Skyrim Special Edition

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FlyingParticle

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FlyingParticle

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About this mod

Hand/weapon collision, weapon two-handing, realistic object grabbing, and gravity gloves-style mechanics for Skyrim VR

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Requirements

SKSE VR
 2.0.12 or above

Description

HIGGS adds some much-needed VR mechanics to Skyrim VR. This includes:
  • The player's hands and weapons collide with other objects
  • Weapons can be two-handed, (held with both hands). This is not limited to two-handed weapons, basically any weapon can. You can even two-hand a weapon while having a spell in the offhand.
  • Objects can be picked up using either hand, and the hand/fingers are positioned to realistically hold the object. This is separate from the base game's grab that levitates objects in front of you.
  • Objects can be put into your inventory by placing them over your shoulder, and food/potions/books can be consumed by dropping them at the mouth
  • A "gravity gloves"-style mechanic can be used to pull objects towards you from a distance, which can then be grabbed out of the air
  • Bodies can be grabbed and moved around, which is a feature missing from the base game
  • Armor can be looted off of bodies by physically pulling it off, either using the gravity gloves mechanic or grabbing a part of the body with one hand and pulling the armor off of the same part of the body with the other hand

HIGGS also implements a few fixes to the base game
  • The length of the physics step is synchronized dynamically to your frame rate. This is a more elaborate version of the "Havok Fix" mod for the non-vr version of Skyrim, and means that you do not need to modify your fMaxTime or fMaxTimeComplex ini settings to match your headset's refresh rate or worry about vr reprojection which halves your framerate - higgs will adjust the physics step accordingly.
  • The base game has an issue where physics objects have flickering lighting while outdoors when their physics settles due to an optimization that was made when porting Skyrim to VR. Higgs addresses this in a performance-friendly way.
  • The base game does not handle certain types of melee weapon collision objects properly for the player's hit detection, causing them to be improperly rotated or offset. Higgs patches the game to handle them properly.

This mod is very configurable! If there's a feature you don't like or would like to tweak part of the mod, there are a huge amount of ini options that can be changed in the included higgs_vr.ini file. See the Configuration section for more information.

HIGGS also includes a papyrus interface for triggering / listening to certain higgs events, which can be used by other mods.
There is also a similar and more extensive c++ api that can be used by other skse plugins, which can be found on github.

If you would like to support future development, consider supporting me on patreon.


1.0

1.2

1.4


Installation

Use a mod manager, or manually copy the files into your Data folder and make sure the esp is in your plugins.txt.
Included is the main dll, an esp with a couple of effect shaders for selected objects, and a papyrus api for interacting with higgs from other mods.

Usage

The basics are hopefully pretty self-explanatory to those familiar with other VR games like Half-Life: Alyx, but here are the specifics.

Grabbing / Pulling

In order to select, grab, or pull objects, you must either have your weapons sheathed, or an empty hand. This is so that higgs does not interfere during combat (as higgs uses the triggers/grips, which are also used during combat) and because higgs animates the fingers to hold the object when grabbing something.

When you point your palm at an object (note: this is different from the direction you point your hand to "activate" something, and is different from how you point your hand in Half-Life: Alyx), it will become highlighted, in a red color if it would count as stealing or a blue color otherwise.
Once an object is selected from a distance, hold the trigger/grip on it and you will see a blue or red beam extending from your palm to the selected object. Pull your hand quickly away from the object in your direction to launch it towards you gravity gloves-style, after which you can let go of the trigger/grip and press it again to grab the object.

To pick up an object, move your hand close enough to the object with your palm facing towards it, until you see your hand open up and the item description text appears on the back of your hand. Then use the trigger/grip to pick it up in your hand, and let go to drop or throw it.

Weapon Two-Handing

Similarly to grabbing regular objects, you can two-hand a weapon by grabbing the weapon held in your main hand with your offhand. You can two-hand two-handed weapons, crossbows, and one-handed weapons (including daggers) while the other hand is empty or has a spell out, and there is no restriction on where on the weapon you can grab.

Melee weapons and crossbows are handled a little differently when two-handing. For melee weapons, the offhand only moves the weapon towards it a little bit, without affecting the rotation of the weapon. For crossbows, the offhand acts as a pivot point and each hand contributes to the weapon positioning/rotation about the same amount. This is so that melee weapons still feel usable, as too much offhand control over the weapon does not feel good. That being said, this can be tweaked in the ini file.

Looting

With an object in your hand, raise your hand to your shoulder until a constant haptic vibration plays. Let go and it'll be picked up.
You can also consume potions, food, and ingredients that you hold by dropping them at the mouth.
Books can be dropped at the mouth to read them, and spellbooks will be instantly learned.

When pointing your palm at a body, individual armor pieces will become highlighted. If you do the gravity gloves pulling motion when an armor piece is selected, the armor piece will unequip, drop, and fling towards you as usual, essentially looting the item.

You can also loot armor from a body by grabbing a part of the body that's wearing that armor, and then grabbing the exact same part (specifically, the same rigidbody of the ragdoll) with the other hand and pulling away. This will loot the armor and place it directly into that hand.
You must be pulling your hand away as soon as you initiate the grab with your second hand, otherwise you will just grab the same rigidbody with both hands.

