Oh wow, congrats; making me jealous! Soon as I saw your post, I immediately started looking at Microcenter to see what was available. Best I could really do is a 9060XT, which is a fairly mild upgrade over my 6700XT and probably not worth it, but still quite tempting! Plus this 6700XT is only 2 years old for me and I feel like I should at least make it 4, given my last card lasted me like 8 years.
I have absolutely never heard this term or encountered this type of gamer before. I've met people here and there that mostly go for big AAA games and don't explore much beyond that--last guy I met like this was all about Immortals of Aveum or whatever the title was--but not this other singular type. Guess I'm lucky in that most of the people I know who play games, maybe aren't as invested in talking about them like I am, but at least play a huge swath of different types that run the gamut.
Not sure if anyone recalls how I feel about Mechwarrior 5, but basically, I think it's a bit crap. The AI sucks, the maps are small, the missions lack variety and overall, I think it's generally just a bit boring.
So, since Thursday I have done nothing (gameplay wise) but play Mechwarrior 5, because I finally got around to installing the VR mod. It is
absolutely incredible. I have been unable to tear myself away from it, nor stop thinking about it since I got it working and I'm a person who doesn't really like MW5 nor really care for VR. My VR headset generally sits in a cabinet unused for long periods.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xGk1mhsY5g
But my God, I can't help but play this and just be completely enraptured, awed and absolutely stunned by how much more amazing MW5 is, in spite of its flaws (of which all are still true), just piloting a mech in VR and feeling like
you are there. Playing my campaign, piloting my Griffin and looking over to the left of my cockpit to see my giant shoulder mounted missile launcher is unlike any other experience I've had in gaming up to this point.
The modders put in incredible work, remodeling great swaths of the game, including cockpits, the initial Home screen, the star map (which is awe inspiring to navigate) and all kinds of other things. The HUD, aside from stuff like your crosshair and heat, has been completely moved to be diegetic, so when you're in your mech, you're looking at screen readouts on your actual dash/cockpit panel. Your map, your weapons, your Lance, enemy targets, mission info, everything. Often, I've found myself in a mech I'm unfamiliar with cockpit wise and I have to look around to actually get my bearings and find where each of the screens are, so I can get that information as I run a mission.
Not just that, but being in different mechs actually
feels different. My Griffin has this wide open windscreen where I can see around my instrument cluster, around my legs and have wide peripheral vision through the huge amount of glass. Other mechs can feel downright claustrophobic, like my little Commando's I have in my Lance, who just have a tiny windscreen in a part of the head, significantly decreasing battlefield awareness.
It's just incredible. I had been playing a lot of Darkest Dungeon 2 and was branching out into emulating Breath of the Wild again, but MW5VR has completely shut that down and I have zero motivation to play either of those games right now and simply want to exist within the Battletech universe.
One thing that is a little disappointing is that it doesn't work great with my HOTAS setup. The HOTAS itself works fine and brings an even further level of immersion, considering you can see your pilots hands on the stick and throttle, which move in-tune with your own inputs. This did make the game a lot harder for me, but it just felt so good I didn't want to stop using it. Unfortunately, I did eventually put that setup away, because you can't use it to navigate through the menus and must instead use your keyboard and mouse or a gamepad, which would be fine, but the mouse cursor disappears in VR and after a mission, the Gamepad becomes non-functional for navigation, necessitating you taking off the VR headset and then navigating with the mouse on the your actual computer screen. So I've gone back to using keyboard and mouse for missions and then picking up my gamepad for menu navigation.
Altogether an absolutely incredible experience. I showed my oldest, as he loves Battletech and MW5 as well and he's become similarly obsessed with it.
Anyway, it's awesome. Highly recommended.