Run out of things to play on your VR headset? One potential solution has just been released, a community-made piece of software that turns normal games into VR ones.
UEVR makes titles you would usually play on a flat monitor or TV playable in full 3D VR, and lets you look around their game worlds with a tilt of your head. It works with games made using the Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5 game engines.
The most famous of these among today’s players is perhaps Fortnite, but hundreds of major games were (and are) made using these engines. That figure jumps into the thousands when you include the projects of small developer teams.
Notable titles on the list include Returnal, Ark: Survival Evolved, Stray, System Shock (2023) and Dead Island 2.
UEVR already includes many of the staple features of VR. As well as playing games in 3D, and being able to wander around environments by actually walking across your living room, support for motion controllers is in there too.
The most impressive part is how developer Praydog has managed to do all this with software not intended for use with VR. The average player might find UEVR a bit of a tech trial to get working at a result. It employs an interface pane you load up after running the game. UEVR is then “injected” into that game, and you fiddle with the settings to get it working properly.
However, it also supports user-made configurations for games, removing much of the legwork for the less tech-savvy.
To get an idea of whether this will be in your wheelhouse, check out Eurogamer’s video on UEVR, which shows presenter Ian Higton getting the software up and running.
Are you a Meta Quest 2 or Quest 3 user? You can’t run this software directly on your headset. A PC running the game is needed, although you can then use the Quest with that PC, connecting wirelessly or with a cable as usual.
The VR community has put together a compatibility list, having tested more than 650 Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5 titles to date. According to that list, most of the tested games either “work perfectly” or “work well”.
UEVR is available to download for free from developer Praydog’s website.
