The hype for Gran Turismo’s VR Tour has been tempered regularly since it was announced, boiling down to a limited mode that supports only one versus one racing. Despite that, the experience has an opportunity to show off what some photo-realistic racing could look like in VR and we went hands-on with it at E3 2017.
The setup at E3 was a full, single-driver cockpit with a high-end steering wheel and pedals.
The volume on audio was fairly low, which took away from the experience because of the loud environment outside of the VR headset, but that’s something that is fixed when playing at home. Beyond that, the race was a pleasant and comfortable experience. While it is disappointing that the VR races are only one vs one, the trade-off there is that it doesn’t really look like Gran Turismo sacrifices a great deal visually when using it in VR mode.
The developers of Gran Turismo pride themselves on essentially being a show floor for the world’s best cars and VR is an opportunity to really show players how it feels to be in the seat of a supercar. It’s no surprise that they’re focusing on a beautiful VR experience but, with the limitation to one versus one on a smaller selection of tracks, we’ll have to accept that GT Sport VR in its current form is yet another cool tech demo for VR. That makes GT Sport at least a taste of a virtual future.
