REAL VR Mod v.9.4.1 post

Dear friends,

today I want to try something new <3

I know that so many of you have been waiting to play Hogwarts Legacy in VR.

The game officially releases tomorrow, but with the Deluxe Edition they granted 72 hours of early access. So I dived in and drafted a VERY ROUGH preview release of a R.E.A.L. VR mod for the game.

With the occasion I would like to shed some light onto the process I use to cook up these conversions, so if you're feeling brave please follow me into my virtual laboratory... never mind the skeletons :-D

The double-early-access draft is attached below.



Setup instructions
The mod is in no way complete! Please excuse the chaos and debris everywhere.

There is no RealConfig yet: just unzip the archive into the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Binaries\Win64" folder (or whatever your custom path is if you have a version from a different store, or you changed your Steam library location).

In case you have a 4090 card, or if the game doesn't want to enter VR, you should also navigate to the folder "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Engine\Plugins\Runtime\Nvidia\Streamline\Binaries\ThirdParty\Win64" or equivalent, and rename "sl.interposer.dll" to "sl.interposer_bak.dll".

When you start the game next time it should enter VR. Be patient with the preliminary phase where it "prepares" shaders (I don't know why but for me it does that every single time I launch the game). After that is done, frame rate should go back up to normal and you should be able to access the menus.

You will need to manually change at least the following settings:

WINDOW MODE to Windowed Fullscreen (otherwise the game will force you to your monitor resolution which is usually no good in VR)
VSYNC to OFF
FRAMERATE to Uncapped
MOTION BLUR to OFF
Then you'll want to bring up the mod overlay (both thumbsticks on the gamepad or Pause/Break on the keyboard), use the "Target pixels per degree" slider to select a resolution of about 2384x1904, and press the "Adapt resolution" button. Of course the pixels per degree value that you should choose depends on how powerful your GPU is and on what compromise you want to strike between sharpness and fluidity.

Update: I am aware that the resolution needs to be set again when a new level is loaded, and I will try to fix that.

The mod has preliminary support for AER v2. If you don't go crazy with the resolution I recommend "1/2 rate", otherwise select "1/3 rate" to let your GPU breathe and allow for higher pixel densities.

Be warned that if you wanna try this, it's going to be a very bumpy ride!

Most options in the "HOGWARTS" page of the overlay will do nothing. However "Force 2D virtual screen" should be working and you can use it if you find a section of the game which is impassable in VR.

Navigating the overlay with the gamepad will be possible, but button presses will leak through to the game.

Cutscenes will be watchable and 3D, but show the obnoxious "cinematic" black bars. Update: Black bars removed in release 9.4.1.

Some menu options will be unreachable if you select resolutions much higher than your monitor can display.

World markers (the UI items that are supposed to be attached to world objects, like quest indicators or health bars) will not be in the correct position. They are always one of the most annoying and time-consuming issues to fix.

There will be errors in the log file, which I'm going to take care of as I make further progress on this.



Final notes and updates
I will be updating this later today if I manage to fix anything else on the fly, and certainly during the next few days.

Let me know what you think of this approach! I'm not saying by any means that I will make it the rule for all new releases, as I don't really like to serve food undercooked ;-)

But I wanted to surprise you with an unexpected release, even though I do apologize for the state it's in []-D

Release updated to 9.4.1: The black bars in cutscenes should no longer be visible now. I had missed one place where the camera aspect ratio was hard-coded by the game to 16:9 instead of following the one dictated by the chosen resolution. Apart from the annoyance of having to do adjustments manually, the main issue remaining for playability is the world markers showing in the wrong place, which I will try to fix tomorrow.