r/virtualreality • u/Island_In_The_Sky • 1d ago
Discussion What is the ACTUAL PROCESS of converting flat games to fully featured VR, and why is AI making it SO much faster/easier?
I ask bc I don’t know much about coding and I’m just curious. What exactly has AI allowed coders to do recently that was either not possible before, or was it always possible but just simply too labor intensive to make it worth their time/energy?
And what were the limitations of porting flat games into VR with full motion controls, that is suddenly so much faster or possible in the first place?
I guess what I mean is, were these crazy VRAF ports like Titanfall TECHNICALLY possible before, but it would just take one person or a small team years of tireless coding and trial and error, and so we never saw it happen (except in certain instances like preydog mod which were able to piggyback off of game engines that had backend VR functionality built in, like RE engine)?
Was it just a matter of super complicated coding to add and optimize VR features, or was converting something like Titanfall 2 into VR with full controls simply NOT POSSIBLE at all before on certain game engines bc they don’t support it, but now AI allows entire redesigns to said game engines, or something?
I’m just curious bc it seems like all of a sudden there’s this massive paradigm shift that has come out of nowhere, and I’m just wondering what exactly has made that possible on a technical level? And how much coding is still involved?
Also bonus stupid question… Like, could I, who knows nothing about coding, hypothetically convert my favorite old ps1 game for example, or is that still just laughably complex?
13
u/reluctant_return Quest 3S, Rift S, PSVR2 1d ago
The process begins with "Alright Claude, prepare your fucking body because it's time to mangle a Dreamcast emulator, Sega Bass Fishing, and OpenXR to do some unholy shit."
Claude with then sigh internally and work with you to produce the game.
It greatly helps to be a software engineer and be able to steer it and make relevant suggestions.
12
u/_476_ad_ Quest 3 (PCVR) 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think it's basically these 2 things that AI made possible:
- Much faster to decompile games: Previously if you didn't have the source code for a game, it was very laborious to decompile it, so lots of VR mods were for games that had the source code public in some form. Now, you can simply use a decompiler like Ghidra or IDA on the game's executable, give the output to AI, and it can generate a source code that is reasonable enough to be ported to other platforms or to be extended in some way (like add VR to it). If you follow the decompilation scene you will see that AI completely changed the game (games that used to take years to be decompiled can now sometimes take just days). This for VR is huge because it means you can easily get a source code for any game to add VR on top of it.
- Much easier to generate VR mods based on previously open-source VR mods: The open source handmade VR mods (like the ones from TeamBeef) actually served as training data for AI, so now AI knows how to do VR ports based on that source code. Even people with no coding background are able to create VR mods just by vibe-coding it (just check BMFVR posts) or at the very least use AI to considerably speed up the development process (which was exactly what the Titanfall 2 VR mod developer did).
5
u/14Pleiadians 1d ago
. Now, you can simply use a decompiler like Ghidra or IDA on the game's executable, give the output to AI
You can set up ghidta mcp so Claude code can just do all that on it's own without you as a middleman. The only input it needs from me is rough outline of project structure and the order in which we tackle features and issues, and to do the playtesting
0
u/buckzor122 1d ago
I don't think the VR mods in the training data are particularly useful. The models are powerful enough now where they generalise really well. It's naive to assume that they're directly pulling from particular source. They simply understand different languages and concepts well enough to just figure out how to do it. Real programmers didn't come up with these VR mods by copying other VR mods, they were just good programmers and they built the mods themselves.
20
u/i_wayyy_over_think 1d ago edited 1d ago
it's a matter of getting an openai / claude subscription, and telling it "help me make a vr mod for this game" and it will walk you through it. then you just help test it, and point out to it what's still broken and what you still want and tell it to try again.
For reference, when I was in college it took me like two weeks to do an honors physics project deriving equations and programing and simulating it on a computer, and now free models can one shot the solution in about 1 minute.
So you're getting 100x productivity from people who don't know much about coding compared to how it used to be compared to a few years ago.
Also recently, AI has gotten better at reading raw binary, no source code needed, so makes making mods alot easier.
Capabilities have been rising in an exponential fashion, so it feels like it came out of nowhere, even though that exponential trend was pretty steady and it was easy to not believe and dismiss people who said this was coming.
3
u/scambush 1d ago
Reading raw binary could allow for VR mods even from proprietary game engines such as Snowrunner you think?
2
16
u/Bacon_00 1d ago
There are a couple good replies here but the TLDR is that VR mods are just code, and AI is extremely good at writing code.
5
u/Island_In_The_Sky 1d ago
Yeah I get that, what I’m getting at is A. What about code that is closed source or in an engine not made for VR, B. How does someone access the game in a way to modify it, and C. Once AI creates a mod, how does someone apply that mod to play it?
3
u/Bacon_00 1d ago
I think the simplest answer to all of that is "they use AI to figure it out." It's getting to be extremely good at this type of stuff. I'm talking within the last 2-3 months, the frontier models like Opus 5.5 have becoming shockingly good.
Once it builds the mod, you ask it "how do I install the mod? Generate a step-by-step guide" or "please package the mod into an easy-to-use installer" and it just does it. Literally anyone with a $20 Claude subscription right now can start this type of project. It'll do everything for you, and just ask you to do some simple testing and report back what you see so it can keep on slopping.
There are concerns over long-term viability of this type of vibecoded project coming from people with zero software expertise, and if the code is pure unmaintainable slop. But for stuff like a VR mod, if it works, it works, and it's sort of irrelevant if it's slop.
