Simple Hack Enables VR Mode For Oculus Rift In Alien: Isolation

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Simple Hack Enables VR Mode For Oculus Rift In Alien: Isolation

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 9, 2014 @12:06PM from the like-it's-in-your-living-room dept.

An anonymous reader writes In a surprising appearance at E3 2014, Oculus showed a virtual reality demo version of Creative Assembly's forthcoming first-person horror game, Alien: Isolation. Despite intense reactions to the demo, the publisher stated that the full game would not feature Oculus Rift support. However, intentional or not, the developer left the code hidden in the game which can be enabled with a simple hack, leading to full support for the Oculus Rift including positional tracking.

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Penalty if caught? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 12:15 · Score: 0

What charges have been filed in this hack? Damn russians always ruin it for everybody.
1. Re:Penalty if caught? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 12:23 · Score: 0
  
  Anyone ever tell you you're not as funny as you think you are?
2. Re:Penalty if caught? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 12:41 · Score: 0
  
  Only gay paedo tranny commies.
3. Re:Penalty if caught? by Joe_Dragon · 2014-10-09 12:45 · Score: 2
  
  Games who uses this can be changed under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and be come felons
4. Re:Penalty if caught? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 12:49 · Score: 0
  
  That's an odd way to spell "everyone I've ever met".
5. Re:Penalty if caught? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 13:59 · Score: 0
  
  The circles you move in are disturbing.
Slow news day. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 12:44 · Score: 0

2nd Oculus Rift story today.
The point? by master_kaos · 2014-10-09 12:48 · Score: 2

SO if all it is is basically an ini hack, and it works flawlessly, what would be a reason that the developer would not have it enabled by default? (And I am assuming not to release DLC later since they left the code in the game)
If it was unstable, or sucked I could understand why.. but if they had it working I don't follow the logic.
1. Re: The point? by Camembert · 2014-10-09 12:54 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly, it puzzles me why it not left in officially. Performance issues maybe? A non optimal gui? Or a sinister conspiracy?
2. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 12:57 · Score: 0
  
  Probably they aren't prepared to offer tech support for it, so they made it so that the vast majority of players will never know about it, most of those who do will be savvy enough to know they're taking a risk, and the remaining few can be blown off with "Sorry, we don't support that, restore default settings or GTFO".
3. Re:The point? by peragrin · 2014-10-09 13:13 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Who says it always works flawlessly? have they played through the entire game several times? maybe there is crash code or places where you can literally get stuck in a wall.
  Lastly it isn't like you can go buy an oculus at best buy. Maybe they haven't fully tested the system. maybe they are waiting on oculus to actually release a product to consumers. Instead of a small beta tester pool.
  
  --
  i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
4. Re: The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 13:17 · Score: 0
  
  Perhaps some portion of the game becomes impossible to make it through using the Rift. Rather than remove the code, they just took the easy way out.
5. Re: The point? by Wycliffe · 2014-10-09 13:35 · Score: 2
  
  Sinister conspiracy?? I vote money was someone involved. Maybe they wanted money from oculus rift or
  oculus rift wanted money from them. Maybe they wanted to do more testing or charge extra for it as an
  addon later. I bet in one form or another it can be traced back to money.
6. Re: The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 14:27 · Score: 1
  
  The don't want to officially support it because then they'd have to officially support it. So like id products of yore, they'll probably leave it in there fully functional but undocumented/unsupported for people who want to tinker with it.
7. Re:The point? by TitusC3v5 · 2014-10-09 14:38 · Score: 1
  
  Who says it always works flawlessly? have they played through the entire game several times? maybe there is crash code or places where you can literally get stuck in a wall.
  
  Very unlikely. Most Oculus integration is little more than a camera mod; it isn't going to integrate to the point where it can cause the types of issues you're describing.
  
