Meta Quest 3: Update with massive improvements for Bonelab
VR shooter Bonelab is getting a massive update that brings performance improvements to Quest 3, as well as lots of new content for all platforms.
Stress Level Zero has released an extensive update called “Patch 4” for the physics-based VR shooter Bonelab. Over the past 18 months, the studio has made several fundamental developments that have now been incorporated into the update. This includes extensive changes “under the hood” that affect performance and bring general improvements.
The patch brings optimizations in three main areas: improvements to the player rig, updates to the SDK, and an overhaul of the zone system, as well as an expansion of spawnable assets for level creators. For Meta Quest 3, the game now features 4x anisotropic filtering, improved rendering, and a much larger texture cache.
Other changes include an updated MarrowSDK for mod level creation, a redesigned zone system for performance optimization and marrow entity tracking, and an expanded dynamic object library for use in custom levels. The spawn gun UI, handles, and individual levels have also been reworked. Numerous optimizations have also been made in the areas of rendering, load times, asset streaming, collision detection, textures, sounds, shading, and memory consumption.
Our impression of Bonelab
In our extensive review, Bonelab disappointed us overall. The cool physics engine and the body swapping between characters with different abilities are positive features. However, the latter is used much too late in the story campaign.
Points of criticism are the too easy difficulty of the fights, a sometimes confusingly staged campaign and a lack of comfort options for VR beginners or players who are susceptible to motion sickness. Aids such as a black vignette or teleportation are completely absent. The quality of the level design also varies.
The Quest 2 version by Bonelab at least offers a full implementation of the physics engine, but has to accept significant graphical compromises compared to the PC VR version. On the other hand, the game runs smoothly on the standalone headset.
Bonelab supports community mods based on the Marrow SDK for both PC-VR and Quest 2.
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