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Fallout 4 VR is Here. Free locomotion is an option

MowTin
Expert Trustee
It’s still uncertain how Bethesda is going to handle Rift support, if the recent release of the company’s latest title Doom VFR tells us anything, Rift support will likely be available despite no mention by the company—something you can chalk up to bad blood over the $4 billion intellectual property dispute involving Bethesda’s parent company ZeniMax and Oculus’ parent company Facebook.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQC1xNIc8TY


i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2
65 REPLIES 65

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
Well I went ahead and got it, here are my thoughts:

First of all, yes, it works and is playable. So with that out of the way...

In terms of gameplay, it's fallout 4 in VR. So yeah, if you were
expecting something else then you have unreasonable expectations.

Graphically, it isn't as blurry as people are saying. It certainly isn't the prettiest VR game, but then again 99% of games on Oculus Home meet that same description. Not everything can be Robo Recall or DCS. There are a few graphics options for object draw distance but that's about it, no super sampling slider I could find. I did notice some pop in around the edges of my view but it isn't too bad, I was expecting worse from other reviews. Overall I think the graphics are acceptable, it's about what I'd expect if I hadn't read all those reviews first. Performance was flawless but it really should be on an i7-8700k, GTX 1080 TI, 16GB DDR4 at 3200 MHz and an nvme SSD.

Movement options are bare bones but do meet minimum VR standards (barely). You can teleport as well as free move with fixed rotation jumps (30, 45, 60, 90 degree at a time). I prefer smooth rotation (as in Dead Effect 2 VR) but that isn't an option. When switching to free move, super tunnel vision is turned on by default, it basically blinds you when moving. But that is a slider, I turned it off completely. The only issue I have with it is movement is tied to where you are pointing your left controller with no apparent option for having it relative to the HMD. This is a bit annoying as where my left hand is pointed often has absolutely nothing to do with anything. On the bright side, the left grip button toggles sneak mode on and off with short presses and your pip boy light with a longer press. So that answers how sneak mode works, which is pretty well imho. I'm happy they implemented it that way.

As for general controls with the Rift, they could be a lot better. When first loading the game up, I found myself constantly swapping between the xbox and touch controllers. The control assignments in both cases are a bit bizarre but once I figured them out, the xbox controller wasn't needed. I had no issues typing my name in unlike a lot of others.

Interacting with NPC's and picking up objects is strange but not a problem. Pushing forwards slightly and in on either stick takes the place of the old interact button from the monitor version (e key?). The on screen hints say to just push it straight in but that's bogus, you have to push about 1/4th of the way forwards before pushing the stick in. It isn't at all finicky once you figure it out but it took me a little while since the on screen hints are wrong.

Gun play and weapons are generally pretty good. Aim is spot on and the right grip button reloads the magazine, very sensible choice imho. Unfortunately pressing the right grip button also drops a grenade if you hold it half a second too long. I had 3 grenades, dropped two of them on my feet and had to run away. 😮 All weapons are one handed BTW, so no proper two handed weapons as far as I can tell. Didn't have any scoped weapons to try but I hear scopes don't work for anyone, Vive users included. On the bright side, I've never been such a good shot in FO4 before, so much easier with touch than with mouse and keyboard. Might do a pistols only play through, that seems to work well with the Rift and all other VR shooters.

I saved the real problems for last, and they are all related to inventory controls. Picking crap up maybe easy, but dropping it is a nightmare. It's designed for you to repeatedly swipe your touch pad, which is inconvenient with a touchpad and just awful with thumb sticks. You have to move the stick as far as you can in the desired direction, push it in, move it as far to the opposite side as you can, release and repeat until you eventually reach whatever it is you want. And then it's a mix of thumb stick presses, trigger pulls and thumb stick moves to select the option you want. It's slow, janky and I promise it isn't much better with the Vive's controller. It's fundamentally a bad design on any controller other than a mouse wheel. Maybe they forgot to change it. 😛

Related to that is the favorites menu. I haven't found a reliable way to pull it up. It's some combination of shoving the stick to the side while pressing the button in and slowly releasing it, but normally it either does nothing or it rotates me to the side. Maybe it works better on the Vive/MSVR controllers but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't.

