‘Borderlands 2 VR’ Gets PS Aim Support & Improved Shooting for All Controllers

By
Scott Hayden
-
38

Borderlands 2 VR (2018) launched on PSVR late last year with support for DualShock 4 and PS Move, and while it also seemed to be a perfect fit for the platform’s dedicated gun controller, PS Aim, users just had to make do. Now developers Gearbox Software and 2K Games have announced they’ve officially added PS Aim support including a few other shooting specific improvements that should keep you happily blasting bandits and looting vaults with greater ease regardless of your chosen controller.

Looking through the options menu, you’ll now find options for swapping sticks, buttons, or both—something the dev team said in a Reddit post was added “to help with Lefty Swap and to allow for more custom options to use the Aim Controller.”

Users can also assign forward movement either according to their head’s position, or movement relative to PS Aim.

“For example, you can shoot straight forward, while looking to your right. If your movement is Gun relative, pushing forward on the control stick will move you based on where the gun is pointing. If your movement is Head relative, pushing forward on the control stick will move you based on where you’re looking,” the developers say.

Photo captured by Road to VR

There’s also a few new features that come to the game as the result of community suggestions:

  • Improved Scope – Performance on the scope has been improved and it is now a much larger window.
  • Crosshairs Toggle – A new option is available in the Options menu that allows you to turn off the crosshairs.
  • Scope Toggle – A new option is available in the Options menu that allows you to use iron sights when aiming instead of the scope window.
  • Vault Symbols – Fixed a bug where Vault symbols did not appear correctly.

Moreover, the dev team says they’ll be working on updates such as “improvements to the HUD and height offset along with fixes to an unreachable chest, teleport, and more.”

SEE ALSO
'Borderlands 2 VR' Could Come to PC Headsets Five Months After PSVR

Although we weren’t wowed by Borderlands 2 VR in our review, it’s good to see the developers taking the time to mold the game a little more to the medium, as some of the negatives we noted in our review seem to be alleviated by the recent update; being able to aim down iron sights of a physical gun without a gaze-based reticle constantly floating around is certainly a step in the right direction in the immersion department, although we would love to see more updates that help make the game more of a true VR native considering it commands premium price tag of $50.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • 3872Orcs

    But no PC version :(

    • Baldrickk

      I’m happy to wait for a VR native Borderlands game, not one with VR shoe-horned into it.

      • Mechamania

        You’re waiting for a port.

        • Baldrickk

          That too.
          But what I meant was that I would want a game where the controls are properly translated into VR.
          Like Skyrim VR, this is a game built for 2d interfaces with VR support squeezed in.
          I’m happy to wait for VR to be properly integrated.

  • gothicvillas

    well, I;ll be honest… i would choose ps4 version with aim gun over PC vr option. I have PC gaming rig (vive) but the aim gun on sony console is so good that it would swing me towards psvr. I love the aim gun in Firewall. Nothing even comes close on pc counterpart, I wish PC had something like the aim gun (ok ok, I know ProTube and other stocks, not even close)

    • jj

      many people 3d print gun stocks to their liking. saying one pulls you in because of a plastic mount is pretty strange when you could even 3d print that model for pcvr one… so in the end pc vr has you covered for more situations

      • Jistuce

        Or make one out of PVC pipe… which doesn’t look a lot different than Sony’s.

        • Pablo C
          • Jistuce

            Okay, I take it back. It looks a LITTLE different than Sony’s.

          • Pablo C

            What matters is how it feels, since you´ll be looking an actual gun in VR.

          • Jistuce

            This is very true.

            Mostly I’m just amused by the Aim controller’s simplicity. I expected Sony to add some flash and try to make it NOT look like just a length of pipe, just for marketing’s sake.

          • jj

            “Mostly I’m just amused by the Aim controller’s simplicity.”

            then you should be REALLY REALLY impressed with the simplicity of 3d printed and pipe ones

        • Mechamania

          If you think the AIM is a Wii-like gun stock, you’re as woefully uninformed as you are woefully bad at trolling.

          • Jistuce

            It was purely a statement on aesthetics. Whatever the Aim’s technical merits, Sony didn’t spend much time at all on the enclosure.

    • Pablo C

      IMO is too immersion-breaking having to turn around with a stick instead of just using your feet.

      • kool

        You can do that on psvr.

