How Do I Enable VR HMD Mode?

[Peekofwar]

Is there a way to enable VR HMD mode? The option is there in the UI, it's just disabled for some reason. I would love to be able to see the ARK world in VR.

I have my Index HMD powered on and I have SteamVR running. I tried the options menu from both in-game and the main menu, and I've even tried restarting ARK with SteamVR running. The button is still disabled.

If the feature is completely disabled and cannot be activated at all, why is the button still present in the UI? Surely there's a way to activate it, be it a launch argument or some kind of console command...?

I don't care if it's an unsupported feature. If it works at all, I'd love to try it.

[Xanmal]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCLoA54Xqa8&t=261s

Google is a useful tool

[Peekofwar]

Ugh... Why does this game take so long to load?

[Peekofwar]

Originally posted by Xanmal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCLoA54Xqa8&t=261s

Google is a useful tool

Unfortunately, this doesn't solve my problem. I tried both launch modes suggested in the video, however the option in the options menu UI is still disabled.

[Peekofwar]

Has anyone managed to get this to work on a non-Oculus VR system? I've noticed a trend of people with Oculus getting it to work, and I wonder if it's hard-coded to work only with Oculus.

[retsam1]

Originally posted by Peekofwar:

Has anyone managed to get this to work on a non-Oculus VR system? I've noticed a trend of people with Oculus getting it to work, and I wonder if it's hard-coded to work only with Oculus.

VR for Arkl was essentially shelved many many years ago for the game and thus since then people attempting to use VR with ark have been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole ever since.

Originally posted by Peekofwar:

Ugh... Why does this game take so long to load?

If you're experiencing long load times that's often indicative of you playing on an HDD and as well potentially with mods and/or in single player. Single player HDD with 10 mods for example can take 7-15 min to load into the game, depending on the size of the mods as well.

[Peekofwar]

Originally posted by retsam1:

Originally posted by Peekofwar:

Ugh... Why does this game take so long to load?

If you're experiencing long load times that's often indicative of you playing on an HDD and as well potentially with mods and/or in single player. Single player HDD with 10 mods for example can take 7-15 min to load into the game, depending on the size of the mods as well.

Just checked, and no; ARK is not installed on my mechanical disk. And if saves are in APPDATA, that'd be on my boot drive which is an M.2 SSD.

[retsam1]

Originally posted by Peekofwar:

Originally posted by retsam1:

If you're experiencing long load times that's often indicative of you playing on an HDD and as well potentially with mods and/or in single player. Single player HDD with 10 mods for example can take 7-15 min to load into the game, depending on the size of the mods as well.

Just checked, and no; ARK is not installed on my mechanical disk. And if saves are in APPDATA, that'd be on my boot drive which is an M.2 SSD.

Steam and ark should be on the same drive for better performance. But again VR is shelved indefinitely so whether that too is a factor or not, is not apparent. All in all this is a square peg in a round hole situation.

[Peekofwar]

Originally posted by retsam1:

Steam and ark should be on the same drive for better performance. But again VR is shelved indefinitely so whether that too is a factor or not, is not apparent. All in all this is a square peg in a round hole situation.

Does it really matter if Steam is on one SSD, and ARK is on a sperate identical SSD?

The fact that some people are still able to get it to work for them means that they never actually removed the code. Sure it might be buggy and incomplete (and further game updates after the abandonment of the feature probably would contribute to buggy behavior), but if I could get it to work for me (even if it's buggy and incomplete), that would be great.

But as I mentioned above, I suspect that it might be hard-coded with Oculus in mind hence why I am unable to get it to work.

[Tiramisu]

While I havent played Ark in a long time, I did play a bit in VR. This was quite a few years ago tho
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1792202078
It does require an app called Vorpx. I didnt do that much in it because I really wanted more res (both hardware and software). That and I could only get it to run reasonable at 72fps.

That was 2 gens back tho, on a 2080ti. Sad to think years later and I have not moved on from the Index, while the GPU has changed twice :/ no one has released something that does everything I want. If the Pimax Crystal wasnt heavy that might have done it for me. And based on the weight of that, I assume then the 12K is out too.

Anyway, it is possible with a paid app. There are free similar apps, but Ive never used them. I will say that it seems better than what was shown in that video, the game looked awful!! And the issue with scaling and having to look up a lot to interact with things >< nope.

[Peekofwar]

Originally posted by Tiramisu:

While I havent played Ark in a long time, I did play a bit in VR. This was quite a few years ago tho
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1792202078
It does require an app called Vorpx. I didnt do that much in it because I really wanted more res (both hardware and software). That and I could only get it to run reasonable at 72fps.

That was 2 gens back tho, on a 2080ti. Sad to think years later and I have not moved on from the Index, while the GPU has changed twice :/ no one has released something that does everything I want. If the Pimax Crystal wasnt heavy that might have done it for me. And based on the weight of that, I assume then the 12K is out too.

Anyway, it is possible with a paid app. There are free similar apps, but Ive never used them. I will say that it seems better than what was shown in that video, the game looked awful!! And the issue with scaling and having to look up a lot to interact with things >< nope.

I tried VorpX, but I don't know enough about that app to figure out how to get full 3D working... All I can ever seem to get in VorpX is a view infront of my face that has to be enlarged so that I can't see the edges as much. That and scale isn't right which bothers me.

[Tiramisu]

The 3D effect was weak. And yes you are just stretching out a box to fill your vision, which is why I didnt find it acceptable with what the hardware allowed. With maybe 40-50% bump in res from both the physical and software, I think it would be fine. A 4090 would probably be able for that, but the problem really then is what HMD can do it. There are a number of such sets for sale, but they all seem to have drawbacks.