vittorioromeo/quakevr v1.1.0-beta4

Quake VR: Unleashed 1.1.0-beta4

on GitHub

Quake VR: UNLEASHED 1.1.0 beta 4: the fourth preview of the next update, with everything from beta 3 plus the changes below. This is a beta: expect rough edges, and please report bugs (Options > Create Bug Report makes a zip you can attach). Features marked experimental are off by default or not finished: see the ⚠ section below.

Highlights

• Earned bullet time: the meter now fills from the damage you deal to living monsters instead of over time (a little faster on Easy, slower on Hard and Nightmare). Pressing it empty shows "Bullet time empty: hurt enemies to refill" on your wrist.
• Shoulder charge: the old tackle is replaced. Run at an enemy side-on with a shoulder leading and your hands low to knock it down, with a thud, a rumble and a pain cry (Combat > Ragdoll Triggers; Charge Leniency makes it easier or stricter). Bodies you throw now topple the enemies they hit, by weight.
• One swing, many hits: a swing hits everything its edge passes through (up to 4 things, corpses included), and a wall only once per swing.
• Autosaves and a death menu: three rotating autosaves per map, made only when it is safe (no monster on you, health not low). When you die, a menu opens after 5 seconds with Respawn, Restart the Level and your autosaves, newest first. Load Autosave is also on the main and pause menus.
• Holster Setup: place your holsters and the ammo pouch by drag and drop (VR Settings > Body and Equipment). It is offered after VR Calibration. Magnetic holsters bind or unbind the weapon in your hand at an empty holster.
• Gore you can hear and track: new gore sounds (stump spurts, splatter, tearing, squelches, wet steps, gib slaps, drips; Gore sound volume slider), bloody footprints and handprints, and cut flesh on stumps and severed limbs.
• Smoother play: fewer hitches the first time something happens in a map (the first gore, new monster sizes, Arcane Dimensions spawns), a depth pre-pass for models that saves GPU time, and a new Graphics Presets page with a My Settings entry.
• Player Appearance: a feminine body build, hand shape and voice, painted nails, and a Randomize button.

⚠ Experimental (off by default or not finished)

These are in the build for testing. Expect bugs, and expect their balance and settings to change.

• Armed humanoids (experimental, off by default): grunts and enforcers that carry real weapons, including yours, and fire them with the player weapons' code. They appear only when you turn on Armed Humanoid Replacements (Combat > Armed Grunts (Experimental)) or spawn them with the toolgun. What they can do:
  • Tug-of-war and disarming: grab a gun and pull it away, or knock it out with a hard swing or a thrown weapon. They hold on, headbutt, shove or fire at you while you tug, and they kneel to pick a lost weapon back up.
  • You can shoot the weapon out of their hands (a point-blank shotgun blast usually does it).
  • They parry your blows with their weapon, and you can parry theirs. Their strikes use the whole body.
  • They keep a fighting distance and take care not to shoot their friends. They can dual-wield guns or blades.
  • Pyro and sprayer grunts wear fuel tanks you can shoot.
  • They carry ammo and spare magazines and drop them as loot. Their shots use your Weapon Damage settings.
  • An optional taunt is available (vr_agrunt_taunt 1).
• New weapons (experimental; not placed in any map): the heavy revolver (swing-out cylinder, single shells, flick to open and close), the flare gun (two flares that set things alight, stick to walls and light the room; Flare Gun on Crates stays at 0), and the nail pistol (magazine-fed, with an off-hand cup grip). You can get them from the toolgun and their settings pages. Armed grunts can also carry them.
• Arcane Dimensions support (experimental): when AD is installed you can start it from Play > Official Campaigns, after a prompt saying it is still experimental. What changed for AD in this beta is listed further down.
• Creator and developer tools (flat-screen or dev only): the Rig Studio (flat-screen rig and animation editor), the Pose Studio and Grip Editor (posing armed humanoids in VR), the Ragdoll Tool (-ragtool, a flat-screen ragdoll workbench) and the Blade Shape editor (Weapon Offsets > Posing Mode). They are meant for tuning, not for play.
• Still experimental from earlier betas: single-pass stereo, TAA.

