When a good chunk of gamers think about the potential of consumer-grade virtual reality hardware, they jump immediately to the idea of the ultimate first-person action game. Since before Doom, gamers have been envisioning the ability to see what their character sees and move with free reign in a virtual environment that takes over their entire visual field, rather than being confined to a small, flat monitor. While Oculus and others have warned that simply porting an unaltered game to run on VR hardware can lead to severe problems with nausea and playability, that hasn't stopped developers and fans from pursuing the goal of making a virtual reality games that are truly "first-person."

Enter Techland, which announced in December that it would add Oculus Rift support to its zombie-survival-meets-parkour game Dying Light. This isn't the first big-budget title to have a VR mode—Alien Isolation included Rift support through a hidden switch, for instance. But Techland and publisher Warner Bros. seemed eager to use VR as a selling point for Dying Light, going so far as to put David Belle, the originator of parkour, into a Rift headset to see what running around was like in virtual reality. "It was like being ten again," Belle said in a promotional video. "I didn't want to stop. ... For me it was magical, amazing."

With all due respect to Mr. Belle, we have to disagree with his magical impression. After a few hours of testing, we have to say that playing Dying Light in virtual reality is a frustrating, nauseating mess that has us questioning what kinds of games are really going to work in virtual reality.

Unusable interface

To start with, getting the Oculus Rift to work with Dying Light isn't a no-nonsense prospect. There isn't a menu option to activate VR mode or any sort of built-in auto-detection for the headset. Instead, as Redditors have documented, Rift users have to find a configuration file and add a line in a text editor to enable virtual reality.

This process isn't all that onerous, and it's somewhat understandable that Rift units still in the "development kit" phase would need some low-level system tinkering to activate. Still, it's a far cry from the mass market experience that virtual reality will need to become a consumer product.

The more serious problems start once you get into the game itself. For one, the VR experience seems to introduce a lot of visual glitches that weren't apparent in the standard version of the game, such as large black boxes that appear in the virtual view only to fade away like raindrops on a windshield. For another, the low resolution of the Rift screen really blunts the visual detail on the game's setting and characters; facial expressions and background objects that are crystal clear on a monitor end up small and blurry in virtual reality.

Techland also seems to have put very little effort into making sure the menu system or interface are usable in virtual reality. Subtitles and on-screen tutorial instructions that are perfectly legible on a monitor are entirely unreadable when squeezed on to the Rift's small, 1080p display. The same goes for buttons prompts for things like opening doors and picking up nearby items. In-game menus are also hard to see clearly—I had to take the headset off and look at the display mirrored on my monitor to tweak graphics settings mid-game more than once.

The only real nod of accommodation to be found in the VR mode is in the heads-up display, which hovers in place in front of the scene no matter which way you look. But even here there's been no effort made to increase the size of the interface elements to be more usable in virtual reality. At its default size, the VR mini-map is a blob that's just barely usable if you take your eyes off the action and squint directly at it. Even then, constantly switching focus between the apparent depth of the floating HUD and the game action itself is a heachache-inducing experience.

Getting sick

At first, I was actually pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I was navigating Dying Light's dilapidated world in virtual reality. Running forward—usually the most common action in most first-person games—felt perfectly comfortable, even at top speed. It was also nice being able to easily look down and see my feet when making a tough jump, or look up at my hand holds when climbing a ledge.

Even turning, usually one of the most motion-sickness-inducing problems in virtual reality, wasn't too bad, at least when using a handheld Xbox 360 controller. The slow turning speed of the right analog stick is actually a boon in virtual reality, limiting how quickly my view could turn and reducing the difference between my stationary real-world position. When using the mouse instead, I had to be careful not to turn too quickly, or I'd risk a well of nausea.

The real sickness-inducing problem, for me, was sidestepping. Every time I'd strafe to the left or right in Dying Light's VR, I'd feel a little lurch in my stomach. Trust me, you don't really notice how often you sidestep in first-person games until you feel it in your stomach every single time it happens. Angling around corners, lining up jumps, and avoiding enemies all became things my stmach learned to fear in virtual reality much more than the attacking zombies. I found myself having to take a quick break every five or ten minutes to get some air and some water just to settle my stomach before continuing.

Even this sidestepping-induced nuasea was nothing, though, compared to the game's cut scenes, where the developers take camera control completely away from the player. That's just fine on a monitor, but when the entirety of your vision is being jerked around with no relation to where you're looking, the effect is incredibly sickening, even if you try to hold your head perfectly still. I ended up having to close my eyes and just listen to the dialogue for these scenes, or risk having to put down the game for good and go find the nearest restroom.

Can it be fixed?

Many of Dying Light's virtual reality problems could easily be fixed by a mix of software and hardware changes. Better headset resolution, a more considered user interface, and some technical bug fixes would go a long way towards making the experience more tolerable.

But a lot of the issues I had playing Dying Light on the Rift seem depressingly tied to default first-person game design. Simply moving around freely in a virtual first-person view, while your body stays stationary in the real world, provides too much of a sensory mismatch for me, and I suspect it will for many others as well.

Oculus, to its credit, seems to be aware of these problems, and devotes much of its 53-page VR game design best practices guide to combating them. Some promising design solutions are already coming to light: adding some sort of visual frame (like a cockpit), slowing down the maximum in-game movement speed, or limiting players to moving between pre-set points can all limit VR's nauseating effects to various degrees.

Dying Light makes it pretty clear, though, that simply sticking a "VR mode" on top of a normal first-person game, with next to no modification, is not going to cut it. Virtual reality is a new platform with new design challenges, not just a checkbox to add to a features list with minimal work. The sooner designers and players learn this, the better.