Configuration

The higgs_vr.ini file is next to the dll, in the SKSE/Plugins folder. If you are using MO2, mods are inside the mods folder under MO2, each within their own folders. You can also right-click the mod in MO2 and select "Open in Explorer" on the left side.

Descriptions of each ini option are in the file, but some potentially useful standouts are:
  • The palm direction (used for grabbing) and pointing direction (used for
    gravity gloves pulling) can be configured independently. These are the same by default.
  • The gravity gloves feature can be disabled by setting FarCastRadius and FarCastDistance to 0. It can be enhanced by
    setting one or both of these higher.
  • The text on the back of your hand describing the object you're holding can be disabled, by setting RolloverScale to 0
  • Various parameters that govern the behavior of the grab can be adjusted
  • The highlighting blue/red effect shaders can be enabled/disabled
  • The havok fix and shadow update fix can be disabled if they end up causing issues for some reason
  • Parameters around two-handing weapons can be adjusted, for both melee weapons and crossbows separately
  • Spellsword two-handing (two-handing your weapon while you have a spell in the offhand) can be disabled
  • Grabbing with an empty arrow hand or empty two-handed offhand can be disabled
  • Looting/highlighting of armor off of bodies can be disabled
  • The trigger/grip can be enabled or disabled independently, as well as
    whether to delay the grip inputs depending on what you have them bound to.
  • Haptics and sounds can be adjusted
  • Shoulder/mouth locations and sizes can be adjusted
  • Various parameters around how strict or lenient the object selection should be can be adjusted
  • Thresholds for various actions, such as pulling or throwing, can be adjusted

Troubleshooting

Here are some common issues people have run into. If your issue is not on this list, please check your Documents\My Games\Skyrim VR\SKSE\higgs_vr.log for any errors, as well as make sure the mod and esp plugin are being loaded by the game.

Q. My game is crashing when getting to the main menu / bethesda logo
A. Check your Documents/My Games/Skyrim VR/SKSE/higgs_vr.log and see what it says.
If your error is "[CRITICAL] Could not get modinfo", then this means the esp is not in the game's Data directory (most likely you didn't "deploy" in vortex, but you can check if it's there manually).
If your error is "[CRITICAL] The higgs esp exists, but is not active", then this means it is in the directory, but it's not being loaded by the game, which is usually an issue with the plugin (the esp file, not the mod itself) not being enabled in vortex (but ultimately this is up to whether it's in the plugins.txt). The reason is likely that the esp is not present in your plugins.txt, so make sure you have enabled the plugin, not just the mod, in your mod manager.
Also, make sure you have launched skyrim vr at least once outside of any mod manager, so that your initial plugins.txt gets created.
There is nothing special about Higgs's esp file, and if it isn't being loaded by the game, this must be an issue with your mod setup.
There isn't much I can do to help past explaining what the errors mean.

Q. I cannot grab or pull anything, even though the objects are highlighted. I press the trigger / grip and nothing happens.
A. Check if the problem is solved by increasing TriggerPreemptTime in the higgs ini to say, 0.1. If yes, then your issue is probably that you have a low framerate / high frame time. Your options here are to increase TriggerPreemptTime to whatever minimum value gets it so that grabbing/pulling works consistently for you, or to fix your framerate, whatever may be causing that.
Do not raise TriggerPreemptTime too high, as this value determines how long your input is delayed when pressing the trigger / grip. If it's high, all your trigger and grip inputs will be noticeably delayed.

Q. My weapon moves up and down in my hands when I move while two-handing it, or objects that I grab move up and down.
A. This is due to vrik's head bobbing. Higgs will automatically disable this while holding something, but only if using the latest version of vrik (and the way that vrik provides its mod interface is a little buggy so there's a small chance it won't work even with the latest version of vrik).
If you are using the latest version of vrik already, then you'll have to disable head bobbing in vrik's mcm to resolve this.

Q. I want to disable the gravity gloves feature / text on the back of my hand / tweak some feature of this mod
A. See the Configuration section.

Q. Objects are not being highlighted or highlighted objects are not where I expect them to be
A. By default, the palm direction is used for selecting objects to highlight. If you rotate your hand so that the back of your hand kind of faces towards you / up, that should feel natural. The direction can be adjusted by changing the PointingVectorX/Y/Z options in the higgs ini file.

Q. My grip button is not working when I'm holding something
A. The grip is used for grabbing and so won't send input to the game. If your grip is bound to 'activate' like with the vrik bindings, then putting the object over your shoulder should achieve what you want to do instead.

Q. I can't put certain things over my shoulder. They just drop down and hit me.
A. Certain things can't be activated or put into your inventory, like candles, rocks, and other physics-enabled objects that aren't actually items, even though higgs lets you pick them up in your hands.

Fin

A huge thanks to Cangar for testing, making videos, and keeping people updated on this mod while it was in development, as well as blazeyboyyy for screenshots, Muken, CylonSurfer, frazaman, prog, Shizof, and others.

Source can be found here