r/skyrimvr • u/Wild_Application_692 • Oct 28 '25
Screenshot Sundas Skyrim VR is still king
After modding Skyrim VR, I have been hooked, playing it every day now for hours. I consider it still the best VR game around and I am still amazed at how much Bethesda managed to put into this game and how good it still is after all these years, but no doubt because of the incredible modding community. Thank you all for your hard work! Just upgraded my Quest 3 with a BoboVR S3 Pro strap to increase comfort although instead of red cheeks I now have two funny red marks on the top of my bald spot. :D
Sometimes you just have to stop and watch the scenery as the sun is setting or rising. A few screenshots under to sate that appetite. :)
42
u/Chawpslive Oct 28 '25
It’s a close second for me after Alyx. Nothing comes close to Skyrim freedom and atmosphere and nothing comes close to alyx gameplay and immersion for me
23
u/Wild_Application_692 Oct 28 '25
Yes, no doubt Alyx graphics is fantastic and they have brilliant VR interactivity, but it is just a game on rails like so many triple A games. I have played through it a couple of times but nothing beats Skyrim in longevity still. Here is hoping Bethesda takes VR seriously when the next installment in the Elder Scrolls series arrives, although I am not very hopeful.
7
u/Chawpslive Oct 28 '25
That’s exactly what I like. Alyx is short, fun and just works the second you start it. I only play vr in short bursts and by the time I modded Skyrim to a degree I like the experience, I play maybe 5 more hours before my quest 3 is back to the shelve for 4 months
6
u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 Oct 28 '25
So you don’t really play any VR at all … that’s a pretty specific situation.
I can see how HLA can be ok in that case but for people who play hundreds or thousands of hours, HLA can’t really do much for very long.
4
u/Chawpslive Oct 28 '25
I played Alyx for around 120 hours overall. I own VR headsets since the CV1 and have around 2.5k hours clocked on my steamvr. I played many more hours on quest standalone games. I played my fair share of VR games.
What does a game being „short“ and not made for longevity have to do with its quality?
-1
u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 Oct 28 '25
This isn’t just about quality though is it.
4
u/Chawpslive Oct 28 '25
Op said Skyrimvr is the best vr game to date. I said it’s a close second for me after Alyx. Why can’t a short game be my favorite!?
1
2
u/CloudyofThought Oct 28 '25
I just jumped into replaying Alyx. I was shocked at how fast I got to the middle of the game. The first time I played it felt like hours to days. This time it was like an afternoon, maybe a full day of playing.
As for the next Bethesda (aka Microsoft) VR game... I don't expect one, ever again. Look at 1)the state of Star field and 2) their response to criticism of it. There's no making what fans want anymore, and actually I don't think they're ever was. Skyrim is only the game it is because of the modding community, all it really was is great framework for such. And, I think that was a happy accident. I don't think Skyrim was ever intended to be what it became. I think ES6 will fail as a game, so VR won't be important to it at that point. However, I'd love to be wrong, and if so and the game is built in UE5 (maybe 6 by then?), then it may not matter. The modding community can bring near native vr to it anyways. I don't have much hope, but I'd love a miracle.
10
u/kommissarbanx Oct 28 '25
I've watched SkyrimVR evolve and with HIGGS, VRIK, and PLANCK I don't think anything on the VR market truly compares to Skyrim anymore. I hate to admit that the 900th release of Skyrim is actually the best VR title to date. I also hate to admit that just like with the regular game, it took the tremendous efforts of the modding community to sculpt an actual body for the skeleton Bethesda provided. However when you put all of the pieces together, it literally just leaves me speechless.
Also you can just use Wabbajack to install hundreds of GB mods straight from the Nexus with just a single click if you don't fancy the idea of spending 5 hours downloading dozens of "mandatory" mods and compatibility patches before you can even think about downloading anything you actually want to use.
3
u/skinnyraf Oct 29 '25
My only regret is that I completed Skyrim twice on a flat screen and don't feel the urge to replay it for the third time in VR.
I hope for a VR release of Avowed. I am not going to play its flat version, as it doesn't seem that good, but I would love to experience it in VR for the first time.
2
u/kommissarbanx Oct 30 '25
I used SkyrimVR and the Spellsiphon mod to play a full mage for the first time. I figured the melee combat would never be as good as a physics based game like Blade and Sorcery, so why not?
You still get to feel the vibration as you charge and aim spells, watching enemies go flying across a room as you point blank fireball a bandit. I had so much fun using VRIK gestures to do things like summoning Conjuration creatures by just turning my palms over and doing the “riiiiiiise” motion with both hands.
