realvr
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Per aspera ad astra
🕑 Added 2025-04-14 23:25:33 +0000 UTC[Important correction: version 19.0.2, attached at the end of the post, actually delivers what I was talking about regarding Higher quality AER v2. I apologize: I made a packaging error in the previous release, which meant the new algorithm was working correctly only on my machine. Again, the difference is not night and day, but I recommend that everybody update because the haloing artifacts should now be visibly reduced on all NVIDIA systems. Also, this revision fixes the missing player health bar in Far Cry Primal.]
I'm sort of getting carried away with these Latin citations, aren't I?
So, this is a surprise update... even for me. No kidding. If you had asked me just a month ago, I would have said that I would not be working on this, at least for a year, and maybe not even then.
But I got a LOT of requests, so I finally gave in. And now I must say: I'm glad that you kept asking and pushing me, and I'm very happy with the way things turned out in the end.
It's still early times, granted, and even an RTX 5090 will sweat bullets running this in VR. So in a sense it's kind of like a tech demo that you can experience if you want to take a peek at how games will look in a couple of years, for those fortunate few who will have the boatloads of money and the PR connections needed to lay their hands on a next-next-generation GPU. But in another sense it is very R.E.A.L. ^_^, and you can use it even now to play complete games, provided that you are willing to accept a few compromises with the graphics options and the resolution.
OKAY WHAT IS IT? Even the most patient amongst you are now asking. Ah sorry, did I forget to tell you?
I fixed Ray Reconstruction for VR. []-D
You will now be able to use NVIDIA's hardware/AI powered acceleration for path tracing in any game you fancy, provided that the games you fancy are Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, or Star Wars Outlaws. At the moment, a grand total of 8 games (!) support this new technology (see https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-rtx-games-engines-apps/ for the full list), and half of them are in our R.E.A.L. VR collection.
But I'm pretty sure more will come, both new and old titles. Ray tracing is here to stay, and after seeing it in action in VR, despite the hardware limitations and the compromises needed to run it at a decent, consistent frame rate, I have to say that it does look mighty sweet.
Also, it grows on you. At first you are likely to see it just as a gimmick. Oh wonderful... accurate reflections, so the game will look better when it rains. Who cares! But after a while you start appreciating all the tiny details, the subtle improvements that together contribute to make the virtual world and the characters in it more realistic and credible, and when you turn it off suddenly everything looks flat. I mean, not "flat" flat, because we're still in VR. But flatter and a little dull. And that's when you'll want to be able to push that magic button in every game.
Well, we have four now. That's a start :-P
I called this new fix DL(S)SS-RR, because who says acronyms must have a finite number of letters? NVIDIA and the game engine developers do most of the work, with 6 letters out of 7: the Deep Learning Super Sampling Ray Reconstruction part. I quietly sneak in the (S)tereoscopic addition.
All 4 games available now really shine (pun intended) with this technology improvement. Star Wars Outlaws can at last be played without the disco-lights effect on every surface that its normal (and compulsory, grr) ray-tracing denoiser exhibits. Ray Reconstruction stabilizes the image perfectly, and the lighting is solid and believable. Hogwarts Legacy looks MUCH better with ray tracing, and the shimmering that was still present for example on vegetation even with the DLSS fix is completely gone. Cyberpunk 2077, as we all know, is a game that seems to have been specifically designed to show off this new tech. Neon lights everywhere; reflections on cars, pavement, and futuristic clothes; bright colors; 'nuff said. Indy is perhaps the most understated of the four titles, with many levels taking place in semi-dark non-reflective environments where the improvements brought by ray tracing are subtler; but it also has its magic moments, and for example the initial level in the huge college rooms with glass everywhere is truly a sight to behold.
DL(S)SS-RR will activate automatically when needed, but as usual with my mods if you encounter problems with it you can turn it off from the game-specific tab of the mod overlay, like for instance the "INDY" tab for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. There is a single checkbox that controls both kinds of DL(S)SS fixes (the previous supersampling one and the shiny (haha) new one for ray reconstruction), because they are mutually exclusive anyway. Meaning, a game can't use both at a single time: when you turn on Ray Reconstruction in the game settings, the mod will automatically switch from DL(S)SS for SuperSampling to DL(S)SS for Ray Reconstruction.
