SF2 in VR using VorpX

[+streakeagle 871]

Years ago (I have had VR that long?) I tried flying SF2 in VR using VorpX and the original Oculus Rift. I couldn't write custom profiles, but I tried borrowing profiles from all of the supported games. I couldn't get it to run in DX10, but if I forced DX9, it did work. But it was buggy, ugly, difficult to use, and tended to crash when exiting missions.

CAStary eventually got VR and fiddled with SF2/VorpX and somehow got it running ok in DX10. He sent me the profile, but I had never gotten around to trying it out.

Well, today I installed the latest version of VorpX and tried out Stary's SF2 profile on my Oculus Rift S. It isn't perfect, but it has improved tremendously. There is a way to toggle between zoomed in for flying and zoomed out for navigating the menus, which solves one of the most annoying bugs I experienced the last time I tried it.

At this point, I only see two major problems with flying VR using VorpX:

1) It uses a "mouse look" emulation that only allows you to pivot your viewpoint around, i.e. you can't lean in closer to look at something in detail or move your head around for a better view around a canopy frame.

2) After removing the yaw and pitch limits, you can see how ugly the combined stock cockpit/external model looks because they weren't designed for 360 degrees of pitch and yaw. You can often see through you own aircraft because the cockpit model wasn't designed for you to see anything beyond what was visible with the default view limits.

Once I am in the game with my jet, I like using the F1 key to center the view, followed by adjusting the zoom out to the maximum. 

On my Rift S, the graphics look very nice with smooth, high frame rates.

If you have VorpX and want to try SF2, log in to the cloud profiles and find and save the "Strike Fighters 2 DX10" profile, and import it into the local Vorpx library.

Edited April 12, 2020 by streakeagle

[+streakeagle 871]

I just played the default F-4J Carrier Takeoff mission. I took off, circled back, and landed. The inability to move my head up to see over the nose is a problem, but the workaround is to recenter your view looking a little low, then look up a few degrees. The more you look up, the more your view is move up, so I was able to see over the nose well enough to have almost a perfect landing. It was almost as easy as landing in DCS World.

Next, I played the default F-4E vs MiG-21MF mission over the desert. The real advantage of VR over TrackIR is the 1:1 head tracking which allows you to maintain a sense of where your nose is while you visually follow the target through your rear quarter with a smooth motion that is damn near identical to using padlock. I thoroughly enjoyed this fight as much as a DCS World VR fight. This makes SF2 feel like a new game. If only the terrain and cockpits were up to DCS World standards, I wouldn't know the difference from the experience in VR.

[Stratos 3,192]

Thanks for this inputs, please keep em coming.

[+streakeagle 871]

I tried doing some flying with TrackIR, but the zoom level kept shifting back to default whenever I looked down, whereas I manually back it out to maximum to match the wide FOV of my 4k TV monitor. I switched back to VR and the zoom stayed where I put it, and it was a blast. I pretty much can't stand to fly SF2 without VR at this point, despite some very painful limitations of the VorpX means of implementing a basic VR capability.

I was beta testing an F-4G and then flew some stock missions: Operation Bolo and F-4J vs MiG-21MF. It is like I am playing a completely new game. Also, after years of focusing on VR, it is nice to experience SF2 dogfighting AI, which has a lot more skill than DCS World AI. In DCS World, if you max out AI skill level, they don't fly smarter, they just abuse their basic flight models and fly more like UFOs. In SF2, the "top-gun" maneuver of chopping your throttle and hitting your brakes will get you killed. The MiG-21 pops his breaks and chops his throttles, too. If you have lost all of your energy, he won't overshoot you, but will shoot as if you are a fish in a barrel. Whereas even the best DCS AI tends to fall easy prey to basic horizontal rolling scissors and will pop helplessly out in front of you even when the AI is in a much superior aircraft.

 

[+streakeagle 871]

I continue to experiment with SF2 VR and with the framerate locked at 80 fps, it is an amazing experience. SF2 is still the only semi-modern sim (as opposed to Jane's Fighters Anthology and Jane's USAF, which are much older and inferior to SF2 in most respects) where I can fly the F-4 in combat against excellent AI MiG opponents in historical environments like Vietnam and Israel. The FSX/P3d F-4s available from Milviz (F-4E/J/S) and Simworks Studios (F-4B/N) are a joy to fly, but VR runs like crap in P3d and the environment doesn't have AI opponents that you can dogfight. If you like clubbing baby seals, shooting down Cessnas and airliners works great in FSX/P3d with TacPack, but it isn't a true combat flight sim experience. SF2's terrains are obsolete compared to DCS World, even with the texture upgrades, but they are still the only way to fly decent combat missions over Vietnam and Israel in a historical context. The mix of SF2 and VR is a very good experience. I recommend it to anyone who owns both the SF2 series and has VR.

[gregfp66 0]

Hello , i'm about to jump into vr for dcs and would like to use it too with SF 2
So your comment made me happy that it is possible, though i dont know how to use vorpx apparently it need tweakings. 

How do you do that? Do you know a guide that can teach me to make it work with this game and maybe other sims?

 

Thanks for sharing your findings

[00Mayday00 1]

Sorry for digging up an older thread but did anyone have reliable success with Vorpx and Strike fighters 2? Im using a Oculus Rift S and it works maybe 1:30 times. It always crashes when I go to start the mission. I have done a clean install of SF2 and nothing seems to work.

