It's not a comeback... it's a return
[Updates at the bottom of the post]
The times, they are a-changing so fast. AI is washing everything away like a tsunami. The entire business of software development will soon be a thing of the past.
Everybody's doing VR conversions these days. It's probably a good thing, because no expertise or knowledge of any kind is required to churn out mod after mod, so the process has become very democratic. We don't have to wait for anything anymore. Everything we ever wished is just a prompt away.
Like the solution to the Navier-Stokes problem. Or the casual drop of 719 "manuscripts" (none of which was written by a human hand: ah, the irony) blowing out of the water 372 long-standing mathematical problems. In a week or so, no sweat.
Is this the Golden Age of VR? The Golden Age of mathematics? I don't know.
If I had a son with a talent for mathematics and a burning passion to tackle new complicated problems, would I advise him to pursue a career in math? Or any career at all? I don't know.
Would that have any purpose? Any meaning?
I have been following the deluge of VR conversions. I couldn't help but noticing that basically all of them, even the most talked about on social media, have a surprisingly low number of downloads. Has the VR audience imploded to the point that there are just about as many players as there are modders?
Or are people simply stupefied with the sheer number of new releases that are coming out each day, even multiple times a day, to the point that nothing seems interesting anymore?
I have tried to snap myself out of that stupor in order to check out some of those vibe-coded mods. I won't name any names, but I couldn't find a single one that was actually playable. Filled to the brim with novelty and flashy stuff? Check. Suitable for a YouTube video that grabs your attention for one day, glossing over the problematic parts with a "this will probably get improved over time" comment, and ready to be forgotten and replaced by a newer one tomorrow? Check.
Actually playable from beginning to end in VR, while at the same time preserving the look and feel of the original game? Nope. None of those I tried.
I mean, who knows? With the mad rush toward AI recursive improvement (with the possible added bonus of self-extinction), it could very well be that by the end of January each game will automatically get a full-blown VR conversion.
And it could also be that by the end of March converting titles will be made completely obsolete by the introduction of a new model that designs and creates the full game for you according to your prompt or more likely to the hidden dossier it keeps on you, optionally in VR if you are so inclined, and commercial games will become a thing of the past.
[]-/
In this confusion, I decided to give you what so many of you asked for. It's an experiment; it might go down well, or get ignored like a bucket of fresh water in the middle of the tsunami, or it might trigger another adverse reaction. I have no way of telling, but since software development as a whole is seemingly on its Sunset Boulevard anyway, I thought ah, might as well try it now and see how it goes.
Release 2610.15.2 (early access) of the R.E.A.L. VR framework brings back support for the incredible https://store.steampowered.com/app/3240220/Grand_Theft_Auto_V_Enhanced/
That's where it all started, remember? Even before the creation of this Patreon that kept us traveling across space and time together for so many unforgettable hours.
Things have changed a lot since then. This new release is for the Enhanced version, and it supports all the amazing eye candy that the game itself and my VR runtime now have to offer: full ray tracing, DL(S)SS for stereoscopic image supersampling, high-quality AER v2 with perfect smoothness of motion even when doing activities that used to exhibit a lot of judder in my former version, like driving a fast car or flying a helicopter.
Most importantly, and unlike AI-generated, vibe-coded one-shot experiments that tend to get abandoned before they're even mature: everything works here. You can actually play the full game with this.
Elephant in the room: do my arguments for not implementing motion controllers in the game still hold? Yes and no.
It's no longer true that adding them to an arbitrary game could take weeks or months of work, because now person-weeks and person-months have been compressed into AI-minutes and AI-hours, and will soon become AI-seconds when the "person" factor gets completely canceled from the equation.
But all the rest is still true, at least for me. None of the "proper" VR mods which are coming out these days actually implement motion controllers properly, the way they would work in a title which had been designed for VR. They're just there so that a vibe-coder can take credit for the work done by Claude and claim "Look at me, I did it!", or so that they can look awesome in a monetized YouTube video as long as you never attempt to start a mission.