  --
  And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
8. Re:The point? by NitsujTPU · 2014-10-09 14:43 · Score: 2
  
  I could offer a handful of reasons, but the top one would be that they don't want to maintain it. Probably, the developers had Rifts, they wanted to play around with the tech, and they were gambling a bit on the development of the Rift during the development of the game engine (the right time to get involved, if you want to be first-to-market, so a smart move).
  However, very few people own Rifts, and so if they left this in, Rift users finding bugs and incompletely-tested code would need to be supported (otherwise, PR nightmare).
  When people use the "hack," they have the company has the option of saying, "That's not officially supported, you had to change things in order to do it." So, when there are bugs and things that don't work very well, the company has its hands clean, the enthusiasts still get to fool around with their early-adopter toy, and the company looks better in the long run.
9. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 15:39 · Score: 0
  
  Because then they'd be expected to support it.
10. Re:The point? by ildon · 2014-10-09 16:34 · Score: 1
  
  Because when you include something in a menu or even advertise to users that it exists, it becomes an officially supported feature, and you have to pay Quality Assurance to test it, then Customer Service has to support it after release. Cheaper to just disable it and let people find it for themselves.
11. Re:The point? by Coligny · 2014-10-09 17:23 · Score: 0
  
  Supported feature in a game ? Even microsoft os usually with "if it don't work, sucks to be you" fineprints...
12. Re:The point? by wonkey_monkey · 2014-10-09 18:51 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah, let's just write some code and assume it works as it intended. What could possibly go wrong?
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
13. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 18:56 · Score: 0
  
  Support.
  The publisher doesn't want to support it; because it won't likely increase sales, but it could generate problems to support if something breaks or doesn't work right.
14. Re: The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 19:14 · Score: 0
  
  Exactly, it puzzles me why it not left in officially. Performance issues maybe? A non optimal gui? Or a sinister conspiracy?
  Or perhaps because on developer kits are available for Oculus so far and it is unknown when a consumer version will be available, if ever.
15. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 19:17 · Score: 0
  
  However, very few people own Rifts, and so if they left this in, Rift users finding bugs and incompletely-tested code would need to be supported (otherwise, PR nightmare).
  No-one owns a Rift, there are developer kits around, but no-one know if the consumer version is going to be the same.
16. Re:The point? by citizenr · 2014-10-09 19:52 · Score: 1
  
  SO if all it is is basically an ini hack, and it works flawlessly, what would be a reason that the developer would not have it enabled by default?
  because they asked bookface for a Shitload of monies for the promotion of occulus, and bookface said screw you
  
  --
  Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
17. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 20:11 · Score: 0
  
  Support.
  If it were a real feature, publisher would have to officially support it. Support drones would need to know about it. It would have to be extensively tested with Oculus.
  Considering the experimental nature of Oculus hardware at this point and the expense of effectively re-testing the whole game using Oculus, this is the logical way to add the feature.
  Code it in. Test it a bit to see it kinda works, hide it behind an undocumented INI switch. "Game doesn't support Oculus Rift. We can't offer support for user-made modifications". Skip all the cost and effort of having it as a real feature, get most of the benefits for users being able to play around with it.
  Win Win.
18. Re:The point? by Richard_at_work · 2014-10-09 21:48 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps the developers ended up being concerned with the frequency of motion sickness related issues coming up (I'm highly speculating here) and didn't want any negative PR from it?
19. Re: The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 22:17 · Score: 0
  
  The don't want to officially support it because then they'd have to officially support it. So like id products of yore, they'll probably leave it in there fully functional but undocumented/unsupported for people who want to tinker with it.
  It is not like official support for games is worth much nowadays anyway (EULAs usually explicitly disclaim any responsibility for the software being broken), so a few more or less bugs does not make a major difference. Typically, after a few patches within the first months after the release, publishers pretty much forget that the game ever existed, and any remaining bugs, however serious they are, will never be fixed. Customer service also has a tendency to be remarkably useless, and users are more likely to get real help in a timely manner on forums.
  Not to mention all the junk that is now being released as "early access".
20. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 22:59 · Score: 0
  
  You have to show them to how drink water.
  It seems that your post could use some Q&A.
21. Re:The point? by drinkypoo · 2014-10-09 23:46 · Score: 1
  
  SO if all it is is basically an ini hack, and it works flawlessly, what would be a reason that the developer would not have it enabled by default?
  If they enable it themselves, they have to support it.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
22. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-10 00:40 · Score: 1
  
