VR certainly seen as a luxury and in some circles as a gimmick. I think the former is true, despite the high cost of entry (and even more if you want a headset connected to a PC or console), but it’s absolutely not a gimmick. Seeing is believing in VR, hence Sony’s launch PlayStation VR2 headsets and controllers sparked another wave of “it’s impossible to explain how good VR is” chatter. That’s true to an extent, but I’m here to tell you that you should buy a PS VR2 to play Gran Turismo 7. It’s so good. And I’m not really a big fan of Gran Turismo.
As I write this, I’m still recovering from the moment in Resident Evil Village where the head movement went out of my control (during a cutscene), which resulted in a momentary wave of nausea. Having played Drive Club VR on the original PS VR, I expected similar gut-wrenching results to GT7. To my surprise and frankly relief, I can play GT7 in VR for hours without any issues. I’m not very well versed in the technical side of things so I can’t explain why this is, but GT7 is a safe entry point into VR, although be careful if you’ve never experienced VR before. .
And what would that entry point be. If your first VR experience is the excellent Gran Turismo 7, which in my opinion is only slightly superior to the full PS5 version playable on your TV, you’ve won the VR lottery. Load it, go racing, and when the start timer runs out, you’ll be in the cockpit of the car. you are there Actually there It’s a really amazing feeling.
The feeling of being in the car is so great that I almost expect the drivers of the other cars I regularly stare at to psyche them up to wave (or make rude hand gestures) at me. I half expected them to have real faces, their mouths silent but clearly saying things that shouldn’t be repeated. It’s all so wonderful that even looking out the rear window or looking at the passenger seats evokes a certain admiration. And actually important things like the feeling of speed and undulation of the track, simply put, load better in VR.
No doubt someone will be going 100 mph to the comments section right now, desperate to honk and tell me that I’m actually an idiot for not talking about some random game that offered this on PC VR back in 2016 or something. I’m sure that’s true. What’s not true is that a regular console has offered a regular (and frankly huge) racing sim in VR before. And even if you can pin it on them, it sure wasn’t the same quality as the PS VR2 in GT7.
I have to say that while the virtual reality experience in GT7 on PS VR2 is phenomenal, it’s not perfect. Everything except the real race and the VR garage mode is not in VR, just flipping the display onto a huge cinema-style screen. It’s perfectly functional, and the real meat here is obviously the actual racing, but some real VR interface would be nice.
The bigger issue is how you can somehow feel like you’re not sitting quite right in the car. Most of the time it was great, but sometimes I was too close to the wheel, too high or too low. You can fix this by changing your head position and then resetting the VR position, but it’s a bit annoying and takes you out of the situation for the moment.
But these are minor annoyances in the grand scheme of things. The main takeaway from this is that PS VR2 has turned me from so-so about Gran Turismo 7 to wanting to go back for a few more races when I get the chance. I love it, and if you’ve bought a new PlayStation headset or are thinking about it, unless you really don’t like driving, you need to make GT7 one of your first experiences.