The Lands Between is a beautiful, ominous place – “like a dream,” as all the talcs say. It’s pretty nice to experience this surreal blend of beauty and horror through a VR headset, and it just so happens that modder Luke Ross (with his REAL VR for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077) mods) are making Elden Ring VR a thing. Click the video above for an exclusive preview.
While Ross is proficient at making third-person VR mods (the Mafia trilogy is a good example), for Elden Ring, he’s optimizing first-person mods. You can also play the game in the original third-person view, although he doesn’t recommend it.
“The third-person in this game is really far away (about 5 meters on average), which doesn’t work well in VR,” Ross told me. “Instead of being in action, you’re kind of like ‘Hey, what’s going on there?’ I’ll keep the original camera as the purist’s choice, though. I’ll probably also add an intermediate, near-third-person camera. But I think the first person camera is where it is.
(Image credit: FromSoftware)
That’s a fair point, though I have to say, in the case of Elden Ring, “what happened there” could be a cat gargoyle lurking in a corner, or a tree sentinel riding you slaughtered and pierced You bunch of wandering nobles. Controlling the camera independently of your character can really save your skin. On the other hand, you might be in a better position to time those parries better when the halberd is moving towards the side of your actual head.
I also asked Ross how he would fix the motion sickness issues related to the more quirky aspects of Elden Ring, like all scrolling. “When scrolling or performing other scripted animations (like combat moves), the camera follows the character’s head (so its position changes), but it keeps the correct orientation based on how your head is moving in real life ,”He said. “So the horizon will remain level and the world will always look stable.”
So it sounds like your VR view won’t be flipped upside down every time you scroll, although there will still be a lot of movement. Ross emphasized that his mod is designed for audiences who “have developed their VR legs,” so it looks like you’ll either need to be comfortable in VR or just be discriminating when dodging the scroll wheel. The threat of nausea is a good trigger, don’t start panicking the moment you taste the power of Radhan or any other holder.
Ross hopes to release the Elden Ring VR mod by the end of the month, but he stressed that it will still be a work in progress at that point. To get it and all of Ross’ other VR mods, you need to subscribe to REAL VR Patreon.
