X4 in VR (Reloaded for 2025)

This guide will guide through a number of steps in order to achieve a playable VR experience with X4: Foundations. Now updated for 2025.

Foreword

It is now almost exactly two years since I first wrote this guide. Time to revisit the subject... some things have changed, others are more achievable than before. In all likelihood, Egosoft will not implement a basic, native VR implementation. So - let's take matters into our own hands. Updated for 2025.

Most of what I wrote back then still holds water: you will still need SteamVR, OpenTrack and ReShade. However, it is the setup and configuration that has changed a little.

It is possible to achieve an enjoyable VR experience with X4, utilizing a few tools and presets. One thing should be stated upfront: the eyes of every human are individual. For this reason I cannot offer a one-size-fits-all config... similar to IPD adjustments in a VR headset, you will also have to tune to similar settings as your hardware to make it work somewhat proper.

IMPORTANT NOTE UPFRONT: What I am offering in this guide will allow you to experience X4 with an almost perfect stereoscopic vision as you would expect in VR, enabling a sense of scale and depth, while retaining normal PC control (so complete or partial KB/M control, HOTAS, joystick - in whichever way you play). It does not use your Motion Controllers because X4 cannot be controlled with those (except maybe you set your controllers to emulate a mouse). It will not be a complete native VR experience, for example like No Man's Sky. But it does offer you the vision of VR, in the X4 universe.

At this point I assume you either own a VR device, or are interested in the topic. There are some requirements to have.

Also, at this point I am going to assume that your SteamVR is set up properly and working correctly for all your normal VR titles.

Requirements

• PC VR headset (Quest 2 / Pro, Pico 4, Index...)
  
• VirtualDesktop (VR-device native or PC version)
  
• OpenTrack
  
• ReShade

I previously listed Desktop+ in this list - but since I haven't used that in a very long time, I am not all too certain that it offers the required SBS view and the optional head lock.

Windows resolution settings

For an optimum experience, we need to approach similar conditions as they are in a VR headset. The resolution for each eye is more square than rectangular - so we need to match that somehow. If you can, you should - at least when you want to play X4 in VR - set your screen resolution to something that is easily divisible by 2.

The resolution 2880x1440 is the best compromize in my opinion. Why this resolution? It will allow us to use 1440x1440 for each eye. In a Pico 4 for example we have 2160x2160 absolute per eye, so roughly an upscale of about 300px only on each side is needed. 2880x1440 is a 2:1 ratio. You can also use other (higher) resolutions, but this works best. The image will later on be vertically divided, resulting in a split of 1440x1440 for each eye.

If you have a 2560x1440 monitor, that will also do fine - with a little loss of fidelity. Best is a 3840x2160 screen - giving you 1920x2160 per eye, natively.

If you do not own such a monitor, you can try to create a virtual screen with this: https://github.com/VirtualDrivers/Virtual-Display-Driver - but make sure your rig can run the game well at these resolutions, at least 60 FPS.

X4 graphics setup

With the release of X4 v7.0 and up, the engine X-Tech has seen considerable improvements. It even now comes with FSR3 and its associated upscaling methods - so the graphics setting is really up to you, and largely depending on what your rig can handle.

Contrary to normal VR titles, X4 does not render the image for each eye separately. So we can safely ramp up the settings a little bit.

I have not found any detrimental effects compared to the first time I wrote this guide. So there are no specifics to watch out for.

Using your physical keyboard in VR

One of the biggest issues you will eventually encounter when playing a non-VR game like X4 through your VR headset, is that you cannot see your physical keyboard. If you are like me, you got pretty much every single action there is bound to some key... which is fine if you play flatscreen - because you can actually see our keys.

In VR however, you cannot. So... how to circumvent this issue?

You could play entirely with a controller of some sort. Mapping the most important controls to it - but more often than not you need quite a lot of other functions. I have experimented around with this idea but did find it to be not good enough.

