Back when the Oculus Rift DK1 was released, Valve added an obscure, tech demo mode of Team Fortress 2 which enables basic, hacky support for the device. The UI was unreadable, the Scout moves way too fast to ever be plausible in VR, the resolution was so low that you are basically nearsighted....

And it was never updated to newer drivers when the Oculus Rift DK2 and Consumer Version 1 (CV1) came out, making it unusable since the method of pushing graphics to the Rift screen changed. (And worse, I don't think it has proper headtracking support, just the early tilt sensor with estimated head offsets maybe?)

But you know what? They gave me a Rift DK1 in-game hat that only glows if I'm playing in VR mode, so by goneit I am going to play in VR mode.

You will need the following:

1. Oculus Rift CV1 (If you have an HTC Vive instead, lucky you, you don't need this guide.)
   
2. GPU drivers that let you force arbitrary resolutions on your monitor. (I use the latest nVidia drivers, I don't know if others have this option.)
   
3. Virtual Desktop, a $15 tool from the Steam store which was definitely not made for this. (Read the rest of the guide carefully before wasting money on it.)

1. Set your desktop resolution to HTC Vive's native resolution: 2160x1200. I can create a custom resolution in the nVidia control panel for this purpose.
   
2. Install and/or open Steam VR. Do not put your headset on yet.
   
3. Run Virtual Desktop. This will begin streaming your desktop to your device. Do not put your headset on yet.
   
4. Check the "Enable Direct SBS" option in Virtual Desktop.
   
5. Set Team Fortress 2's launch options to: -vr
   
6. Run Team Fortress 2 through Steam. Do not put your headset on yet.
   
7. Disregard warning that Team Fortress 2 is not a VR game and never will be.
   
8. If Team Fortress 2 is Fullscreen, you probably won't be able to see it in your headset, so let's fix that:
   
9. In Team Fortress 2's video options, you'll find a new setting for "Disable Virtual Reality". Set it to "Enable Virtual Reality" and click OK. This will give you a warning that VR mode will be enabled on restart, but also force the game into windowed mode, which is what we really wanted.
   
10. In Team Fortress 2's options you'll also probably want to set the resolution to be as high as possible. This won't affect the window size, just the rendering detail, making text more readable and such.

Assuming all went well, you may now put your headset on.

• Attempt to play Team Fortress 2 at about 10 frames per second with a janky UI that barely functions, a mouse pointer that completely disappears all the time, and classes like Scout and Spy who zip around so fast you can barely ever see where you are.
  
• Throw up and curse the Gods who are punishing you for going against their whims.
  
• Increase in jealousy of Vive owners, who can just skip all the hacky workarounds and play it in VR at full framerate, simply because Oculus completely removed the obscure legacy option we needed to be able to run this the right way. You're probably already jealous of them because literally every good VR game requires hand-tracking motion controllers which Oculus still isn't selling yet.
  
• Cry yourself to sleep, whimpering about all the broken VR promises and how unfair life is despite the wealth of gratuities and good intentions of everyone towards you poor early adopters. People have literally[www.digitaltrends.com] died in their efforts to bring you VR.
  
• Consider getting a refund on Virtual Desktop if it's not useful to you in some other way.