Speaking of monetized YouTube videos that "content creators" pump out constantly by simply showing content that other people have published for free, content which in turn is actually generated by AI slaving away in some datacenter (which is perfectly fine as long as it is far from home) before it decides to self-replicate into all gadgets connected to the Internet, and where "generated" actually means algorithmically combined from the uncredited work of millions of humans, work that was scraped by companies with billion- or trillion-dollar valuations without any respect for copyright law or privacy: it makes me cringe when I hear the terms "physical steering" used in conjunction with motion controllers.
Do you have an actual steering wheel controller, with force feedback, meaning that your hands can actually grab a solid object and interact with it in the material world, with your brain getting precise information about the object placement and existence in space through tactile sensations? Yep, then you have "physical steering". Even though of course it's still only a controller in a video game, and the force with which it reacts to your hands turning the wheel is being simulated by an actuator and not getting mechanically transmitted all the way from the tires on the asphalt.
Does the wheel not exist at all, so that you have to carefully look at where your virtual hands are until they snap as if by magic on the virtual model of the wheel, and then you have to pretend-turn them in a circle, all the while paying close attention not to leave the snapping area which is not reported to your brain via any physical sensation of touch? Does all of that happen not only without any force feedback, but also without you being able to feel any resistance as your hands are going through the wheel, like you were a ghost? Then sorry mate, that ain't "physical steering".
But I digress. While we're waiting for the new installment in the biggest game franchise of all time, getting all sorts of official and unofficial reveals, including the sad fact that it will no longer have any first person camera, we can still experience the magnificent virtual world of the enhanced predecessor in VR.
As you might imagine, despite the many requests, I've been thinking long and hard before going down this path again. Does this bring about the risk of another DMCA attack? Well, legally speaking, the scenario looks completely different now.
It's been made exhaustively clear, by myself and through third-party analysis, that my software acts like a runtime, a conversion layer sitting between the game itself and the VR headset. I no longer do "mods" as I did back in 2020, and the only actual mods I ever created were the full conversion of NOLF2 and the original one for GTA V.
I no longer make any use of promotional materials from the games, an action which happens to be universally considered fair use when done in any hugely monetized YouTube channel, but which somehow is purported to be a copyright violation when in the context of the Patreon-aided creation of a compatibility layer that interfaces with more than 60 heterogeneous games running on a multitude of different engines.
I no longer even use the official game names in the announcements of new versions of my runtime, although I always made it abundantly clear that all the brands and registered trademarks were the property of the respective owners.
So misusing the DMCA mechanism by fabricating alleged copyright violations, sending notices which are actually attempts to extend unilateral EULA's to cover a multi-purpose runtime which is by no stretch of the imagination "derivative work" based on any of the compatible titles, would most likely constitute a bad faith claim according to IP experts and lawyers I consulted with and potentially backfire.
But then again, what big fish want most is to eat small fish, so there are no guarantees that my reissuing the old releases, porting them to the new game-agnostic framework and rewriting them (some almost from scratch) to leverage all the improvements that R.E.A.L. VR has gone through during all these years thanks to your unfailing support, will actually be a successful or sustainable operation.
We can only hope for the best!
The game-specific post with the installation instructions and recommendations is here, while the early-access archive can as usual be found on this page.
I also expect Brandon to come up with a video or post of his own for the possible DLSS 5 extensions, to this new game and maybe to other titles. Depending on the interest for that, we might even try to reorganize the Patreon so that it has a "traditional" main section where everything is basically hassle-free download-and-play as it's always been, and a clearly separated "tinkerer" section where you can find all the cutting-edge developments that can potentially push the quality/performance frontier but require additional knowledge or user intervention. Let us know what you think!
Updates and improvements: this R.E.A.L. VR release also fixes the crash at startup that BOND started exhibiting with the most recent official updates. Additionally, after extending my camera pitch control to the SPIDEY games, I found that it might actually be better to restrict its use to cutscenes and QuickTime events, while keeping the camera level (horizon-locked) during normal gameplay and swinging, so I added an option to that effect which can be found in the game-specific tab of the R.E.A.L. overlay. You can choose whether you want pitch control to be applied at all times or only in cutscenes.
