Smarter than the Steam Frame: inside the VR mod that’s brought virtual reality to hundreds of games

Laying eyes and lenses connected UEVR

Valve’s precocious announced Steam Frame is promising a unsocial twist connected VR headsets. On apical of being a Quest 3-style standalone headset that tin some watercourse games from a almighty PC and tally little demanding games connected its ain internals, the second won’t beryllium constricted to VR titles – by utilizing SteamOS arsenic its operating system, the Frame tin locally tally immoderate Steam crippled successful your library, provided it tin execute connected the hardware.

That’s each fine, particularly successful however it bypasses classical VR issues similar the request for basal stations oregon an costly desktop. But the smartest happening successful VR close present is not the Steam Frame. It isn’t adjacent hardware. It’s a mod. Enter Praydog's UEVR, oregon Universal Unreal Engine VR: a mod that’s softly turned hundreds (potentially thousands) of Unreal Engine games into playable, room-scale VR experiences since its release.

The Frame’s quality to locally tally your Steam room – enabled by SteamOS, the aforesaid operating strategy arsenic the Steam Deck – mightiness beryllium new, but yet it’s inactive astir moving level games successful a 2D theatre view, and that’s thing that Valve’s ain SteamVR level has been doing for years. UEVR really changes the games, not conscionable the surface you’re utilizing to show them.

This free, open-source instrumentality injects VR enactment into Unreal Engine games (currently those connected UE versions betwixt 4.8 and 5.4) by hooking into Unreal's own, built-in stereo rendering pipeline. It allows for existent stereoscopic 3D rendering utilizing Unreal's autochthonal VR path, arsenic good arsenic 6DOF caput tracking, truthful the in-game camera is really your head, and moves arsenic you look around. The effect is that acquainted flat-screen scenes summation existent carnal presence, letting you peer, lean, and inhabit the crippled satellite alternatively than simply ticker it. For galore of these games, UEVR besides provides enactment for question controllers, which remaps in-game actions for VR input.

So, alternatively of projecting a level framework onto a virtual cinema display, UEVR fundamentally rewires the crippled to deliberation and behave similar it's ever been a VR rubric - conscionable truthful agelong arsenic the crippled is made successful Unreal Engine. To recognize wherefore this is specified a large deal, you person to look astatine however the games are played utilizing theatre mode vs UEVR.

The Outer Worlds is a truly bully illustration of however UEVR works. In a 2D theatre mode, the crippled is conscionable different sci-fi RPG playing connected a large virtual rectangle. Sure, it looks nice, and the standard of the planets pops a spot more, but each cutscene and camera determination is inactive staged for a TV oregon a PC monitor. You can't thin astir the country oregon a corridor to cheque whether a marauder is hiding; you're locked to immoderate the developers framed.

All of that changes erstwhile you occurrence the crippled up done UEVR, due to the fact that your headset presumption drives the in-game camera, truthful you tin physically thin implicit railings to look down astatine stuff, oregon duck down crates portion you enactment up a shot. It truly starts feeling similar you're determination successful the heavy of it, blasting raiders and sneaking done abstraction stations.

Image credit: Banai Namco/ResetEra/FarZa17

None of this is imaginable without immoderate meticulous motor tinkering. Under the hood, UEVR enables autochthonal stereo wherever imaginable portion relying connected Unreal's ain VR presumption way of each eye, and falls backmost to alternate methods, similar synchronized sequential rendering, if the motor objects and autochthonal stereo misbehaves. It besides rebinds the camera and inputs, truthful your headset and controller efficaciously go the "player" from the engine's perspective.

The standard of what UEVR's developers (and comparatively hands-on community) managed to propulsion disconnected and unlock is truly hard to overstate, particularly since thousands of titles moving connected Unreal Engine person been tested with the mod to immoderate extent; here's conscionable one, partial database of compatible games that's deed 667 astatine the clip of writing. Of the games I’ve played, The Outer Worlds decidedly ranks among the astir successful, shockingly natural-feeling implementations, with the unfastened hub areas gaining a peculiar charm erstwhile exploring them successful 3D VR. Walking done a dusty frontier colony and turning your cervix to work a neon motion abruptly feels little similar moving a camera and much similar abstraction tourism.

Borderlands 3 is different large example. On a show oregon successful theatre mode, its shooting and visuals are already large and busy. But with a headset, it’s implicit sensory overload, with loot dropping astatine your feet, bullets hailing astir your head, and NPCs barrelling into your idiosyncratic space. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice swaps the chaos creeping dread but is nary little involving successful VR, particularly erstwhile you're creeping astir dungeons by torchlight and looking for biology cues to lucifer the runes you're seeing. Oh, and the whispers that nag astatine Senua successful the level version? They orbit your caput erstwhile playing successful UEVR. It’s adjacent much uncomfortably intimate, and an atrocious batch scarier.

Then there's Dead by Daylight, which, successful fairness, already gets beauteous aggravated erstwhile played connected a monitor. It's adjacent much truthful successful VR, though, arsenic you tin perceive the killer's footsteps getting person and spot their shadiness stretching crossed the crushed successful beforehand of you. Not your quality - you. I recovered myself instinctively shrinking down, having to punctual myself it was conscionable a game.

Image credit: Praydog

As analyzable arsenic it seems for UEVR to bash its happening with level games, immoderate caller releases tin get enactment with amazingly speedy turnarounds. Oblivion Remastered, for instance, got VR up and moving wrong hours of its (mostly) astonishment launch. In different words, it’s not conscionable a backmost catalogue of older games that would different ne'er person an authoritative VR larboard being retrofitted. Newer worldly is expanding the scope of compatible games each the time.

On the user’s end, UEVR is besides amazingly casual to acceptable up, and there's nary shortage of how-to guides floating astir YouTube if you get stuck. There are immoderate drawbacks: you bash request a beardown PC, since you're fundamentally asking the crippled to render doubly (once for each eye) connected apical of the game’s accustomed hardware demands. Still, the mod works with immoderate OpenVR- oregon OpenXR-compatible headset, from the Valve Index and Meta Quest household to the HP Reverb and Pimax series. It will, astir probably, enactment with the Steam Frame arsenic well, erstwhile it’s streaming from a desktop successful PCVR mode.

Obviously, the Frame and the UEVR aren’t really rivals. If anything, they’re allies, arsenic they lick antithetic halves of the aforesaid problem: the Frame seeks to determination VR hardware further distant from shackling basal stations and high-end PCs, portion UEVR handles contented scarcity by simply VR-ifying existing Unreal games.

But portion the hardware volition travel and go, VR volition ever request games, and UEVR is proving itself a precise clever motor hack that’s helping supply much reasons than ever to enactment a headset on.