A few decades ago, the idea of playing virtual reality games was an unattainable goal. Some game companies have tried, but all have failed – even Nintendo bombarded with their now infamous Virtual Boy. However, as technology has advanced, the line between the dream and the reality of playing in a beautiful virtual playground has become increasingly shorter.
There are tons of VR games available these days that you can sink your teeth into. While by no means cheap, VR games today are more accessible to a wider range of gamers. That said, if you really want to immerse yourself in a jaw-dropping virtual environment, you’ll need a PC that can handle it. Some VR games are so graphically demanding, but the cost is worth it to play them to their full potential.
9 Star Wars: VR Squadrons
While the base game for star wars: Squadrons won’t strain your PC, switching to VR mode will certainly cook your hardware. Going for a mid-range graphics card should be the bare minimum if you want to game in a galaxy far, far away.
A GTX 1070 GPU should suffice, but if you want to play the game at maximum settings, you’ll need to upgrade to a RTX-3080 or more.
8 No Man’s Sky VR
After a rocky start and a few years later, Hello Games has certainly picked up the pieces to deliver the game they promised with No Man’s Sky. An additional feature is the ability to play the game in VR. Although it doesn’t require the latest high-end graphics card on the market, you may need to upgrade your hardware if you want to experience this space epic in virtual reality.
Playing the game on a medium setting will require a GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 470 installed in your rig. For the smoothest experience possible, however, an RTX 3070 or higher will deliver the best performance.
7 Asgard’s Wrath
Asgard’s Wrath requires a VR-enabled PC platform, as it’s one of the most GPU-intensive VR games you can get your hands on today. At a minimum, Asgard’s Wrath will require a PC with an Intel i7-7700 and an NVIDIA GTX 1080 to have respectable performance; anything below will leave the game with a choppy frame rate bordering on unplayable. Hardware with 16 GB of RAM is also highly recommended for Asgard’s Wrath.
In terms of gameplay, Asgard’s Wrath is one of the most breathtaking VR games out there, with exceptional levels of immersion. It’s also a good choice for an introduction to VR games for beginners, as the interface is simple.
6 hubris
Hubris is a graphical achievement in VR game. Although the gameplay is dodgy, you can’t deny that Hubris is one of the best looking VR games out there today. The sci-fi setting takes the games’ visual pizzazz even further to new heights, and immersion in movement is on the cards with various methods of navigating the rich and detailed environment, such as swimming, climbing, and good old-fashioned platforming.
At a minimum, you will need a GTX 1080, 12GB of RAM, and a Core i5-7500 to play the game. If you want to enjoy maximum performance, an RTX 2070 with 16GB of RAM is needed to play it on ultra settings.
5 Lone echo 2
Developer Ready at Dawn’s Lone Echo 2 improves on everything from its predecessor and showcases the level of deep immersion that virtual reality can add to a game. With nearly 20 hours of gameplay to dig into, including side quests, Lone Echo 2 is more than just another engaging VR game, which it is, too.
As a GPU-intensive VR game, it is recommended that you get a PC with an RTX 3090 or higher to play Lone Echo 2 smoothly.
4 Pavlov RV
If you are looking for an immersive and thrilling VR shooter, then Pavlov VR is a good game to check out. Pavlov VR is an FPS developed by Vankrupt Games.
Graphically, Pavlov VR is quite impressive with its incredible attention to detail and realistic lighting effects. Realism is where Pavlov VR puts all its chips, and it achieves that with flying colors. Of course, to get the best performance, you have to meet higher demands. In Pavlov VR’s case, you’ll need an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti or better, which is the most forgiving on this list.
3 boneworks
Boneworks is a VR FPS whose main selling point is its hyper-realistic physics engine. Unlike other VR games that let you teleport around the area, Boneworks is all about navigating the game world and its obstacles the old-fashioned way: on foot.
Due to the high computational demands of a realistic physics engine, Boneworks will need a minimum of GTX 1060 and a 3.0 GHz quadcore to play. The developer’s recommendation, however, is a 2060 Super or better GPU. You will need money if you want to play this awesome physics-based VR game.
2 Half-Life: Alyx
Half-Life: Alyx is a must-have game if you’re curious about what VR can bring to the table in terms of gaming. What’s more impressive here, besides the excellent VR integration, is how Valve has managed to optimize the game for mid-range PC users to still enjoy.
Unlike most current VR games with high hardware requirements, you can play Half-Life: Alyx with a 12GB RAM rig and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060. However, if you want to push the game to its full potential, you must have a current or better quadcore processor, 16GB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 or 2080.
1 Microsoft Flight Simulator
Although not a native VR game, Microsoft Flight Simulator still manages to push the limits of your hardware to the limit. MFS is already graphics intensive enough without adding VR functionality, so you can imagine the demands it will need once you put your VR headset.
The complexity of running a realistic physics flight engine as well as rendering miles and miles of detailed scenery will consume a significant amount of CPU and GPU. If you want to run Microsoft Flight Simulator at ultra-high settings, you should invest in a powerful graphics card like the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT.