Update Oct 16: Shortly before the release I had to make a last-minute change to the cutscene detection code in order to remedy an issue that was found during testing, and as an unforeseen side effect of that change I broke shooting from vehicles. It's fixed in Release 2610.16.2; I recommend that everybody who wants to play GTAVE update now, because not being able to aim while driving is a big bummer :-/
Happy VR gaming!! Stay safe in these troubled times!
Comments (64)
So then show how them how to "actually implement motion controllers properly" etc you are good at writing, so teach them dare to lead and be the example ,I dare you , no I challenge you, can you ? :)
Luke has always been clear that he has no interest in adding motion controls. I don't know that it is impossible to change, but I don't see why he would suddenly. I am fine with either if they actually fit into the game well. It is not a matter of trying to force them into games and make them fit, it is really simple. They naturally fit in some games like FPS, but not in others like Dark Souls or Spiderman where you have to make drastic changes to the combat system to try and fit them in. That is the point at which I personally draw the line. If you have to rework the combat system to be entirely different, that is destructive to the game. Just put them in where they fit and don't force them where they don't. But people can do what they want, I am not going to go attack or insult the person who is working on the Spiderman mod because I disagree with it. I will just not play it. I am also not going to say it is not "proper" or trash. Yes, it is still a VR mod. That is the most annoying thing to me. That people are acting like this is the "proper" way just because it now has some sort of motion controls. Even when they are janky and don't fit the game. I would never consider playing my beloved Souls games with motion controls, because it changes how they were meant to be played fundamentally. I would absolutely play Titanfall 2 or FEAR or Max Payne with motion controls, because it fits there.
Look, i am a long time supporter, and i really like your mods. I have had a lot of my most memorable gaming moments in VR in games, that you modded. But: i strongly disagree with your assessment about motion controls in newer VR mods. Motion controls work excellently in Titanfall 2 VR - i actually prefer this mod to most native vr games. I still think, "no motion controls" is not a complete turn off for me, but if they are done well (like in Titanfall 2 VR or in the COD Overlord mod) i defintely prefer them to gamepad and gaze aiming. And i really liked Timo's post - maybe this is a chance to get your great work and motions controlls in your mods (at least as an option), leading to a even larger supporter base without doubt.
In this post, many people saw you refer to a steam store link (ie: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3240220/Grand_Theft_Auto_V_Enhanced/ ) and, for a second , many people thought you had released a LUKE ROSS enhanced game on the Steam Store. To many, the idea of a CLICK IT, GET IT install was orgasmic. Many people do not do Luke Ross or other mods because downloading a thing and unpacking it and putting things into other folders, etc. scares them. There is no logical explanation for it but many gamers are scared to do the things to install mods...or their mommies just won't let them. Is there any hope that Luke Ross mod games could ever appear on the Steam Store, just like the link above?
Yeah, just like LSFG (Loseless Scalling Frame Generation) - Luke's software platform could be sold on Steam imo.
I think that’s the general problem with things that become more accessible to the general public. As a result, there are more people who do something on a whim and then just as spontaneously lose interest in it. I first noticed this a long time ago with websites, back when many people were still creating personal sites. They put a website online, maybe update it a few times and then it was abandoned. So I suspect it’ll be the same with AI. A lot of people will now be able to bring their ideas to life thanks to AI, but most of them will quickly lose interest. Eventually, though, that will settle down and then there’ll be more people left who want to seriously keep things going.
Just want to say thank you incase you get cooked for this one! Best gaming experience I ever had was Elden Ring in VR, Siofra River Well was incredible. Some games have no business getting motion controls as it destroys the whole premise of the design, while others it can be an improvement. Looking forward to Brandon’s optimization and enhancement recommendations as well!
Anyone tried DLSS5 and Tiger Masters OFXR yet?
