A lot of you said yesterday’s video made you feel nauseous, so make up for that I’ll
be going through Dust2 in VR today. I have chosen to show both eyes at once, for increased
resolution and field of view, because otherwise it feels like it’s all really zoomed in.
But where it transitions between the eyes, you’ll sometimes notice a fade on close-up
stuff. It’s a small price to pay for clarity. Right, onto the video!
Bigboysteve ported Dust2 to SteamVR, meaning I could walk about it like it was a real place.
It’s Source 2, but that’s not the cool thing here cos it doesn’t utilise anything
that makes it look that different from how it is right now in CS:GO. In fact, it’ll
look slightly worse because some of the texture transitions are missing. And the lighting
is flatter, with shaded parts appearing too brightly lit. But it’s close enough that
you get the idea. The big thing about Dust2 in VR is, unsurprisingly… the VR. I was
half expecting it to be a boring experience. It is, after all, the same Dust2 I’ve been
around a thousand times already. But I was staggered by the difference VR made and feel
my experience will have long-term repercussions on how I view the map.
This isn’t the first time it’s been in VR. It’s been in Pavlov for years, and no
doubt any other VR game with a map editor. But this was MY first time. And my all-important
first impression of it was: ‘THIS IS MASSIVE!’
Literally massive. I couldn’t believe how BIG Dust2 is! Even the tightest, most claustrophobic
parts of the map seemed spacious and sprawling in VR. I’d dread to think of what Cobble
would be like. At first I thought the scale must have been wrong. But let’s go on A
Long walk over to bombsite A. This crate, you can see over. And this one,
you can’t. And it’s the same in the normal game. I can even just about check short from
this position! Thus, scale’s correct. Or at least, close enough. But just think about
this for a moment, and try to visualise one of these crates in your room: this one’s
taller than you are, and as wide as you are tall. Like, what’s in these things? One
of these crates is big enough to dominate a sizeable room. You’d never get it through
a doorway. This gap between the crates and the wall near
short A is enormous. I could fall down there. I don’t know why cars surprised me- I see
them all the time in real life. But the ones in CS:GO are larger than life. Or are they?
I had to go out and compare myself to some cars to make sure.
I feel really stupid trying to explain what I mean here. I promise you, I’ve seen plenty
of cars in real life. And this one in-game is probably actual-size. It’s just that
I never perceived the ones in Dust2 as full-sized cars until now.
In-game you’re used to being able to leap up onto the roof in a single crouch-jump.
And it would feel wrong if you couldn’t. But these things are as tall as you are! Even
the bonnet requires a substantial step up onto it.
Or these oil drums. I put my hand on one, expecting it to cover a large part of the
lid. But my palm is about the size of this circular bit. Filled with liquid, these things
must weigh a ton! No wonder you can’t move them in CS:GO.
I think the disconnect is because in-game, you’re viewing these things from a gameplay
perspective. But VR forces you to see things for what they would be in reality. This crate
at the back of B is no longer a pointlessly small box that provides limited cover. It’s
as wide as a double bed, as high as one. In real life you’d have no trouble hiding behind
this, or even inside it. In fact… let’s do it.
‘DETAIL’ 3D is more than just 2 screens. It’s like
another graphical option you can toggle, like texture detail or polygon count. And what
it does is it highlights imperfections that you don’t notice on a flat screen. In CS:GO
maps, there’s a massive difference between how detailed the models are, and how simple
the rest of the environment is. It all looks okay when you’re viewing it on a screen,
but in VR, the 3D props ‘pop’ and the flat 2D walls remind you of Playstation 1
graphics and bring you back to the fact that this is just a game. It’s a night and day
difference and I spent most of my time in VR fixated on the props and ignoring the bland,
empty spaces in between. You run past this bit of debris outside long in gameplay. This
might be the first time you’ve noticed it here. But in VR this was the highlight of
my trip to the double doors. That and all these little shrubs just here.
It makes me appreciate Half-Life Alyx a lot more, since there aren’t inconsistencies
between bits of the environment in that game. I now suspect that game is one of the best
looking we’ve ever had, and that if you put other games under the VR microscope, even
ones you’d deem good looking, they’d fall apart under the scrutiny.
Take Crysis 3 and Mankind Divided… VR would make them look better, but at the same time
you’d think ‘I remember them looking better than this’. It’s a hard thing to describe.
But 3D adds a new dimension to an otherwise flat experience.
‘Dust2’ I understand the things I’ve said in this
video aren’t specific to Dust2. Because, take away the stuff I’ve mentioned and it’s
Dust2, at the end of the day. But just as Domino Dancing is the song track I test new
audio gear with, Dust2 is THE map I’m most familiar with- and so I think visiting it
in VR has the most potential to break me when I realise how little I knew about it.
I have spotted so many small details that I might have seen before, but that I didn’t
think about until now. Like this wooden… thing next to the doorway on B that you never
cared to see. How this arch at goose is barely even a doorway.
How nice and messy the edges of these grain bags look.
How many 3D details there are on the floor in bombsite B when compared with any other
bit of the map. These rollers on the bottom of this huge dumpster
at long. And how low-res the leaves on this plant are.
I’ve spent thousands of hours on Dust2, yet a few minutes in VR highlighted so many
things to me I had never noticed before about it. I thought I knew it well… but maybe
I don’t. It didn’t feel like I expected it to. So yeah, I can recommend checking something
like this out if you get VR. 2kliksphilip covered the cheap Lenvovo Exploder in this
video just here which he got on ebay second-hand for about £200.
My first time exploring this map in VR was mind-blowing, but loading it up normally again
to recheck all this stuff was also unreal. I might never see Dust2 in the same way again.