Cockpits and virtual reality are practically made for one another, with VR racing games delivering a sense of place and realism beyond anything you can experience on a flat panel. Many earlier VR headsets, like the original PSVR, were limited both by lower fidelity panels and hardware driving them. That makes the arrival of Gran Turismo 7 VR on PSVR2 exciting, with the entirety of the game now playable within virtual reality at a far higher level of fidelity. This no compromise approach has the potential to provide a truly killer experience, but does it deliver?
GT7’s VR mode comes courtesy of an update, which also adds the fancy new Sophy AI opponents we’ll touch on later. After installing the update and launching the game, it’s not clear how to play in VR with the game just floating in space like other non-VR content – but once you begin a race or a select a VR-specific feature VR activates automatically. This approach is a little odd, but makes sense given that the game uses a gamepad (or wheel!) rather than the Sense controllers. The game seamlessly switches between 2D and VR modes as the headset is removed or replaced, so you can also take a breather when needed.
Once you sit down and begin a race in VR though, you might not want to ever leave. The cockpit VR experience here is sublime. Gran Turismo 7 already featured some of the most detailed cockpits in racing game history but I never used them in the base game because they occupy too much screen real estate, making it more difficult to see the road. In VR, all that changes and the cockpit suddenly becomes this natural place that beautifully replicates the sense of scale you’d expect from driving a real car. Everything is sized up perfectly – from the wheel itself to the various dials and LCD readouts, it’s all meticulously realised. All the work poured into those realistic physically-based materials pays off big time – it’s really striking.
