development schedule by doing production tracks at once. So they had dedicated staff working on Firmament, other dedicated staff working on Myst VR (and other projects), and some floaters that were going between multiple things.

      I too am anxious to play Firmament. But I don’t blame them for trying to avoid a situation where all their irons are in one fire. I.e. URU.

      • Cdaked

        If they were starting from a bad economic situation, I don’t think they have hired many more people and, of course, they have used the money intended for Firmament, since they didn’t have it, according to them. With all the delays, it’s clear that there aren’t that many people and it’s foreseeable that the project will be delayed a lot more. It seems they are also working on Riven VR (more delays).
        As for Oculus funding, I haven’t seen any indication, does anyone have a link where Oculus itself or Cyan confirm that?
        It seems to me rather more likely that they’ve put it out first on Quest hoping to get more money in the quickest way.

        • Zerofool

          Myst was one of the Quest 2 launch titles (it got delayed but it was announced as one) – watch the Quest 2 reveal. You don’t develop and release a game for an HMD no one knows about (using dev tools not publicly available) unless the HMD maker picks you. These selected games are usually sponsored. But to answer your question – no, I personally haven’t seen any explicit official confirmation that the project was funded by Oculus/Facebook.

        • User_Name_24601

          Just a guess, but Cyan probably did receive some funding from Oculus, and there’s probably an NDA where they won’t ever be able to disclose it.

    • Zerofool

      I’m sure Oculus funded this Myst remake (the Quest version) and Cyan did the smart thing to first create the high quality assets and scale down from there, so I don’t think any of the Firmament funds went towards this project. I’m also anxious to play Firmament (also a backer), they’re hyping it to have a great story, the best they’ve done in a while…

      The positive side of the delay (the latest info is “sometime next year [2022]”) is that by that time UE5 will be out and we may benefit from having the “Nanite” micro-geometry feature in Firmament, which would increase the level of detail in the world compared to the traditional LOD approach – basically, we’ll see all the assets the artists have built in their best light, without any visible loss in detail, no matter how far you get from them. Especially if you have a high-res HMD – I’m hoping that by then, the resolution of 2.7×2.7K per eye (and above) will be a common thing.

      UE5’s “Lumen” feature, however, will be 2D-only for the foreseeable future (Epic’s engineers say it would be too heavy for VR), so even if Firmament switches to UE5, and Cyan decides to use the Lumen feature (real-time dynamic global illumination), it would only be available in the 2D version. The VR version will stick to traditional pre-baked lighting, I guess. I’m certain it will be gorgeous nevertheless :)

      • Cdaked

        I’m pretty sure Nanite and Lumen don’t work in VR and may take a long time to do so. Also, even for monitor they need special hardware features to work, like the ones Windows 11 asks for; the last demo they showed had stalls unless you had 64 gigs of RAM, as what it did was load the whole demo in RAM, as it didn’t have the features to read quickly from disk, like it could on PS5, that’s why the other demo worked only on PS5.
        But first they would have to make some decent VR interactions, the ones they have are lousy. And Quest’s graphics look like a mobile version. The hand turning into a ball when you pick something up doesn’t bode well for innovation.

        • Zerofool

          Nanite and Lumen don’t work in VR in the UE5 Early Access version. Epic is working on completing the Nanite support in VR rendering for the final release of UE5 early next year. If you are interested, I highly recommend watching the in-depth presentation about Nanite:
          https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1044652371?t=0h7m48s

          About Lumen, as I said above, there are no plans currently to support VR because of the insane rendering cost in stereo. You can also watch the stream dedicated to it on the same Twitch channel.

          About the Demo and the requirements – it uses insane texture resolution (8Kx8K) and film-quality meshes. The whole thing wasn’t well optimised (their words, not mine), over 100GB for just two levels (most of this are textures).

          Meshes converted to the Nanite structure are actually smaller in comparison to traditional mesh formats. They are easier to stream, easier to fit in memory. The concept is similar to Carmack’s MegaTexture, but for geometry.
          If your level has 100s of GBs in assets, millions of polygons each, then you would benefit from Direct Storage (the Win 11 tech you mentioned). Microsoft actually backed out and it will also be available in Windows 10. In these cases, to use it you’d need a RTX 20×0/RX 6×00 (not sure about RX 5×00 and GTX 16×0) or newer, which any serious PCVR gamer already has and many more will have by the time Firmament is released. So I don’t see that as an issue.

          But Nanite doesn’t require Direct Storage to work. Games like Firmament which have their content authored in the traditional pipeline will work just fine. Basically getting “free” fidelity and performance boost at the same time.

