Thanks to a free update to PS4’s WipEout Omega Collection (2017), you can finally get the authentic anti-grav racing experience on PSVR. The game’s VR update is a smart and skillful adaptation, offering players a chance to “play the full game in virtual reality from start to finish.” Just be sure to get familiar with the game’s various comfort options to find what works for you before you push it to the limit.
The franchise that seemed destined for VR from the beginning is finally here. Wipeout Omega Collection launched back in 2017, and brings remastered versions of WipEout HD (2008), WipEout HD Fury (2009), and WipEout 2048 (2012) together on PS4. And now, thanks to a free update released this week, you can play it all on PlayStation VR.
Of course, the legendary franchise is known for its high speeds and sharp cornering, which, on paper, seems like a recipe for nausea in VR. Thankfully, the developers have taken their time and offered a number of smart adjustments to keep players comfortable even while racing at breakneck speeds, taking jumps, and doing barrel rolls.
One of the core comfort innovations is a ship design which puts the player in a cockpit that rotates independently from the rest of the ship. Not only does this look really cool, it greatly cushions the rotations otherwise caused by twists and turns, without sacrificing the feeling of speed and cornering, thanks to the rest of the ship separately around your cockpit. You can also race from a third-person view, but I found I enjoyed the immersion of the first person view the most when playing on PSVR. The detailed interior is sharp and futuristic looking, and damn if it isn’t cool to see your air brakes pop up during tight cornering from the interior view, not to mention the thrill of trying to line up a perfect salvo from your machine gun. Check out a full race in VR:
There’s other comfort options too. If you aren’t prone to motion sickness, you can try dialing back the peripheral canopy in the game’s settings, which pulls back the enclosure around your head, opening up more of your view at any one time to the game world. This effectively increases your field of view, but you might find that makes your more susceptible to nausea. Instead of the independently rotating cockpit, you can also lock the camera’s rotation to your craft’s full rotation, or to the track itself (with each step increasing the motion of the experience).
Each time you dial back the comfort options, you open yourself up to the possibility of nausea. In a game like Wipeout Omega Collection, it can build slowly over time until you suddenly realize you’re dizzy and need to take off the headset (which is never fun). But if you pace yourself—experiment with the comfort options, find what works—you can have a ton of fun with Wipeout on PSVR.
If you take your time and find your personal sweet spot among the comfort options, you’re in for a treat. Wipeout on PSVR delivers a responsive and well produced game that looks and sounds as great as it plays. The game has seen a full 3D audio pass, highlighting its strong sound design—it’s quite immersive to hear the pulsing engines of enemies zoom past you, or incoming machine gun fire. And who could forget the great soundtrack which heightens the action every step of the way?
Overall, Wipeout Omega Collection’s transition to PSVR seems like a clear success, and bodes well for the potential of a future Wipeout game built from the ground up for immersive racing.