vorpX, the VR injection driver that lets you to play non VR games in VR, has announced that the latest version will be out this month and will include some major updates including reworked DX11 3D Geometry support and Oculus Runtime 0.7 with ‘Direct Driver Mode’.
vorpX has come a long way since its initial release nearly 2 years ago and for its 2nd birthday, developer Ralf Ostertag has cooked up a feature packed update celebration for release by the end of the month.
The biggest highlights are likely to be vorpX’s new “reworked” DX11 3D Geometry renderer and the addition of Oculus Runtime v0.7 support.
The reworked DX11 G3D renderer provides stereoscopic support for newer games built on that platform and for most gives the most realistic 3D ‘feel’. This will also means a “few more” DX11 titles will be added to the supported list.
The inclusion of Oculus Runtime v0.7 support brings with it the support of the new ‘Direct Driver Mode’, whose low latency benefits were described by Oculus as thus:
Rather than inserting VR functionality between the OS and the graphics driver, headset awareness is added directly to the driver. As a result, Direct Driver Mode avoids many of the latency challenges of Extended Mode and also significantly reduces the number of conflicts between the Oculus SDK and third party applications.
That’s not all though, for vorpX version 0.9, you can also expect the following additional features and enhancements:
Support for arbitrary resolutions: This allows you to launch games at any resolution you want – you are not bound to resolutions that are supported by the headset anymore. Can be used to enhance image quality and, more importantly, in many cases can mitigate FOV issues by choosing 4:3/5:4 resolutions. Works with every game, even unsupported ones.
Internal Resolution Scaling: Similar to the above feature, vorpX 0.9 let’s you scale the internal resolution of some games like native apps do. Those mostly use higher resolutions internally to make up for the lens distortion. This will be DX9 only and restricted to a handful of games for now. More to come.
Super smooth Virtual Cinema Mode: Virtual Cinema Mode and EdgePeek are now fully decoupled from the game rendering for the best possible performance and next to unnoticable latency.
HUD-Scaling now also available in Z-Buffer 3D: For games that have HUD scaling in Geometry 3D, you will now be able to also use it if you switch to Z3D, which wasn’t possible before.
Better gamepad handling: The vorpX gamepad emulation has been largely rewritten and now supports hot plugging, multiple controllers, selective override of specific axes and more configuration options.
If you already own a vorpX license, you should expect an automatic update upon release, if you don’t and would like to play your old games in VR, buy it through Road to VR and help support us.
Full Disclosure: Road to VR has an affiliate agreement with vorpX.