Quake3Quest: Q3 in Virtual Reality
Posted: Wed May 18, 2022 7:42 am
I know Discord is the hot new thing but quake3world.com can't go without someone mentioning this thing.
Quake3Quest is a Quake 3 Arena port for the Oculus Quest 2. It means you can play Quake 3 Arena in its full glory in Virtual Reality. The Quest 2 is a standalone device, so you don't need a beefy computer to connect it to.
[youtube]2Z_ns5kwNZk[/youtube]
I've installed this thing on my own Quest 2, initially being s bit skeptical because eh, aiming must be terrible (I had visions of playing Quake 3 Arcade on my XBox 360) and it must be a puke machine, seeing how fast the gameplay of Quake 3 is (including its dependence on jumppads and the like).
Turns out I couldn't be more wrong. Quake 3 feels so natural in VR, it's amazing. Aiming and shooting is perhaps even easier and feels more direct than with a mouse and keyboard. Yes, you need solid VR legs to handle this, but weirdly enough Quake 3 made me feel less wobbly on my legs than Doom 3. It's definitely comfortable enough to play for longer stretches of time.
Performance of the game is solid. It hits the 72Hz refresh rate easily, although DrBeef (the author of the port) said some if the larger Team Arena maps (I guess he means the terra maps) show some framerate drops. Haven't checked those out myself yet though.
Oh, yes, Team Arena works as well! The same goes for multiplayer. I played some matches yesterday and that goes really well, even in a map like q3dm17 (The Longest Yard). There's a special VR master server set up where the game takes its server list from, so that's cool.
Controls are simple enough. Left analogue stick to move/strafe, right analogue stick to turn in X degree increments (where X is configurable). The right stick is not necessarily needed as you can turn but looking in that direction. Right motion controller is used to aim (so the crosshair isn't necessarily in the center of the screen, which sounds weird but is immediately intuitive and logical). Buttons on right controller are used to jump/duck, left controller to taunt. The right grip button brings up a weapon-wheel for weapon selection. All I really miss is next/prev weapon buttons. Not sure why the left controller buttons weren't assigned to this. The game doesn't offer customizable controls as far as I know, but I am going to see if a little q3config.cfg hacking might help out here.
Now if you've watched the trailer you'll see it mentions mods. Don't get your hopes up though, as they're confusing the use of this term as we used to use it with any sort of custom content. This means the game does allow custom maps, models, textures, sounds, etc. Custom code, however... nope, haven't gotten that to work with my own mods (EntityPlus and wofreloaded). I'm getting the impression this is also not easily doable, so that's a bit of a bummer. Granted, Team Arena works fine, but I guess they've prepped something in the port specifically for the missionpack to get that to work. I am going to do a bit more research to see if there's any chance of getting actual mods to work. Getting to play EntityPlus in VR is kind of the dream here.
So besides that, the whole experience is pretty solid. There are a few small rough edges (like some UI elements not playing nicely with some geometry where z ordering gets messed up but that's not a big deal). This is just a 1.0 release and DrBeef usually puts out some updates for his ports.
It's quite amazing to be able to walk through levels I built 20 years ago in VR. It's pretty surreal. I know all these stock and a lot of custom Quake 3 maps by heart, seen them a million times, but to actually be in them like this and get a real sense of scale just adds a whole new layer to it.
Quake3Quest is a Quake 3 Arena port for the Oculus Quest 2. It means you can play Quake 3 Arena in its full glory in Virtual Reality. The Quest 2 is a standalone device, so you don't need a beefy computer to connect it to.
[youtube]2Z_ns5kwNZk[/youtube]
I've installed this thing on my own Quest 2, initially being s bit skeptical because eh, aiming must be terrible (I had visions of playing Quake 3 Arcade on my XBox 360) and it must be a puke machine, seeing how fast the gameplay of Quake 3 is (including its dependence on jumppads and the like).
Turns out I couldn't be more wrong. Quake 3 feels so natural in VR, it's amazing. Aiming and shooting is perhaps even easier and feels more direct than with a mouse and keyboard. Yes, you need solid VR legs to handle this, but weirdly enough Quake 3 made me feel less wobbly on my legs than Doom 3. It's definitely comfortable enough to play for longer stretches of time.
Performance of the game is solid. It hits the 72Hz refresh rate easily, although DrBeef (the author of the port) said some if the larger Team Arena maps (I guess he means the terra maps) show some framerate drops. Haven't checked those out myself yet though.
Oh, yes, Team Arena works as well! The same goes for multiplayer. I played some matches yesterday and that goes really well, even in a map like q3dm17 (The Longest Yard). There's a special VR master server set up where the game takes its server list from, so that's cool.
Controls are simple enough. Left analogue stick to move/strafe, right analogue stick to turn in X degree increments (where X is configurable). The right stick is not necessarily needed as you can turn but looking in that direction. Right motion controller is used to aim (so the crosshair isn't necessarily in the center of the screen, which sounds weird but is immediately intuitive and logical). Buttons on right controller are used to jump/duck, left controller to taunt. The right grip button brings up a weapon-wheel for weapon selection. All I really miss is next/prev weapon buttons. Not sure why the left controller buttons weren't assigned to this. The game doesn't offer customizable controls as far as I know, but I am going to see if a little q3config.cfg hacking might help out here.
Now if you've watched the trailer you'll see it mentions mods. Don't get your hopes up though, as they're confusing the use of this term as we used to use it with any sort of custom content. This means the game does allow custom maps, models, textures, sounds, etc. Custom code, however... nope, haven't gotten that to work with my own mods (EntityPlus and wofreloaded). I'm getting the impression this is also not easily doable, so that's a bit of a bummer. Granted, Team Arena works fine, but I guess they've prepped something in the port specifically for the missionpack to get that to work. I am going to do a bit more research to see if there's any chance of getting actual mods to work. Getting to play EntityPlus in VR is kind of the dream here.
So besides that, the whole experience is pretty solid. There are a few small rough edges (like some UI elements not playing nicely with some geometry where z ordering gets messed up but that's not a big deal). This is just a 1.0 release and DrBeef usually puts out some updates for his ports.
It's quite amazing to be able to walk through levels I built 20 years ago in VR. It's pretty surreal. I know all these stock and a lot of custom Quake 3 maps by heart, seen them a million times, but to actually be in them like this and get a real sense of scale just adds a whole new layer to it.
