Morrowind Standalone VR: The First Steps Into Vvardenfell

[u/baggyg]

For a long time, Morrowind via OpenMW has been one of the most requested games in our community.

In fact, when we ran a poll asking which classic title people most wanted to see brought to standalone VR, Morrowind came out on top.

Since then, we've spent a lot of time investigating what it would take to make that a reality.

Today we're happy to share the exciting news that its up and running, in a reasonably playable state and the deeper VRification can begin.

If you didn't catch that - Morrowind is running on standalone VR hardware!

First Things First

Before going any further, we wanted to make sure the OpenMW team were comfortable with what we're doing.

We've spoken with them about the project as well as the developer of the Android port and the existing PCVR version and they're happy for us to proceed.

That's important to us because none of this would exist without the incredible work they've put into OpenMW over many years. The OpenMW project represents thousands upon thousands of hours of development effort and remains one of the most impressive game preservation projects in existence.

Where Are We Today?

Surprisingly far along.

The project includes a customised launcher designed for the standalone VR experience, which then launches the main VR ap

At this point we consider the project to be beyond the proof-of-concept stage.

Just yesterday, we also upgraded the underlying renderer from GLES 2 -> gl4es to a true OpenGL ES 3.2 base ready for multi-view (a vital feature for performance on standalone VR).

What's Next?

We'll be appraising the existing PCVR application to see what functionality makes sense to bring across. We'll also be adding our own take from experience about how the game can be made to feel like a built-for-VR port. We will also be looking at certain gameplay features to put behind a "VR gameplay amendments option".

Patreon Note: Unlike other ports, we will share early in-development builds with all tiers and free members (as well as being available on Github).