HowToFishXR

HowToFishXR brings full 6DoF PCVR support to How to Fish, including tracked hands, physical fishing, two-handed weapons, roomscale movement, full-body IK, VR-ready UI, and multiplayer pose syncing.

This is a Windows PCVR mod. It is not a standalone Quest or PICO APK.

Requirements

• How to Fish on Windows/Steam.
• A PCVR headset and active OpenXR runtime, such as SteamVR, Meta/Oculus, PICO Connect, or Virtual Desktop.
• BepInEx 5.4.2305. The mod manager installs this dependency automatically.

Controls

Only the right-hand laser controls menus. The right hand is always the primary tool and weapon hand.

Features

• Physical rod casting and reeling while preserving the game's fishing behavior.
• One- and two-handed gun aiming with physical sights, muzzle-correct firing, recoil, and support-hand steering.
• Physics-aware fish, food, item, creature, and dead-body handling with improved throwing.
• Full-body IK or Hands Only mode, roomscale movement, physical crouching, and snap or smooth turning.
• VR-converted HUD, menus, dialogue, character customization, item markers, death screen, water, damage effects, and UI blur.
• Correct VR handling for TNT, brass knuckles, punching, scopes, boats, and held-item animations.
• Multiplayer VR body, hand, tool, and fishing-pose synchronization between modded players.
• VR or flat-screen startup without uninstalling the mod.

Multiplayer

HowToFishXR provides full multiplayer pose syncing between VR and flat-screen players who have the mod installed. Modded players can see VR head, hand, body, tool, and fishing poses. Some VR-player movements or interactions may still look inaccurate or bugged to other players; those remaining sync issues are actively being patched.

Fishing

Hold the left trigger, swing the rod from the side like a baseball bat without swinging too fast, and release slightly early as the rod comes forward.

To reel physically, hold the left grip near the reel and rotate your hand around the crank. You can switch freely between physical reeling and holding the right trigger.

VR Settings

The in-game VR Settings menu includes body mode, turning mode, snap angle, smooth-turn speed, roomscale movement, sprint mode, crouch mode, HUD scale, death view, and calibration.

Hand placement, right-hand primary controls, HUD distance, native player height, and VR visual behavior use permanent tested values.

Installation

Mod manager

Install HowToFishXR through the Thunderstore Mod Manager or r2modman. BepInEx will be installed automatically as a declared dependency.

Manual

1. Install BepInEx 5.4.2305 using the instructions on its package page.
2. Download and unzip the HowToFishXR package.
3. Copy its BepInEx folder into the folder containing How to Fish.exe and allow the folders to merge.
4. Start your OpenXR runtime, then launch the game.

Headset support

HowToFishXR supports major PCVR OpenXR headsets and controllers, including Meta Quest 1/2/3/3S over PCVR, Rift/Rift S, Valve Index, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, HP Reverb G2, Meta Touch Pro, and PICO PCVR.

Open source and support

HowToFishXR is free and open source under Apache 2.0. Source code, issue reporting, and build instructions are available on GitHub.

Donations are entirely optional. The mod is free and nothing is locked behind payment. If you would like to support development, visit Ko-fi.

Credits

• Created and directed by J_axon.
• Testing by mrbub, VernalWitch, Feesh, Wake, Aeolian, and supersaiyanslyr.

Changelog

All notable changes to HowToFishXR will be documented here.

1.3.0

• Changed empty-hand, brass-knuckle, and knife attacks from head aim to calibrated right-hand aim.
• Increased VR melee targeting reach from the game's 1.5 meters to a 3-meter minimum and added direct input-time targeting for ground-creature bodies whose small or buried colliders are rejected by the delayed melee pipeline.
• Added a temporary segmented melee guide for empty fists, brass knuckles, and the knife: red during/recent trigger input, then light blue before hiding five seconds after the last input. It starts enabled and has an on/off toggle in VR Settings.
• Added a None turning mode for players who want physical turning only.
• Restored the crab rod's native physical-reel path and throttled only its rate while physically cranking, retaining immediate feedback without the original excessive speed.
• Put the knife through the same authored right-hand root-grip solve used by guns, while suppressing only its local flat-screen sway and attack-lunge animation in VR.
• Added physical reeling support for the crab fishing rod's differently authored crank axis.
• Fixed the sailing main-menu camera and tracking basis when returning from gameplay, including reuse of the clean initial boat-camera offset.
• Fixed snap-turn body drift by synchronizing the IK body's tracking parent immediately after each turn.
• Centered the full-body IK on the headset's floor-projected body pivot, matching Unity XRI/LCVR and removing the remaining player-root offset that caused a small orbit during snap and smooth turns.
• Moved the knife toward headset/view-left rather than raw controller-local X, restored its previously correct authored-grip rotation solve, and kept the hand fully controller-driven.
• Made the melee guide display the exact input-time assisted target without restoring per-frame creature scans.
• Increased the crab rod's physical-crank speed to 60% of its native rate and enabled the regular rod's fast-reeling multiplier/text when cranked quickly.
• Removed HowToFishXR-owned log output and eliminated per-frame creature enumeration from the melee aiming guide; normal BepInEx logging remains unchanged.
• Prevented remote-player death UI and stale death canvases from appearing in the local headset during multiplayer.
• Made low-health, blood/hit, underwater, and death effects independent of HUD Scale so full-view overlays retain fixed coverage.
• Added full fists, brass-knuckles, knife, and segmented melee-guide documentation with a new showcase GIF.

1.2.0

• Added a VR keyboard that opens for text-entry fields, follows the active menu, uses a dedicated keyboard pointer, and includes a reliable Close button.
• Improved right-hand menu clicking and dragging while keeping the normal menu laser hidden during keyboard input.
• Improved SteamVR cold-start handling so launching before SteamVR is ready does not produce an inverted VR view.
• Applied the finalized hand calibration consistently to guns, fishing rods, and both brass-knuckle meshes.
• Improved render-timed hand, arm IK, and knuckle posing for smoother, correctly aligned motion.
• Restored normal BepInEx logging behavior while keeping unnecessary mod diagnostics and dump systems removed.

1.0.0

• Initial public release.
• Full 6DoF OpenXR head and controller tracking.
• Roomscale movement, physical crouching, snap/smooth turning, recentering, and guided calibration.
• Full-body IK and Hands Only presentation modes.
• Motion-controlled tools, physics-held items, dead bodies, TNT, brass knuckles, and hand-directed throwing.
• Physical rod casting presentation, two-hand reel grip, and physical reeling.
• One- and two-handed gun aiming, physical sights/scopes, muzzle-correct firing, and recoil handling.
• VR conversion for HUD, menus, dialogue, item markers, overlays, character customization, and pointer dragging.
• Underwater, death, damage, low-health, and UI-blur presentation adapted for VR.
• Multiplayer VR body, hand, foot, held-tool, and fishing-line pose synchronization.
• Optional VR/flat-screen startup while the mod remains installed.
• Streamlined VR settings with permanent right-hand primary controls and tested HUD/visual defaults.
• Separate GitHub release packaging with installation documentation; BepInEx remains an external requirement.
• Thunderstore-specific manifest, README, icon, dependency declaration, and package builder.