‘Doom VFR’ Coming to PSVR and HTC Vive, Here’s the Reveal Trailer

By
Ben Lang
-
22

What was an earlier version of Doom for VR announced last year has evolved into a full title from Id Software, now titled Doom VRF. The game will be released for PlayStation VR and the HTC Vive.

On stage during Bethesda’s E3 2017 press conference the company revealed a more developed version of their in-development VR version of Doom. Now titled Doom VFR (an acronym which we can only guess involves a certain F word), the game looks a lot more mature than when we tried it at E3 last year.

A reveal trailer (heading this article) gives a glimpse of the game in action, showing teleporting locomotion, but also quite a bit of flying through the air and dashing.

The formalization of the title suggests the game is nearing release, and Bethesda says we’ll see it launch at some point in 2017. The game is now confirmed as launching on both PSVR and HTC Vive.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Me

    Not so sure what to think of it. What makes a FPS without a real story fun, is its gameplay, so it better be very, very good – considering the current state of VR locomotion mecanisms I’m quite skeptical.

    • Sam Illingworth

      Yes, I’m with you there. FPS are pretty much all about the movement and the shooting in equal measure, an FPS based on teleporting is an entirely different game.

      • AndyP

        Yes, and there’s an essential rhythm to combat in classic Doom games that can’t be replicated with teleportation, and difficult in full locomotion.

    • G-man

      maybe wait till you play it to decide what you think about it…

  • Jade Nepia

    Teleportation is crap in any vr game. I hope theres at least an option for real movement

    • G-man

      “real movement”. you mean walking around your play space? because a thumbstick movement isn’t “real” any more than teleport is real

      • Jade Nepia

        Wow a new kind of nazi. You obviously knew what I mean but needed to make your oh so amazing intellect known. My god how could I be so stupid a thumbstick isnt real movement, all this time I thought I was paraplegic. Thumb movement is definitely less jarring plus I would love to see you play quake using room scale movement.

        • G-man

          oh now much of a nazi of me. pointing out that thumbstick movement isn’t real so people will maybe stop calling it that. thumbstick movement may be less jarring for you, but for me trying to strafe sideways/backward while turning s a bit more than “jarring”. also quake isn’t a vr game. why would you play an old game that was made for a monitor, mouse and keyboard and try play it in vr? do you play chess with a car over Bluetooth?

          • Jade Nepia

            Resident evil wasn’t vr but 7 is great in vr etc etc, I wont be playing quake in vr anyway because from what I’ve seen and from peoples experience with it, its shit.

  • CazCore

    this is weird how they seem to force teleportation for lateral movements, yet apparently frequently throw/bounce you up in the air, causing vertical “strafing”, which is actually one of the more nausea inducing motions for susceptible people.

    • G-man

      jumping up isn’t so bad, falling down is, and if you notice there a blink for the downward portion of jumps. you need a way to be able to get out of combat fast and move to higher locations when needed. looks fine to me.

      • CazCore

        why do you think there is a difference in which direction you are vertically strafing? to me this sounds like “strafing left is fine, its strafing right that makes you nauseous”.
        up or down effects me the same way.

        • G-man

          down feels like falling. going up feels like, well, going up. we go up in elevators all the time, because the physical difference between whats happening an elevator can go up much faster than it can go down. if it goes down faster than gravity pulls us then we would go into free fall, and feel weightless. whereas going up we just feel a bit heavier. two very different feelings that affects us in very different was because of physics and because of the way your anatomy isn’t vertically symmetrical. whereas is is symmetrical left to right, so strafing is okay, but then its not symmetrical front to back so there is a difference int he way moving forward feels compared to moving backwards. these all must have inherent psychological implications connected to them even if the movement isn’t really happening because these different artificial movements in vr also have different effects.

          it likely has something to do with the brain protecting itself. if we are moving down, intentionally or otherwise then we could fall and injure ourselves. but moving upwards is less risk. imagine walking up and down stairs, if you run down the stair to fast you stumble and fall down the stairs. you run too fast up stairs and you maybe miss a step, slip and fall into the steps in front of you. it’ll hurt but you wont break your neck. same was true before we even invented stairs, climbing up and down a mountain, the climbing down is the harder part.

      • CazCore

        i just watched the trailer again. i still don’t see any downward blink.

        • G-man

          when he gets to the peak of the jump and time slows down, he aims at the floor, as he does so it starts ot blink but the trailer is cut to a different shot mid blink, so you dont see the blink from the jump but thats what was going to happen there.

  • wheeler

    I’m all for teleport being the default locomotion scheme but please give us a smooth locomotion option as well. Developing for the least common denominator will just mean that a lot of us smooth locomotion tolerant users (probably about half of us) won’t buy a high priced game like this.

  • Fear Monkey

    I hope they port Fallout 4 VR to PSVR once its released on Vive, seems stupid to ignore the biggest market for their software.Even if it has to be dumbed down graphically, it would be worth it.

  • me

    So apparently there is a Skyrim PSVR coming… not sure how true this is however I was in my local EB games and they had a Skyrim PSVR place holder with a place holder release date of Dec 31 2017… interested to see if this is announced tonight…!?!?!?

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Hmmm.. no Oculus?

    • burzum

      I own an Oculus and I’m OK with it. If it works with the Vive on Steam it will very likely work with Oculus as well – thanks to OpenVR – not Oculus. If bigger devs show the Oculus store their middle finger I’m all in because I don’t want to be limited to a single store nor do I want support for a closed API and eco-system. If Oculus can’t bring up something really awesome my next HMD is going to be one from another vendor.

  • Tomas Sandven

    Yes! A thousand times yes!

  • brandon9271

    I can’t help but think this not having native Oculus support has something to do with beef between Bethesda and John Carmack.. Ironic since he’s the father of Doom.