        • Mechamania

          Hopefully he can use HIS feet to spin his wheels long enough to keep him occupied, while waiting…

  • Alextended

    Not even close in that the PCVR controllers like Oculus Touch are a next generational leap in comparison to Aim and Move as they track your movements far better in full 1:1 without any layer of abstraction (Move and Aim feel more like aiming with Wiimote’s pointer rather than like any kind of real weapon – or an accurate lightgun but not on a flat plane for something more people can compare to).

    At the same time you maintain full independent use of both your hands so you can on the fly switch to just as fully simulated use of sidearms, grenades or any other gadget or function like realistic reloading with a new magazine and pulling back on the bolt release and grabbing and either slashing with or throwing your knife and whatever else the given game includes.

    It’s a minor in comparison inconvenience that you have to steady your arms on thin air when holding the larger weapons with both hands but as you say, the available commercial, DYI or 3D printed stocks can fix that as well, while the better designs allow you to easily slot the controllers in and out to maintain the other functions in full.

    To showcase these try Contractors which might be a low budget indie game compared to Firewall but nothing quite beats the kind of weapon handling it’s got and it feels pretty polished already. The same goes for Onward, though I want that one for the co-op aspect and it’s not nearly advanced enough in things like AI and mission design just yet so I wouldn’t actually recommend it for someone who doesn’t know what early access is all about. It also doesn’t have the visual quality of Contractors, though it’s improving with every large update and somehow it’s still fun as hell in this early state.

    • Alextended

      I should add that indeed the Vive wands don’t have very conveniently placed inputs but Touch makes the form factor and placement so much better it feels much more intuitive and natural to do all kinds of things with that. But the superior to PSVR Vive tracking still beats it handily, there’s no contest. Not to mention with either you can have 360 degree VR so you can turn around yourself rather than always be front facing as on PSVR and rely on other abstract controls only for turning (which you can also use in combination on PC, whatever works for your style, preference, and game situation). It’s really next gen VR compared to Sony’s in every aspect. Only lacking some nice exclusives like Astro Bot, but there are tons more great exclusives on PCVR or multiplatform games that play so infinitely better that they may as well be exclusives.

    • Alexisms

      Move and Aim controllers feel absolutely nothing like the wiimotes. To think they do even remotely is frankly embarrassing. You might think oculus touch is better that’s fine. But this article is not about that.

      • Alextended

        This all was meant to be a reply to the guy who said Aim is better than
        PCVR controllers, lol, I just clicked wrong, I didn’t post it out of the
        blue, and I don’t see you telling him that’s not what the article is
        about either, haha.

        Aim and Move are different and way inferior to real 1:1 motion tracking that Vive/Rift. That’s not what I “think” or an opinion, it’s objective, scientific if you will if you want to look up how their tech is implemented, fact.

        The same way Wiimote seemed similar to actual lightguns on the surface (for applicable games) but was in fact very far from one in practice. There were less than a handful of games that allowed you to calibrate it in such a manner, but then still unlike lightguns you had to remain perfectly in place for it to work as intended after calibration, so perfectly it’s in fact impossible even as you move your arms to aim for different parts of the screen so you just learned to play with the added layer of inaccuracy by using your shots as a split second guide (since turning crosshair on would be cheating for the real lightgun game ports like HOTD2&3).

        That’s also why games like Point & Blank were never ported as some of their challenges are impossible without 100% accurate lightguns, like giving you a single shot to shoot a rapidly falling in a see saw motion leaf in one challenge. There’s simply a layer of abstraction and inaccuracy that just isn’t there when you’re shooting a lightgun or a gun as they always work as intended and in full sync with your actions.

        I say all this because there’s a very similar layer of inaccuracy and abstraction in Aim and Move compared to PCVR controllers (well, the better ones, I haven’t used WMR to know how much worse they are but then they still allow for 360 degree VR which trumps PSVR) and it’s arguably even more important than Wiimote’s case since it exists in 3D space rather than a flat plane so it’s apparent in more dimensions.

        This is why you’ll never see a game that has Contractor’s intricate micro movement mechanics (that are yet super intuitive and natural when you do them in PCVR, so it’s not a matter of not wanting realistic games, after all you could have a less realistic game with many of these mechanics anyway, Contractors is already far less realistic than Onward intends to become after all) in the current iteration of PSVR. It’s just impossible. The tech isn’t there.

