How to Play ‘No Man’s Sky’ in VR (Warning: Strong Stomach Required)

Aug 14, 2016

This is how to get No Man’s Sky running on your Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headset using the VR injection driver VorpX. Be warned though, you’ll need to have an iron constitution before setting out.

No Man’s Sky is a game screaming for VR support, with its design goals on sci-fi immersion and an entire universe for you to explore the more I play it, the more I long to be ‘inside’ that world. Unfortunately, despite persistent rumours the game may one day receive native VR headset support, it was not to be – at least not for launch.

However, as with many things in things in the PC gaming community, someone somewhere was working on fixing this. Enter the VR injection driver VorpX and intrepid VR gamer and budding YouTuber Hoopermation VR (aka /u/hoopera on Reddit), who’s posted instructions on how to get the game running on the HTC Vive, although these instructions should apply to Oculus Rift users too and do let you experience the title in Stereoscopic 3D.

Check out the full thread over on Reddit for updates, but the core steps are below:

You’ll need the VR injection driver VorpX
Once you have it downloaded and installed, open VorpX Config and go to “Cloud Profiles”
I recommend using the DOOM profile made by SorryAboutYourCats. This one should probably work for most OpenGL games.
Add NMS.exe from steamapps\common\No Man’s Sky\Binaries to the profile under the “local profiles” tab in VorpX Config.
If you’re using the Vive, pause the VorpX Watcher and start SteamVR, then unpause the watcher.
Make sure Steam Overlay and “Use Desktop Theatre” is disabled in the game properties
Start No Man’s Sky through Steam.
Press the delete key, make sure the 3D Reconstruction is set to “Geometry”, and set the Separation value to 0.01. If you crank it higher you can make the world tiny around you, which is…strange but cool.