The initial announcement of PSVR2 was pretty exciting. PSVR had been one of the most accessible and curated experiences, and all of the feature improvements seemed poised to make a good thing even better.
As the release date loomed, however, I noticed something odd. Listings for games were not popping up on Amazon or Best Buy. Then the story came out that PSVR2 was going to be sold exclusively through Sony Direct. Then someone let most of the air out of the room: none of the best titles announced would be released as physical discs.
Anyone who reads my blog or social media will probably know that I don't participate in the "pay money for games you can't own" machine. Not only is it offensive to me to have someone pretend to sell me something but retain the ability to modify it, disable it, or remove my access to it at will, but this practice of locking games behind a download/login wall is having a destructive effect on preservation.
Once it was confirmed that none of the games I wanted to play were going to be sold on a disc, I canceled my pre-order and mostly closed the book on PSVR2.
Then the PSVR2 PC adapter was released. The PC, for all of its unforgivable faults as a gaming platform, has the advantage of being too wide open to hackers for DRM to live very long. When publishers refuse to actually sell games to me, I use...other means to play them.
A short rant about game "piracy": When games are available on GOG, I pay for them because that platform is the only one, to my knowledge, actually selling a product. Games on GOG are prohibited from using DRM, and therefore they are as close to something one can actually buy as any digital distribution platform can get. Technically the games still have license terms that are revocable by the publisher, but without any mechanism for enforcing them. If I download a game from GOG, DRM will never stop me from being able to install and play it whenever and however I want. Other so-called digital storefronts such as Steam or Epic don't sell products. They sell services and access, both of which are exclusively and arbitrarily controlled by them and the publishers they contract with. This means, among other things, that any or all games in one's so-called library with those storefronts can be altered, removed, or disabled and the player has no recourse or redress because the player owns nothing. If the player's account is disabled because Steam wants to disable it for whatever reason, or no reason at all, the player has no legal recourse for restored access because the player never owned anything to begin with. If the player downloaded software before losing access, the software will refuse to start because of artificial failure states (i.e. DRM) meant to prevent use without permission of Steam or the publisher's own DRM platform. Games available exclusively through these storefronts are not actually available for sale at all.
So anyway. I heard good things about Half Life Alyx, and it's even used to advertise the PC adapter for PSVR2 so I thought I would try it out.
At ~$550, buying a PSVR2 just to find out if I could use it offline seemed like a bit much, but fortunately I have a friend that had one that he was willing to lend me.
The Experiment
To see if PSVR2 was useful for a strictly offline gamer, I had two questions that needed to be answered.
- For the few PSVR2 games that are available on a PS5 disc, does PSVR2 work without needing any kind of download?
- Can PSVR2 be used to play PC VR games on a Windows PC without Internet (and therefore without Steam)?
Below you can see my answers to those questions (thus far).
Native PS5 Offline
If you weren't aware, most, if not all PS5 game discs contain the system software that the game was built to run on. If you insert a disc into a PS5 that has an older version of the system software, you will be prompted to update it before being able to play the game. If you agree the system software will be copied from the disc itself and the system will be updated. My PS5 has never been connected to the Internet for any reason so all of my system software updates come from discs, and they only happen when I try to play a game built for a newer system software than I am already running.
When I connected the PSVR2 and powered it on, the PS5 recognized it and notified me that it needed a firmware update. The system software already contained the necessary firmware and updated the headset successfully. The same thing happened with the controllers.
Once the two controllers and the PSVR2 headset were connected and updated, the PS5 started the "Play Area Setup" process. This is where you use the headset to look around the room while a 3D map is built from the data. It's kind of a cool and odd experience to view the room around you in stereoscopic 3D in real time, but through a viewer not seeing things with your own eyes. I suppose it's technically an "augmented reality" experience.
This process basically allows you to create a safe area to move around in that the headset will track for you and remind you whenever you start straying from it - that way you don't knock stuff over or trip on things you can't see while you're playing. This step completed without a hitch.
I purchased the disc-based "Song in the Smoke" for $20 from Amazon, and had already installed it beforehand. The game opened and ran normally - no begging to go online, no major issues.
So, in conclusion, yes the PSVR2 works offline on PS5 and doesn't require extraneous downloads unless the game itself does.
PSVR2 Offline on PC
The experience of trying this was basically the polar opposite of trying to use the headset on PS5 in terms of simplicity and so far, success. I will update this when/if I ever manage to get it to work.
To attempt this you need all of the following:
- PSVR2 (headset and controllers)
- PSVR2 official PC Adapter
- A PC that meets the official minimum specs
- A 1.4 or higher Display Port cable
- A Bluetooth adapter (the one built in to your motherboard probably will not work)
- The "free" PlaystationVR2 App from Steam
- A Steam Emulator (the app has Steam DRM, but I don't have Steam)
- The SteamVR software (running offline is "officially" supported, and ironically this does NOT have Steam DRM)
PSVR2 PC Adapter
I'll echo what I've since seen some other folks opine about this adapter, for the price it feels like it should have provided a bit more. For complete connectivity, you need to bring your own DisplayPort cable and your own Bluetooth solution (for the Sense controllers). By not including an officially supported DP cable and Bluetooth adapter, players are forced to roll the dice on what solutions they choose.
The PSVR2 was designed in a way that is compatible with "VirtualLink", which was a technology briefly supported by graphics card manufacturers to allow a direct, standardized USB-C connection for VR headsets. Unfortunately everyone dropped native support for it a couple of years before PSVR2 was released. I'm told if you have one of these older graphics cards such as an RTX 20 series, you can just plug the PSVR2 directly into it. Otherwise you have to use the PC adapter which replaces its function.
