As a VR veteran and self-confessed Far Cry fan, a fully VR version of a Far Cry game is always near the top of my wishlist when someone asks me which games I'd love to play in VR.
And now, thanks once again to the Flatscreen to VR modding community, my dreams have been made a reality. Talented modder Cabalistic who previously released a flatscreen to VR mod for Crysis has used that framework to bring 6DoF VR to the very first Far Cry game from 2004 and putting my face inside it has been an excellently nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Check out the video above these words if you'd like to see me put the first portion of the game through its paces in my latest VR Corner episode. It features a look at how the cutscenes play out in VR and there's a couple of big action segments in there too, including an explosive vehicular shootout on some of Far Cry's gloriously golden sand dunes.
As with Cabalistic's original Crysis mod when it was first released the Far Cry mod is currently rather barebones. While it does bring 6DoF headset tracking and stereoscopic rendering to the game, there's no motion controller support and no roomscale movement to be had. This means you currently have to play it seated with mouse and keyboard controls which, as you'll see in the video, can be a little tricky to get used to.
Even with these early build issues though the tropical islands of Far Cry look undeniably beautiful in VR and, due to the age of the game, it should run really smoothly on most VR capable rigs.
If you'd like to try out Cabalistic's Far Cry mod for yourself, you can download it for free, here. It's a fairly simple installation process which works with both the Steam and GoG versions of Far Cry and, since the initial publication of my video, Cabalisitic has released a couple of bug fixes that should help with a few of the camera and control issues that I had during my initial recording.
Now to cross my fingers and hope for a fully motion controlled Far Cry 2 VR mod...