He’s probably got other places to be after all. The only thing that could possibly make the experience more authentic is if Phil Mills were sitting next to you… but it would be a little awkward afterwards when you immediately fire up your Dunfermline Athletic Football Manager save. This is rallying, and in VR you really do experience all the visceral thrills. With its genre-leading engine notes and impressive weather effects, DR 2.0 sets the benchmark for immersion in rally sims, and arguably, in the racing genre as a whole.įiring through a dark and rainy Welsh forest in the middle of the night, aiming your Group B Metro 6R4 at the next muddy apex, exhaust note ricocheting off the claustrophobia-inducing trees as you inevitably spin on a twig and beach yourself in a ditch. DiRT Rally 2.0Ī hugely popular rally title, at the moment DiRT Rally 2.0 (DR 2.0) is the only focused rally title designed with VR compatibility in mind.
Arguably the handling physics are an improvement on PCARS 2, but there still exists a perceptible MADNESS engine whiff about how the cars behave, and for me, that’s not wholly positive.Īs an early-backer of AMS2, I paid $99.99/£75 to receive the game plus all future DLC, so I’m invested in this being a great game, but at the moment I can only recommend it as a fun VR title. In terms of VR performance, it matches PCARS 2 in the immersion stakes it looks pretty, has some excellent sounds and runs smoothly even with multiple cars on track. AMS2 has less content overall, but it feels like there’s been a little more attention to detail in what’s there. They’ve maintained the same jaw-dropping visuals and dynamic weather used by Slightly Mad Studios in their title.
However, AMS2 arguably has the upper hand in terms of physics, having been refined by crack Brazilian developers Reiza over the past 18 months. Automobilista 2Īutomobilista 2 (AMS2) uses the same MADNESS physics engine as Project CARS 2, so in a lot of ways, the two games are very similar in how they handle and look.
Puddles form organically, snow flutters onto your windscreen and the sunset over the Ferris wheel at Le Mans is truly a sight to behold, doubly so in VR.īest of all though, it has licenses to use the Ind圜ar Series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval, so you can feel like you’re actually in the Indy 500. PCARS 2 uses Slightly Mad Studios’ proprietary MADNESS physics engine, with one of its key features being the sort of dynamic weather never seen before in a racing game. The action speeds along fluidly, and even with 20+ AI opponents on the grid it maintains impressive graphical fidelity. However, when you find the right car and track combination – plus pick the right weather and time of day – PCARS 2 is an absolute delight and a definite must-try for any racing fans with a VR headset. I could write a whole article about the things I don’t like about this game a lot of the cars handle very strangely and some of the engine sounds are unconvincing or just plain wrong (looking at you, Ford GT with four cylinders). Whether its vehicle handling matches its graphical prowess is arguable, but after spending some time with PCARS 2 in VR I can categorically say it works tremendously well. Not only that, but it has some of the best changeable weather effects in any game, and it still looks great four years after release.
Released in 2017, Project CARS 2 (PCARS 2) garnered favourable reviews from fans and critics alike, as it crammed a whole bunch of racing content into one PC and console – from Ind圜ars to Rallycross. In the UK this costs £299.99 for the 128GB version, and £399.99 for the 256GB option. For the purposes of this test, we used the Oculus Quest 2 headset, soon to retail as the Meta Quest 2, which has proven to be one of the most accessible headsets on the market due to its gaming performance and relative affordability. Well, we’re here to help, and the following is a list of what we think are the top five racing game VR experiences around. You’ve heard the positives and negatives – more immersion vs motion sickness – and now you’re looking for some awesome sim racing experiences to blow you away. So, you’ve been nice to yourself this Christmas and bought a shiny new VR headset.