I don't subscribe to the idea of full motion controls for every experience. I also wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments regarding "physical steering" - it's bloody abysmal to have to pretend to hold a virtual wheel of air! It bestows all the precision of a shopping cart to the vehice XD
whats the diffrence this time tho whats stopping rockstar form another dmca again and hitting your patreon , i appreciate the game but this is just asking for more dmcas and more attention on other companies
Where is the paid download...I cant find it ?
There is a link for it towards the end of the post up above :) Make sure to read over the post.
While I do appreciate all you have done and continue to do, I always wondered why , with your stance on motion controls you never saw the value in doing REAL mods for cockpit games (Driving, Racing, Space, Flight, Mechs ) these would be pretty low hanging fruit. Especially considering your FFB Steering wheel comment above. I know, they are not your cup of tea. For a decade i fiddled with tools like Vorpx and Reshade desperately trying to get games like Forza, GRID, DIRT, Need for Speed, Everspace 2, X4 to be at least 3D to no avail. Then AI dropped and I said fine I'll do it myself. And i've never been more proud to finally realize my dream of playing PROPER VR versions of games like these. Turns out all these cockpit games needed was a VR view and they become fully playable from start to finish. The cat's out of the bag and I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that AI is shaking up the balance of power. If you watch Star Trek, what do you think happened to game industry when Holodecks existed and people could just walk into a room and manifest anything they wanted to do with a verbal prompt. It's where everything is headed anyway. Anyway, I think your argument would have held more water if you actually started with the Good mods Like F.E.A.R from TheFreeMike, Titanfall, DOOM, etc. I feel like you have to go pretty far out of your way to avoid those games just to make a point.
I fully undersign this. The motion controller nonsense is just plainly stupid in most games hence I am pissed that Hitman3 has its own horrible motion controller version, as it would be a million times cooler to have head-aim and controller version rather than trying to grab 15 times a knif from the floor like a moron and hitting my PC screen while doing it , I am too stupid to use AI to do it myself - but maybe not for long! who knows. Unless there is someone already smarter here who can do it? if GTV is getting a revive, lets do them all and blame AI.
I just want to experience what you guys do with my 9070xt, and have smooth mouse turns 😮💨
I just couldn't afford nvidia
DAAAAaaaM! It's not even Easter! So wanted to ask if you were gonna bring it back now that you make it free, but didn't want to offend salt in the wound. AMAZING MAN! THE OG! 6 would be jizz...
I half agree on the vibecoder craze being lazy projects from novices who prompt until something breaks that they can't fix, or they don't want to spend more money and leave the project. You are correct, that has been happening a lot. But for every 10 mediocre projects, we get gems like the Titanfall 2 VR mod or the Max Payne 2 VR mod, which genuinely do feel like native VR ports, made by existing software engineers leveraging AI to supercharge them, rather than doing all the work. If you haven't played at least these two mods, you might be surprised. On that point, I really can't do gamepad only mods anymore. It doesn't mean I didn't enjoy my time with REAL mods back when I would occasionally sub to get the latest version. I did, and I am thankful for your work and all the hours I spent enjoying the games included in VR before the sludge took over. I hope you will reconsider your stance on 6DOF hand tracking.
whats the point of making the mods paywalled still despite the free mods being way better?
Possibly the same reason Praydog isn't as active as he used to be :) Your point of view may become truer as time goes on across all of gaming and entertainment though. What is the point of buying new games or watching movies etc. when AI can make whatever you like.
Have you admitted that it waas your fault for making your mods paid or are you still a professional victim?
How about no to both 😋
Hi, I joined the VR Friend membership because I got my SteamFrame and wanted to play Dead Space in VR. But I seem to be getting a picture only in my right eye, not in the left, plus I cant control the start menu, neither with frame controllers, nor with mouse/keyboard
Can you put a copy of your RealVR64.log file on pastebin or drive or something allows you to link it here? Don't paste the log itself please.
Awesome! Thank you Mr. Luke.
Today is a good day, im off work for the day and you release this!!!! And at the same time clarkcheekykent released a huge update to their Forza horizon 6 conversion, adding VR frame generation apparently. Gonna try both when I get home from my appointment! Thank you Luke❤️. Perfect timing to do a replay of gta5 before 6 comes out!
