Alien Isolation - possible compatibility hack on the way

[FlukeRogi]

I use keyboard and mouse

I always found that more comfortable than joypad turning. Used to play TF2 on the DKs with no problems. I wish they'd kept updating that, but during various talks Valve always said it had been a bad idea, when for me it was one of the best VR games there was back then.

 

[FlukeRogi]

It's £8 on cdkeys, i'll buy it tomorrow and give it a go, sort of looking forward to it :X

Bargain at that price. It's so atmospheric, and it's one of the few games that utterly overrides any and all failings that I notice with the current VR hardware. Resolution, SDE, FoV - it all fades away for me with Alien Isolation (ok, maybe apart from when you're trying to read a monitor, but hopefully he'll fix that awkward distance problem in a later version of the mod).

 

[Devrij]

Oh god I'm not sure I'll be able to handle this lol

 

[Liamz51]

Just played 30 minutes of this. This is so good, exactly what I hoped VR would be. Fully expecting to have nightmares from this. Can't understand why SEGA didn't do it themselves.

 

[FlukeRogi]

Just played 30 minutes of this. This is so good, exactly what I hoped VR would be. Fully expecting to have nightmares from this. Can't understand why SEGA didn't do it themselves.

30 minutes is a sane amount of time per play session with A:I. It's been a long time since I've played it, and it's fantastic to be able to dive back in. I'd forgotten how amazing and authentic the sound design on this is.

 

[melmac]

I didn't get a chance to play today. Tomorrow I will give it another go. VR will hopefully make it more interesting than the normal version.

 

[Liamz51]

It's really surprising that after so many disappointing games set in the Alien universe (and hot on the heals of Colonial Marines), Creative Assembly come along, better known for strategy games, and gave us the Alien game we had all been waiting for. Some people considered it overly long, and I accept that there is a degree of re-tracing steps, but it really is the definitive Alien experience. VR just takes it to a whole new level.

 

[nightrider1470]

Not as good colonial marines

 

[melmac]

It's really surprising that after so many disappointing games set in the Alien universe (and hot on the heals of Colonial Marines), Creative Assembly come along, better known for strategy games, and gave us the Alien game we had all been waiting for. Some people considered it overly long, and I accept that there is a degree of re-tracing steps, but it really is the definitive Alien experience. VR just takes it to a whole new level.

Speaking for myself, I thought it was a very boring game. The Alien only ever appears to block your path at certain mission points. You can have a party at other times and the Alien will never appear. After your first 3/4 times meeting the Alien, he just becomes a nuisance more that anything else. The fear factor is gone and because it's so long, it's annoying to have to wait in hidey holes all the time. Then once you get the flame thrower the Alien isn't even a problem after that. But, I can understand why many people liked it, if you like stealth games and like the Alien movies, then this game had it all

In my opinion, I think the original AVP game, released in 2000, is the definitive Alien game. It was the scariest game that I have ever played, nothing else has even come close. Turn out the lights in your room, put on you headphones and it was so atmospheric. The Aliens were scripted of course and it was never the same the second time around, but, it never seemed like that on your first play through. Every second of that game was "oh sh.. I am going to die, I am going to die!!" The motion trackers were just like the movie, completely accurate but entirely useless at the same time. The beep, beep, beep as you walked through dark corridors with no idea where the Aliens were going to attack from.

It's probably the reason that I didn't find Alien Isolation that great.

 

[Liamz51]

Well I guess everyone has a different take, for me it was the definitive game set in the Alien universe, but I can respect that other people will have different opinions. That notwithstanding, this is an amazing experience in VR.

 

[window]

I suffer from vr sickness too, so far project cars, rip coil and alien isolation are no go's for me. Playing them for little bits every now and again to hopefully build up a tolerance but do you think it could be solved via graphic settings?

 

[Shiari]

I suffer from vr sickness too, so far project cars, rip coil and alien isolation are no go's for me. Playing them for little bits every now and again to hopefully build up a tolerance but do you think it could be solved via graphic settings?

If your performance is good, graphics settings won't make a difference.

From what I can tell from reading a lot about the subject and some of my own experience there's two major reasons for "VR sickness" really, the first being a latency between moving your head and the image moving (solveable with good frame rates), the other being caused by particular kinds of movement. If the camera is moving but there is no other apparent movement or cause for that movement (such as would happen in say a drone shot), or you're rotating or moving with some kind of locomotion that's detached from what's going on in the experience such as moving or rotating with thumbsticks that can really cause a disconnect to what your body is experiencing and it can easily make you feel queasy or even ill.

Rip coil is definitely an iffy one, can't say it made me queasy but it felt very weird. Alien Isolation I haven't tried yet, but I presume the locomotion would be similar to that of Minecraft in "immersive mode" and that locomotion made me queasy initially, but it only took me a week to gain VR legs. However, both these two titles have less than perfect locomotion if you haven't got your VR legs just yet.

