There are a ton of Fallout 4 VR mods out there since it launched on the first generation of consumer VR headsets back in 2017, most of which you can find on NexusMods. If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution that makes the game less of a port and more of a native VR experience though, modder and streamer GingasVR just released a comprehensive modpack that is essentially a survivalist’s dream come true.

The modlist, aptly named ‘GingasVR’s Fallout VR Essentials Overhaul’, includes a bevy of optimizations that aim to fix some of the biggest gripes of Bethesda’s less-than-perfect VR port.

Not only does the modlist bring stability to a majority of the Commonwealth, which includes interior locations, but it also features things like a more intuitive Pip-Boy UI, smarter AI (including companions), and bunch of other things that make the Wasteland a more dangerous place. Bullets are actually rare, enemies are more crafty, and as GingasVR puts it: “you WILL die.”

One of the biggest limiters to everyone grabbing this modlist right now is that it requires not only the VR version of the game, but all official DLCs from the flatscreen version of Fallout 4 from Steam, all of which are included in the Fallout 4 Game of the Year Edition. You can grab that for under $15 if you’re looking in the right place at the right time (eg: Greenman Gaming, periodic sales on Steam, etc).

To GingasVR, the reason for requiring all DLC isn’t just about making a more visually pleasing experience, but rather making it a more immersive survival RPG experience by bringing a level of danger to the game which you might expect, well, when having to scrounge through a post-apocalyptic world filled with mutated malefactors.

This overhaul is NOT easy, this is meant to be an immersive survival rpg. You can customize things to your liking but the default is a game where there is NO Compass and NO HUD. VATS is turned into BULLET TIME (No auto targeting) The AI is also SMART and WILL USE TACTICS against you, Combat is FAST PACED and DANGEROUS there WILL be Random Ambushes! Radiation is actually deadly.

Provided you do have all DLC, you can get started by closely following GingasVR’s comprehensive guide on how to install the modlist using Wabbajack, an automated modlist downloader. Still, automated downloader or not, installing the modlist requires a fair bit of configuration before you can start stalking the Commonwealth, and an SSD with at least 85 GB to spare.

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If that seems daunting, take a look at a list of improvements available in GingasVR’s modlist which ought to wash down the bitter pill of  having to mess with system settings:

  • Optimization and Stability in the majority of Commonwealth as well as interior locations.
  • DLC Fixes
  • Auto-Eating and drinking in Survival – 2D menus suck in VR (This mitigates the issue but food and drinks will NOT heal you)
  • Survival Manual Saves
  • Customizable HUD with as much or little HUD elements as you want
  • Survival Fast Travel from Settlements (Can also be customized to Fast travel from anywhere)
  • Hand Model and better VR Pip-Boy Interaction
  • Sim Settlements And Conqueror ( Complete Auto Build Settlements and ability to raid- CAN be customized or turned off)
  • BULLET TIME made SPECIFICALLY for the VR version of VATS
  • Edited and custom made perks So that Perception isn’t useless with bullet time and accuracy changes
  • Complete Accurate VR Weapons
  • Reduced loot to realistic levels for the setting (Finding bullets is actually a rare commodity now)
  • Smart AI (PANPC, Arbitration)
  • Smart Companions (Better Companions, More Smarter Companions)
  • Companion Whistle
  • Every NPC can be killed (Including Kids and Essential NPCS – Only Unlocked after going down the “Evil Path”)
  • Traveling NPCs
  • New Guns (Too many to list and all of them work – BE CAREFUL if trying to add other weapon mods)
  • New Quests and Locations ( Interesting NPCS, Stumble upon Interiors, Heather Casidian)
  • Easy hacking and Easy lockpicking
  • New weather from True Storms and Vivid Weather
  • New Optimized Textures
  • Darker Nights
  • Health changes, live dismemberment and non-bullet sponge enemies
  • New Radio Stations
  • New Music and no combat music
  • Better Blood
  • Stalkers that will periodically hunt you down and try to kill you (Can be customized or turned off- you can also run away and they’ll get bored of you)
  • Ability to increase carry weight with in-game progression
  • New Sound effects
  • VR Mirror to see yourself in 3rd person (Only possible with this list- Unavailable anywhere else)
  • And A lot more.

What’s your favorite, most essential mod for Fallout 4 VR? Let us known in the comments below!

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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.
  • Zachary Scott Dickerson

    Three Questions that were my main gripes for VR:
    1. can you aim down the gun sights yet?
    2. are sniper scopes able to be viewed like normal onward/pavlov scopes yet?
    3. will I still spend all my time sorting menus vs. quick slot grabs like other games?

    • There are mods for the scopes in nexusmods, and you can fix things like the sorting menus and all that stuff

      • Zachary Scott Dickerson

        aww shit, now I’ma have to reinstall. I liked the game but those items ruined it for me.

    • Tailgun

      1. Yes, in fact it’s very accurate
      2. Yes, although not all scope types work well
      3. Not at all, the quick-select menu works fine in VR

  • Zantetsu

    I had never played Fallout 4 before Fallout 4 VR. It was the best game I ever played in VR just because it was so extensive, so interesting, so atmospheric. It was downright creepy at times. The building mechanic was super fun and I thoroughly enjoyed building fantastic communities at each of the buildable sites.

    However, there was so much jank due to it not being a native VR game. The PIP Boy was actually pretty good, being a real time menuing system on a device attached to your arm. But looting via menus is strange, and the PIP boy although good is very fidgety. Dogmeat was fun to have around but the number of times my aiming system selected him instead of whatever I was trying to do, requiring me to push extra buttons to reset to the normal pointing state, it was just constant and never ending …

    The graphics had a lot of problems. There were many times textures did not show or load correctly, leading to weird shimmering, non-stereoscopic sections of landscape. Performance could be abysmal, even with a very fast system. So many skipped frames.