        • kool

          The aim is better!

        • Jistuce

          “Aim and Move are different and way inferior to real 1:1 motion tracking that Vive/Rift. That’s not what I “think” or an opinion, it’s objective, scientific if you will if you want to look up how their tech is implemented, fact.The same way Wiimote seemed similar to actual lightguns on the surface (for applicable games) but was in fact very far from one in practice.”

          Interestingly, the PS Move tracking is an evolutionary predecessor of the Rift’s, and the Wiimote tracking is arguably a similar predecessor of the Vive’s. The Move controller is a programmed light source tracked using external webcams, and the Wii controller uses IR sensors to perform processing on an exterior light source of a known geometry(the “sensor bar” is just two clusters of IR LEDs in an attractive package).

          Which is not to say there are not fundamental problems with Move tracking. The refresh rate is limited, there isn’t a good way to acquire accurate controller orientation, and the task of identifying and triangulating a light source’s position in a full-color image is much more challenging than the Rift’s IR-only cameras.

          The big problem with using Wiimotes as accurate lightguns is that the system has no knowledge of the screen you’re aiming at. The pointer function is actually quite accurate… but only with respect to the light bar. One has to know the exact screen size and the PRECISE location of the bar relative to the screen for the pointer to be accurate with respect to the screen. And there’s no way to configure that in the system, nor to ensure the bar stays put afterwards. By contrast, a traditional light gun is actually directly observing the screen, so accuracy is inherently with respect to the screen. Unfortunately, a traditional light gun won’t work with LCDs, hence the light bar’s existence.

          The problem with calibration functions in games is that they don’t correct the aim until AFTER the data has been compressed down to a final aim point, which isn’t going to be a realistic solution. They SHOULD be doing correction while they still have the full three-dimensional Wiimote location data.

          But unless I’m mistaken, the Wii OS only presents a cursor location to games rather than offering the raw pointer triangulation data. Calibration should’ve been done at the OS level, but Nintendo opted not to.

          • Baldrickk

            “Unfortunately, a traditional light gun won’t work with LCDs”

            Indeed, my copy of House of the Dead 2 is feeling a little unused these days…

      • Graham

        I really wouldn’t bother – that guy is clearly a pc zealot. Everything else is rubbish! ;-)

      • Mechamania

        Trolls don’t care about that, except that not being about that makes it easier to try making a decent diss, to relieve some of the steam building up, while they wait for an “epic” release.

  • mellott124

    AIM support… Epic! This is my favorite game on PSVR.

    • Mechamania

      It’s even fun to watch, on Twitch, if you have to wait it out, this year…

  • Alexisms

    Excellent! The AIM of course has all the buttons of the dualshock therefore you can finally move about like a normal fps but with the intuitive aiming of the move. Great job Gearbox!

    • Mechamania

      … but, but, there are Wii-like, 3D-printed gun stocks, for Vive and Rift.

      Oculus and HTC are too embarrassed to sell pieces of plastic that don’t hold a candle to the best full-featured gun controller, which is far-and-away the best gun controller, in the 83+ years they’ve been made. Perhaps they’re waiting to get their inferior copies under a $200 price-point.

  • Ted Joseph

    I haven’t played this game since I purchased it as I was waiting for Aim support! Cant wait to play it when I get back from march break vacation a week from tomorrow!!

  • guest

    One of the best games I played in VR!

  • TaintFist

    Good to see work being done, but since Krieg isn’t in the VR version, my fallback is Sal, and I usually play a pistols build with him. Pistol Sal is IMPOSSIBLE with the way pistols turn to the sides as you shoot. This needs to be fixed, the game is unplayable as a pistol build if you have used firearms in real life, it is too unnatural to have the gun turning sideways while you are firing.

  • Wow, it didn’t have Aim support at launch?? Geez, PSVR users got the beta build! It’s like only half done! Not that I’d notice though, since I’m going to exercise some patience and wait for the PC version with Co-Op support.

    • jj

      they need aim assist cause the shooting is sort of unorthodox, as if ur shooting from a 2d bubble

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    • Mechamania

      You’ll be waiting much longer than AIM users did.

      The “Master Race” trolls were really out in full force — quantity not quality — for this game.