Receiver VR mod!

Ever since we released Receiver, players have been asking us about supporting the Oculus Rift headset and the Razer Hydra controller. The gun mechanics and exploration gameplay seemed like a natural fit for VR! We were planning to try it out at some point, but didn’t feel like we could take the time away from Overgrowth to work on it yet.

Fortunately, since Receiver is open-source, another developer decided to implement it himself! The developer (who goes by Teddy) has created several demos trying out different ways that the Rift and Hydra can be used in FPS games, and has found an innovative control scheme for Receiver. Here is his video about it:

If you have both the Oculus Rift and the Razer Hydra, here is the download link for the VR mod. If you would like to try editing it further, you can get the modified Unity project. Finally, you can check out Teddy’s thread in the Oculus Rift forums, for more discussion about how to get the calibration to work.

When I was thinking of Hydra control schemes for Receiver, I never considered attaching one of the controllers to the player’s torso. That is an interesting idea, because it gives the game much more information about what the player is doing, allowing for leaning, crouching, and better gun tracking relative to the player’s view. Of course, the experience is not perfect, since the game was not really designed for this -- the calibration process is quite finicky, and the Rift resolution makes it difficult to use iron sights. However, this is definitely the most compelling VR experience I’ve had with the Rift yet!

Some fun things to do in VR:

• Use cheats to give yourself a lot of ammo, and shoot out lights in slow motion.
• Blindfire around corners
• Shoot turrets gangsta style with the full-auto glock
• Lean so the turrets can’t see enough of you to lock on, but you can shoot at them
• Push your gun through thin walls to shoot enemies on the other side
• Clip the gun into the camera so you can see how the bullets in the magazine move when you rack the slide