    I never used VATS even one time. It just seems out of place to me in a VR game, totally unrealistic and immersion breaking. You don’t need VATS to finish the game.

    Mods are interesting and I used many, but they can’t fix most of the fundamental problems of the game.

    • quidnunc

      the vat’s she uses is just slow mo instead of the auto target thing. i switched it back to normal vats because i like watching heads explode on headshot etc but I could switch back whenever.

      • quidnunc

        I should add that many of the more hardcore functions can be turned off. I turned back on compass, the hud, etc (the readme walks through it)

    • Tailgun

      Yeah, the game has jank, no doubt, but about 70% of what you describe here either was fixed by the time I played it or we were using different modlists. Bullet-time VATS is very cool and does not break the game like the vanilla version does.It is very exciting and encourages John Wick-style strategy, including target selection and careful aiming.

    • Zachary Scott Dickerson

      Yeah I liked the game too, but spent so much time in menus that my back/feet would hurt from just standing there. I ended up playing seated and then standing up when I needed to fight. Less menus, like in Asgard Wrath or Onward would do wonders.

    • Jason Evans

      A lot of those things you described are to do with re-projection when the framerate drops, things like flickering textures and missing ones too are generally attributed to framerate issues although of course conflicting mods can cause that too.

      I’ve not tried this mod myself but I am currently playing FO4 VR and I’m about 50 hours in with over 30 mods.
      I can highly recommend using vortex to load mods and sort them too,
      Despite a lot of crashing and lock ups that seem to plague the vanilla version of the game (it likes to crash on certain parts of the map) I can generally play it for 3-4 hours with no issues on Rift S.

  • JakeDunnegan

    Good grief. 200 Mods! I wonder if there’s a time estimate on setting this thing up, like “Well, if you’ve never used the tool before, to having it completely installed and happily enjoying your new Fallout 4 VR experience.. expect to spend.. errr.. 20 hours.” Or something along those lines.

    On the flip side, I’ve been waiting to dabble in FO4VR for a while for exactly this reason – I wanted the DLCs to be out, I wanted a healthy modding community, and it sounds like they are both there.

    • quidnunc

      it installs automatically with wabbajack, which requires a nexusmods account (few bucks). there’s still about 30 mins of doing setup, config, etc but you just follow the setup readme to get through it

      • JakeDunnegan

        Thanks for sharing that – with the other positive feedback about this mod-accumulator person, I’ll have to give it a shot.

  • ANy bugs in that trailer above?

    Dont like seeing them. SO ugly

  • Ad

    The DLC is needed because most large mods require all DLC. Modders don’t see a point to maintaining multiple versions when the game is so old.

  • How about just one mod for simply fixing the controls? That was the only HUGE headache I had with it. It was made with the VIVE’s wands in mind, not the now standard Touch-style controls. (Thanks Gabe for your stupid touchpads!)

    I was able to adapt it, and played 50+ hours in it, but the touch controllers were never really well done like they should have been.

    I can’t imagine why I’d want the game even harder and more “Survival Oriented”. I played Fallout for the story and discovery, not because I wanted a brutal challenge. If I wanted a brutal survival challenge, I’d play “Into the Radius”. That game is IN-SANE!

    • Amni3D

      Fallout used to be heavier on the RPG aspect, and the shift in genre didn’t resonate for everyone, going from RPG to looter-shooter. So one of the most common mods for Fallout games is to make it heavier on the RPG aspect.

      I don’t use these mods, but I understand their audience, being a big fan of Fallout 1 and 2.

    • Tailgun

      I’m not a super-hard, Survival-difficulty gamer, either. But with these mods, the Survival mode details are really not that bad, particularly after the first few levels.

  • Tailgun

    Awesome to see our beloved Gingas written up in R2VR, she deserves it. I’ve been using her modpack for over six months now and FO4VR has taken over my life entirely since then.

    I’m on my second playthrough (my first time as the female) and it’s like a crack addiction – I have so many other VR games to get to – but this modpack brings the game to life and makes it truly an immersive wasteland experience. The Commonwealth at night is as terrifying as you imagine it should be.

  • johann jensson

    Nice to see an article mention a game like FO4VR. Although given Gingas’ track record, i expect an utter neglect of the visual side (vulgo: eye candy). I’d love to be proven wrong though.

  • i love this modpack, i ignore most of the crafting stuff, pimp some nice guns , Have Fun in this survival hell. I play it with NaLo and gunstick.
    Works Great with a Geforce 1080.
    I set SS in Steam to 400% and lower Render Traget ingame to 0.5 Works best for my system

    https://youtu.be/Zv5H9AqiIEc

  • Prosims

    Sorry, I am new to falloit 4 modding. Do I need to buy a Fallout 4 VR from steam and flatscreen Fallout 4 Game of the Year Edition?

    I just do not understand how I add DLCs to Fallout VR.

    • EvilSmells

      Yes you need to own both games. You basically install Fallout GOTY just so you can copy the DLC folders over the Fallout VR version.

      The Instructions for this mod are very details but you MUST follow them.

      • Prosims

        Thank you for you help.

  • JrSpaceMan

    This mod pack is absolutely amazing. Truly does make if feel like a native VR experience. While not completely free of bugs and jank it is actually much more stable than the vanilla version. Played on Reverb G2, 2080ti

    • Andy701

      Yes, it’s quite something playing with the Reverb G2, very immersive, you can also smell the fallout.

  • ntblood

    the woman who runs this is an insane b$&*