I'm surprised Project Cars is causing you issues. Probably best to get started purely on the "comfortable" experiences where you can sit or stand and do not otherwise move around, not even in a cockpit, rather than trying the less comfortable ones and just making yourself feel bad. Try Medium, Quill, Superhot, Fantastic Contraption, Toybox, The Lab, to name a few. Lone Echo / Echo Arena could be okay too (since your body "knows" that when you push or pull yourself with your hands you should be moving like you do) but I'm not yet convinced everyone will have an easy time with these two titles. And when you feel any queasyness or illness, stop immediately: go to the pause screen, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, take the headset off. Then do not use it again until you've fully recovered. It may take some time, but you must not force it.

 

[window]

If your performance is good, graphics settings won't make a difference.

From what I can tell from reading a lot about the subject and some of my own experience there's two major reasons for "VR sickness" really, the first being a latency between moving your head and the image moving (solveable with good frame rates), the other being caused by particular kinds of movement. If the camera is moving but there is no other apparent movement or cause for that movement (such as would happen in say a drone shot), or you're rotating or moving with some kind of locomotion that's detached from what's going on in the experience such as moving or rotating with thumbsticks that can really cause a disconnect to what your body is experiencing and it can easily make you feel queasy or even ill.
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Yeah ive looked into it myself too and am trying the tolerance thing. Not sure about gamepad moving though as they get me straight away. was so looking forward to playing alien isolation. I put on bioshock on bigscreen and even that made me feel queasy so I think ive got it quite bad. Regards to Project Cars so far 5 people have tried it (including me) and only 2 haven't suffered with motion sickness so not sure its that uncommon.

 

[Shiari]

Regarding big screen, it's possible your body has already started to associate being in the HMD with not feeling well. Make sure you're feeling absolutely fine before trying it, and really, really don't push yourself ... stop if getting queasy. Maybe even initially just stay in home (whether Oculus Home or Steam VR Home), make sure you're feeling 100% fine with that before starting anything else. Steam VR home at least has some environments and toys to play around in and with.

Yes, it would get boring just visiting home say every day, but it really sounds like you need to build those VR legs or you're not going to be able to stomach anything at all.

 

[Borsch]

I suffer from vr sickness too, so far project cars, rip coil and alien isolation are no go's for me. Playing them for little bits every now and again to hopefully build up a tolerance but do you think it could be solved via graphic settings?

if you have stable 90fps then graphics settings will not help. If fps is below, say 45 - then ctrl+1 turns off Asynch time thing, and you may also play around wit the graphics.

Tolerance is a matter of time though, jsut dont push yourself too much and stop playing/close your eyes at the first signs. Otherwise you may develop an allergy to VR instead of that tolerance. I was like you in the beginning, but can play for an hour now without any problems (just close my eyes for a few seconds if there are uncomfortable camera transitions etc)

 

[FlukeRogi]

Yeah ive looked into it myself too and am trying the tolerance thing. Not sure about gamepad moving though as they get me straight away. was so looking forward to playing alien isolation. I put on bioshock on bigscreen and even that made me feel queasy so I think ive got it quite bad. Regards to Project Cars so far 5 people have tried it (including me) and only 2 haven't suffered with motion sickness so not sure its that uncommon.

I'm not sure if Project Cars has this option, but in Dirt Rally, you can enable an option that keeps the horizon level, instead of having the roll of your head move with the car. Normally, your view would tilt with the car, whereas with the alternate method the car tilts around your view while the horizon stays level, which makes it more comfortable for some people.

 

[lllclarkylll]

Just got this, really impressive, does changing the graphics alter anything with this mod or will it revert back to certain settings? I'm using a 980ti so I'm not sure what I can get away with.

 

[FlukeRogi]

Just got this, really impressive, does changing the graphics alter anything with this mod or will it revert back to certain settings? I'm using a 980ti so I'm not sure what I can get away with.

I've always had a problem with A:I not keeping graphics settings, so what I did was to edit the config file that stores the settings for the various graphics levels and copied the max level settings over to those of the lower levels, so regardless of whether it tries to revert to low/med/high etc, it will always be at the top quality settings.

I don't think you'll have any problems maxing things out with a 980ti.

 

[lllclarkylll]

Yea when I put the graphics on max from the main menu and then go into the game it crashes but if I go into the game, change the graphics and resume, its fine. Regardless though, the graphics seem to be put back down when loading up the game apart from the anti aliasing which I've set at SMAA T2X. Quite difficult to notice much difference when going through the settings but it didn't seem to effect the frame rate so I'll just have to crank it up in game each time I play.

 

[FlukeRogi]

so I'll just have to crank it up in game each time I play.

Edit the ENGINE_SETTINGS file in the data folder so that it can't use lower settings. For example:

<Setting name="ShadowMapResolution">
<!-- resolution in pixels. -->
<Quality name="512" int="2048" precedence="1"/>
<Quality name="1024" int="2048" precedence="2"/>
<Quality name="1536" int="2048" precedence="3"/>
<Quality name="2048" int="2048" precedence="4">

Above, regardless of whatever shadow setting is selected, it will now use a 2048 res shadow map. Just go through the file and adjust as required.