Bioshock 2 still playable? Constant CTDs

[lohan]

I am playing the original release with the helixmod DX9 fix (not the Remaster). The game is known for random CTDs with no indication why (seems to happen also in 2D and even for the Remaster). So up to this point I just saved the game very often (sometimes it didn't even crash at all during a play-session). Now I am facing one of those big sister enemies in Ryan's Amusement park and the game crashes every single time. So basically it's unplayable right now (but even before that fight the CTDs were frustrating like hell).

Can anyone confirm that the game is no longer playable in 3D Vision or if there is any solution?

[Shift-E]

I had crashing issues that I could only resolve by setting Texture Detail set to Medium. unfortunately medium looks horrible, but I got used to it.

viewtopic.php?f=105&t=23278

Bioshock Infinite also crashes on me in 3D, and I was never able to solve it. so I gave up playing that one.

[RAGEdemon]

Do you have VR? I played it for the first time recently, and in vorpX/VR - it was an amazing experience. The expansion too...

I remember changing the memory streaming options but can't remember how I resolved the issue of CTDs:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =210917941

[lohan]

@Shift-E

Even with Texture Detail set to Medium the game constantly crashes in that specific scene. (4K OLED via EDID override and also on my 3D Vision Laptop).

I wanted to play Infinite after Bioshock 2 and was hoping for a hassle-free experience after the trouble with Bioshock2. Now you say Infinite has the exact same issues. That's a real bummer!

@RAGEDemon
Yes I have VR indeed! I used VorpX for the first time with my Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 (way before even the first Oculus Rift was released). And it was exactly Bioshock Infinite that I played quite a few hours before my Rift Dev Kit 2 somehow got defective. Somehow I never went back to VorpX the following years with all my VR-headsets that followed the Rift Dev Kit 2. (Rift CV1, Vive, Vive Pro, Samsung Odyssey, Samsung Odyssey Plus, Pimax 5K Plus, Pimax 5K OLED, Pimax 8K...now Valve Index...and waiting for my Pimax 8K X Preorder).

So which one did you play recently? Bioshock 2, Bioshock 2 Remaster or Bioshock Infinite? Officially all Bioshock games support real Geometry 3D under VorpX (the only acceptable option for me) Would you say it's really worth it? What about those constant CTDs that seem to generally plague the Bioshock games (not only in 3D Vision). I am very interested in your opinion. Already succesfully reclaimed my old VorpX-key from Ralf!

[RAGEdemon]

I believe it was the Bioshock 2 remaster + Minerva's Den, both of which still suffer from CTDs. It was a couple of years ago - to a 40ish year old, that's pretty recent I guess

I believe I banged my head against the CTD issue with 3DV, and resorted to using VorpX Geo3D - then being thankful for the CTDs which 'forced' me to try the game with VR/VorpX.

My personal opinion is that in /FPS games/ generally, VR/Vorpx + custom resolution to at least 1600x1200 (ideally the native resolution of your VR screen) with special effects turned down to accommodate VorpX shader incompatibility/shadows/low VR performance etc, is superior to 3DV on my ~300" projector screen at 2560x1600 with all special effects turned on. The presence one feels in VR's life-size in-your-face 3D environment with full head tracking is quite incomparable.

Some other FPS type games which I have had amazing experiences with in VR/VorpX which I can outright claim 3DV would not have compared as well to, are:

Dark messiah of might and magic - the spider den level still puts a huge smile on my face when thinking about it.
Metro Exodus
Pathologic 2 (now playing - I had given up on this in 3DV due to lack of a proper fix and game mechanics, but VR presence brought me back to it)
Borderlands 3 (the fake-3D profile is very good)
Dead Space
Dead Space 2

I have to say though that tweaking takes a good bit of time to get things to work optimally as I personally like them to - one gets out of it as much as one is willing to invest into it:

-- Custom 4:3 game resolution + VR super sampling set to to deliver mostly 90fps - overclocked 2080ti level GPU and above recommended of course, paired with a highly overclocked CPU and high speed memory - VorpX is CPU limited just as much as 3DV, if not more in my experience.

