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For all those Final Fantasy 14 players who linger in its main cities for hours on end, an upcoming VR mod could help make that familiar MMO hobby a little more immersive.
A fan-made Final Fantasy 14 VR mod will appear as an alpha release “soon,” according to tweet from modding community Flat2VR (opens in a new tab).
The VR mod supports full first- and third-person motion and movement controls. One of the mod’s creators, Marulu, wrote on the Flat2VR Discord server that the first-person mode is mostly experimental and that the third-person mode is how you probably want to actually play the game. A zoomed view would not be ideal during combat as attacks and environmental hazards happen all around you.
In the video next to the announcement, you can see how the mod translates the busy MMO UI into VR. It overlays your skill grid and a mini-map over your character’s third-person view. In the few shots of combat, you can see how tilting your head essentially mimics turning the camera with a mouse. The in-game camera still works, you can rotate it regardless of your headset.
Wobbly view shouldn’t be a problem for regular MMO players who don’t spend a lot of time looking at their hotbars. Most of their skills are fixed to keyboards and memorized, but keyboard and mouse users might struggle. The initial release will not include full keyboard and mouse support due to a mismatch with the cursor and the VR UI. You can still turn it on but you won’t be able to select objects or NPCs in the world without hotkeys. Gamepad users will have the advantage here. FF14 has impressive gamepad support – which is why many people use it even on PC – which allows you to map a lot of stuff to the buttons with the triggers acting as modifiers like pressing Shift.
The VR mod supports motion controls via Steam VR button remapping. You can move your character with the left stick or, in first person, point and click where you want to go. The alpha release will have a profile for the Valve Index controllers. For anything else, you’ll need to do the button mapping on your own.
To use it (when it’s out), you’ll need a pretty strong graphics card. Marulu recommends an RTX 3070 or newer to hit a stable 90 fps (the accepted fps floor for VR to avoid motion sickness). You also need to install the custom FF14 launcher called FFXIV Quick Launcher (opens in a new tab) and then install the XIVR plugin which you will be able to find in its search bar. The game’s TOS technically doesn’t allow both the launcher and the VR mod, so it’s up to you if you want to take the risk. Many FF14 players use mods of varying levels of complexity, whether to track their DPS in raid or to wear custom clothing, but Square Enix has yet to consistently punish anyone outside of streamers. (opens in a new tab) who use them. Marulu says the mod uses completely original code and is “undetectable and fully usable on live servers,” but admits it could get you into trouble.
The Flat2VR community, which helps promote the FF14 VR mod, is also home to the recent Jedi Academy VR port. (opens in a new tab) as well as similar mods for Left 4 Dead and Valheim. FF14, however, is an ambitious choice. If it works (and doesn’t get you banned), there are a lot of nice places in the game that I’d like to go through. Drop me on the snow-covered streets of Ishgard and let me take first-person photos as people walk in and out or let me take an immersive tour of the magical Crystal Tower. People run private servers from old MMOs for this kind of thing and it would be nice to be able to do it in the live game.
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