With Gran Turismo 7’s free PlayStation VR 2 update now live, Polyphony Digital’s latest racing game is immediately one of the must-play experiences for early adopters of PSVR 2, though there’s still room for improvement…
This is everything that original PSVR buyers hoped and dreamed that VR support in GT Sport would be: it’s the entire game available and playable in virtual reality on console. Whether it’s starting from the beginning with a fresh single player run through the Café’s Menu Books, taking on some races to get your daily miles in, heading online in the Sport mode or custom lobbies alongside TV gamers, you get the full experience with Gran Turismo 7 and PlayStation VR 2.
The one new feature for VR is the VR Showroom, letting you place a car in half a dozen meticulously crafted environments – from outside the Café to a track-side garage, or an opulent showroom with windows for days. Here you can slowly move around the car, inspecting each element close up or getting inside it. Get too close and you’ll end up fading through to a minimal wireframe outline, mind you.
But it’s the driving that’s the star of the show in any Gran Turismo and it is fantastic. After navigating menus that simply project the PS5 TV experience in front of you, you’re transported into the driving seat and cockpit as soon as you start driving. If you’ve spent dozens of hours staring straight ahead in racing games, or even have a big multi-screen set up with PC (or GT5 on PS3), the shift to VR is remarkable as you’re fully ensconced in the car.
Right out the gate I hopped into a quick race on Grand Valley – a circuit that has been remade for GT7 and added in the same update 1.29 release today. You can really get a sense for the circuit in VR. You can look into corners and gauge your speed more naturally through them, you can glance in mirrors to peep at your following competitors (as well as a floating HUD in the car’s centre), you can really take in the elevation changes as some of the world’s most iconic tracks fall down steep hills before rising up the other side.
Jumping over to a rally car and one of the few dirt tracks in the game, and you can push this combination to the limit. Every large jump will buzz your head upon impact, you’re constantly counter-steering to drift through corners, looking for seconds at a time in the direction you’d like to go even if your car is pointing somewhere else.
It all took a bit of getting used to, for me. I’ve not played Gran Turismo 7 much in the past few months, so many of my braking points would be off in the first place, even without the shift in viewpoint to the cockpit.
If there’s one fundamental weakness here, it’s in the frankly baffling lack of options for VR users. You can’t adjust your seat position, you can’t adjust your height offset, you can’t adjust your viewing angle, you can’t choose whether your viewpoint is kept level to the circuit or the car, you can’t adjust vignettes which can aide those who are prone to motion sickness. It’s bizarre when VR game developers have spent such a long time putting in deep levels of customisation for people to find the settings that are just right for them. Worse, I had the exact same complaints about GT Sport’s lack of options!
I’ve been without my racing wheel for a few months now, and playing with a DualSense controller because of this – this still works surprisingly well in VR – but it’s a glaring oversight that even if I had my wheel, I wouldn’t be able to use any in-game settings to adjust my position so my real hands match those of my avatar.
I also wish that more time was spent in the cars themselves. Pre-race, the menus are still in the flatscreen view instead of a floating UI while you’re in a car, and even when the race starts, you have the external camera cuts before teleporting into the car a few seconds before the lights go green. If you pit mid-race? You guessed it, it’s back to that flat screen view until you cross the speed limiter line on the exit. Oh, and you can’t sit in the cockpit or passenger seat during replays – the VR Replay option is the Music Replay but you’re teleported between different camera points to look around in 3D.
For all my complaints, the fundamentals of Gran Turismo 7 in VR still make it practically essential for anyone getting PSVR 2. Driving cars is a touchstone that non-gamers can easily relate to, especially if you want another game to showcase your new headset, while the millions of ardent motorsports fans will love every moment of what VR can do for racing games. Hopefully Polyphony will expand the options over time, making it a true rival to racing games on PC VR.
Nigeyboy
Really enjoying GT7 so far in VR. I noticed what you mean about how view point level is kept level. Generally I think they’ve kept it to the least sickness inducing settings. but I did find some of the banked corners felt weird, I’d have like to try that locked to the car instead.
In terms of adjusting position in the car. I didn’t have any problem, generally it was spot on, I must have standard length arms. If not though holding the options button recenters the world around where a generic avatar head would be and locks this to your real world surroundings. You’re then free to shift yourself on your own real world seat to get into a position to suits you. e.g. If you want to sit further forward in the car just lean back before pressing ‘options’ and the car will shift backawards. Even in games that offer in game adjustment, I’ve always found it quicker to just recenter how I’d like it.