  I am working with the SDK right now. The only interaction the game code should have with it is a) grab position/orientation from the head tracker and b) distort the output for the display. There is no way to cause situation dependent crashes or bugs, there is no reason to have situation dependent code paths ( unless you go out of your way to write something overly complex where a simple solution would be right ).
  Most likely the cost of doing a good integration ( menu options, warnings ) and quality control ( frame rate always good enough for VR?, How many of our test players get sick after x hours of playing ?) was too high.
23. Re: The point? by i+kan+reed · 2014-10-10 00:58 · Score: 2
  
  Official support, though, does mean people calling your useless tech support. And taking their time.
24. Re:The point? by i+kan+reed · 2014-10-10 01:01 · Score: 2
  
  If you just mod the camera behavior to use an additional input, you leave out a lot of important things.
  1. The game has a "lean out of cover" button. When you physically lean, the game would need to discern if you're leaning out of cover enough to count for gameplay purposes.
  2. There's 2 extra rendering steps to get the screen content to match up with the optics' skewing. Small problem, but still one that needs to be embedded in the code.
  3. The framerate has to be really high to not cause motion sickness.
25. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-10 01:28 · Score: 0
  
  Why?
  1) Because it doesn't work perfectly and has bugs
  2) Because the implementation causes nausea?
  The reason they include it UNDOCUMNETED AND UNADVERTISED is because people that really want to try it out can.
26. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-10 01:29 · Score: 0
  
  QA - Quality assurance
  They did not want to spend resources guaranteeing it would work 100% of the time for the 0.001% of the people who would be able and willing to use it. I don't blame them, but they could have provided the hack themselves as long as they did not advertise the game as being compatible with Oculus they would not need to provide full QA for that feature.
27. Re: The point? by kactusotp · 2014-10-10 01:52 · Score: 2
  
  I think you are correct.
  I read a thread on reddit where people were playing it on the rift and basically the entire UI, computer terminals etc were unusable. Also those cinematic bits where the game moves your vision around is really disorientating within the rift. Add to that a couple of bugs that require the unit to be recalibrated a couple of time an hour and you have enough reasons to axe it.
  Rift support was probably one of those "nice to have" things but meant more work so it was simpler just to drop support.
28. Re: The point? by tlhIngan · 2014-10-10 03:24 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly, it puzzles me why it not left in officially. Performance issues maybe? A non optimal gui? Or a sinister conspiracy?
  1) Extra thing to QA (and apparently there are issues with UIs being unreadable and sequences where they move the camera causing motion sickness)
  2) Perhaps they fell for the hype that the Rift would be out for consumers by now when they started coding the engine years ago. Given how few have one, the added support costs couldn't justify the feature (low ROI).
  3) With so many competitors coming on the market ahead of the Rift, perhaps there's incompatibility with them
  4) People got sick.
29. Re:The point? by zarthrag · 2014-10-10 06:22 · Score: 1
  
  Tried it, had to down a nice tall glass of ginger-ale afterwards and go back to 2D - I consider myself exceptionally "VR hardned". But this game is the closest I've come to surrendering my stomach contents. (No real spoilers, here)
  * I think it's a problem with the calibration routine, which doesn't cancel out any rotation in your head (if you're looking slightly up/down, to tilting your head to the side, even slightly. ...it becomes the new "level". Euurgh...
  * Walk speed while on the first ship, walk speed is entirely too high. Your brain is damn-near expecting to feel whiplash. Double Euurgh...
  * Framerate and controls are superb, but it's **straaaange** to from from a IRL 6'0" 210lb man to being a 5'4"ish scrawny woman who probably weighs a buck, soaking-wet.
  Nevermind that this game is already hard/scary. Probably too much for a first "AAA" VR experience. The interface is an excellent implementation, though. But that calibration...
  I thought the part where you're wearing the spacesuit on EVA was amazing, too. Was more comfortable than the game.
  