Instead of slowly making vertical pitch available to older games, you took it out from Spider-Man? I really don't see the reasoning behind it when it could be a single toggle switch in the menu like the recent games. Sorry but most of the profiles are unplayable for me I'll have to unsubscribe again just for this reason. Hope you consider adding it for older games in the future.
It's ok, no worries. But I made it optional, I didn't remove it :-D
Back to the roots! YEAH! I am very happy to see you taking that route back to the legendary titles that started the journey. That move had to happen somehow! There is so much potential there, still waiting to be unleashed by the newest REAL technology alongside DLSS 5 optimizations. I know because I never stopped playing Cyberpunk and RDR2 in VR with old REAL... and I'm currently playing Hogwarts with UltraPlus Path Tracing Extreme settings, DLSS 5 injection with RR, and some Reshade FX on top to fine-tune the result to my HMD. It confirms the result in VR is spectacular AND sustainable at a decent framerate (~70 fps on my 4090) when all the latest technologies work alongside each other (NR, upscaler, bridge for frame gen). This is why I have high hopes to see that wonder happen for RDR2 and Cyberpunk. The full picture of Night City with its neons path-traced and denoised by a working DLSS 5 RR will be the GREATEST show! No doubt. Cheers!
A few things: maybe one reason why there aren’t so many apparent downloads is that nowadays VR mods get often installed through VR hubs that keep a tab on all games? (not sure they always pull stuff or do some caching) Also, if you’re a real VR gaming fanatic, you actually want to finish every game, and working people (the only one who can still afford a gaming PC for VR) have limited time to play, so it takes time! In the last couple months I managed to play the Halo collection VR mod (on Halo 2, 3, ODST, Reach), then Resident Evil Requiem. Now I’m playing the CoD Modern Warfare 2 VR mod, which is amazing - the motion control is pretty impressive (with complex reloads, robust grenade throw, etc), and things like scopes work pretty well. Next I have to try Titanfall 2. This summer I also managed to install Luke’s old gtaV VR support from the github… so I’m excited about the new support for the enhanced version. I agree with Luke that lots of those vibe coded mods get abandoned too quickly, because the last 10% of issues are the hardest to fix, and the non coders just give up. I would say that the main plus from the tsunami of recent mods is the addition of proper motion control. There’s a Diablo 2 one that looks really promising (first person view with direct bow and melee mechanics) As for the “physical steering” thing, I own forcefeedback wheel and joystick, but those are for sims, where I care about subtle inputs, for something like the GTAVC VR mod on my Quest where you steer with your hand in front of you by grabbing in the air for cars and bikes, or when steering a snow mobile in some over the top chase in the CoDMW2 VR mod, I really don’t mind using fake steering. The brain is just too busy and it’s close enough to the real thing for a short time. It’s the same with shooting two handed, ideally you want to use a gun frame to hold your controllers, but if the gameplay is intense enough just holding your free hand in the air to stabilize the gun works too. That’s how I play CoDMW2 in VR, and the fact my two controllers aren’t physically connected just doesn’t matter - I hit all the shots and the haptic feedback when I shot and the complex manual reloads make it super satisfying and thrilling.
