VorpX’s New Virtual Cinema Lets You Play Non-VR Games on a Virtual Big Screen

Paul James

On Jul 29, 2016

Categories: NewsOculus RiftOculus Rift Compatible GamesOculus Rift Compatible SoftwareOculus Rift GamevorpxvorpX CompatibleVR Game

vorpX news has been thin on the ground just recently, but that’s because the team behind the project have been busy preparing one of the biggest releases yet. v0.8.0, released today, brings with it a raft of new features, including an innovative method to enhance traditional games via an enormous, virtual cinema screen.

vorpX, the app that lets you play games not designed for VR on your Oculus Rift, has come a long way since its initial release back in 2013. Since then it’s honed and tweaked its way through several releases, improving compatibility, adding DX11 support and even positional head tracking for the DK2 for some games.

Today, version 0.8.0 is released and brings with it another major feature addition which further enhances your ability to enjoy your favourite games – never intended for use in virtual reality – via your Oculus Rift.

Buy vorpX v0.8.0 Right Here

The feature is called Virtual Cinema Mode and allows you to play games thrown onto a huge screen, set inside a virtual living room. This means that games not traditionally well suited to playing in VR, titles such as Diablo III, Life Is Strange, Resident Evil Revelations 2, XCOM: Enemy Within. It gives you the illusion of playing on a decadent cinema screen – adding extra impact to the experience. It’s a great feature that has to be seen to be fully appreciated and something we think people will revisit older games with. What’s more, games displayed on the screen are in full stereoscopic 3D too!

Existing vorpX users should receive an automatically delivered update upon restarting their vorpX application.

Other important enhancements for vorpX 0.8.0 are:

38 new Stereo 3D profiles and 20 new Game Optimizer profiles, about 2/3 optimized for Virtual Cinema Mode (for games that otherwise don’t make much sense in VR).
Up to 25% better Geometry 3D performance in CPU bound games, e.g. Skyrim. Up to 10% better performance in D3D11 Geometry 3D games with high shader count.
Integrated, custom image sharpening filter with edge detection, highly optimized for speed and a pleasant sharpening effect that works very well in VR.
All Compiled against Oculus SDK 0.5.0.1

Full Change Log / Bug Fix List

As stated, this is a huge release for the vorpX team, to illustrate that fact, here’s the full change log for v0.8.0:

New/Changed:

Virtual Cinema mode for playing games that don’t work well in VR otherwise (3rd person, strategy, sports etc.)
Geometry 3D performance increased up to 25% in CPU bound games (e.g. Skyrim)
Improved EdgePeek mode based on the Virtual Cinema 3D rendering. (old 2D EdgePeek is still available as an option)
Image sharpening filter added (display page of the ingame menu)
vorpX now uses Oculus SDK version 0.5.0.1
G3D shadow treatment now user selectable in some games
D3D11 G3D efficiency improved, faster in games with huge amount of shaders
Windows mouse acceleration can be disabled (per game setting, input page of the vorpX in-game menu), can improve head tracking in some games
Positional tracking crouch/jump: triggered by velocity. Move slow = pos tracking, move fast = crouch/jump, has to be enabled per game in the vorpX in-game menu
Better compatibility with downsampling display modes (DSR/VSR)
Delayed input initialization for less intrusive game start behaviour
(gets also rid of Rift init timeouts in some games).
New transform modes for better control over individual elements/effects
Some adjustments to the DK2 B-cups display parameters
Adjustments to letterbox AR modes, making them more different
Oculus Rift version is now auto detected in vorpControl
Windows 8+ Modern UI Apps folder excluded from injection
Config app: various usability enhancements
Config app: Game Settings Optimizer now supports more settings types

Bugfixes:

Head tracking pitch was accidentally disabled together with mouse y-axis in games that support this function
Unwanted hotkey actions could be executed during FOV adjustment
Keyboard input in gamepad/VR-Hotkey mapper had a few quirks
Shift, Ctrl, Alt keys were not bindable to gamepad/hotkeys (post 0.7.5 regression)
Secondary display behaviour wasn’t always optimal (Fallout NV,
probably others)
Some D3D11 G3D effect fixes were not initialized correctly (post 0.7.1 regression)
D3D9 G3D stereo switching caused rendering errors (Stalker series, probably others)
UI placement glitch after unsuccessful device creation (DX9)
vorpX cursor was displayed at wrong position in G3D with HUD scaling active – Positional tracking message could not be closed with [ALT][SPACE] when game was minimized/maximized or rendering device was reset otherwise during message display
Some 64bit vorpX desktop shortcuts still were not working
Small memory leak in injection watcher fixed
Switching 3D modes didn’t work in DX10 (post 0.6.4 regression)