  --
  Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
30. Re: The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-10 08:47 · Score: 0
  
  Why?
  If it was a feature it is a product feature... and needs money for advertisement...
  IF its a hack everyone will write it for free... FREE advertisement its the best motivation...
31. Re:The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-10 09:51 · Score: 0
  
  Or maybe one of the testers had a heart attack when the immersion in a horror game proved to be too much.
  They don't want to be liable, but if you enable it while they say it's unsupported then it's your own fault.
  Unless they end up going all Hot Coffee on this patch.
32. Re:The point? by wonkey_monkey · 2014-10-10 23:23 · Score: 1
  
  The only interaction the game code should have with it is
  Yes. Should have.
  
  There is no way to cause situation dependent crashes or bugs
  And that's the kind of attitude that can lead to Heartbleed and Shellshock.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 13:37 · Score: 0

Have you seen QA these days? You have to show them to how drink water.
The point? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 13:47 · Score: 0

They don't want to have to pay Facebook for the "Oculus Ready!" logo on the box.
First VR related death in by Kryptonut · 2014-10-09 14:11 · Score: 2

5....4....3....2.....1.....
1. Re:First VR related death in by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 21:26 · Score: 1
  
  First VR related death in 5....4....3....2.....1.....
  - Cat suddenly jumps into your lap while you are intensely focused on surviving in a 1st person horror game with your VR set over your eyes. {Heart-attack}
Oh jeeze by davesque · 2014-10-09 16:19 · Score: 1

Why would you even want that?! I would have nightmares for the rest of my life after playing that game in VR!
1. Re:Oh jeeze by LordWabbit2 · 2014-10-09 20:39 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed, I practically crapped my pants playing previous alien games normally, I think I would give myself whiplash playing with the oculus rift.
  
  --
  There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Damn by JasonGoatcher · 2014-10-09 16:28 · Score: 0

As if this game isn't already scary enough as it is, now you can have the creepy alien kill you in 3d.
scifi horror for oculus is so cool by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 17:30 · Score: 1

I purchased the game yesterday when I read this is possible. It's not a hack, it really works well and I have to tell you I had to take off the rift a couple of times because it's so intense and scary :) the (scifi) horror genre fits perfect with the extra immersion you get with vr :) If you have an oculus you should definitely try it out.
Optional extras with the Oculus Rift version by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 22:19 · Score: 0

Adult diapers.
Anti-convulsives.
Strong tranquilizers
Sixteen pairs of clean underwear.
1. Re:Optional extras with the Oculus Rift version by RDW · 2014-10-10 00:54 · Score: 1
  
  Adult diapers.
  Anti-convulsives.
  Strong tranquilizers
  Sixteen pairs of clean underwear.
  Dramamine?
  Already felt a bit of motion sickness playing it with a standard monitor, though there's a hack for that too (which does seem to help):
  http://steamcommunity.com/app/...
3D isnt hard by cheekyboy · 2014-10-09 23:30 · Score: 1

It just doing 2 renders from two angles.At half the res, but either side-by-side or top-2-top framed.
Most 3d tvs, and projectors take those inputs to be 3d.
And its probably a feature of most game-engines to do so.Like those ps3 games.
Motion inputs are probably just mapped from a Xbox-controller protocol.

--
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
1. Re:3D isnt hard by Jeremi · 2014-10-10 03:36 · Score: 1
  
  3D isn't hard.
  3D that doesn't make people nauseous is hard.
  
  --
  
  I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Who would want such an awful hack? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-10 00:05 · Score: 0

Having just started playing it on a normal screen, in a house full of people, in daylight hours I only have one thing to say...
Who would want such a horrifying hack to an already horrifying game?!
Literally too terrified to continue. by Mysticeti · 2014-10-10 03:19 · Score: 1

Everyone has different tolerances for this sort of thing but some people may be literally too terrified to play this game in VR.
Medical Liability? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-10 03:25 · Score: 0

Maybe during testing they where warned that due to the nature of there game it may cause medical complications with some people who play it, like a heart attack. As such they do not want to be the first company to be responsible for something of that nature especially as there is no financial benefit to having it Oculus ready as it has not been commercially released yet.
It's *not* flawless. by Dr.+Manhattan · 2014-10-10 04:16 · Score: 1

Many things that work on a flat screen don't fit well with VR.

--
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!