When playing competitive online multiplayer shooters speed and accuracy are two of the
most important things to have if you want to stay off the bottom of the leaderboard.
This is the Kobra Wolverine. It's the latest gun stock from Falandorn and the team at Kobra VR.
And I'm just gonna come out and say it right now, in my opinion this stock is a total game changer.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; using a gun stock for VR shooters is one of the
best ways to increase stability and accuracy as well as increase the level of immersion.
The downside to using a gun stock though is how they negatively effect speed. Clipping in and out
to switch to your sidearm, to use equipment like grenades or to simply reload your gun, takes time.
Time you often don't have the luxury of wasting in the middle of an online match.
And it's my understanding that for this reason many competitive players
choose not to use gun stocks at all.
The Kobra Wolverine is designed to offer players the best of both worlds. You get the stability
and accuracy a physical gun stock offers but also the speed of playing without a stock.
To accomplish this Falandorn did something, that to my knowledge, no one else has done to
this point. He semi-permanently mounted the stock onto the right controller.
I say "semi-permanent" because the controller is mounted to the stock with some releasable zip ties
so it can be removed it just takes a minute or two to do it.
When I found out that the Wolverine is more or less fixed to your controller
my first thought was,
Wait! How am I supposed to use a sniper rifle?
But after trying it, I found that although it feels a bit
weird at first, and flat out wrong to cycle a bolt with my left hand,
I was able to adjust to this action really quickly and it was actually very fast.
The light weight and compact design of the Wolverine make it where you hardly even notice
it's there. You can wield it one handed to fire a pistol or use grenades or other equipment without
any issue and when you're ready to shoulder your rifle you just reach out with your left hand,
grab the front grip and bring the stock to your shoulder. No
more fumbling around trying to find and connect to your stock; it's fantastic.
Another thing I've found I really like about this design is the fact it doesn't require the use of a
shoulder sling. So you don't have the sling restricting your movements in any way,
not to mention you never have a stock dangling from your body
at any time which I find particularly annoying whenever I have to crouch down.
One downside to the compact design of the Wolverine is it doesn't have
the same level of adjustability other Kobra Stocks have like the Elite and CQB
which allow them to very accurately simulate a wide variety of guns.
The version of the Wolverine I was sent for testing places your hands fairly close together
so what you feel as you grasp the stock and what you see in VR don't always line up.
That being said I found most games are very forgiving of your hand placement and I didn't have
any issues trying to hold any of the guns I used and once I was in a multiplayer match I didn't pay
attention at all to my hands not quite being in the same position as I was seeing in game.
I was too busy trying to shoot other players and getting pwned by 12 year olds to care.
The only other thing I found while playing with the Wolverine that may be an issue for some people
is there is very little clearance between the aluminum strut and your
thumb as you're using the right thumbstick and pressing buttons. I personally didn't have any
issue at all with it while doing my play testing and I don't know that I would have
even thought to mention it if Falandorn hadn't asked me if it had been a problem for me at all.
As you can see he's contoured this portion of the strut to provide space for your thumb to live
and it's just enough for me to be able to comfortably move around in.
One of the big issues top mounted gun stocks have which Falandorn has addressed with the
Wolverine is that of tracking occlusion.
The rings on the Oculus Touch controllers have little infrared
lights in them which is what the headset uses to track the position and orientation
of the controllers. Gun stocks that have the controllers mount underneath like a real gun
often occlude portions of these rings which result in the headset loosing
tracking at times. Meaning sometimes you can't aim your gun and YOU get shot in the face.
This problem led to the bottom rail design gun stocks like the Pro-Tube and Kobra's own CQB
which leave the tracking rings completely unoccluded but at the cost of the center of
mass being below your hands rather than above your hands like a real gun. The Wolverine
solves this problem by passing through the tracking ring of the right controller
leaving the infrared lights completely unoccluded thus giving you perfect tracking
AND placing the center of mass above your hands like you would get with a real gun.
The front grip handle is also designed where once you've gripped it the front
controller tracking ring is fully visible as well.
When the Wolverine launches, which I think is going to happen right about
the same time this video goes live, only the core model is going to be available.
However there are going to be several other configurations available in the near future.
The version I've showed so far in the this video is the SMG variant but
all variants are built upon the same core model which is this...
This is the Ultralight. It's the most basic and least expensive version of the Kobra Wolverine
selling for 45 Great British Pounds which
is around $60 U.S. dollars as of the making of this video.
At the core of the Wolverine is this aluminum strut. Or aluminium for all of you watching
this outside of the U.S. The Ultralight then has the controller dock, the shoulder stock
and then the front grip handle.
Assembling the Ultralight is super simple. You
first slide the controller dock onto the aluminum strut like so following
the arrows Falandorn has drawn onto the strut and stopping at this line here.
I used a Dremel to grind arrows and this line into my strut because the ones Falandorn had
drawn on with a marker began wearing off pretty quickly as I was swapping parts back
and forth between the SMG and Ultra-lite configurations as I was making this video.
The fit of the controller dock is pretty snug so it does require some effort to get into position.
You can then pass the strut through your controllers tracking ring like
so and secure your controller to the mount with the included zip ties.
This bit of black rubber here is positioned to protect the tracking
ring of the Oculus Touch controllers from the metal in case you were wondering.
You then attach the front grip handle using the screw and Allen key included with the gun stock
and finally secure the shoulder stock to the opposite end.
Yah, the Ultra-lite doesn't have the sex appeal that the SMG variant has
but it does have all the performance.
If you're not quite feeling the aesthetic of the Ultra-lite however,
Falandorn is planning to also sell other variants of the Wolverine like the SMG variant which I've
shown, as well as allowing you to mix and match parts so you can customize your Wolverine.
Some of the parts they're planning to offer are the mag well and magazine,
the SMG front end here, and a longer version of this called the DMR to more accurately simulate
longer assault rifles, sniper rifles and light machine guns. The SMG front end that Falandorn
sent to me is actually a prototype version. He's since redesigned this part so this lower portion
here is now a picatinny like this top rail is here. So the front grip handle is now it's own
piece which you can see in this picture and it can be secured to the lower picatinny on both
the DMR and SMG front end modules rather than being fixed like this prototype version is.
There's also an upgraded shoulder stock with a push button that allows you to
quickly and easily adjust the length of the stock to 3 different settings. This
shoulder stock can also be upgraded to include an adjustable cheek rest,
like shown in this picture which helps give a little more realistic feel when aiming down sites.
A couple other add-ons he has in the works is this holosite, which is obviously non-functional
and purely aesthetic, a bipod for added stability when doing long range sniping
and a magnetic dock for the rear controller for those that want that functionality.
For pricing and availability of these parts and different variants of the Wolverine
I've placed a link to Kobra VR's Etsy page in the video description where you can check it all out.
To stay up to date on the latest news about the Wolverine
and other projects Kobra VR is working on, you should subscribe to Falandorn's
YouTube channel and check his community tab and follow @Kobra_VR on Twitter.
I've included all of this information in the video description as well for your convenience.