Another option is to memorize the keys on your keyboard. If you ever noticed, there are little notches on the F and J keys - they are there so that you can type without looking with your left and right hands. You could train to find the keys by memorizing where the notches are, and then find your way. This is most useful for normal letters, not so much for other keys like Backspace, F1-F12, and so on. But is possible to train to find these keys blindfolded as well.




Yet another option is to buy a dedicated programmable keypad, such as this one[www.amazon.de], and use that instead. These have a unique keyboard, which may be more recognizable for you.




Personally, I am experimenting around with using my old Akai APC mini (yes, that IS a Midi controller), and using the software MidiKey2Key[midikey2key.de] to emulate a keypress. In other words, I press a Midi button on the controller, and that translates to a keyboard key being pressed. As it has a perfectly rectangular 8x8 (64 buttons) button field, this could be another way forward. The linked software works with any Midi controller that has buttons to press.




The least comfortable option is to use some kind of virtual keyboard being projected into the VR environment. While they work and you would see the keys, you will have to use your Motion Controllers to type any letter. This is absolutely undesirable in fast-paced situations like combat, where you need your hands on your HOTAS or controlling mechanism.

Text readability

X4 is a game that uses quite a lot of text, sometimes cluttered into multiple UI elements. This is especially tiresome in the map, even in non-VR. To make matters worse, Egosoft uses some kind of very standard Arial font for the game.

Thin fonts are really bad for this project... ReShade squishes the screen in half per eye, and your VR desktop projector then stretches this font again in your headset. This results in very blurry text, which unfortunately makes the text of X4 even more difficult to read.

But fear not.

I have compiled a number of fonts into a mod pack, which you can grab here: https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/1052 . You will find examples of their looks on the mod page.

Using any bold font variant is much more useful for VR, as these fonts massively improve the readability on these tiny screens.

I have personally verified their functionality in X4 7.5 (current release as of this writing), and they work just as well.

Of course, you can also stick with the default font and ramp up the UI scaling if necessary.

VirtualDesktop

Depending on how you access your desktop in SteamVR, you will need either one of these two. Both of these support partial Side-By-Side, which is basically the core column upon which this construction rests. While I can't speak to the vision of your eyes, I can give you pointers for a good setup. For me, the screen is 186 degrees in size, and approx. 4.73m away from my eyes (in 3D space). The screen has a curve of 60%. How to enable Half SBS view is different for each two, and is described in numerous Youtube tutorials or blog posts.

The distance and curvature of the screen depends on your individual sight and your IPD, therefore this probably requires fine-tuning. Desktop+ offers the advantage of creating different profiles for every use case, so that you can experiment around and come back to a previous stage by simply loading up the profile you created.

It should be noted that VirtualDesktop is not free - the SteamVR and Quest/Pico versions.

These are my current settings for the PC version of Virtual Desktop. Half Side-By-Side:


This gets me very good results. The best to date. Haven't changed these since back then. I tested it recently. However, I am primarily using VirtualDesktop on Pico, with its accompanying Streamer app. While the settings aren't as clear as they are with the PC version, they are present - point above the screen for the settings of curvature etc., and below to enable SBS.

OpenTrack

Up next, you should install this little gem of a tool. It is free and open source. You can grab it right here: https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack/releases

Since I wrote this section, there have been significant changes. Primarily within X4 itself, which now also has a dedicated pipe for OpenTrack. We can't be bothered with that, for I have found a better way.

It will allow us to acquire your headset movment information and translate this into movement data, which X4 can access. With this, you can move your head in the cockpit and look around. Yes. You can. Install the tool, and open it.

As Input, select "Valve SteamVR".

As Output, select "mouse emulation". Yes, you heard that right. This is not a typo.

Click on the hammer icon beside "mouse emulation", and choose "Yaw" for the X axis, and "Pitch" for the Y axis.



The sensitiy is something you will probably have to adjust - but as a general rule of thumb: Y needs to be approximately double as much as X, since the Y axis, or the vertical axis, is a shorter line than the X axis. You can see my settings in the screenshot.

Also, I highly recommend to map a button to toggle the tracking. Click on the large "Options" button, then click on "Bind" beside "Toggle". Choose any key or mouse button that suits you best. For me, it is one of the side mouse buttons.