Speaking of Indy, this release also works around the driver issues that made the game crash when playing with DL(S)SS active on an RTX 50xx series card. I know that many of you have been waiting for this to finish your playthroughs; sorry that it took me so long to identify the problem and find a trick to sidestep it.
Unfortunately the latest few NVIDIA driver versions have been plagued by regressions, crippled functionality and even BSODs. If you have a powerful card and want to try out Path tracing with Ray Reconstruction, please be advised that you are quite likely to stumble into driver problems. They might manifest as checkerboard patterns, flashing lights in one or both eyes, super-grainy and noisy images, you name it... and you can immediately tell they are driver problems because once they start they persist through different game sessions until you reboot the system.
If you fall victim to these issues, I only have three remedies to suggest: first clear the shader caches, both the game's and the driver's; if that's not enough, reboot; and if even that doesn't fix it, try to downgrade or upgrade your drivers until you find a version that works acceptably with your card. At the moment of writing, I'm running my RTX 5090 on 572.83 and can usually "fix" any weird issues by clearing the shader cache.
Higher quality AER v2
Besides the flashy new stuff on which I shared my reflections above (OK I'll stop now, promise), version 19.0.0 of the R.E.A.L. VR mod also introduces a new, more accurate optical flow estimator for AER v2. The checkbox to turn it on is in the main page of the mod overlay. It's not switched on by default because it's more taxing on the GPU and older cards might fail to keep a steady frame rate when it's activated. Your feedback as usual is very welcome.
Don't expect a night-and-day difference. It's actually a very subtle improvement, mostly intended to make the AER v2 fringe artifacts smoother and more regular, rather than to get rid of them altogether. Unfortunately the artifacts cannot be completely eliminated on current hardware because the optical flow estimation the card provides is simply not good enough. But for me this improvement does the trick of making my brain more tolerant to the defects, which is all I can strive for at the moment.
Frame generation
Pre-emptive answer to the questions that will surely come. No, sadly frame generation cannot be used in VR. And it's not one of those cases where I say no and then start hammering on it for weeks until it finally becomes workable. Frame generation is not for VR because NVIDIA doesn't want it to be.
While DL(S)SS happens in user space, and the upsampled buffers are given back to the game so developers can do what they want with them, with FG the interpolated frames are kept hidden in the driver, and they never make their way back to the application. When it's time to present them, the driver sends them directly to the monitor (which makes it impossible to even record them for replay and analysis without specific hardware capture tools), and the game doesn't get any information about the precise time the frames were presented, let alone the contents of the buffers.
VR headsets are basically screens with accelerometers and lenses, but despite that they are not seen by the driver as a generic screen, due to engineering decisions taken by Oculus, Valve and the IHVs in the early days of modern VR. So, frame generation doesn't take VR headsets into account, at all. If you were to employ FG on a VR conversion, and for some lucky combination of events the hack didn't crash, all you'd get would be smoother motion on the monitor display with increased GPU usage, but no extra frames at all in the headset.
That is not going to change until NVIDIA reverses their policy on not making the generated frames available to developers, and frankly I deem such a reversal exceedingly unlikely. The only scenario in which NVIDIA could reconsider their decision is if there was huge demand for the feature from gamers, and that won't happen because flat games don't need access to the interpolated frames.
Far Cry 4
Finally, this version restores VR functionality for Far Cry 4 after it had been broken by Ubisoft's nude/not nude/actually nude again series of updates, in which they apparently took advantage of the confusion to sneak in an undisclosed anticheat watchdog that triggers even when you play completely offline. Uncool, Ubi.
Play it now
Actually, the Far Cry 4 thing makes me want to say something I've been thinking for a while. If you like these games we now have in VR, don't wait: play them today, while they're working well. The exhortation is also meant for myself; I've been spending too much time modding, and precious too little time playing, in this last year.
