Crysis is fully playable in VR with a new mod that brings immersive gameplay and full 6DoF tracked controller support to the iconic classic.
The groundbreaking 2007 release of Crysis has long held its legendary status in the gaming world. “But can it run Crysis?” became a serious and unserious question across multiple generations of PC hardware, but for some it truly was the benchmark for the hardware of its day.
Now, it runs in VR.
Holger Frydrych fholger, lead developer of the acclaimed Half-Life 2 VR mod, brought the classic AAA gameplay experience of Crytek’s Crysis into the immersive realm of virtual reality, making it possible for players to explore the stunning tropical Lingshan Islands and stop a war of unprecedented scale.
PC Specs & VR Headset Used
My PC has an Intel i9-13900K clocked at 5.8 GHz, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, and an RTX 4090 graphics card.
To play in VR, I used the Quest Link feature of a Quest 3 via USB.
Playing Crysis again in virtual reality with full 6DoF controls has been an amazing experience. It still looks great, and 18 years later my computer can finally run it smoothly. The mod includes support for tapping your temple to activate night vision and body-anchored holstering of the weapons. Despite being a mod, this feels like a game built for VR.
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The mod also maps the game’s complex control system onto your Touch controllers, integrating the functionality to harness your Nano Suit’s speed, strength, armor and cloak modes. Hearing the old familiar voice of my suit’s AI uttering phrases like “Maximum Armor” and “Cloak Engaged” was a nostalgic throwback, and that voice coming from the embedded speakers of my Quest 3 amped up the immersion. I felt as if the voice was actually coming from my in-game helmet.
Crysis Performance In VR
While the mod does deliver an immersive and engaging experience in VR, players with lower specification machines should brace for a performance challenge. When played on a flat screen the game might not offer much of a challenge to modern gaming PCs, but Crysis still requires some pretty robust hardware to run smoothly in VR. The mod’s Github page gives the following warnings about performance and recommendations for the hardware you will need to play at full frame rates:
Be advised that Crysis in VR needs fairly potent hardware. This is in part due to it being Crysis, and in part due to the method I’m using to implement stereoscopic rendering not being the most efficient one. Unfortunately, due to the limited engine and renderer access being available to me, that’s about as good as I can make it.
On the CPU side, expect even the most powerful CPUs to struggle and cause reprojection! I’d recommend playing on a Ryzen 7000 or 5800X3D or an Intel 12th gen or up. Expect more issues as you go down. A Ryzen 3000 is not going to provide a very good experience.
On the GPU side, it is less clear, and you do have some options to trade visual quality vs performance via the SteamVR rendering resolution and the ingame quality settings. Still, in my testing an RTX 2080 Ti was struggling (although that may have been in part due to its pairing with a weaker CPU). A 4090 does perfectly fine (duh), as does an RX 7900 XT.
Getting Started With The Crysis VR Mod
Players must first own a copy of the original Crysis from 2007 – not the remastered version. If you don’t already have it in your library, Crysis is available on GOG and Steam at a very affordable price.
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Installation Steps To Play Crysis In VR:
- Install the original version of Crysis from GOG or Steam.
- Visit the mod’s GitHub page and download the installer.
- Run the installer and point it to your Crysis installation directory. If needed, Steam can be used to find where the game is in your system (right-click on the title in the Steam interface, selecting “Manage,” and then “Browse local files”).
- Launch the Game: The installer offers the option to create shortcuts. Click on the VR shortcut to launch the game in VR.
- Adjust Settings: Upon launching the mod, navigate to the “VR Settings” to customize your experience.
- For a smoother gaming experience, avoid enabling anti-aliasing, and ensure your hardware meets the recommended specifications.
Recently on our live Friday VR Gamestream we featured the Crysis VR Mod and it was exhilarating to see the audience enthusiasm for it matching my own, with fholger joining live chat alongside Team Beef and Flat2VR Studios.
Overall, the community support for bringing in classic games to VR seems to be accelerating. From both officially licensed store-released remakes to near-weekly releases of new VR installers for old games, VR ports of old titles are becoming easier to get for a wider range of games.
While much of our coverage focuses on games that are built natively for VR headsets and painstakingly optimized for specific hardware, some developers and PC fans have top tier VR rigs that can play games like Crysis well in VR. So tune in Fridays to my Gamestreams in the weeks ahead as I line up these mods as best I can for quality streaming.
As we focus more on these recent mods and retrofitted classics for VR over the coming weeks, highlighting VR-specific features that fans are adding to these classic worlds, you can contact or email us about interesting mods we should check out.
