Addon Review: AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality)
Comments (0) * As of Patch 3.3.5, AVR will cease to work! It was fun while it lasted… *
AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality) allows you to draw and add lines, circles and other markings in-game environment itself. All markings may also be shared with others, but I assume they need to have the addon installed as well. Raid leaders will find this addon an extremely helpful tool for explaining strats to the raid. For example, it can be used to mark locations when explaining raid tactics. These marks can even be left visible for the fight itself. Say goodbye to all those flares!
To install: Copy the folder to your Addon folder, restart WoW and you’re good to go.
Other things you can do with AVR:
- Draw range circles around you at any range
- Clearly mark players close to you
- Bossmods type things, currently adds a red circle on Festergut spores, Putriced Malleable Goo (one target only), Rotface ooze explosion and Sindragosa Frost beacons. (Requires BigWigs for these to work.)
- Mark any location relative to player position and rotation, for example mage blink landing spot
- Measure distances
Here’s a screenshot of how the addon looks like in game.
Here comes the best part. The coolest thing is that it integrates with another addon: “AVR Encounters” (aka AVRE) to provide visual effects to highlight various boss mechanics, “boosting” your raid awareness heaps. You can download the godly addon AVRE here.
Currently AVRE supports only some encounters in the Icecrown Citadel raid:
- Icecrown Citadel: Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Festergut, Rotface, Professor Putricide, Blood Prince Council, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, The Lich King (does not work correctly after the platform collapses due to Blizzard zone coordinate bugs).
- Ulduar: Hodir, Freya, Mimiron, General Vezax, Yogg-Saron.
Example videos:
These are some somewhat early examples of what AVR+AVRE can do. The graphics have been altered a bit since these videos were taken, but you get the idea.
- Putricide (Unbound Plague):
- Putricide (Malleable Goo):
Addon memory usage is surprisingly decent… ~780kb of addon memory usage in our Lich King attempts, way lower than some resource-intensive addons such as Grid or Recount. If you have a decent system, it doesn’t hurt your framerate very much. Yes, it does lower it some. If you have a slow computer or low frame rate already, I wouldn’t recommend using AVR/AVRE.
Overall, I think this is a really excellent addon and an extremely valuable tool for raid leaders to explain raid tactics precisely, accurately on the in-game environment. Coupled with AVRE, there is no reason for you to fail at certain boss fights now!