If you have SteamVR already running, you can hit "Start". You should see movement, AND - your mouse cursor might also move. If this works - great. You can click Stop for now.

ReShade... ReVisited

I have revised this complete section as all of this got significantly easier, primarily for youi - since I have done the boring part up front, so you don't have to.

Just in case you don't know: ReShade is a tool that can manipulate the final image coming out of a graphics pipeline in games. You can perform a number of settings as it ships with a number of effects and alter the shading of the final image - hence the name.

You can get it here: https://reshade.me/

Download it and run the setup. The current version works great for me in X4 7.5.

You will need to select the folder where your game is - so go to your X4 installation folder. Then, you will need to select Vulkan - as X4 is using the Vulkan API.

Choose the effects you want, but make sure SuperDepth3D is among the effects you install.

Run the game - if everything went well, you will see a bar at the top of the títle screen, informing you it is currently compiling shaders.

Once you are in the title menu, press Pos1 which is usually the key to bring up the ReShade menu. If something pops up on the left side, great. You are close to enjoy X4 in VR.

Press Pos1 again to close the menu, and exit the game.

Now. Go here: https://codefile.io/f/71JUYmd0hc . This is my current ReShade config, which includes all settings for VR.

Copy the text, and save it with a name you like, but ending with ".ini", in your X4 folder. For example "VR_Guide_X4.ini".

Start the game again, and press Pos1. At the top, you will see arrows pointing left and right. Click either one arrow until your new created name appears.

Then, at the bottom right, you will see a checkbox: "Performance Mode". Uncheck it.

Now you can tweak all settings to your heart's content.... but the only setting you should actually change in the SuperDepth3D shader is the IPD. Mine is set to 64 - you absolutely have to adjust this to your IPD. This should be the same value you set in your headset.

Once you set this, check the box "Performance Mode" once again. It is up to you iif you want to use the other effects.

You will need to check "SuperDepth3D" every time you want to play in VR.

Final Touches

Game Settings

In the game settings, you will also need to:

- Enable Mouse Look toggle
- Bind the Mouse Look to a key or mouse button of your choosing

Why is this important? In the map, you will want to turn off tracking and mouse look, to do whatever it is you need to do. Once done, you can re-enable both and be back in "normal" VR mode.


On-Foot VR

The reason why I chose "mouse emulation" in OpenTrack is because it also enables head tracking on foot.

However, for more immersion I highly recommend using some kind of controller when ever you are on foot. It is possible to use the Motion Controllers, but it can be very annoying sometimes, so I ordered a normal Bluetooth controller for these purposes. You need to map it in any way you like in the "Walking" subsection of the controls.

Then, if you have a HOTAS, you can seamlessly switch between HOTAS in ship and Controller on foot.


VirtualDesktop

Depending on the version you have, you will need to enable Half SBS in its menu. The Quest/Pico version has it as a floating menu below the projected screen, while the PC version has it as a checkbox in the window that opens. Enable it, and make sure you turned on the SuperDepth3D shader.


Head Lock

While both versions offer the head lock option (the screen is "glued" to your face, per se), I found it to be rather... how do I say this? It made me dizzy. So it is up to you if you want to turn it on.


Working in the map and managing your empire

Open the map, then press both bindings you selected to 1) stop tracking and 2) disable mouse look. You will find this to be a pleasant way of working in the map (or any menu for that matter) in this mode. Then, once done, you can hit your bindings again to be in the VR mode again.


Enjoy!

I hope you found this useful. It is a bit of techno-gymnastics to see the scales of X4, but I hope it is worth it for someone.

See you around. VR docking permission granted. Entering system: Seer of Scales :)

Appendix: Mouse Cursor

You will have noticed the huge annoying cursor of the X4 game being shown in either one eye, depending on where it is located on screen.

Download this file: https://www.marstr.online/download/mousecursors_vr.zip

This pack contains all mouse cursors as normal for X4, but they are all transparent.