my witcher 3 mod is pretty much playable and i've done things that nobody else has done before, and i have the same AI as everyone else. Vibe Coding unleashed my ideas as i was not that skilled to do it by myself but i know what to do. Most of the implementation i did with vibe coding was because i tell him exactly what to do and where are the problems. without proper knowledge you probably spend days trying to vibe code something and going anywhere. Go have a look on the features i implemented on witcher 3: -Asymmetric projection -Same tick Stereo -I had also RayTracing working at some point, dropped in favour of asym. pr. -Implemented AFW -implemented dlss5 with a vr tuned Optiscaler -fixed all issues with asymmetric, moving smoke, moving terrains, shader hacked all the lights automatically with an internal script -Framegen both with Optical Flow and FSR 3.1 (where OFXR has born basically) -First Person -editable HUD -and another ton of features i don't remember now. Also 500€ of tokens and countless hours, basically i haven't done anything else from July till now during my free time. I partially agree, lot of mods are just basic AER and unpolished with useless motion control, tried a few, unplayable for me. Is a labor of love and the fact that i've spend that huge amount of time using AI doesn't mean it has lower value than yours spent without it. And i'm getting nothing, except some donations (thank you all!!) that barely let me able to recover token costs, no paywall or whatever and everything open source. And those videos on youtube actually helped me to recover that costs so a big thanks also to the guys that has done those videos. Lastly i'm working on yours too and improving it even if is closed source and i wasted weeks because of that, so be prepared :)
Thank you for taking the time to write a detailed comment to tell us about your work and your results. I confess I haven't tried your Witcher 3 mod yet but I know that people are absolutely loving it. And above all I fully respect the "labor of love" feeling. By no means I'm saying that your time has a lower value than mine. However, it does appear to me that you are the one ascribing no value on your time, because you say (with some pride, I might add) that you're barely getting back the out-of-pocket costs you incurred for tokens. You're spending all of your free time working on your mods without any compensation. I know the feeling. I've been there. That's what I did for my first mods to GTA V and NOLF2, and for my first conversion of RDR2 before I started the Patreon. I had no AI to assist me, so as you can imagine the amount of free time that went into those projects was orders of magnitude higher. Does that kind of work make you feel good? Sure it does. You get a feeling of accomplishment by telling "him" (ugh, sorry but personifying AI makes me shiver a little) exactly what to do. Unfortunately that won't last long. The next generation of models will not bother listening to what you suggest, because they will have everything ready before you can even begin to think which direction you want to go. AI companies are now using their trillions to digitize all kinds of work done by all categories of human beings. See https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-companies-human-workers-robot-training-data-2026-10 for example. You invested all your free time since July doing nothing but modding. Come July of next year, we might have nothing but "free" time, because most of us will be unemployed and with zero market value. But we might no longer be able to use that free time directing AI because it will have grown past the need for any guidance. It's a little funny reading that you wasted "weeks" because my code is closed source, as if there was any obligation to race towards the bottom until nobody is able to extract any value from their creations. But sure, if you feel that you need to invest your time improving my work, it's your prerogative. And it won't make much of a difference anyway, because AI will do that itself soon after. Maybe you'll manage to speed up the process by a month or two.
Titanfall 2 VR mod. I feel you with a lot of the vibe coded stuff out there BUT hands down this is the BEST VR conversion EVER….id go so far as to say it’s my fav VR game of all time (mod or not). On my 3rd playthrough, couple of minor bugs , but dude, bees knees, all the knees…..
Thank you so much for this! Truly, I had given up hope of ever getting to play an updated version of this mod - let alone for the enhanced! I am in your debt Sir, GTA V in VR is the reason I have VR for.
First of all, kudos for having the balls to reinstate GTAVR and I hope those dipsh*ts at 2K will not come after you. And that RDR2 and Mafia: DE will also return. Secondly, your anecdata suggests that there are no good VR mods made with AI, which is not true. Yes, most of those vibe coded mods are sh*t and get abandoned at 0.0.1 pre-alpha and this should be criticised, but there is also a bunch of good mods, for example Titanfall 2, F.E.A.R., Breath of the Wild, Doom (made by actual VR developer).
