Fans add Oculus Rift support to Alien: Isolation

Ingenious fans of Alien: Isolation have managed to add Oculus Rift support to the game through some simple edits in one of the game’s data files.

Oculus Rift support looked like it was going to be included in the full release of the game back at E3 as developers Creative Assembly had put together a demo that was shown off on the show floor with the use of the virtual reality device. The developers later revealed that it was simply just a tech demo and they had no intention to include it in the final release.

This demo was also shown off to the public at EGX at the end of last month and generally received positive feedback from anyone trying it.

The workaround that players have discovered requires changing a couple of settings in the ENGINE_SETTINGS.XML file found in the DATA folder. The full instructions can be found on this Reddit thread.

Although there are reports of a certain level of instability and a few crashes here and there, the hack appears to be very effective and even allows for positional head tracking in the game that lets players lean round corners.

Alien: Isolation was released earlier this week and has received a positive critical feedback from many outlets, including Bit-Tech, which have praised the game’s slower pace and sense of atmosphere. Andy Kelly at PC Gamer also added that negative reviews were possibly a result of people trying to rush through the game.

’If you’re playing the game and you’re trying to rush to the end - perhaps, for instance, to get a review filed on time - you’re going to find it, inevitably, frustrating,’ writes Kelly.