Vortex support for SkyrimVR being less and less effective.

[valentueur]

Hi everyone I would like to start a topic about Vortex regarding the way it handle the game SkyrimVR, especially recently.

First, at the time I'm writting this message I'm using the version 1.14.8 of Vortex, and users I know are also using this version.

I've been maintaining a Collection for SkyrimVR for 2+ years now and while I've seen many improvements either on the community side (SkyrimVR esl support) or Vortex side (Reinstalling mods to apply differents FOMOD choice when updating a Collection), I've also noticed some bad stuff going on, especially recently and I feel theses recent issues need to be looked at.

 

One of the recent update of Vortex (I ignore which one exactly) introduced a new "feature" that tells you that most mods (if not all of them) you want to install for SkyrimVR aren't compatible with the managed game and they don't even appear as uninstalled in your list of mods like it used to do when you've just downloaded it.

Basically now to install your mod once downloaded, you need to select the install button from the Vortex's notifications (see attached file) and if you miss it you can also do it via the Download tab but I doubt a lot of peoples knows that.
When you're about to install your mod you're then prompted with a message telling you that the game you're managing (SkyrimVR) isn't compatible with the mod (see attached file), which is not true for most cases. 

I've noticed that now we got 3 Skyrim related download folder in Vortex and only one is being used (see attached file), my memory isn't perfect but I think the skyrimse folder is new. The SkyrimVR folder hasn't been used in a while and that's actually been an issue for me as a Collection Curator for the Binary Patching feature (I will come back to this later because it's quite complex to explain in detail and it's not the main focus of this post).

 

Now we need to speak about the download of Collections, recently a lot of users reported me various complex issues ranging from an infinite loop of downloading mods and moving them around from one download folder to an other, one particular mod (CS light) that is never counted as being installed despite being already installed by the Collection therefore blocking the finalisation of the Collection and some peoples that can't access a .7z file that probably contain important data for the Collection (see attached file).
All of this is pretty new to me and I can't fix it on my end, something changed the way Vortex see SkyrimVR and it need to be fixed or reverted back.

I've asked peoples to give more feedback under this post to help figure out exatly what are the issues and how to fix it, I hope they will comes with detailed post.

 

 

[valentueur]

About the Binary Patching

When I want to remove a file from a mod as part of a binary patching I simply can't do it anymore, this issue isn't new and I've reported it 2 times already under the feedback button of Vortex but nothing has been done about it so here I am.
 

After deleting a file from a mod (right click on a mod + open in file manager and then delete the file) when I want to apply the binary patching in the Collection I got an error message.

To get around this message I move the coresponding archive located in skyrimse download folder to the download folder of SkyrimVR.

And it does the job! Now that the binary patching is applied I try to upload the update and I got an other error message preventing me to plublish the update.

 

I need to restart Vortex so I stop being notified about an infinite upload of a new Revision, the mod archive get moved back to the skyrimse download folder and when I try to upload the Revision again I got an other error message.

And I can 100% confirm that the archive is existing inside the skyrimse folder.

And that's it, can't do it anymore, it's just stuck there. I used to be able to use this feature when Vortex was downloading mods directly into SkyrimVR download folder instead of SkyrimSE download folder (that was more than a year ago now).
I understand that for saving disk space the dev team choosed to use only 1 download folder for both games but they broke the binary patching feature for SkyrimVR as the same time and despite my reports thay haven't fixed it yet. 

 

Please, pretty please! fix theses things, it's getting harder and harder to get nice stuff going for VR :(.

[Mellanie1992]

Its switching folders once the file is done downloading between SE, VR, or Special Edition.

My uneducated guess is LOOT and the GameBryo extensions being completely broken.
Loot gives Skyrim.esm on Skyrim VR a more than 10 lines of Error in the code.

I've fiddled around a bit and Loot stops having an error on disabling some,
However it probably breaks as much as is placebo fixing at first sight though does give a lead i think.

If anyone has a much older version and is able to share their Gamebryo Extension files,
I might be able to test how much we can fix there with that older file.

Also some Author named Pickysaurus might be more knowledgeable to reach out to,
Perhaps he/she/they can shed some light?



I've also noticed many Smartscreen Messages popping up while downloading,
Not even unpacking mods. (Disabled that before hand.)

Reinstalling Vortex from scratch did not help any amount either,
I've cleaned up the Documents, Appdata, and Loose files in Programfiles after uninstalling.
Yet the issues persist as if nothing changed.

Current Version: 1.14.8 (07/09/2025)
2 Days Old Update.

[ChemBoy1]

Vortex's download code has been changed quite extensively recently in an attempt to improve performance when downloading collections. This has had some unintended side effects.

For example, my GitHub downloader code bundled with several of my game extensions was broken by a Vortex update. 

This doesn't have anything specifically to do with LOOT or gamebryo-plugin extensions, most likely.

Please report these issues on the Vortex GitHub page so that Nagev can investigate.