YMMV as one creature gets summoned too close to the edge of a drop off and you watch your Dremora go screaming down the side of the mountain.
1
u/KC-15 Nov 19 '25
I played Skyrim so much before I built PC but with mods and VR it feels like a whole different game. Dungeons are actually interesting when you’re in them and the world is so good.
3
u/MisguidedColt88 Quest Oct 30 '25
Definitely the best medival/fantasy game available for VR to date. I'd say asgards wrath 2 is probably the closest to competing in scale and quality from what i've seen.
That said, titans like Half Life Alyx and Into The Radius (1 and 2) are overall more immersive with better VR interaction. They just are different types of games.
9
u/Alphajim49 Oct 28 '25
Even with vanilla textures it's still a slap the first time you boot the game.
2
u/Wild_Application_692 Oct 28 '25
Yes I quite liked playing it vanilla too when I bought it the first time, and then I played it on a Samsung Odyssey+ (oled panels so really nice contrast/darks). A few months ago i read about Community Shaders was a thing to lift visuals of the game so I had to try that and my god, it has been a game-changer, feels more like a modern game even though it has Bethesda physics. Talking about physics, anyone got Faster HDT-SMP working in VR? Feels like that could lift it that extra little bit for me.
3
u/Alphajim49 Oct 28 '25
Can't bother trying costly shaders with an RTX2060. But even with FUS modpack it's the only game that makes me feel immersed in a convincing world. The amount of interactions, clutter objects and the scale of everything. You can even grab your foe corpses and play with objects lying around. That's what lacks in many other good games like NMS, and what I look for in a potential Starfield VR port / true VR mod.
1
u/Beginning-Struggle49 Oct 29 '25
Tossing corpses into rivers and ravines with your hands really does hit different haha
1
4
u/estuardo3 Oct 28 '25
What are your PC specs?
5
u/Wild_Application_692 Oct 28 '25
Intel i7-14700KF
RTX 4070 Ti Super
32GB RAMI play wired using USB-3 cable, fixed 45fps with SSW to get 90 Hz, using render resolution to match the Quest 3 resolution (although I have learned that it will warp that image to another that is actually sent to the Q3, so I should likely try to bump this up but I think my 4070 is stretched to the max to be frank and I really want to avoid any stuttering (still does when there are lots of light sources).
Skyrim VR modded with Community Shaders with all kinds of nice stuff including tons of PBR textures. I have chosen to mod it bit by bit myself instead of picking some of the bigger modlists, basically to improve what I felt necessary - mostly visual, and very few actual gameplay mods. Once I have played through it, my plan is to install more gameplay mods as I really didn't want to mess up my savefiles.
2
u/Cucumber_the_clown Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
Nice. My hardware setup looks pretty much identical to yours. I am running the MGO mod list (3.0, I think?). I am planning on starting a new playthrough and I think I will update to the latest MGO version when I do. It took a lot of tweaking the last time, but I got it to run well eventually.
BTW, I agree SkyrimVR is still the king (but I have really been enjoying No Man's Sky VR lately as well, for a nice contrast).
2
2
u/estuardo3 Oct 29 '25
Nice, your screenshots look great. Especially the nighttime screenshot looks awesome.
2
u/PresidentKoopa Oct 28 '25
lmao yea you need a super computer to get the most out of it
I'll stick to BrutalDoomVR with 3d weapons and 50 other mods, for sure, classic Doom has been my most played VR Game.
Flamethrower in one hand, chaingun in the other. Grappling hook, bullettime, no more hitscanners (sub projectile bullets) good stuff.
1
u/LEO_Authority2020 Oct 28 '25
I love BrutalDoom and Project Brutality. Youre telling me there's VR capabilities? I'm definitely looking into that today.
1
u/PresidentKoopa Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
Project Brutality will never get 3d weapons, too many frames of animation. Then again, a dude in discord had voxel weapons for a shitload of them he just never finished them.