-- Head movement sensitivity

-- Reducing default VR virtual viewport size - by default Vorpx's virtual VR screen covers the entire headset FOV but the centre of the viewport is not aligned to the centre of the HMD's viewing area. What this means is that a huge portion of the viewport (virtual screen) is cut off from being viewed. I have to adjust it down to ~55% to enable the full 4:3 aspect ratio virtual screen to fit inside my HMD's ~90 degree FOV. This has the disadvantage of introducing a unused pixel border at the top and bottom of the screen but the advantage is a much crisper, much more detailed, much higher resolution, and much more natural display area where the game hud isn't arbitrarily cut out from view.

-- In VorpX image sharpening set to 2.0 (max).

-- Maxed (optimised) in-game 3D settings/FOV adjustment,

-- DISABLING ASW or similar to prevent 45fps lock - I MUCH rather prefer floating 45-90fps than locked 45fps - VSync is disabled in VorpX by default so microstutter isn't a huge issue.

-- Disabling mouse acceleration (I don't know why this is even an option - which gamer in their right mind plays FPS games with mouse acceleration on? The mouse movement to screen movement ratio always needs to be 1:1. In vorpX, mouse accelerations is enabled by default ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-- Setting game sound to virtual surround in headphones using technologies such as Creative labs SBX/HRTF/Binaural audio etc, which converts standard 5.1 to positioned 3D sound, with varying success rates. It is rare for games to actually support 3D headphones sound placement.

-- Experimenting with various settings to optimise performance.

I am sure I am missing quite a few steps which become apparent as one starts to game...

It's not as easy as 3DFix manager or dropping a fix into the game folder, but your question was 'Is it all worth it?'

Default VorpX settings with an official profile will give a mediocre experience in my view, which is certainly less than 3DV Perfection, thanks to the amazing work of shaderhackers and other invaluable people making it happen.
HOWEVER, a /tweaked/ and optimised VorpX experience with the above modifications will give an amazing experience. Will it be perfect? Far from it. But, it will be damn good regardless...

In summary, my personal answer to your question is an overall emphatic YES, with the caveat being the time investment for tweaking, and putting up with VorpX's various frustrations one will run into.

Interesting titbit - did you know that a recent study showed that something like 80% of PC gamers never go into a game's options menu to adjust any settings, including resolution, key bindings etc? Insane. This doesn't sound like you or anyone here, of course, but the reality is quite disheartening.

----
I too am eagerly awaiting the 8KX, but to be sold on Amazon etc where the later batches will have the kinks worked out, and I can return it without hassle if problems arise - I am sure you're all too familiar with Pimax's customer service nightmare - already it has come out that the 8KX units shipped to backers have lower quality screens than the later batch being sent to pre-orders...

[ThinkVR]

@ lohan:

All Bioshock games are FullVR games in vorpX, the profiles also have max. DirectVR support with all bells and whistles. Using vorpX to play Bioshock on a virtual screen would basically be disabling 2/3 of what it can do. Thanks to the level of DirectVR support you don't have to set up anything manually to come as close to a native VR game as it gets.

The only thing you might want to do is raising the resolution for a crisper image by selecting a preferred quality on the DirectVR page of the vorpX menu. Apart from that just make sure to run the DirectVR memory scan after entering a level for perfect 1:1 low latency head tracking (no mouse emulation) and automatically adjusted FOV.

The original DX9 versions are preferred for Bioshock 1+2 for several reasons.

@ RD:

The mouse acceleration option in vorpX is actually a convenient way to automatically turn off the system wide Windows mouse acceleration while vorpX is attached to a game. As suggested by the according tooltip it only affects (usually older) games that use the default Windows mouse input pipeline.

[lohan]

@RAGEdemon
Thanks alot for your extensive feedback! Considering how positively shocked I was about Bioshock 2 holding up that well in 3D Vision even 10 years after release I am now even more curious about the VorpX experience.

Now Pimax:
Oh well, where should I begin. Yes I had my fair share of Pimax-madness! I won't start here to name all the crazy stuff that Pimax did over the last few years (let's face it - contrary to their promises they never changed their way of doing business one single bit). Still I am quite excited for the 8KX. When I preordered the Index I was quite sure it would end up short compared to my Pimax 5K Plus (way bigger FOV, better resolution - although strectched over a siginificantly bigger screen).

