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:

  1. You’ll need the VR injection driver VorpX
  2. Once you have it downloaded and installed, open VorpX Config and go to “Cloud Profiles”
  3. I recommend using the DOOM profile made by SorryAboutYourCats. This one should probably work for most OpenGL games.
  4. Add NMS.exe from steamapps\common\No Man’s Sky\Binaries to the profile under the “local profiles” tab in VorpX Config.
  5. If you’re using the Vive, pause the VorpX Watcher and start SteamVR, then unpause the watcher.
  6. Make sure Steam Overlay and “Use Desktop Theatre” is disabled in the game properties
  7. Start No Man’s Sky through Steam.
  8. 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.
SEE ALSO
Meta Opens First Ray-Ban Pop-up Store in Hopes of Making Smartglasses Fashionable

Fair warning though, as you may well be aware, No Man’s Sky‘s PC release has seen many complaining about performance problems, with inconsistent frame rates and other issues which will almost certainly result in comfort issues when playing with a VR headset.

Let us know how you get on in the comments below and feel free to share any tips and tweaks to help with No Man’s Sky performance and VorpX immersion

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Paul James
Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • Chuck Middaugh

    Everything seems to work, but when I press delete to change settings, my mouse has been captured and I cannot select anything. Any ideas? How did you select reconstruct 3D?

    • Oculus L (Oculus Lou)

      Pause NMS first then hit delete and make the changes. pro tip!

      • Derek Gardner

        Hi Oculus L,
        Thanks for the tip but it doesn’t work for me. I get the “circle” mouse pointer in the background that I can move around but the actual mouse on the VorpX panel remains dead center. Using a CV1

        • Oculus L (Oculus Lou)

          you are right sorry I forgot. Pause NMS then use the keyboard up/down/left/right arrow keys to change the settings. I just do that instinctually now when the mouse cursor gets stuck in vorpX.

          • Derek Gardner

            Hmm… Still doesn’t work. The up/down arrows work fine, but the right/left don’t work at all. Still can’t get geometry mode, dang it… it’s sooooo close to working ! :(

          • nthn

            Alt+Tab to get control of mouse

  • Buddydudeguy

    Haha. This game is ass.

    • Yaniv Ben David

      lol u r right

    • beestee

      To each their own, I am 27 hours in, still over 175,000 light years away from the ‘center’, and I am having a blast with it.

      • Najeeb Shah

        no , there is no each to their own , its a BAD game in factual terms . It failed to deliver , Its over priced , it looks shit .

        a few people enjoying shit doesnt make it good

        • T3hWhiteHorse

          ^^ Is that what your mother told you at birth?

          BTW, Your the probably the stupidest idiot I’ve ever witnessed move his fingers across a keyboard.

          • Najeeb Shah

            butthurt much fanboy?

          • petrik mur

            Dude, listen. Each to their own does apply because it’s an opinion. Mainly though, the argument of “it’s a bad game” makes a lot of sense as it did fail to deliver a lot of its promises (Hello games is trying to fix this with updates, but ultimately their launch really hurt their rep), but given it is an indie game, they needed much more time for it. This isn’t a Bethesda sized studio, you’ve got 15 people tops, and creating a video game is an ass load of work. If they had been given a year and a half, as Ruben said, it would have been a better game, guaranteed. I pre-ordered, jumping on the hype (which was, yes, very stupid), but wasn’t able to play until like 7 months later when I finally had money to build a gaming PC. I completely forgot about the game and it’s lies and all of that, and really enjoyed it. For the raw game it is, it is very good if your personality type fits inside the niche it’s targeted towards. With all the lies and shit, yea it seems like a trash game, but past all that, given you’re the kind of person who likes exploration sort of games, it’s great. Maybe not your game specifically, but it is for others.

        • Ruben Zikarsky

          In factual terms its a great game. Sony stuffed them. They released a due date almost 18 months earlier than planned.

          If Sony had let them finish what they promised they would have been fine. VR support was among that.

          • Najeeb Shah

            i dont really care what anyone did , what matters to me as a consumer is it failed to deliver and is over priced

          • Marc Tabor

            whats your take Najeeb on the game these days?

  • q23main

    The spaceship part looks like a free Android Cardboard game, with it’s space ship being controlled by moving the head.
    Until there’s proper in-game VR support, there’s no topic.

    One could expect someone who played a lot of VR games to be more skeptical..

  • AmishPark

    Cant get this to work. VorpX dosnt seem to recognise that NMS is starting…. :( any ideas?

    • Marcus Childs

      Same here

  • Sean Hall

    I tried this and it seemed horrible. The 3D, even when set to Geometry, seems out of whack. Is there a particular FOV that should be set in the NMS options?

    For how excited the video review was I expected this to be cool, particularly with the increasing level of quality content on the Vive. This guy losing his $hit made it sound like this actually works well, when in actual fact it seems to work very poorly. If you don’t have vorpx already, don’t pick it up thinking that this could make it worth your while.

    Really enjoying NMS though, I sure hope they add VR support.

  • Najeeb Shah

    VR for a game that looks its being rendered in 480p? no thanks

    monitor support is shit , game is always rendered in 720 regardless of what resolution you use , just upscale , its a shitty game full of lies

    • Ben Heintz

      “I am a bandwagon hopper, I like hopping on bandwagons, I really hate this game because” *waits for the rest of internet’s input to register* “of those reasons, YES! I hate this game so much because I am so cool and part of the bandwagon, omfg the game looks like its being rendered in 480p” (thinks to himself, that sounds cool, right? I’m cool too, right? I don’t know what 480p even really means means, but it sounds cool, right? I mean, I’ve never even tried this game, but I AM SO COOL BECAUSE I AM PART OF THE HATE CREW FOR THIS GAME! MONKEY SEEE MONKEY DOOOOOO) “Game is FULL OF LIES!!!!” (I read that on the internet so it must be true)

      Sorry didn’t mean to reiterate your subconscious to you.

    • francisco garay

      have you played VR? And when did you last play this wonderful game? And why is the internet so negative ALL the time?

  • ProDigit

    So, can you set the stereoscopic effect level?
    Like on the Nintendo 3DS you can start out with a very low setting, almost 2D, and bump it up slowly the more comfy you are with the image, by increasing the distance between the cameras (increasing viewing angle), giving you more and more depth to the image (more and more things flying into, or out of the screen).

  • Snuggler

    Looks like this was recorded with a garden hose, oh wait no that’s the punch line. It actually looks like that.