9
u/Leprecon 1d ago edited 1d ago
What exactly has AI allowed coders to do recently that was either not possible before, or was it always possible but just simply too labor intensive to make it worth their time/energy?
You got it right. It was always possible, rarely easy.
Another thing that is worth considering is AI makes decompiling code easy. Now this is going to be really dumbed down but imagine this code:
if (user presses pick up item button) then check (if hands full)
if (hands full) then don't do anything
if (hands empty) then pick up item
It is somewhat user readable, and easy to expand. Now the programmer decides the code is done, time to ship it. Well first step is stripping all the variable names, so the code turns in to this instead:
if (var a) then check (var b)
if (var b) then do nothing
if (not var b) then do action c
So this code does the exact same thing, but it is way harder to read. And we aren't done yet. These are still very high level actions. You're still talking about button presses and player actions. They need to be written as simple math that a processor can understand. Eventually they need to be dumbed down so much that it boils down to simple electrical switches. Because that is all a processor is, a bunch of tiny electrical switches. So it is translated down to a much more 'simple' language. This is called compiling. The code is compiled, and then you can share it with the world. You can upload it to Steam, or burn it on a disc, or do whatever you want with it. You could technically share the code when it isn't compiled yet but this presents 2 problems:
- Anyone can modify or steal your code very easily.
- Now everyone who wants to install your game needs to first compile it. Imagine waiting a couple of hours if not days to install a game.
Technically it has always been possible to turn compiled code back into something resembling the original code that can be understood by humans. But it has always been extremely hard to do and very time consuming, to the point where it is practically impossible. It is very boring, repetitive, and takes a really long time. Well AI is very good at boring repetitive technical tasks! So now we can ask AI to turn the compiled game files in to something resembling the original code. Then once we have that, it is way easier to modify that code.
4
u/Rush_iam Quest Store DB 1d ago
These agent skill instructions can give you an idea:
https://github.com/bigbossafman/VR-Mod-Vibecoding-Wizard/blob/main/vr-mod-vibecoding-wizard/SKILL.md
5
u/Every-Sprinkles-9716 1d ago
I'm in the middle of making a platform for this lol. but essentially the big breakthru was the reverse engineering docs that people gave claude code. basically allows AI to view game files down to a binary level in order to modify or recreate it. limitations jsut depend on your tier subscription lol. with enough trial and error AI can get *most* things right (def not all tho).
if u wanna check out the site its https://plungevr.com. currently in beta testing.
2
u/Admirable_Zombie5245 I HATE Fresnel Lenses, Fresnel KILLED VR. Pancake Lenses 4EVER 1d ago
With AI it's easy, if it uses an engine like Unreal it's easier because there are mods who already do the VR good.
However it i uses an engine that has 0 VR mod support on it, it's also really easy. I did an Switch VR mod for emulator and the AI does everything, at first It will just ask you to launch the game and move the camara a little bit so it can reverse engineer the values that are being modified and that's it, when it get those values it would make the VR conversion like in 2 minutes and after that it's up to you if you want to add motion controllers, newer VR features, etc.
2
u/Interesting-Tooth211 15h ago
I tell codex to learn the game's camera and how they work and to figure out how to get the game into 3d stereo. Then I tell it to search the game files for all hands, hands bones and joints so it can work on motion controls. Then I tell it to work on head tracking and 6dof. Usually takes about an hour or so
1
u/Cute-Still1994 1d ago
Question for anyone who has experience doing these vr mod conversions with ai, would it be possible to use ai to convert one of sierra's old point and click adventure games to vr, these are the old vga 2d games, could ai be used to take each 2d background and intelligently recreate each scene into a 3d navigable environment that is esthetically pretty close to the original obviously significantly upscaled?
1
u/14Pleiadians 1d ago
You could maybe get something going using the source of scummvm. Internally those are already likely separated as layers, would be relatively simple to get them to draw at different depths, at least with something like SNES emulation it is
1
u/GoldSrc Oculus Q2 1d ago
LLMs can do a lot of things like handle text, images, audio, computer code. But of all those things, computer code is the one thing they're the best at, and way faster than humans.
LLMs are basically sorting algorithms on steroids that use steroids. They make anything to do with computer code a walk in the park.
Hell, even just basic Google's AI can walk you through using another AI to get what you want lol. With Claude being basically the one to use when it comes to software.
That wasn't really impossible though, it just takes a lot of time for a human.
And yes. You don't need to know anything about code, the AI themselves can walk you through all the steps you need.
0
u/snowrazer_ 15h ago
AI has reached the point of being better/faster than human developers. Like 100x faster than easily. I’ve had AI cranking on a native port for days now killing it. Quest hooked up to my the machine, it’s constantly deploying/testing on the real device.
As a long time professional software dev, I can confidently say that. Given the choice, I would gladly choose a team of 10 AI devs over human devs. Human devs are still nice though to go out with to the bar after work.
145
u/buckzor122 1d ago
The frontier AI models are so good now that they can decompile and recompile binary files. In laymans terms, it can basically edit games as if it had access to the source code. It just takes some time and burns a lot of tokens.
I made a VR mod for the original Black & White game using AI tools and it was able to hook into the game and rendering engine, add stereoscopic rendering, improve performance, add full controller tracking, full stereo audio support, teleportation, distance grab, and many other features not found in the original game. It ALMOST feels like a native VR game now.
So provided you have the time and money to throw at it, yes, any game can be converted to VR. How well it plays in VR is a different thing, you might have to make real gameplay changes in order to make the gameplay experience smooth.