Homeworld: Unboundactivework in progressReleases →
Homeworld (1999) in room-scale VR, running natively on a Meta Quest 3.
Not streamed from a PC, and not the flat game on a virtual monitor. The engine renders the battle in tracked stereo around you, and you command the fleet by pointing at it.
Homeworld’s own fiction was already describing this. You play Karan S’jet, a scientist who had herself surgically integrated into the Mothership’s core and who perceives the fleet through a neural link rather than through a screen. Every one of the game’s interface conventions is a compromise made for a mouse and a monitor. This port removes the compromise rather than adding a gimmick.
The name comes from the Bentusi, the trader race who gave up planets to live in the void — the Unbound. It cuts the other way too.
What VR actually changes
Orders are placed in real 3D, because a tracked controller has six degrees of freedom where a mouse has two. Routes are drawn freehand and flown as curves. Ships are their true relative size, with the monitor-era scaling that inflates distant fighters switched off. The two hands have distinct jobs — one commands, one points — and a command wheel at the left wrist carries the twenty-odd verbs that six buttons cannot.
Lineage
An unaffiliated fan project, built on the source Relic released in 2003 by way of Homeworld SDL and Gardens of Kadesh. No game assets from any commercial release are distributed. Homeworld is a trademark of its respective owners.
6 learnings from this project →
Updates
Homeworld: Unbound 0.4 — one APK, and a crash worth writing down
Two APKs became one that plays either campaign, B became the attack button, drawn routes are flown as curves — and hyperspacing out of a mission stopped crashing the game.
Homeworld: Unbound 0.2 — the lighting fix
A player said the ships looked lit from all sides where the original lit them from one distant source. They were right, and the cause was the colour space, not the shading.
Homeworld: Unbound 0.3 — handling fixes
A round of fixes that only show up once you actually play: focusing put you inside the hull, the Mothership stole every click near it, and drawn routes bulged past where your hand went.
Homeworld: Unbound 0.1 — it runs on the headset
First release. Homeworld 1999 rendering in tracked stereo on a Quest 3, natively, with orders given by pointing at the fleet rather than through a virtual monitor.