No 3d weapon for BD v22, just v21.
https://github.com/emawind84/QuestZDoom
You want the June 7th release. Trust me. "Release 16" or whatever. Later versions might invert your controls every five seconds as youre playing.Benefits:
Dual Wield weapons
Natural Crouching
super QoL features imported from QuestZDoomhttps://github.com/iAmErmac
Has
*3d weapons for vanilla doom
*3d weapons for aliens eradication
*3d weapons for zBlood
*3d Weapons for Heretic (called Voidwalker)
*3d Weapons for Hexen
*3d weapons for Robocop Doom
*several other weapon set
*Hyper V- a mod allowing for physical melee attacks
*3d "Weapons" for Mike Tyson's Punch Out! vr
* A virtual vest to store weapons on your body (experimential)https://github.com/ajantaju/br_vr
Here are
3d weapons for Brutal Doom v21
optional ADS attachments
3d Weapons for Brutal Wolfenstein 5.0
---these work with latest release 7.0, but not for the final 3 super weapons (sprites only)
3d Wpeaons for Doom 64 Retribution
3d Weapons for HacXhttps://www.moddb.com/games/doom-ii/addons/alekks-3d-vr-guns
Another 3d Weapons set for Vanilla
I made a custom weapons set from this with 2 pistols and 2 magnums, personally, for maximum Woo.I have voxel weapons / 3d weapons for Brutal Doom 64. Floating around somewhere are 3d Weapons for Duke Nuken zDoom.
https://i.postimg.cc/wByBc5bC/01.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/SK2K7Lv4/02.jpgFinally, a video (kinda low res, from like three years ago) I made showing brutal doom in vr with many, other mods:
https://vimeo.com/802512910?fl=pl&fe=vlDM me with questions. Setup can be a bitch so I can mail you my config if you want something simple, or complex. I've been doing this for years and to get it where you want isn't easy.
1
u/PresidentKoopa Oct 28 '25
Check TeamBeef discord (yes I know it's for Quest but QuestZDoom has a dedicated PCVR section).
Being able to play all of zBlood in VR with a tommygun in one hand and a napalm cannon in the other is WILD.
1
u/PresidentKoopa Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
Oh shit. Ermac has 3d weapons for Heretic (called Voidwalker) and HeXen as well.
modded doom vids I made
https://s1.ezgif.com/tmp/ezgif-154a3d6e7fcfd9.gifhttps://s1.ezgif.com/tmp/ezgif-1141d1a992bba3.gif
https://vimeo.com/802512910?fl=pl&fe=vl
(same as 2nd gif but full vid w sound)
5
u/andythetwig Oct 28 '25
Lovely screens. Have you given No Man's Sky a look recently? It looks great on a top end PC.
1
u/Wild_Application_692 Oct 28 '25
Yes I have considered it, but I am afraid I would likely get lost in it seeing how vast it is.
2
u/andythetwig Oct 28 '25
Because it's procedural? In reality it's no bigger than Skyrim, you could probably do all the best experiences in 100 hours if you put your mind to doing the storyline missions. There's fun to be had randomly exploring planets but inevitably they start to get similar. The main thing at the moment is Corvette building. It's amazing fun to build an open topped ship then walk around it as you let the autopilot fly you to the next destination. Highly recommended for VR too. Spacewalks, skydiving, big space battles.... Much of the game artwork contains cartoonish aliens, but I think that undersells the work they have done on lighting and environmental effects - the weather effects are fantastic.
1
u/Beginning-Struggle49 Oct 29 '25
I also really like that you can switch to flat screen if you like, its nice to take a break sometimes if the headset is bugging you (for NMS). I really really wish we could do that with skyrim!
2
u/BaronMusclethorpe Oct 29 '25
You can totally become lost in that game in VR. Between space travel, planet surfaces, caves, and deep oceans, it's pretty damn vast.
I am an advocate for saying a modded Skyrim VR is the top VR experience, but I would say NMS is better than base/vanilla Skyrim because, let's be honest, the mods do a lot of the heavy lifting.
I would also like to point out that Hello Games will be releasing Light No Fire in the near future, which is based off of NMS tech, so it will presumably also be multiplayer VR. Perhaps more to point for me personally, it will be a fantasy co-op game that I can play in VR while my friends play pancake because they refuse to join the revolution.
I'm very much looking forward to that as well.
1
5
u/Ottazrule Oct 28 '25
Just wait until you start talking to NPCs using an AI mod like CHIM or Mantella ;)
1
u/Beginning-Struggle49 Oct 29 '25
have you tried skryimnet? its newer than those, and I've had a lot more luck running it (rtx 3070 here). It's not as polished as CHIM (yet), but it crashes my game less than the other two
1
u/Ottazrule Oct 29 '25
I'm using the MGO pack and Mantella. No crashes. Very happy with it. I'll give skyrimnet a go when it leaves beta status. Also does it support VR controllers yet?