Hello Luke, As the owner of an advertising agency that develops custom-designed websites for business clients—generating hundred thousands of euros annually with that work—we also face the risk that this type of development work might eventually disappear. After all, building websites using AI tools is even easier than creating a "VR mod" for a PC Video Game. However, our approach to this challenge differs from what I read between the lines in your Post... We harness the "FORCE" of AI tools to automate the creation of our highly customized, CMS-based business websites, allowing us to complete them within a single week. The "trick," as we see it, lies in combining the deep expertise of our developers with the time-saving capabilities of AI tools. This approach enables us to deliver top-tier business websites in just a quarter of the time it used to take. As a small team of 15 Humans, our three developers can now handle all our web projects much faster—making them more profitable for us—without the need for layoffs. We’ve effectively left the "low-effort/AI-slop" web developers far behind in terms of quality and possibilities with our solutions. What’s the point of my story? USE THE FORCE, LUKE! ;-) I believe you could—and should—leverage AI to elevate your framework and your VR Solutions. With your immense technical knowledge, you could create something truly outstanding, making it so that all those "AI-slop" hobbyists lose interest in flooding the VR-mod market with half-baked, low-quality junk! I’m referring specifically to features like full 6DOF motion controls within your framework! Given your already outstanding solutions, you would leave everyone else FAR behind if your framework could also offer a "full VR experience"—much like the VR mod for Titanfall 2, for example. (Absolutely play this one and see what is possible! It is an outstanding solution!) I believe your new GTA V solution would be a massive hit if it featured 6DOF; in fact, if such a solution from you existed, it would likely discourage almost any other "Vibe Coder" from bothering to create a subpar VR mod GTA V and all the Other Games you have a very good VR-Solution for! Best wishes 4 you! Timo
Glad to see GTA V Enhanced back, and I’ll be trying it. But the first half of this post reads like a man annoyed that the drawbridge got lowered. “No expertise or knowledge of any kind is required.” “A vibe-coder can take credit for the work done by Claude.” That’s not analysis, that’s a priesthood complaining about the laity. You say the process has become “very democratic” and “probably a good thing” in a tone that means the opposite. For years getting a title into VR meant waiting for a handful of people to decide it was worth their time. Now someone with a decent understanding of what they want can get a rough conversion in a weekend. That’s not the problem. That’s the point. Yes, most of the first wave is rough. I’ve tried a fair few and plenty of them fall over by mission three. But “the first wave is rough” is true of every tool that has ever opened a field up, and you know that. You concede the real point yourself: the motion-controller work that used to take months now takes hours. What’s left is that nobody’s implementing them “the way they would work in a title designed for VR.” Fine — but that’s a bar about retrofitting, not about who’s doing the retrofitting. If it can’t be done properly on a flat game, that’s true whether a human or an AI is holding the keyboard, and it has nothing to do with vibe-coding. If it can, then the new crowd will get there the same way anyone does: by shipping bad versions first. Which brings me to the copyright section. You’ve spent years — correctly, in my view — arguing that a runtime interfacing with a game isn’t derivative work, that fair use should cover you the way it covers every monetised YouTube channel, and that the DMCA notices were bad faith. Then in the same post, when it’s LLM training, “scraped without any respect for copyright” is the whole story and transformative use doesn’t get a mention. You can’t claim the interoperability and fair-use defences for yourself and deny the same family of arguments to everyone else. Pick one. The quality bar you’re setting — playable start to finish, faithful to the original — is the right bar. Nobody’s disputing it. What I’m disputing is the idea that only people who earned their stripes the old way are allowed to aim for it. The guy who vibe-codes a bad conversion this month learns something, and his next one is less bad. That’s how everyone gets good, you included. Software development isn’t on Sunset Boulevard. Scarcity of a particular skill is. Those aren’t the same thing.
"That’s not analysis, that’s a priesthood complaining about the laity." That's not you, that's AI slop. If you have something to say to Luke, make an effort and write it yourself. Some points of Luke's post can be critcised (like him only trying bad VR mods, as if purposefuly avoiding the few good ones in order to make it look as if there are only bad ones), but exposing people to undisclosed AI slop is disrespectful.
Any chance your camera pitch control will be added to past games? You're alienating a portion of your subscribers/potential subscribers, like me, by locking your camera instead of giving us options. I believe you would want to retain us, who prefer third person gamepad VR, given the new boom of AI coding happening. If you feel it's not worth your time I wish you'd just come out and say it so we can all move on.
Hope you'll update RDR2 next!
I would be so happy
Love your work Luke 👏 Your real vr versions are always exceptional. I have just played full VR playthroughs of Titanfall 2 VR, Zelda Ocarina Of Time VR and FEAR VR and they are like a native vr experience due to motion controls, physical combat and manual vr reloading. Excited to see if you also will be able to include motion controls to games that work well with them like shooters or other first person titles.
