Starfield in Virtual Reality - this is how it works
Want to dive even deeper into Starfield? There is a trick to experience Bethesda's role-playing game with a VR headset.
Starfield is the talk of the town right now. The sci-fi role-playing game is Bethesda's first major single-player game in eight years. In the huge game world, you explore alien planets, fight your way through giant mines on Mars or explore sci-fi cities in cyberpunk style. Now you can experience what playing Starfield in a VR headset feels like with a little trick.
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Extensive VR mods in the works
Unlike its indirect predecessors Skyrim and Fallout 4, Starfield is unlikely to get an official VR release. Bethesda has been tight-lipped about its VR ambitions for years.
By the time official mod support for Starfield launches next year at the latest, some VR mods will be released. Until then, you can get a first impression of Starfield in VR – with some limitations.
Limited VR experience already possible
German Youtuber Thomas Poersch from VoodooDE VR channel shows in his latest video how to play Starfield on a Meta Quest 2 with the vorpX software and explains how it works.
Controller tracking is not available, but you can control most of the game with the VR controllers, including snap-turn. You only have to use the keyboard to access the game menu, so playing on a computer while sitting is recommended.
In the game, you turn and aim according to your head movements. You can see the gameplay in the video above, starting at the 4:30 mark.
Try out Starfield in VR – here's how it works
To get a first impression of how Starfield might feel in VR, you need a PC VR headset (or Meta Quest 2 with Meta Link for example) and the paid software vorpX in version 23.1.0 BETA (see source section for link).
- Note: vorpX does not provide a full VR experience as you know it from normal VR games or VR mods. As described above, it does not allow full tracking and the spatial representation is limited.
There, you find several profiles for Starfield in the “Cloud Profiles” section if you enter the name of the game in the “Game/App” bar. Select the latest version and click on “Import Profile”. When you start Starfield later, two vorpX windows will open. Select “Install hook helper” in the first and “D3D10/11/12” in the second.
Important settings for a good VR experience in Starfield
To make Starfield an enjoyable experience in VR, you'll need to adjust a few settings in the game itself. Thomas recommends the following:
- Start Starfield in windowed mode (without VR headset).
- Open the settings in the main menu of Starfield
- Deactivates “Dynamic Screen Resolution”
- Disables “Motion Blur”
- Disables “Depth of Field”
- Sets “Film grain intensity” to zero
- Saves the settings
Then open the configuration of vorpX and go to the “Virtual Monitor” menu. Set the checkmark at the following settings:
- Activate when you put on your headset
- Activate when no display is connected
- Allow manual activation
Then click on the “create” button, select the 1:1 resolution and click on “Add Resolution”. After that, the corresponding resolution for your VR headset will appear in the Virtual Monitor menu.
Right-click on vorpX in the Windows task menu to activate the Virtual Monitor (“enable Virtual Monitor”).
Windows settings and the config file of Starfield
Open the screen settings of Windows. You will see an additional monitor – the Virtual Monitor. Click on it and select the resolution you chose in the Virtual Monitor menu of vorpX.
The last step is to edit the game's config file. To be on the safe side, you should create a backup first. Open the file “StarfieldPrefs.ini” in the file path of the game.
Copy the following lines into the file and set it to “read-only”:
[Display]bBorderless=0
bFullScreen=0
iSizeH=2160
iSizeW=2164
Then create the file “StarfieldCustom.ini” in the same directory, copy the following lines into it and set this file to “read-only” as well: [Display]
fWideAspectLimit=1.0 [Interface]
fSafeZoneXWide=440 [Camera]
fFPWorldFOV=130
fTPWorldFOV=90
Once you have made all the settings right, you can experience the game in the VR headset.
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