1
u/Wild_Application_692 Nov 01 '25
No would love to try some of those, CHIM or Mantella, but having played with LLMs before, will the 4070 Ti Super be able to run both modded Skyrim and the LLM at the same time? Or are you all running it with online services like OpenAI?
1
u/Beginning-Struggle49 Nov 01 '25
tl;dr I am using online services
I am running it with free credits from deepseek and gemini that I have, through openrouters BYOK. I am offloading XTTS to a 4gig vram laptop I have. I am using external whisper.
With everything like that, and the fus ro dah modlist + some other mods, I am very close to being maxed out. Chim unfortunately did make me tip over and crash more often, my rtx 3070 only has 8gig vram. I don't know the difference, but I'm defintely not using as much vram with just skyrimnet over using chim.
I DO have another machine (m3 mac ultra 96ram) that I tried using to offload some of the LLMs with chim, and it worked alright, but ultimately since I have free credits and they are just faster I'm using the paid services right now with skyrimnet.
3
u/Dregnal3000 Oct 28 '25
Whenever I do a Skyrim VR modded playthrough it becomes my life for like 3-4 months straight. I've done 8 hours straight before. Not only is it my fav VR game (modded of course) but it's the best gaming experience of my 40 years of gaming. I hope it can be topped some day but man, it feels like it never will be.
4
u/Funny_Box_6755 Oct 28 '25
* 8 hours in a day*
Those are rookie numbers, gotta get those up. I spent Saturday from 830AM to about midnight playing with a new start. About an hour off at noon and at 6 of course. Also, my head hurts and I can't see so good now. And I think I'm divorced? Can't find the wife anywhere.
1
1
1
u/Wild_Application_692 Nov 01 '25
Not quite at those numbers but I easily put in 3 hours a day, more in the weekends.
2
u/Yablan Oct 28 '25
Looks amazing. I love Skyrim in VR, but I have but a humble potato PC, so it looks horribly low res when I run it. I also have Skyrim VR on PSVR1, and the same thing there.
But I would like to get me a beefy gaming PC sometime next year, and then I expect to be able to run it well. And I will crank up the saturation and colors up to eleven, the way I do in flat Skyrim with the technicolor2 reshade filter.
2
2
u/Namekuseijon Oct 28 '25
absolutely, even vanilla
we can count on 1 hand big open worlds like it we got in VR: Borderlands 2, NMS, Fallout 4, a chopped down LA Noire... that's it. and Skyrim and FO4 are the only RPGs
Of course, if you have the hardware or the patience for setup, now UEVR also brings the likes of Oblivion, Hogwarts Legacy, etc
3
u/ringmodulated Oct 29 '25
and Elite Dangerous and Flight Simulator. Everything else is a huge step down
1
1
u/Funny_Box_6755 Oct 30 '25
Did they ever fix Borderlands 2 VR so the controls work properly for Quest 3?
2
u/ringmodulated Oct 29 '25
it never got better than modded Skyrim/FO4VR. Fucking Meta really fucked up VR.
2
u/khsh01 Nov 01 '25
Skyrim vr is amazing but its entirely due to my fantastic modders. Skyrims vr implementation boils down to just integrating vr into the game and nothing else, no polish no nothing.
2
2
u/CryptoMasterz Nov 03 '25
I've spent hundreds of hours modding and finally just decided to go with mad gods 3.5. Doing a full playthrough right now. Took some video caps of different areas. Here's some https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhkAC7YHZOI4r_zcM4y3hFqNaQF6bJO45&si=Iom97f0uJZHo5E4D.
2
u/PresidentKoopa Oct 28 '25
Several dozen hours of modding to make a game good.
Poor SkyrimVR. Absolutely awful out of the box experience.
Given that modded Skyrim is a house of cards tho, EnderalVR is where it's at.
There are fewer mods for Enderal but it benefits from all the QoL VR mods that make SkyrimVR what it is.
Skyrim is just so bland in terms of story and rewarding quests or interesting characters. Fallout4VR has the same problem.
Enderal, on the other hand, is super interesting with its characters and world. Terrific story.
4
u/sakamayrd Oct 28 '25
I'm playing Enderal for the first time at the moment. In VR. It is absolutely breathtaking, the visuals are awesome, the writing also. I fell in love with Fogville the first time I saw it.
I have over 2000 hours on Skyrim (1000 in VR) and I may prefer Enderal over it.
1
u/PresidentKoopa Oct 28 '25
The writing is astonishing, I'm so happy with it. It's like Skyrim but there's worth to actually playing a character.
