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How to setup Skyrim Special Edition for VR?

Madaras
Expert Protege
Alright, so I found a decent guide to setup the regular version of Skyrim, however I'm having trouble with finding one for Skyrim SE. Perhaps because it doesn't exist, but I figured there would be no place better to ask than here. Also I suppose Oblivion. Can anyone here help me please?
14 REPLIES 14

Anonymous
Not applicable
I can't see that Vireio yet supports Skyrim SE. You could ask here, perhaps.

Failing that, VorpX does support Skyrim SE, though that isn't free (costs around $30 to $40, I believe) so it's up to you whether it's worth getting. Check comments on the VorpX forums and elsewhere, VorpX tends to attract highly conflicting views ;). I would say that, if its new Direct VR feature works properly for you (it isn't 100% reliable), then you don't need to do any further tweaking of settings, and the experience is as good and seamless as any attempt to shoehorn a non-VR game into VR can be :). Although, the author recommends using regular Skyrim anyway if possible as the performance is better.

Madaras
Expert Protege
Yes, I did read up on the vorpx forum about this topic and saw the same things. Pretty much it ends up writing that it's "near perfect" for head tracking, which leads me to believe that it'll be a bit of a headache to try.

Anonymous
Not applicable
Heh, depends how much emphasis you put on the "near" and how much on the "perfect" ;). But unless the good folk developing Vireio get Skyrim SE support in, it may be the only option.

Anyway, hope you manage to find a solution 🙂

Madaras
Expert Protege
Well I don't know anything about Vireio, but just googled it to find out more, went to their site tried playing the FO4 video and got a pop-up that is pretty much a form of malware. "Important security message please call..." Well I hope another solution does present itself, I may come back to this again in the future. There is still much on my plate to sift through, this is one of those things on my to-do list.

danknugz
Superstar
shame bethesda isnt doing a vr version of skyrim like they are with fallout4. maybe skyrim 2
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on forums?

edmg
Trustee
If they get Fallout 4 working in VR, porting Skyrim SE should be a relatively simple job, since they now use a very similar engine.

Doesn't mean they'll do it, but they could.

Madaras
Expert Protege
Alright, so I decided to get Skyrim non SE working with VR and followed that guide I linked to. However, I can't seem to figure it out. I have every mod installed, I copied the vireio perception bin over to the skyrim folder, what am I missing?

Chazmeister
Rising Star
Skyrim for me works quite well with Vorpx. I only just caved and bought Vorpx a few weeks back myself to give Skyrim a go. Overall I think it's great. The Direct VR feature works pretty well. The only tweaking I did once in game is to push the sharpening in the Vorpx interface right up to 2.0.

The Ugly:
- Distant landscapes and forests look kind of urgh! But then they always did in Skyrim, it's just more in your face in VR. Distant mountains and stuff look great but grassy plains and woodlands look cack. Also the grass and foliage looks messy too.
- Slight fuzzy feel to all the graphics, but you get used to it and tune into it, like you do with a lot of VR's little quirks.
- Like a lot of trad FPS type games, Skyrim uses a separate 3d model for your 1st person view from your 3rd person one. It's a kind of fudge to make your arms and weapons viewable when playing on a 2D screen. Of course in real life it's a totally unnatural viewpoint and so of course in VR it's totally wrong. When you draw out a weapon it makes you look like you've got massive mutant Hulk sized arms that touch the floor when you bend over and look down.
- The UI doesn't fit on the screen properly in VR and makes it quite hard to see. To get around this you can click a button (middle mouse button by default) to bring up what they call "Edge Peak Mode". Essentially this flattens out and reduces the image size to make it look like you're viewing the game on a big screen TV set a few feet away from you. The transition is instant though and it's easy to flick back and forth as needed.
- Some of the water effects kind of vanish if you look at them from a certain angle (do not change your view height in the Vorpx UI, it makes this worse) . It's not a biggy though.
- Perfomance out in the heavily wooded areas can take a bit of a hit some times. Not terrible, but noticeable. Certainly livable though. Running the game on Ultra settings with max AA is a must. It looks really jaggy with anything less than the max AA settings.

The Good:
- It's Skyrim in VR! Seeing all the familiar sights of the mountains and the towns and buildings in life size is just amazing. The interiors really shine in VR, both in buildings and dungeons. Creeping through the dungeons in VR feels like playing a different game, despite all your previous familiarity with it. I must have done Bleak Falls Barrow about half a dozen times in 2D, but in VR it was like WOW! A completely new experience. That grand snow dusted ruined entrance and the big chamber with the word wall at the end both looked magnificent. The great hall of Dragonsreach also looks stunning. Can't wait to get a bit further in to check out some of the other sights.
- Combat is so much more immediate. The first time you get a giant life sized Frostbite Spider in your face, you will panic. Arrrgh, horrible!
- As with combat, just dealing with the NPC's feels so much more intimate. Your meetings with the Jarl and others, you're standing there with them part of the discussion, not just staring at a screen clicking buttons on dialogue prompts. Obviously you're still doing that but you feel so much more immersed in the RP bit of the RPG.

Basic setup with Vorpx:
- Obviously a decent rig is still required to run this in VR even though it is quite an old game now.
- Run the game once in 2D with everything set to max. Probably best to create your character first too before playing in VR.
- With the game closed, run Vorpx. In Vorpx go to Local Profiles in the side menu and select Eldar Scrolls Skyrim SE from the menu and apply the settings. This will change the FOV to one best suited for VR and a few other things.
- With Vorpx running launch the game by what ever means you normally use. Check the settings again in the launch window before starting. Make sure it's still all set to max. The resolution should be set at the lowest (it's just the desktop resolution), Vorpx should have set that.
- Once in game just press Alt+L to run the Direct VR scan. (Keep your hands off the mouse whilst it does so).
- In the Vorpx menus set the image sharpening to 2.0 (I think it might be called something other than sharpening but it'll be obvious what it is, it's on the first tab anyway).
- Thats it, you should be good to go.

Helpful mods for VR:
- Joy of Perspective http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/9358/?  This adds a 3rd person style body to the 1st person persective so when you look down you see a body. More importantly though it lets you use 3rd person style animations which means that your weapon arms are not right up in your view, they're more natural. So when your weapons are drawn you can't see your monster sized arms. However when you swing a weapon you still see them then. I find though that in combat they're not as much of a distraction as your concentration is more on your opponents. The body however still feels a bit false as the animations are not in sync with the 3rd person animations, which are the ones that leave footprints etc. Also the body is not subject to the environmental lighting conditions. So it's not perfect but it's the best fix for the monster arms that I've found at the moment.
- VioLens http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/668/?  This adds a book to your inventory that lets you change the settings of the critical hit animations. You'll want to switch all the 3rd person ones off. Probably the 1st person ones too.

They're the 2 mods I've come across so far that have been helpful for a better VR experience. All your other faves and the usual must have mods are still recommended of course, like the unofficial patch and SMIM etc.

What I would love to do is figure out a way to be able to set the 1st person view to be set at and use the 3rd person model. I think that one simple thing would solve a lot of the the VR perspective problems and make it much more immersive. I've downloaded the tool kit and will have a gander sometime. No idea what I'm doing with it though.


Gwiz84
Heroic Explorer
Why even waste your time trying. Unsupported games make for a pretty shitty vr experience.