The adapter needs to be connected to your graphics card's DP port with a 1.4 or higher cable, to an available USB 3.0 port (via USB-A) and it's own separate power supply. This will present the headset with a USB-C cable that should, in theory, work just like a VirtualLink port.
The adapter does not function as a USB hub or a standalone USB device as far as I can tell. The power light will come on when the power supply is connected, but it is not detected by Windows if plugged in without a PSVR2 headset connected to it. Windows will not detect a connected device until the PSVR2 headset is plugged in and powered on. In fact, the adapter does not appear as an object in Device Manager at all.
Sense Controllers & Bluetooth
Originally I attempted to pair the Sense controllers with the onboard Bluetooth radio on my motherboard. After fiddling with it for some time I did manage to get them connected, but they would disconnect as soon as I opened the PlaystationVR2 App.
I had a generic Bluetooth 5.0 adapter purchased for another project laying around that I was able to use. It actually came with a mini-DVD containing the drivers, and I'm such a troglodyte that I still insist on having optical drives in all of my computers so I was able to install the drivers with no issue. When you have more than one Bluetooth radio installed on a Windows PC, you have to go into device manager and disable the one(s) you don't want to use, otherwise you'll get a message on your shiny new adapter that the driver couldn't be loaded. This is spelled out in the setup instructions on Sony's website, but I didn't read that until after I learned it through trial and error.
PlaystationVR2 App
The PSVR2 PC app on Steam serves two purposes. The first is to provide drivers and firmware for the PSVR2, and the second is to act as a bridge program to help SteamVR recognize the headset.
I don't have a Steam account nor any intention of ever having one, so I had a friend install the App and send me a copy.
A couple of Windows Batch files are included in the app directory which install or uninstall the drivers for the headset. These worked without issue and I was able to see the headset in device manager with correct drivers all reporting that they were loaded and functioning normally.
Although it's "free", the PSVR2 PC app comes with Steam DRM. If you try to launch it without having Steam installed on your machine, you get a message from Windows that you need Steam.
Ordinarily this is as simple to bypass as replacing the steam_api64.dll with a version that has been modified to ignore the DRM check and just let the software start normally. Unfortunately, the hacked DLL has to support all of the facilities that the software is expecting or it simply will not work. That was the case here. Using a hacked DLL just resulted in the app throwing an error when it tried to start.
While I'm told it's fairly simple to hack the steam_api64.dll, it is still beyond my present abilities to do.
The alternative is a "Steam Emulator" - a program that pretends to be Steam and answers API calls made by the software through the steam_api64.dll. As far as I can tell, there are really only two of these in circulation - "Smart Steam Emu" and "Mister Goldberg". Initially I tried the Smart Steam Emu which seemed to be more fully featured, but it altogether failed to work. The App would never actually open when launched by the emulator. Mister Goldberg was a bit more esoteric - I still don't understand how it's normally supposed to work, but within the Mister Goldberg release is a tool called "experimental_steamclient.exe" which requires a couple of configuration files to be created in order to launch a Steam DRM'd executable. This actually did allow the app to launch.
Steam VR
Once again, I had a friend send me a copy of the files noted in that document. This time, however, none of the executables were crippled by Steam DRM, they all launched without that particular complaint. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I had installed all of the mentioned prerequisites (Direct X and VC++ redists) the vrstartup.exe still complained about not being able to find VCRUNTIME140.dll or
MSVCP140.dll. This was kind of odd behavior considering that both files were present and installed correctly in "System32", but copying the DLLs to the same directory of vrstartup.exe qelled the error messages and Steam VR launched and waited as though it was working normally.
Putting It All Together: Where It All Falls Apart
So, with all of the software installed and superficially functional, I followed the process described on Sony's website. With the adapter installed (connected to power, USB, and DP), but nothing else plugged in or turned on, I launched the App. The app has several steps for connecting the PSVR2 and will not let you move to the next step until the current step is complete.
The app prompts to connect the Sense controllers and explains how to pair them if they are not already paired to your Bluetooth radio. As each controller is turned on and connects, there is a visual indicator in the App acknowledging that they are detected. Both controllers popped up, no problem.
Next the app prompts you to plug in the PSVR2 headset's USB-C connector into the PC adapter and turn it on. Just like with the Sense controllers, there's a visual indicator in the App that won't light up until it detects the headset. As soon as it's powered on, the app recognizes the headset and gives you the go-ahead to do the next step. This is where it breaks down.
From going through the PS5 setup process, I knew that the next step after connecting and powering on was the "Play Area Setup". From there it wasn't hard to work out that the primary PSVR2 App was launching a secondary program called, cleverly, "PlayAreaSetup.exe".
For some reason the PlayAreaSetup.exe does not detect the PSVR2 is connected and active, and responds with this message:
I've tried various things:
Unfortunately, my friend needed his PSVR2 back before I could figure this out, but here are the things I'm going to try next time:
- Verifying the USB configuration of the motherboard. Once upon a time, I shut off USB 3.0 capability in the motherboard in order to get the Rocksmith USB adapter to work with my PC. I'm pretty sure I set it back, but I need to check.
- Snatching the RTX2070 out of my wife's computer to see if a VirtualLink video card will work better than the PC adapter. This kind of eliminates any doubt about the DisplayPort.
- A 2.1 DisplayPort cable. At the time of testing I only had a single 1.4 cable and no easy way to know if it was working correctly.
- One of the knockoff PC adapters now being sold on Amazon. These look identical to the official adapters, but they might be built differently and it's at least possible that the counterfeiters solved this problem while testing.
Conclusion
So far, this is a bust. I'm not done trying, though. I plan to borrow my friend's headset again before the end of the year and give this another go - that is if there isn't a surprise Black Friday sale where I can pick one up for myself at a deep discount.
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