There is no telling how long we'll be allowed to play these titles. Microsoft has killed its WMR technology completely. Apple has stopped production of the Vision Pro. Sony is doing very little to keep the PSVR 2 ecosystem alive. NVIDIA is no longer mentioning VR in any of its products, and their latest generation of developer tools actually errors out if a process has been marked with the VR flag. I don't want to end the post on a sad note, so let's just say this: if you want to enjoy these games in VR, from start to end, with the titles working properly and without jumping through crazy hoops... the time is now.
Carpe diem!
Comments
Milan Švancara
Did you figure it out? It runs to me in 3D only when i install the 18.0 version and the view seems to be constantly porting my view to my back (jumping back and forth)
Administrator Urządzeń
Whoa man, KCD2 after 30 min configurating is maddness. Thanks! Just wondering is there a way to work KCD cursor in KCD? I have a "Real VR" cursor in game and I cannot use in-game cursor to work?
Brandon(Post Maester)
What game? Can you put the log file on pastebin.com and post a link here please? Usually, a good idea to post under a newer Patreon post so it is easier to see :)
Faith Holland
Hey so I'm new to this and am having issues with crashing immediately upon loading in. The log shows this as red [21668] | ERROR | Unexpected NVSDK_NGX_D3 D12_Createfeature(000001A3F151AF0, 11, 000001A3C429BA60, 0000001B6FE720) returns 00000001 (NVSDK_NGX_Result_Success)
Marco
Hey Luke, I’ve noticed a specific visual issue when combining DLSS Ray Reconstruction with the new DL(S)SS Fix. Without your new fix — which is brilliant, by the way — puddles flicker, for example. With your fix the image is much calmer and the puddles no longer flicker. However, there are scenes where it gets much worse with the DL(S)SS Fix + Ray Reconstruction. Example: when driving in first person, as soon as the car starts moving everything inside the car flickers / is blurry, while the outside looks fine. I’m using a Quest 3 at 72 Hz with AER v2 set to 1/3. Are you familiar with this behavior?
Brandon(Post Maester)
You will need the fix for CP 2.3 that just dropped today :)
Brandon(Post Maester)
There is now a fix in the latest post :)
BioGamer74
I had to do a rollback, 2.3 update broke the mod for me. Tried on valve index and meta quest 3 and it wouldn't load.
Lloyd Dawkins
Has anyonec urrently got this running? I keep launching into windowed mode in STEAMVR
Brandon(Post Maester)
What do you mean by the UI issues?
Blue Factory Games
Hey ! Thank you very much for fixing Ray Reconstruction. I just got 5090 and I am eager to try it and see how it looks :) I love path tracing on my OLED 4k TV and yeah. It does add depth you are 100% right. But what it changes the most is "getting it right" when it comes to presentation. With all games you can always see some issues with lighting etc. if you look close enough. You may not notice it but you "see" it. Once PT turns on all those unseen seen problems go away and suddenly picture looks right ! Speaking of which. Did you found any resolution to UI issues in C2077 ? Like cars 2d speedometers etc ?
Brandon(Post Maester)
Good luck with that one! Some people have had success using ALVR and Oculus runtime I believe. Some people have not had good results. Is there any kind of ALVR discord or anything? You could try Flat2VR discord. I know there are some AVP users on there in the Luke Ross channels. One of them is currently having an issue running one game but has it working with others fine. I haven't kept up with the Discord much this week. I have a bunch of DMs on there I haven't even looked at.
JAFG58
In your tutorial you said you make sure you have the appropriate runtime set in your headset and you gave a few examples. What do you set/what's the process for an an Apple Vision Pro?
Lasse Hiltunen
Im trying run it with 5090 and 12900k. Tried with Crystal. Head tracking issues, but that’s not the problem.
Lasse Hiltunen
Not new to mod. Have played cyper punk, far cry etc. Does anyone have settings for INDY or is there some driver issue etc?