          Direct Storage will become a necessity when the entire game is designed to rely on Nanite and the meshes in use are the highest quality ones coming from the DCC tools they use (millions of polygons)… or from the Quixel library. And you have lots of these in the level, and the character moves/looks quickly around the level. This kind of VR games are years away, IMO.

          As for the interactions (unrelated to UE5) – Firmament is at least a year away, so all lessons they’ve learned from the community feedback on Obduction and Myst should be integrated by then, fingers crossed.

          • Cdaked

            Nanite and Lumen work for one càmera, won’t work in VR in the near or middle future in any case.

          • Zerofool

            Seems like we’re in a loop – regarding Nanite I’m repeatedly saying one thing and you’re saying the opposite.
            On what information do you base your statement?

            My conviction that Nanite will support VR sooner than later is based on what Nanite’s main dev said in that video I linked. Here’s a timestamped link to that section of the talk:
            https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1044652371?t=2h1m0s

            If you still insist that Nanite won’t support VR anytime soon without backing it up with anything… then let’s agree to disagree and stop spamming the discussion – time will tell.

          • Cdaked

            The information I have comes from a trusted source who worked until very recently for Epic on Unreal Engine. All the “plumbing” they say needs to be done, in theory, could take years to get to a useful level for the VR audience, according to my source.
            I saw that presentation and asked them in another one and they didn’t answer.
            but there’s a very strong discrepancy between what the developer and my source are saying; hopefully it’s true that “plumbing” isn’t a big deal, as I’m studying Unreal Engine and VR, so I’d be fine with that.
            Anyway, thanks for the link with the exact position.

          • Zerofool

            OK, I see.
            I’m a UE VR hobbyist myself so let me make some educated guesses and speculate a bit – I presume that your acquaintance is referring to the forward renderer. Yes, Lumen will never support it, but Nanite might, although this seems some time off (basically what your buddy is saying). In that presentation we discussed, there’s a segment where Brian Karis says “we will probably end up supporting the forward renderer in the future” – doesn’t inspire great confidence for a timely integration for sure.

            The “plumbing” which they mentioned needing to be done for VR to work is only for the deferred rendering mode. So in order to use Nanite in VR, one would have to use the deferred rendering path initially. But realistically, who knows how long even this will take them. I’m still hopeful, though.

            Generally, the forward renderer is recommended and preferred for VR, but in this case I think switching to deferred is an acceptable sacrifice to make instead of waiting indefinitely for the Nanite support for the forward rendering path.

            I guess this is what your acquaintance was referring to – maybe in their eyes VR = forward rendering, in which case their doubt about quick implementation is warranted. If you get the chance to confirm/refute my suspicions with your contact, that would be interesting to hear.

            In any case, good luck with learning UE, it’s a great tool which I think every tech-enthusiast gamer should explore and get to know at least a bit. The ability to quickly block out some virtual spaces and explore them in VR without having to write a single line of code is awesome! Building virtual worlds – the same thing Cyan specializes in :)

          • Cdaked

            It’s just as you say, but deferred rendering combined with Nanite would kill performance in VR to levels that would make it totally unusable and, as the other system doesn’t work in VR, Nanite won’t be usable in Myst VR for years.

          • Zerofool

            Nanite doesn’t kill performance, it improves it. It makes it possible to load tons of geometry. What kills performance is the millions of triangles on screen which must be drawn by the GPU. 3D assets authored “the old way” (like the ones in Obduction, Myst, Firmament) will not have millions of triangles and the usage of Nanite is a net positive for the performance. If materials for the level are created in a smart way, Nanite will also reduce the amount of draw calls, which is quite important as well.

            Cyan’s games are already using the deferred renderer even in VR – Obduction, Firmament was planned as well (check Eric Anderson’s reply to my question in the comments here from almost a year ago), I presume Myst VR does as well, we’ll know in a few days). So there’s a decent chance that Firmament will be using UE5 and Nanite if Epic’s timing is right. We’ll see.
            For Myst VR (PC) I doubt it will ever use Nanite, but who knows – Cyan may decide to port the game to UE5 in the future…

  • Zerofool
  • Andrew Jakobs

    I hope their VR implementation is better than the one in Obduction as I’m now playing that game and I think even Alice VR is better. Shame they haven’t updated the game to improve the VR.

  • Trip

    Does the PC version have better visuals than the Quest version, or should I just buy the game on my Quest 2?

    • david vincent

      “A new trailer with footage from the PC version shows how the graphics have been enhanced over the Quest version”

      • Trip

        How did i miss that!? I must have missed the whole first paragraph. Oh well, thank you for pointing it out.