 

Thanks 

Mayday

[+streakeagle 871]

I think VorpX patched away the compatibiity. It worked well for me quite some time, now I can't use VorpX with SF2 not matter what I do. I tried going back to an old video driver that used to work, but it seems VorpX is the problem. I have tried with my Rift S and my Reverb G2 with nothing but crashes to desktop when I try to fly. I can navigate the menus, I just can't get to the flying part any more.

[Aries144 3]

I've got the game running with VorpX!

At first, I noticed the game also wouldn't run with flat screen. Not sure what changed. I reset the options.ini to default, set up the graphics for flat screen use using the in game menu, and then started a process of elimination in graphics settings after I found the game would run in VorpX after setting graphics to low. In the end, the only things I changed were setting shadows and effects details from "unlimited" to "high."  I found the shadow setting significantly decreased load times, even just running flat screen. I wonder if the super long load time was making things time out?

I'm using a Reverb G2.
Shadows to high
Effect details to high

Instant Action works, single missions work, All the official maps work, several different aircraft including 3rd party modules all seem to work.

Making a custom resolution like 1920x1920, setting aspect ratio to 1.0, and modifying the default camera position in some aircraft's individual ini files to be farther away from the dash all seem to be beneficial in eliminating that "too zoomed in" feeling without playing around with a bunch of VorpX settings. For me, playing with VorpX settings to resolve that always resulted in fish eye vision near the edges of the screen.

I hope this works for you guys too.

[+streakeagle 871]

VorpX is what keeps changing. Now I can use Starry's Strike Fighters 2 DirectX 10 profile that I uploaded to the VorpX Cloud profiles without any issues again. OpenXR/Windows Mixed Reality was recently added so that I can now use my Reverb G2 natively (as in no longer needing SteamVR). I have the graphics set to unlimited at 4K resolution and it looks fantastic in VR with framerates locked at 90 fps (native frame rate for my G2). There are some limitations with this setup, but overall it looks and works great. I have installed SF2 Vietnam Air & Ground War and SF2 Wings Over Korea. If only it had multiplayer functionality comparable to DCS World, though I would settle for the original multiplayer in SFP1/WoX.

[+streakeagle 871]

I just flew SF2 Korea in my favorite Razbam F2H-2 Banshee. I am using the Reverb G2 with VorpX and the OpenXR driver option. The experience still amazes me: locked at 90 fps with the great SF2 Korea mod terrain and dogfighting MiG-15s. After killing the MiGs, I went sightseeing at tree top level and 300-400 kts IAS. What a great view with a sense of speed and altitude. I primarily fly DCS World at this point, but SF2 is pretty darn good with high-resolution VR pegged at max frame rate with max graphics quality settings. 

[+Coupi 4,395]

Hello my friends ! 

Please... just a question !

Do you think it would be possible to play SF2 with the Meta Quest 2 VR system ?

Best regards,

P.

Edited October 6, 2022 by Coupi

[+streakeagle 871]

On 10/6/2022 at 1:16 PM, Coupi said:

Hello my friends ! 

Please... just a question !

Do you think it would be possible to play SF2 with the Meta Quest 2 VR system ?

Best regards,

P.

At one time, it worked great with VorpX. But in recent history, I have been unable to get the Quest 2 to work with SF2. It is possible that it is working again, but I haven't tried in a long time.

On the other hand, the HP Reverb G2 was still working great the last time I tried, but that was several months ago.

VorpX constantly goes through patches/upgrades (as do gpu drivers), so there is no telling when compatibility will be broken and/or restored.

But if you can get it working correctly, it isn't as good as a natively VR sim like DCS World, but it still looks amazing. When you fly mods that have full 3d cockpits like the recent F-5 releases is when it looks its best. Stock cockpits were never built to let you look all over in the vertical and horizontal.

[+Coupi 4,395]

14 minutes ago, streakeagle said:

At one time, it worked great with VorpX. But in recent history, I have been unable to get the Quest 2 to work with SF2. It is possible that it is working again, but I haven't tried in a long time.

On the other hand, the HP Reverb G2 was still working great the last time I tried, but that was several months ago.

VorpX constantly goes through patches/upgrades (as do gpu drivers), so there is no telling when compatibility will be broken and/or restored.

But if you can get it working correctly, it isn't as good as a natively VR sim like DCS World, but it still looks amazing. When you fly mods that have full 3d cockpits like the recent F-5 releases is when it looks its best. Stock cockpits were never built to let you look all over in the vertical and horizontal.

Ok ! Thank You  very much !  

P.

[CaptainKoloth 0]

Hello all:

 

 

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I am actually trying to do exactly this. SF2 was working fluidly and beautifully for me on my HP Reverb G2 the last time I tried it about a year ago, but now it's crashing about 29 times out of 30 when I try to run it. I'm trying to figure it out on the VorpX end but they haven't been super helpful and there doesn't seem to be a way to install older VorpX builds (as some update clearly broke its SF2 compatibility). Has anyone had recent success with it? It's a shame as SF2 was nearly at native-VR levels when it was working. 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2023 by CaptainKoloth

[UllyB 1,206]

I first told myself , when the pandemic was in full blown, that I will purchase a VR device, but then they were out of stock. I was seeing those exclusive games for VR ads , that I found them interesting to take a look at. Maybe I will buy an Oucculus Rift device after all someday. Thanks for the input anyway, it gives some clues of what one can expect  from the VR realm.