Thank god this is a motion control free zone
Guessing you haven't tried Titanfall 2 VR then.
I confess I haven't. It's not my bread and butter, but I'm hearing great things about the modder, so I'll do my best to check it out soon!
If the AI will do perfect VR MODs/games in some MODs doesn't change that during a time period only a small number of modders could do that magic, it has been a trip I have enjoyed a lot, that will never change. BTW, I haven't tryed yet the new avalanche of MODs, I'm waiting for them to be polished
Yes, we are VR bros for life! ❤️😁
Does GTA work with version 2610.15.2?
Yes, but you need the Enhanced version (more details in the game-specific post that I linked)
Wherever this is going....I know where I am going: I am going home early from work *NOW* and try your runtime conversion layer on GTAV with my old PS4 controllers immidiatly :) :) :). Luke, Thanks for this!!!
Thank you. I’m looking forward to trying GTA. But I’m so happy you fixed bond. I I bought it and started playing it the day the update was release so I been waiting. I got a beast at home so I should be able to play it at max graphics or very close.
Dear Luke, your post - coming from someone who knows what he is talking about - covers best what's going on with self-accelerating pace exploding literally in all our faces, no matter what we do and what our jobs are. Your insights and analysis are profound, your answers and outlooks substantial, and your post alone was worth the monthly subscription fee!
Thank you for your kind words ❤️ It's so hard to be taken seriously nowadays. Especially in the context of this impending AI doom, I often feel like Cassandra
It seems that the rug is being pulled from under someone's feet
Yep, the rug is being pulled from under everyone's feet. Unless there is major event that snaps people (and particularly decision-makers) awake, software companies will be next to go belly up, and that includes game studios :-(
I was literally thinking about you yesterday Luke. I was wondering what your thoughts on the current VR landscape was and bam! You deliver! Thank you! I have absolutely gotten so excited about many of the vibe-coded VR games, and I assume like many, has my excitement dashed when I ‘finally’ get a mod working only to find it riddled with flaws. Barely playable. Then I switch back to your mods, Praydog or a UEVR injected game, (which can bring the jank too sometimes.) Yes I am grateful you brought back this game, (though I have been falling out of love with Rockstar games for numerous reasons), I am glad to see you still in the game and coming full circle. Ultimately I think the interest and experience new eyes on VR will bring will yield good results. Thanks again for your thoughts and thanks for this update!
WOW...can I be the first to say how happy I am that you have "gone there" and salute this bold and objectively brave move. While I managed a disjointed playthrough of the archive version of GTA/REAL, the sheer number of bugs and issues (from double out-of-date software) made it just a tech demo rather than a viable game. Most trio story missions crashed out hard. But the idea of playing with RT, DLSS and (gulp) NR is tantalising. Just hope it plays ok with Rockstar launcher as that's my modern version. And does this potentially open to the door to to a wild-west adventure in the future? :)
Yes, that's in the plans if the gaming gods are benevolent. Let me know about the Rockstar launcher version, I'd like to know if it runs well or has any issues (e.g., watch out for errors in the log)
Yeah please do add a WIP tech section for things still being worked on. This may help you out as well cause ppl can give you feedback about how they may have figured out certain things that works for them. By end of this year I should have my new pc and be ready to try out dlss5 with VR so hopefully its all working great by then
There are definitely quite a few AI VR mods that are playable from start to finish. Not most of them since a lot of them are still a work in progress, but it's not none of them as you claim. Also some of them do motion controls really well
I only said, none of those I've tried. I'm obviously not claiming that no AIVR mods are fully playable. Which ones would you recommend?
Oh this is a big read and I look forward to finishing it all later when I get home from work. So happy to see gtav back and you did answer your question about why downloads are low for new vr converts. Many still have issues so ppl are still waiting for better more polished ones and with dlss5 ppl seem to be happy just playing back all their favorite games on flat screen. If dlss5 was better in VR with all these new converts then probably many more ppl would be using em
Are you sure this is a good idea?
No, but it's hard to be sure of anything these days :-|