R.E.A.L. VR mod developer Luke Ross is back with his latest project. This time it’s a Horizon: Zero Dawn VR mod.
Update: We’re talking to Ross about performance issues we had with the mod and trying to see if we can improve our gameplay experience. For now, we’ve removed our video and replaced it with one where the mod runs better!
As in the PlayStation game, not the Meta social platform.
Ross is releasing the mod to his Patreon subscribers today. It allows you to play the PC version of Guerrilla Games’ flagship PlayStation series with a headset, though still using a gamepad to navigate the world. Ross’ work even includes an experimental first-person camera and the ability to remove Aloy’s character model so there isn’t any orange hair swinging into the camera every few seconds.
Take a look at some gameplay from our friends Cas and Chary below.
Horizon: Zero Dawn VR Mod Gameplay
We’ve played a few hours of the mod now. As always, it’s an impressive conversion from Ross that — as with most VR mods — isn’t perfect. We struggled to get performance running at a consistently acceptable level (maxing out at around 45fps using a 3070 Ti card), and there are the expected weird moments of playing a third-person flatscreen game in first-person with VR.
That said it’s interesting to see how the mod changes the Horizon experience. Hiding in the long grass, for example, obscures your view of enemies just as much as you hide from them, and it feels great to be able to aim with your head rather than the sticks on the gamepad.
This marks Ross’ seventh VR mod, including work on GTAV and Red Dead Redemption 2 as well as, more recently, the Mafia trilogy. Earlier in the month we reported that the modder is looking to release a Cyberpunk 2077 mod next.
As for Horizon, hopefully this is just a taste of what’s to come for the franchise and VR. With a PS5 VR headset in the works, hopefully we see an official version of the franchise in headsets sooner or later.
Are you going to be checking out the Horizon: Zero Dawn VR mod? Let us know in the comments below!