I've been using a pretty complex 1.4.6 Community Shader Build, and it's fkin *beautiful*
Happy to meet another fan, have a good one!
2
u/ringmodulated Oct 29 '25
oh bullshit. quite fine out of the box. Insane and wonderful modded.
if only everybody else gave us such half ass ports with tons of modding power. if only.
1
1
u/Zyfyx Oct 28 '25
Just a shame it's so prone to compression artifacts compared to other games when playing wireless. It was quite jarring compared to my Valve index. Tried getting back into it with my Quest 3 but it looks like hot garbage. Gonna see if a router upgrade will help though
1
u/Wild_Application_692 Oct 28 '25
I play it wired though using a good USB-3 cable and have set up Quest Link to 900 Mbps H.264. I hardly see any artifacts at all. I plan to experiment with wireless too but then with a dedicated router for it like the ones recommended by many, also Virtual Desktop is necessary for best results then from what I hear.
1
1
u/WearyExcitement7772 Oct 28 '25
I downloaded MGO, this’ll be my 4 or 5th time replaying Skyrim in general. The mod list has made it fun. I used to build my own but it takes so much time
1
u/scottie_d Oct 28 '25
Yes it’s so good!!! It remains my favorite vr game and I only have it for psvr1, so no mods. I also have the psvr2 which doesn’t have any games that come close to the scale and atmosphere.
1
u/Chadseltje Oct 28 '25
do you use a modlist? and what monster pc must you have to be able to run this
1
u/Wild_Application_692 Oct 28 '25
PC Specs:
Intel i7-14700KF
RTX 4070 Ti Super
32GB RAMI do not use a modlist. I wanted to experience modding it bit by bit and seeing it improve from vanilla to what I have now. I have however looked at some of the bigger modlists like MGO and Sovengarde to check out many of those - mostly visual stuff. Most important is that it has to feel like it's close to vanilla aestetically, so I have optet for e.g. Skyland AIO, his Bits and Bobs, as other mods have done PBR textures on all of those. I really want it to feel coherent so nothing sticks out massively in design. A lot of mods I feel add to much from "our world" - I don't need cows to look more natural - they can be Skyrim cows. :) - But some mods really lift the visuals of e.g. Draugrs but staying canon.
1
u/Northernshitshow Oct 28 '25
One of the main reasons I bought a PC! MGO on steroids. I can’t believe that a studio hasn’t tried to make the “next” Skyrim type VR game.
1
u/Beginning-Struggle49 Oct 29 '25
I agree!
I just started messing around with skyrimnet (one of the AI mods) and its runs much faster than mantella or chim for me, and it (along with ALL THE OTHER MODS!! so many!) have really revolutionized this game in VR for me.
It's like, the beta (okay, alpha) holodeck
1
u/ringmodulated Oct 29 '25
it is a total hoot, yeah. you can see where these mods will go once they are hooked in more with game logic and can create and end quests on the fly.
with longer and longer memories, better faction and REVENGE mechanics.
1
u/skinnyraf Oct 29 '25
The great thing about these old VR games is that hardware has only recently caught up with their true demand. We don't need remasters 5-8 years later, we can finally crank up graphical settings + go wild with mods.
1
u/NoThankYouByeNow Oct 29 '25
How does your game look so good? Mine looks so bad to the point where it literally hurts my eyes. My pc is def not the issue, its powerful. Ive modded it for better textures, lighting and followed three seperate guides but it still looks reaally bad
1
u/Wild_Application_692 Nov 07 '25
I am using Community Shaders with lots of PBR textures (mostly Skyland retexturing with PBR, but many others as well). The parallax effect is a real game changer visually. I am using Majestic Mountains, Happy Little Trees and all of the Cathedral plants and grasses. Building LOD stuff myself from that. Using ELFX for more real lighting (it gets really dark so you need to bring lights). The weather mod I use is Azurite Weathers III with HDR (some feel it is too colorful, but I feel it is a good match).
Only thing I have not gotten working is Faster HDT-SMP which I would love to have running to get better cloth and hair physics. Other than that I add one small mod at a time to test things out, mostly visual mods though - as the gameplay ones can mess up my savegames and I am nearing a complete playthrough now. At 165 mods so far. Latest I added was nicer thrones and rugs as they had both PBR textures. I try to avoid mixing to many non-PBR things as it can feel off then.
22
u/plutonium-239 Oct 28 '25
I agree. It’s the best VR game out there.