Combat and melee

• Melee no longer depends on frame rate: a swing does the same at 72, 90 and 120 Hz.
• Parry balance: how well a parry works now depends on your weapon, your grip and your timing against each monster group's Parry Poise. The result is a block, a flinch or a stagger.
• Shoves: running shoves carry your speed, two-handed shoves hit 25% harder, and a shove off a ledge tips the enemy over. Shoves no longer make enemies bleed.
• Held enemies struggle: every humanoid flails, zombies struggle too, and held enemies turn their heads to look at you (you can tune this per monster group). Once a body you are dragging by the legs is lying down, the drag holds it firmly.
• Body shields: a corpse or a downed enemy you hold in front of you takes the monsters' shots.
• Swords can now hit bodies lying near the floor.
• Weapons held off their handle collide with the level.
• Two hands throw heavy things farther.
• Crates need two strong hits to break, light ammo no longer breaks them, and a fast hand catch-up no longer counts as a blow.
• Bloodlust heals only from enemies: hitting crates and props no longer heals you.
• A closed fist that strikes a wall torch takes it.
• The two-handed aim now works on cup grips too (on by default for the Widowmaker's front handle).

Enemies and ragdolls

• Zombies fall as active ragdolls (Quake, the mission packs, Dimension of the Machine and Arcane Dimensions), and a beheaded zombie stays dead.
• A staggering enemy now keeps its balance on its feet: knees bent, stepping, arms flailing.
• The enforcer, zombie and mummy ragdolls (AD's variants too) bend at a proper knee.
• Enemies that die against a wall reach out to it and slide down it.
• The Machine Games' infected drop their weapons as they turn, and a gibbed Freddie drops his super nailgun.
• Big monsters have a little less health: up to 20% less, more for bigger monsters (Combat > Monster Health).
• Fixes: a stagger on a step or crate no longer drops the enemy, a snapped neck stays loose after loading a save, and a hand holding an ogre's or death knight's ledge lets go when struck.

Weapons and reloading

• Shotguns load two shells at a time by default, with a second shell sound.
• Nailgun and super nailgun magazines show their top nails, and the nails disappear as the magazine empties. Empty magazines are no longer force-grabbed and don't sparkle when you aim at them.
• The ammo pouch shows what it holds: a pile of shells, two rows of magazines, grenades and rockets, which wobble as you move.
• Spent enemy guns and empty chainsaws lose their loot beam and sparkles and can't be force-grabbed.
• Gun Model Pitch now turns the hand and the aim with the gun. It has been merged into Hand Pitch (your value carries over).
• No more glowing specks on the guns: Model Warp's half-texel shift is fixed, and model-pack skins load only from the model's own game folder.
• The super shotgun's shot is no longer refilled by the hip holster.

Gore, fire and water

• Gore sounds: a separate volume for each kind, quieter drips, and wet chokes (off by default). With gore off, they are silent.
• Gibs: one rule for thrown, held and struck gibs (held smashes burst, light taps bounce), and gibs pop underfoot. Breakable props follow the same rule.
• Shallower dents, cheaper wound painting, and blood marks no longer vanish mid-fight (more decals kept in one spot).
• Flamethrower scorch marks are on by default and appear with every hit. Map flames set monsters and bodies alight, and water puts out flames and lava nails.
• Blood in water: bloody clouds on the surface, and blood slows down under water.
• Shoreline foam for each liquid: spray off the walls for water, a glowing crust for lava, green scum for slime. The foam band moves in and out unevenly along a wavy edge, with sliders for each liquid.

Body, holsters and calibration

• Body and Equipment (VR Settings): your legs fit your standing height, your gear fits your body, and your legs step in time with your run.
• VR Calibration: Stand Tall's eye height becomes your Height, and Undo brings back your old one. The body no longer stays crouched after calibrating.
• Holster Calibration is now on the first VR Settings page, and Holster Setup shows a mirror image of your body beside its panel, with the holster boxes drawn on it as you drag them.
• Seated play: crouch with a stick press, and the hip holsters sit a little further out.
• Climbing: a mantle starts once your head is above the ledge, your feet find footholds on props, and you can climb props from any side.
• Pressing on props: your hand gives instead of pushing a braced prop into the floor.
• Ghost Hands (Player Appearance, off by default): now one solid translucent hand, which fades in from 6 cm away.

Menus, saves and comfort

• VR Settings has been reorganized.
• Item Pickup Mode: Immersive (the default), Auto-Collect or Vanilla (walk over items to take them). There is also a Carry Ammo and Health toggle.
• Comfort > Soften Flickering Lights (0.5 by default, VR only): animated lights swing half as much and change smoothly. Set it to 0 for the original look.
• Text floating in your view follows your head smoothly.
• You can move the VR menu panel by gripping just outside its edge, and it stays where you put it.
• Thumbstick movement: a round deadzone, a response curve and a smoother change from walk to run.
• Vomit Mode (Advanced VR Options > Body > Death View, off): after you die, the view rides your body's head.
• The flat-screen (desktop) hands stay locked to the view, with sway, bob and turn lag.
• Crates and rocks keep their layout when you restart the same map.
• Defaults: Ambient Light 0.1, Smooth model animation, and Heat Haze Detail full size on High and Ultra.