Brandon(Post Maester)
VD works perfectly fine with Meta headsets and in general. We both find that Link Cable has better overall quality if you disable link sharpening and increase the bitrate to 700-900 in Oculus Debug tool. If VD is working great for you, keep on using it. The whole point is to enjoy the VR experience, and we are glad you are doing that :) It is still true that you should not use OpenXR over Oculus runtime though. OpenXR simply runs over the top of Oculus and can cause issues sometimes. Better to just run Oculus runtime by itself, which auto will default to when using VDXR with VD. Sometimes OpenXR will work fine but then an update comes along, and it has problems for people. If you are using 1/2, you really want to have a solid 90fps or whatever your refresh your headset is set to. 1/2 and 1/3 both work best without frequent fluctuations. Say hi to Panam for me!!
Sairai
Dear Luke, first, I want to thank you for this absolute stunning experience I just had in VR again. Goosebums while walking through Night City and just spending my time watching all those beautiful details in this world! Thank you so so much, that you made this possible! Then I would also like to put a little question. I just came here today, so fairly new. In one of your posts, you wrote something like "stay clear from openXR and VirtualDesktop". Unfortunately I am not able to find this exact post anymore... I carefully followed the information in your posts to get Cyberpunk up and running in VR with my Quest 3 for the first time and because of your statement, I tried Oculus Link first, rather then Virtual Desktop, which I generally use. Out of curiosity, after Oculus Link connection run fine with your mod, I wanted to test Virtual Desktop and actually the graphics quality is (as expected) much more crisp (comes at a fps cost of course, but my 5090 is able to handle it) and I didn't find any issues in my short test session. Is Virtual Desktop already officially supported or would you in general recommend Oculus Link for your mod for some reason? I am using the latest update v20.1.0. I was able to play with 1/2 setting with improved AER v2 and most times maintained 85-90 fps. The picture is so crystal clear, that I can even read documents on the peoples desks. I am absolutely stunned!
Brandon(Post Maester)
Yeah, Ray Reconstruction uses a different version of DLSS. So, the DL(S)SS fix will switch between them depending on if you have RR active or not.
Michael Falsetti
I tried looking for the ray reconstruction fix option on the mod menu but couldn't find it when playing cyberpunk. Does it get applied automatically now?
Brandon(Post Maester)
Performance and the Hfov optimization are the most likely culprits. You can disable Hfov in the main tab of the REAL overlay but you will lose a chunk of performance because it stops the game from rendering beyond your headsets fov. Since you are using link cable, you could also modify fov tangent multiplier in Oculus debug tool to something like 1.1:1 The first number is the horizontal fov, so you can extend it out a bit and not lose all the performance. Latency will play a big roll, if you have pretty high latency then the view won't keep up well when you move your head. Higher refresh rate will lower latency. It is a good idea to make sure you are hitting the fps cap for whatever render mode you are using consistently as well.
Alexsandro Jezeerel ferreira de ramos
Hello, I'm using the cyberpunk mod using the link cable in quest 3, but I can see the black borders in the right and left corners looking like a black box, is there any way to fix it?
Justin
Star wars outlaws looks better with RR but everything still looks all washed out gray, and the HUD still super annoying. I think I'm still resigned to playing this game in 2D sadly.
Justin
I finally got my hands on a 5090 inspired by your ray reconstruction. I think it makes a huge difference so far in cyberpunk! Not only are the lighting and reflections way better, there is way less weird visual artifact. With the shadow ray tracing off, I am managing around 50FPS at vision pro resolution on quality DLSS setting. Pretty amazing. Its not perfect, but its close enough for everything to run pretty smooth and look good at native resolutions. The 4090 just couldn't quite cut it. Thanks for the ray reconstruction birthday present!
Brandon(Post Maester)
Maybe you are using the wrong runtime or something is off in your setup? Is the whole image doubling or just the HUD? What headset and how is it connected? What runtime are you using?
