Quest 3: Whitewater VR features the most realistic water simulation yet
Meta Quest 3 gets its first full-fledged kayaking game with an impressively realistic water simulation. We tried it out.
Last week saw the launch of Whitewater VR - Extreme Kayaking Adventure on Meta Quest.
Released almost a year ago for Steam and later ported to Playstation VR 2, Whitewater VR is now available on Meta's standalone VR headset, unlike its main competitor, Kayak VR: Mirage, which is still only available for PC VR and Playstation VR 2.
I played Whitewater VR on Meta Quest 3, focusing on the technical aspects of the port. Here are my first impressions.
The most beautiful rapids of standalone VR
Whitewater VR is optimized for Meta Quest 3 and 3S and only supports the new VR headsets. If you take a look at the elaborate whitewater simulation, you can see why. As far as I know, there is nothing like it for standalone headsets.
The game lives up to its name. You are mostly in whitewater rapids, gliding at high speed through rapid currents, cascades, narrows, eddies and waves. It all looks and feels great in VR. Not least because of the controller feedback, which simulates the resistance of paddling.
The clear water and the individual fish that swim away when you get too close are also nice to look at. If you get particularly wet while paddling, you can see drops on the kayak.
The following trailer gives an authentic impression of the VR experience and is representative of the graphical quality of Whitewater VR.
I tried three of the five environments, and the Unreal Engine 5-based VR game ran smoothly at 72 frames per second in all three. Luckily, without Spacewarp, a rendering technique that can cause artifacts.
Despite all the visual highlights, Whitewater VR isn't perfect. At medium distances, the environment sometimes appears coarse, and there are noticeable aliasing effects on contours and foliage.
I tried to increase the resolution with the Quest Games Optimizer, but since the VR game is already optimized for Quest 3 and 3S, there is not much to gain without sacrificing the stable frame rate. Landscapes in the distance look better thanks to fairly sharp and nice-looking 360-degree backgrounds.
No multiplayer mode
I can't judge the controls of the game in the short time I had with it, and it may simply have been my inexperience that caused me to get stuck on rocks a few times. Unfortunately, I often had to recalibrate the orientation of the kayak after collisions. The fact that you can do this by pressing the left trigger suggests that this sort of drift is a fundamental problem with the VR game.
I was surprised that Whitewater VR has no settings against motion sickness. I wouldn't be surprised if some players felt uncomfortable with all the movement involved, even though I didn't feel sick after playing.
What I would like to see in the future is a multiplayer mode. Right now, you can only compete with other players via leaderboards.
Whitewater VR features two single-player game modes: "Free Ride" lets you explore the environments freely and without time pressure, while "Time Attack" lets you paddle against the clock and collect floating crates to reach the next checkpoint before time runs out.
You can purchase Whitewater VR in the Horizon Store. Alternatively, the VR game is available in the Playstation Store for Playstation VR 2 and on Steam for PC VR headsets.
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