Overall, not sure I recommend it. If you absolutely must have FO4 in VR, then yeah, get it. It does work and I'm sure with practice it's possible to get reasonably quick with the inventory system. But it certainly isn't intuitive and is more than a little slow at first.

DarkTenka
Trustee
How are you guys saying this is playable? .. you realise this is an RPG right? .. the moment you need to level up or use your inventory you're straight fucked.

In-game controls are fine .. you can point/shoot .. hands are correct orientation etc and you can walk about the wilderness just fine. But the moment you need to use a menu (remember this is Fallout) .. it is literally impossible to navigate correctly. You have to press up on both sticks to get to the top .. then hold up on one stick hold down on another .. then let go of one and half push the other .. and then you MIGHT have a chance of landing on the option you wish to use. 

Also .. why am I knee high to a grass-hopper? .. Seriously - and this is for both vive and oculus - you cant change your height and it uses neither SteamVR nor Oculus's height settings to determine player height. It's just hard set to "Danny Devito".

Sorry .. no .. DooM VFR was WAY more playable than this (Edit: With the free locomotion mod of course).

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
I wasn't a midget in it, though I do seem to be missing a good 6 inches (6'1" irl). Getting around the inventory is annoying, but it can slowly be done. Leveling up wasn't too hard for me, it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to recover all bottles from the workshop so I can make purified water. 😕

DarkTenka
Trustee


I wasn't a midget in it, though I do seem to be missing a good 6 inches (6'1" irl). Getting around the inventory is annoying, but it can slowly be done. Leveling up wasn't too hard for me, it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to recover all bottles from the workshop so I can make purified water. 😕


Sigh .. I'll have to stick at it and see if I can figure out it. I do also have the blurryness problem, but I'm only on a GTX980 so I thought this was just going to be unavoidable .. 

Thing is I cant even look at my inventory/pip boy at all .. the moment I try it gets stuck on the stats page. No matter where I push the stick it wont go to the Inventory. So far I have been unable to equip any armor or weapons apart from the first pistol I found.

Its so frustrating because its so god damn close ... you can feel the sense of immersion wandering the wastelands ..

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
Oh yeah that took me a minute to figure out. You have to move the left thumbstick to the side and press in. I can't remember if you press in before or after moving the stick, but it's one of those. Not at all intuitive, I discovered it by accident while trying to do something else.

DarkTenka
Trustee


Oh yeah that took me a minute to figure out. You have to move the left thumbstick to the side and press in. I can't remember if you press in before or after moving the stick, but it's one of those. Not at all intuitive, I discovered it by accident while trying to do something else.


Thanks! .. I'll give that a try.

nalex66
MVP
MVP
Yeah, the menus are definitely an issue, and it’ll get worse as the inventory fills up. I’ll try pushing forward a little on the stick to pick things up, but I’m also going to mess with the ini files—there was a variable called something like “center percentage” which was set to 0.5, and I did notice a Y offset variable that might account for needing to push forward. 

It does feel more like playing Fallout 4 with VorpX than a real made-for-VR game. Things like picking up objects—it should be a natural grip button grab, instead of pressing and holding the stick to get into “interaction mode” (which is a direct carry-over from the 2D game, press and hold the interact button).

If I could remap the controls, I would move interaction to the grip buttons (so you can still press them while manipulating the stick), move Reload/Grenade, Pip light, and Crouch to the unused X/A face buttons, and change the sticks to “hold to scroll” like in the Oculus Home menus. Also, turning needs to be done by just nudging the stick, rather than push to the side and click. 

Apart from the thumbstick behaviour, the rest of that might be do-able with that user-made input emulation software for SteamVR. 

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
It is certainly a minimal effort port to VR but that's all I was expecting tbh. Would be nice if the menus played better with the thumb sticks though, let me know how it goes.

nalex66
MVP
MVP
I know there are several people working on better controls, so we'll see what happens today. If a good scheme for Input Emulation doesn't emerge by tonight, then I'll try setting up something like I described above.

There is one guy on Reddit who mapped the unused A/X buttons to emulate the thumbstick click for the opposite controller (so one hand can point the stick and the other can click when needed), but that seems clunkier to me than moving the click to the grip buttons and moving the existing grip functions to X/A.

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

Luciferous
Consultant
I am too lazy to look but are they really charging the full price to existing owners of fall out 4?