‘DiRT Rally VR’ Coming Soon to Oculus Store, Steam to See VR Update “this month”

By
Scott Hayden
-
22

DiRT Rally, the racing sim from Codemasters, doesn’t have an official launch date for the Oculus Rift just yet, but in an Nvidia blog post announcing new optimized drivers for the game, we learned that the racer is coming soon to the Oculus Store and updating for VR support on Steam later this month.

According to Nvidia’s blog post, “DiRT Rally VR will launch with on [sic] the Oculus Store, while existing PC players will receive the update via Steam this month…” Although the language is vague, it seems as though the VR edition of Dirt Rally is somewhat of a short-term timed exclusive for the Oculus Store, although that could just be logistics of development at play. Either way, the release is being billed as “a custom-built virtual reality” version of the game.

Nvidia’s post makes no mention of HTC Vive support despite the planned VR update to the full Steam-accessible PC game later this month.

dirt rally oculus rift
DiRT Rally at the Thrustmaster booth at E3 2016, photo courtesy of Codemasters

During Dirt Rally‘s time as an Early Access title on Steam, DK2 owners got a chance to experience the game with it’s built-in preliminary VR support. As Road to VR‘s senior editor Paul James put it when all new support for the consumer Rift came to light back in May, headset support “was rudimentary at best, broken at worst…”

Since then however, Codemasters has shown Dirt Rally working on consumer Rifts as late as E3 2016 this past June.

At the time of this writing, the PC version of Dirt Rally is currently going for $49.99, and has an overall 91% user rating.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Rick

    I feel like you’re trying to stir the pot a bit calling it a “timed exclusive” there’s no mention of exclusivity. It merely mentions that a version is coming to the Oculus store soon and then hints that the steam version will take a week or 2 longer to get updated, which is most likely due to the devs working on 1 version or steam not getting the update out until later etc. It was the same story with Project cars. They created the Oculus home version, and said that the steam version would take them a couple weeks longer, but they ended up beating their expectations and released the steam update only after a day or two.

    • I’ve tempered the language there little to clarify things. But by definition it may be exclusive for a period of time to the Oculus Store, whether it’s logistics at play or not. However, the title is already in the Steam store and previously had Oculus Rift support, so it’d be interesting to know what the time delay was / is down to.

      • Rick

        Yeah I’m curious myself! My best guess would be they split the code down to get a working version for the Oculus and get it ready to release it on Home while the rest of the team keeps working on bugs and features for the current build of the base game, and then they will merge after both sides are ready and capatible. Just my guess though

  • mrtexasfreedom

    Not trying to beat the author over the head by calling out typos, but I’m wondering if there was something else intended to be communicated in this sentence that the readers are missing—-

    ”
    Nvidia’s makes no mention of HTC Vive support despite the planned VR update to the full Steam-accessible PC game later this month.
    ”

    Does Nvidia have a role in this release?

    • The line referred to the source of information, namely the referenced nVidia blog post. I did fix a typo there though, thanks for the heads up.

  • Raphael

    The very fact that this is mentioned for “Oculus store” suggests it’s a paid timed-exclusive. We know now how Oculus operate and given how popular Vive is and how long Codemasters have had to make Dirt Rally run on SteamVR… it’s highly probable they were paid to hold it back from Steamvr.

    • Actually we didn’t suggest it was a paid exclusive, merely that in essence its presence in this form on only one store by definition makes it exclusive, albeit only for a short period of time. There’s no evidence Oculus in any way had anything to do with the timings here and it may simply be development logistics. I’ve clarified our meaning here at any rate.

      • Cleave

        It’s already on Steam though so how is it exclusive to the Oculus store? If you mean that it doesn’t have support for Steam VR yet I doubt that has anything to do with exclusivity rights and it will be made available when it has been implemented.

        edit: Reading the paragraph again I think you mean that the patch for the Steam version will be released after the Oculus version has launched. I’ll be annoyed if that is the case, I assumed it was already out when I noticed the new Nvidia driver.

        edit 2: http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/dirt-rally-vr-game-ready-driver-released
        apparently both versions will be released tomorrow :D

    • Kalle

      Bah, so tired of all this trash talk. Some devs start with optimizing for “OpenVr” (not really open though). And some start with Oculus SDK. And of course Oculus want the release first, only way to compete with Steam (Valve) which almost have a monopoly as a pc game-reseller. Kind of interesting though, how everyone want the competition gone…

      • Raphael

        It does get out of hand one must say. I used to be a big fan of Oculus and never imagined I’d turn in this way.

        • Harald Heide Gundersen

          They would be better off cooperate.. groving the total vr marked together rather than fight over petty market shares in a marked barely off the ground…

          • Raphael

            Oculus should be supporting other VR at the driver level. I should be able to login to octopus store with my Vive. That’s the issue I have but maybe Valve won’t allow that? Maybe it’s valve or Oculus. I think Palmer has done a lot to bring VR to where it’s at now so I take that into account.

      • J.C.

        I don’t want the competition gone. I’ll happily install the Oculus Store and purchase titles through it when they directly support the Vive. If I have to use a workaround to get the store and games to work with my hardware, I’m definitely not paying full price to do that. I want to buy Chronos, but without direct support, I’m only willing to pay maybe a third of “full price”.
        Oculus seems to be righting their ship, but they’re not where they need to be yet. If they want Vive users’ money, they need to offer the same level of hardware support. Otherwise they should only expect to ever get money from their own headset owners, which is a very short sighted plan.

    • I can tell you that I just played it on Steam (haven’t purchased through Oculus) so it isn’t exclusive to the Oculus store, though if you purchase through the Oculus store, that version might only work on the Rift (where the steam version works without rift and will support the Vive when that’s available).

      It’s nirvana too. I can’t imagine how I’ve ever been decent at any rally game before after having that experience. My only complaint is no surprise; after only 3 stages, I’m feeling a bit nauseated.

      UPDATE: Just found out I don’t even have the new VR optimized drivers for my 1080. :)

  • CCSLED

    I’ve been waiting for this one. If there is no immediate Vive support, hopefully Revive will come to the rescue. I am really waiting for a Codemasters release that is built for VR from the ground up. Exciting times!

    • Raphael

      I only got to try D Rally briefly while it half-worked back on DK2 before ATW came along. I purchased the game a few weeks ago knowing that VR support was returning at some point. I’m a Vive user so I expect steamvr support sooner rather than later.

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  • chaos_in_ashland

    The awesomeness of this patch will be paralleled only by the awesomeness of the amount of people puking from motion sickness.

    • Raphael

      Eh? I’ve been using HMD VR since 2007 and never had any motion sickness. I suggest those who complain about it go play nintendo. Stay away from VR.

      • Cleave

        The only time I’ve felt remotely dizzy in racing games in VR is when I’ve crashed, the sudden change in velocity messes with my brain. I can only imagine this effect will be amplified when you’re crashing into a tree at 100mph but I’m looking forward to it :)

        • Raphael

          You’re going to crash into a real tree?

          • Cleave

            virtually