Gipss
hey, just installed the mod and playing cyberpunk, generally looks awesome, but quite often I get glitches when moving my head around (like image stays in the same place, but at the same time it's moving like it should, and it duplicates for a second). And when I just move my mouse around, everything is fine. I have a record of this, but the issue is barely visible there. Is there a fix for that? Version 19.0.2
Brandon(Post Maester)
I can give you some basic stuff, but you are going to have to tinker and find a settling point. There is no real way to avoid that :) For Optiscaler, I still don't know if that works for AMD users and to what extent. It seems from reading things, that it doesn't actually allow AMD users to use DLSS but it would be great if you could try it and let me know for sure. It offers a lot of options, so if you get something that works really well with AMD, that would be awesome. Here are manual install instructions, which includes a list of possible things you can rename the Optiscaler dll file to, to avoid the conflict you are having. REAL has a dxgi.dll file, so you will need to rename the dll file for Optiscaler. https://github.com/cdozdil/OptiScaler/wiki/Manual-Installation
Tyrese Hubbard
So I’m using a 9070xt and a Ryzen 7800x3d. I was trying to use Optiscalar, an injectable to give Cyberpunk the ability to use FSR4. I’m running into the issue where the mod doesn’t like it. I could only install one or the other. I’m not sure if they share a similar file or not. On top of that, I’m using a quest 2, I’m also not sure what graphical settings are recommended for the game. What frame rate I should be shooting for, what hardware settings to set. If any one could give me some pointers it would be greatly appreciated.
Brandon(Post Maester)
1. Can't be entirely sure as it could be a number of things. Make sure you are getting adequate performance and not pushing so hard that you are running into a VRAM wall and it is freezing or getting throttled. You could try connecting a different way to see if things change or look at your system performance while playing to see if something is struggling or overheating etc. You can also bring up the VD performance graph to see if anything seems to struggle there. Is it at one particular part of the game or does it happen no matter where you are? Are you using VDXR and Oculus runtime? 2. Are you using DLSS? If so, then the picture should be fairly stable with no real shimmering or aliasing. There may be trails and some odd artificing with NPCs when they are in motion. Be careful not to over sharpen the image. The mod has built in sharpening, deblur slider, in the main tab of the overlay that is all the way up by default. 3. Make sure to enable the built-in capture source at the bottom of the REAL overlay main tab. Use Right or Left eye and not both. Make sure you then set up a capture screen in OBS that uses that source specifically (should have the game name) and not your display.
Brandon(Post Maester)
What update? What game?
Sophie
Hi is the mod broken at the moment after the update? I tried it a few minutes ago with v19.0.2 but it didn't work... I am on the last chapter :(
Saya Midori
Sorry, I didn’t know where to post, so I’m replying here. I’m using a PC with an RTX 4070 and a Quest 3 headset, playing Cyberpunk 2077 via Virtual Desktop. The game is a clean install with no other mods except for your v19_0_2 mod, and DLSS is enabled. I’ve encountered three issues: 1.Freezing: After around 3 minutes of gameplay, the entire screen freezes, and I have to restart the game to recover. 2.Aliasing / Ghosting: All object edges in the game exhibit shimmering, aliasing, and ghosting artifacts. It’s very distracting—do you know how to fix this? 3.OBS Capture Issues: I’m unsure how to properly capture the game with OBS. The recorded video also shows the same left-right flickering as in the headset. Please let me know if you need any additional information or logs!
Brandon(Post Maester)
I don't see a particularly new update, has it been a while since you played it? I just tested and it still works perfectly fine on my end.
Darren Stoller
Avatar has a quite large update, I don't know if it affects the mod?
Brandon(Post Maester)
You can adjust the camera position in the Cyberpunk tab of the REAL overlay I believe. Either that tab or the main one somewhere, don't remember for sure off hand. You can also recenter the camera by shaking your head no, so try that first to make sure the alignment isn't off somehow, before you go changing the actual placement of the camera in game. What headset and how is it connected if not Displayport? What rendering mode are you using and what kind of fps? In the overlay tab of the REAL overlay there is a box you can check to display your fps and latency to help with working out performance.
Ita
I am very new to VR games, installed this for Cyberpunk 2077 and I've some problems getting it to run properly. I hope this is the correct place to ask. The main problem is that the mouse movement makes it all very shaky. It was REALLY bad before I set rendering mode to Mono, which helped a lot, but moving the mouse still is very shaky. Secondly, is there a way to change the POV? It seems like the character is really, really close to other character in dialogues. This issue is minor. Have a great weekend.
