HZDR
Legal notice: this post is made available through the Patreon platform ONLY to current subscribers of the "VR friend" tier, exclusively for private reading and/or interacting with comments. Any other use of the contents, including but not limited to reposting, copying, republishing in whole or in part on social media or any other form of disclosure is strictly prohibited, and in violation of Luke Ross's and Patreon's IP rights and terms of service.
Game
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2561580/Horizon_Zero_Dawn_Remastered/
Enabled technologies
Supported version(s)
The R.E.A.L. VR framework was tested with game version 1.5.89.0, a.k.a. Patch 1.5, available from Steam at the address linked at the top (I get no commissions). The same version of the title bought from other stores should also work, but I cannot give any guarantees, as there could be differences that cause issues ranging from small defects to showstopping problems in VR.
Older versions or pirated copies are not supported. Official versions later than the ones listed above may or may not work, depending on what was changed. See here for information on how to prevent automatic game updates from breaking VR functionality.
Special setup notes
The folder where you should extract the R.E.A.L. VR archive and run RealConfig is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered". You might need to customize the path if you moved your games library or in case you own the game from a different store, but it will always be the folder that contains the "HorizonZeroDawnRemastered.exe" executable file.
Resolution and aspect ratio
Use the "Target pixels per degree" slider and "Adapt resolution" button (see here to find out how they work).
Options
You can adjust all graphics and gameplay options in the game menus according to your liking and how powerful your GPU is, but there are a few settings that R.E.A.L. VR needs in order to work properly.
In the CONTROLLER menu, you will have to manually set Aim Assist = Off, as this choice is tied to the player profile and I have no way of configuring it programmatically.
The following settings instead will be preselected automatically by RealConfig, but please make sure never to change them. In the GENERAL menu:
HUD Widescreen Scale = 16:9 (you can also set it to Auto if you wish the HUD to be more square-ish looking, but I find that 16:9 makes top/bottom information like subtitles more easily readable)
In the DISPLAY menu:
Window Mode = Windowed
Aspect Ratio = Auto
Cinematics Letterboxing = Off
Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction = Off (unless the game aspect ratio looks wrong in your headset, in which case you might try turning this on)
VSync = Off
NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency = Off (counter-intuitive, but there seems to be a huge performance hit when this is turned on, at least on some systems)
Dynamic Range> HDR Rendering = Off (it might also show as Unavailable)
Dynamic Resolution Scaling = Off
Upscale Method = DLSS. Make sure upscaling is set to DLSS, and select an Upscale Quality from (Ultra) Performance, Balanced or Quality, so that you can use my DL(S)SS fix to eliminate the shimmering around nearby objects and characters. DL(S)SS should also work with this game if you are running on an AMD GPU thanks to the voodoo magic of OptiScaler (see my previous post for details on how to install and configure it for VR). Frame Generation must be Off, like in all other games, because it doesn't work in VR.
In the GRAPHICS menu:
Field of View = 0
Depth of Field = Off
Motion Blur Strength = 0 (you should never enable any kind of motion blur when using R.E.A.L. VR, or the world will look smeared out horizontally)
If you need subtitles, I recommend setting AUDIO> Display Subtitles> Subtitle Background to On, which will make them easier to read.
Additional game-specific notes
You can bring up the R.E.A.L. overlay with the Pause key on the keyboard, or by pressing Back+Start (Select+Start) on the gamepad. The controller gesture is always active, even during gameplay.
Input
You will definitely want to use a gamepad to play HZDR. Keyboard and mouse sort of work too, but there might be issues, like mouse clicks activating other windows at random or some entries in the game menus being unreachable with the cursor; thus, in order to have a smooth experience, using a gamepad is highly recommended.
Camera, HUD, gameplay, cutscenes
The R.E.A.L. framework supports 6 DoF tracking, i.e., the camera will follow your head rotation and movement.
HZDR is a game designed to be played in third person. As usual though, I find that detracts a little from full immersion, especially because Aloy (your character) is so far away from your point of view that she looks rather small, and you tend to feel like you're not part of the action but instead watching it unfold from a safe distance.