Graphics and performance

• Fewer first-time hitches: work that used to happen the first time something occurred is now done while the map loads (shaders, the first head pop and new monster sizes).
• The model depth pre-pass draws models' depth first, so each pixel is shaded only once.
• The shadow atlas is sized for each map, and physics uses more threads only in big fights, where it pays off.
• The parallax depth write is now on only in Ultra (Medium and High are cheaper).
• The spectator camera is skipped while the desktop window is minimized, and Resolution Scale now moves in steps.
• GitHub issue #79: a focused desktop window no longer slows the headset to the monitor's refresh rate.

Arcane Dimensions (⚠ experimental)

• The Widowmaker: a hand-made model with three spinning barrels, a foregrip on a rail and a darker, more detailed skin. It spins up before the first shot, and its front handle aims two-handed.
• Monster swords and the flail: the Phantom Swordsman's, the Dark Prince's, the justice knight's and the judicator's swords, the Death Fury's swords and the zombie knight's blade can all be dropped and wielded. The death sergeant's flail has a physical ball and chain (its own Flail page).
• Fuel tanks: a dropped flamethrower or sprayer lies with its tank and hose. Shoot the tank to burst it into a fire field or a poison cloud, cut the hose with a blade, or throw the tank at a monster. Pellets on a tank spark instead of bleeding.
• Mini bosses and elite knights (the Death Fury, zombie knight, death lord, stone golem, drole...) resist knockdowns and ragdoll tricks better.
• AD explosions throw props and ragdolls, and AD humanoids flinch, buckle at the knee and limp when hit.
• The ogre's overhead smash comes down where it faced, and ogres drop their chainsaws.
• The flamethrower and sprayer have new fire and mist effects. Plasma bolts glow, arc and push.
• Health vials are bigger and easier to grip. The hammer and mace are heavier.
• AD's metal and stone breakables take as many blows as before. Enemy weapons get relief (normal) maps. AD maps load faster.
• Fixes: the Dark Prince's ragdoll triggers, flames on the body, and a beheaded zombie getting up again.

Fixes

• Late sounds are kept in saves, and fire crackles start again after loading a save.
• A crash around map loads while a motion take was recording.
• The death menu now opens in VR, in front of you.
• Many smaller fixes and cleanups.

Known issues

• Arcane Dimensions: the sky and some lights flicker in VR when you turn or move. This is being investigated; Comfort > Soften Flickering Lights does not fix it.
• Arcane Dimensions hub: the original Quake slipgates on the lower level don't take you anywhere.
• Arcane Dimensions hub: starting it may put a nailgun and a super shotgun in your holsters.
• Armed humanoids (experimental): a knocked-down one that aims high may pull its arm in.
• With Player Appearance > Voice: Feminine, the grunt when you land after a fall still uses the original (masculine) voice. A fix is coming in a later build.
• Two-handed grips very close together on a crate can pull one hand in.
• The magnetic holster's tether chain can stretch on very fast swings.
• Prereleases are not offered by the installer's update feed or the game's update notice. Install this beta from this page (its own QuakeVR-Setup.exe installs it).
• The installer and the game are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn you (More info > Run anyway).

Notes

• Your settings carry over: configs from 1.0.x and earlier betas are migrated on first start. Settings you left at an old default move to the new one, and values you changed stay yours. Gun Model Pitch is folded into Hand Pitch, and Flare Gun on Crates goes to 0.

Full details: docs/vr-port/ROUND22.md in the repository.

Files

Build: Quake VR 1.1.0-beta4 (2026-10-27 c9aedff), commit c9aedff.

HD texture pack (the installer's optional HD textures; not attached here): quakevr-hq-textures-png-2026-10-03.zip, 586.4 MB, SHA-256 0c0df0e7b19525ba3fabfd1a88cce871b4b1321a5cae0134d5ae21636116b706.

Source of ericw-tools' light.exe (GPL-3; QuakeVR.zip ships light.exe): https://github.com/vittorioromeo/quakevr/releases/download/assets-2026-10-08/ericw-tools-2.0.0-alpha11-src.zip

The installer and the game are not code-signed: Windows SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC" (More info > Run anyway). Check a download with Get-FileHash <file> against the table.