The result was quite the opposite. I kept the Index and sold the Pimax (the Pimax 5K Plus was my daily driver at that time as I was more impressed by it than by the 8K and the 5K OLED). Now it's the same situation again: I am quite sure that my Index will be replaced by the 8K-X but even for the 8K-X a possible successor is right around the corner. I guess you are familiar with Sebastian Ang from MRTV. Once being a "herald" for Pimax (saying "once you witnessed high FOV VR you can't go back) it seems his preferences changed a little lately (could have to do with the NDA-hassle he faced with Pimax).

Now he is all over the new HP Reverb G2 which also seems very promising. As soon as his MRTV experience is available again (currently unavailable due to Corona) I guess I will visit him in Dortmund, Germay (just a 40km-trip from my location). Then I will do a Pimax 8K-X vs. HP Reverb 2 faceoff. Of course I couldn't resist and also preordered the HP Reverb G2 which should arrive late Septembre. But in the end I will keep just the Reverb 2 if it impresses me more than the Pimax 8K-X. Or if the Pimax 8K-X impresses me the most I will also keep a backup-headset (probably the HP Reverb G2) because with Pimax you never know (I remember when suddenly the Pimax didn't launch Oculus games any more and that situation persisted for month).....

@ThinkVR
That sounds very promising. With the older version instead of the remaster I should also be able to continue my walkthrough instead of starting a new campaign. Your comment sounds like Bioshock 2 and Infinite perform pretty flawless in VorpX by now. Does that also mean the constant crashes are a thing of the past now?

[ThinkVR]

As far as vorpX related crashes are concerned the infamous Bioshock 2 DX9 problem *should* be gone since a year or so. Was always quite a mystery considering how well Bioshock 1 worked. I‘m not 100% sure since I don’t know what exactly caused the improvement, but after a series of changes to the DX9 pipeline at some point I could not replicate a crash anymore in a situation that crashed fairly reliable before. Also didn’t hear anything regarding the matter since then, so fingers crossed.

Use the remaster only if necessary. Except for said infamous (and hopefully gone) crashes DX9 Bioshock 2 is preferable for several reasons. One being that due to DirectVR positional tracking you even have some leeway for basic room scale if you want. For the remaster DirectVR tracking is limited to rotation while position always uses the default method. OK for peeking around corners etc, but not really well suited for walking around. That alone makes the DX9 version the better choice. It also has better performance with vorpX.

Either way: Play these games as intended in FullVR mode, which in this case means just running the DirectVR memory scanner after entering a level (plus potentially raising the resolution in the vorpX menu). Switching to screen mode for games with FullVR/DirectVR support as complete as the Bioshock profiles have would be a total waste.

[RAGEdemon]

Thanks for the insight on the G2 lohan; I have had my eye on the Reverb 2 for a while and have now pre-ordered it to reserve a spot.

I am looking at:
£1800 for an 8KX + lighthouse + knuckles (+ possibility of eye tracking/FR @+£200(?)) + PiMax craziness
vs.
£525 for a G2 all inclusive from a reputable company as HP.

Rough calculation:
8KX = 8.4 million pixels per eye @ 170 degree H fov = 50,000 pixels per degree
Reverb G2 = 4.7 million pixels per eye @ 100 degree H fov = 47,000 pixels per degree
My current Rift CV1 = 1.3 million pixels @ 90 degrees H fov = 14,400 pixels per degree

Intriguing... Pure conjecture but I suspect that the 8KX will be marginally superior due to the FOV alone, but not worth 3.5x the price more to the average person.

I look forward to your future comparison, as well as videos on the net before the G2 shipping date, and too shall decide then which one to complete the order with.

In the meantime straight from the horse's mouth: https://youtu.be/2tjXiZlUi7o?t=1365

[lohan]

Saving a spot for the G2 is definitely a wise move! Sebastian is totally impressed by it (as you can see in the video you linked above).
The FOV though is definitely last gen stuff.
But we have to keep in mind that Sebastian was one of the first who was absolutely blown away by wide FOV-VR.
Now the Reverb G2 is his daily driver because of the stunning picture quality (and he also has a pre-series model of the 8K-X).
So there must be something special about the quality of the Reverb G2.

And just as you said, a VR headset from a reputable company always makes a world of difference!

I will definitely share my thoughts here when my Pimax 8K-X arrives (and later the HP Reverb G2).
I preordered the Pimax 8K-X a couple of hours after preorders went live so it shouldn't take too long now as they are already sending out the units to original backers.