For those reasons, I implemented two additional cameras that can be selected from the "HZDR" tab in the R.E.A.L. VR overlay. The default one is called "Closer", and as you can imagine brings you much nearer to where the action is, while moving Aloy a little further to the left so that she won't take up most of your field of view. Both the camera distance and the offsets can be adjusted from the overlay.
I also hacked in a "First person" camera, but it has many problems due to the fact that HZDR was never really intended to be played in 1st person. For instance the game will often hide the character model completely, which means that during combat you won't be able to see either your spear hitting the machines or even get any visual feedback about which direction Aloy is currently facing. Similarly during climbing you won't be able to see your hands and you will get a weird "Half-Life gliding" effect. Short-clicking on Focus to highlight important stuff will work, but there will be no ping sound or visible scanning effect. While rolling, swimming or riding Aloy's body will suddenly pop up and clip through your view... and so on and so forth. I honestly recommend the first person camera only for moments of peaceful exploration, while the Closer camera works in every situation and is actually the one I was using for my own playthrough.
In HZDR, to show all UI elements in their correct 3D positions (for instance machine health bars, quest markers, etc.) I had to employ a rescaling technique that has a few unfortunate side effects:
the crosshair and the subtitles will always appear at infinite depth (as though they were very distant from the observer), which can make them look doubled when they're aligned with close objects or NPCs;
the HUD will always be headlocked, i.e., following your head rotation, instead of looking as if it was suspended in space in front of you;
HUD elements will jitter/double slightly when you look around.
However, there's good news too: you can resize the whole HUD, so you won't miss any of the important information that appears on the sides. If the default scale doesn't work for you, you can tweak it in the "HZDR" tab of the R.E.A.L. VR overlay, using the "HUD scale X" and "HUD scale Y" sliders (these are different sliders than the ones found in the "R.E.A.L. VR" main tab, which won't have any effect on the game UI).
If you set new values for the sliders, note that there won't be any immediate visible changes (except in the menus) until you resize the game window using the "Adapt resolution" button.
Gaze-based aiming performs as intended and the crosshair will always be properly aligned. To that effect, whenever you have a weapon drawn 6 DoF will be limited to 3 DoF, i.e., without positional tracking.
Focus works fine too, in full 3D, and tagging the enemies also follows the direction of your gaze. The camera might tend to slide away a little, depending on how fast you turn toward the target you're examining; you will quickly learn how to compensate for that.
All cutscenes are fully 3D and allow you to look anywhere without restrictions or black bars. There is the occasional missing chunk of scenery or floating character, as well as some near plane clipping especially during dialog interactions, but mostly the cutscenes are just AWESOME.
The movie that only shows once when you first start a new game (baby Aloy) is an exception: it is prerendered and will appear as if projected on a virtual 2D screen in VR.
Custom controls in the "HZDR" overlay tab
You can quickly switch between the Game default, Closer or First person cameras with your gamepad if you tick the "Pressing both thumbsticks cycles camera" checkbox.
"Fix near clipping" prevents the camera from clipping into close objects during cutscenes.
For the most natural and accurate aiming, don't forget to set your dominant eye (the default is right-eye dominant, which works for about 2 out of 3 people).
When playing flat, aiming and focusing will make your view appear more and more zoomed in. In VR you might want to keep that effect (although I don't find it really necessary even for precision archery work), but some people could be bothered by the warping effect that comes from the zoomed-in field-of-view not matching the headset FOV. For that reason, I included a checkbox called "Allow zoom while aiming or using Focus", defaulting to unchecked to offer the smoothest VR experience.
Additionally, in the same tab you can change the world scale, from small adjustments to playing with dolls or giants, and even force the game to render to a 2D virtual screen in case you should find a section too hard to play in full VR. Toggling from 3D to 2D and vice versa can optionally be bound to a key shortcut.
The vast majority of users should not need to tweak this, but if your system appears to display the 3D effect incorrectly (as though distant objects were actually in front of closer ones) try changing the "Frame delay compensation" value step by step until you get a perfectly stable world image, with proper depth everywhere.
[I'll post new information here as it becomes available.]