In your X4 folder, make a copy of the "mousecursors" folder, and rename it to something like "mousecursors_normal", then extract the zip into the X4 folder. You will have a new one called "mousecursors_vr".

Delete the "mousecursors" folder, and make a copy of the "mousecursors_vr" folder. Rename "mousecursors_vr" to "mousecursors".

The downside is that you will have to "switch" mouse cursors depending on the mode you want to play in. So for non-VR mode, you will have to do the inverse and make the "_normal" folder the mousecursors folder (if that makes sense).

(Here I am using the VR cursor pack, but also have a copy of the originals)

Appendix: Additional VR Controls in X4

Desktop+ allows the creation of a custom dashboard with custom controls or buttons, each one with its own text. These buttons can also emulate keypresses, if I read that correctly. With this method, one may create those extra buttons in cockpit for immersion or other functions within X4 - these do react to your Motion Controllers only.

Caveats

• Some headsets may enter a standby mode after a period of inactivity. This kills the OpenTrack tracking. Close OpenTrack, open it again, and hit Start for it to pickup your headset again
  
• If you want to play in "Normal" (so, non-VR) mode again, you will have to at least disable the SuperDepth3D_VR effect in ReShade

[Flock of These]

The reshade config appears to be blank for me.

[Noddie]

Hmm, Does not work for me withe the new Guide.
I stuck at the emty SteamVR loading Screen. But i Can't go back to Desktop (with xBox Controler Clon)

[beko]

Neat. I do the same with my XR glasses on a Linux PC. If that's of interest for you find my scribbles on https://simpit.dev/systems/xr-glasses/ - the same principles described here apply with minor differences in the tooling.

About the mouse cursor: The SuperDepth3D shader has an option to emulate a cursor. Think it defaults to "diamond" when enabled. This helps a lot when the real cursor can no longer be trusted.

You may also want to check the Nexusmod "Reflex Sight for TrackIR": https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/1162

[MarStrMind]

@Albus Dumbledore - How smooth it is after going through these steps to set it up is largely dependent on the performance of your machine, and of course, which preparation you want to take if you want to play in VR sometimes. As I don't develop the title, all bugs and issues you have in the normal game will translate to VR. What I suggest here is to the best of my ability with fiddling around with a number of tools - but I cannot guarantee it will be free of artifacts, because in some situations, the rendering is not free of those.

X4 is not, and probably will never be, a native VR title. If it were, there would be no need for this guide all right. And for this reason, I will refrain from making any guarantees of this being free of issues or bugs. Also, I cannot support any issues with the SuperDepth3D shader or the other tools used in the guide as I do not own or develop them.

[svet]

*cracks knuckles* this might just be worth it eh. Thank you for the thorough update <3

[Albus Dumbledore]

Hello,

Thanks for the guide

Would you say that once everything is set up the VR experience is "smooth", as in not a lot of hassle, not a lot of bugs, not a lot of artefacts or whatever ?

I don't own yet X4, and VR is a big factor in me buying this game, but I don't want to deal with something quite buggy

Thanks your in advance

[DagothUr]

@MarStrMind Thanks for the link!

[MarStrMind]

@PringleMan Same happens for me as well, but I can double-press the menu button on my left controller to come back into the Pico's version of VirtualDesktop, and I am certain there is a similar combination for PC VirtualDesktop to switch between the environments. In the SteamVR desktop projection, there is no head lock.

[PringleMan]

@MarStrMind yes, as long as you are in the regular desktop part. What is happening with mine is that when you launch SteamVR, it takes over and boots into the SteamVR environment and overrides the VirtualDesktop environment. So none of the VirtualDesktop settings are staying, and it just swaps to what SteamVR does with "flat" games which is project it onto a (slightly) curved large screen. I have not been able to find a head lock setting for the flat screen in the SteamVR environment.

[MarStrMind]

@PringleMan I just had a look at PC VirtualDesktop again, and I am wondering how you can miss it or not find it - it is literally in the box aptly named "Screen Options" in the main settings pane. There are two checkboxes: Head Lock, below you can find No Delay. Enable both.