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It's one of PlayStation VR's most impressive titles. DriveClub VR is the best racer available for owners of Sony's HMD, and stands proud against many of its competitors running on much more powerful hardware. Clearly, visual compromises are made, but the final result still impresses: the sensation of being in the cockpit is immense, and finally, we actually get to see the racer running at the 60fps we always hoped for - 120fps if you factor in Sony's temporal upscaling. The question is - how was this achieved?We've been looking at how PlayStation 4 Pro enhances the VR experience recently for an upcoming feature, but we wanted to break out DriveClub specifically for two reasons: first of all, to highlight the processes required in adapting one of the best-looking AAA PS4 titles to virtual reality. And secondly, because, well... DriveClub VR doesn't appear to have any specific Pro optimisations. We ran captures side-by-side and noted identical detail, resolution and draw distance. It may well be running in Pro mode for more stable performance, but the fact is that DriveClub VR is extremely stable to begin with on base hardware. Clearly, it's the likes of Robinson, Battlezone, Batman and Rigs that should be the focus of specific Pro VR testing.
But if our comparisons of base PS4 vs Pro turned up little of interest, stacking up those captures against the original game is a fascinating exercise. We spoke to the developer at Paris Games Week last year, and the team openly pointed out some sacrifices they had to make to achieve a VR version of DriveClub. Plenty of aspects stay the same of course; car model detail is matched, and the track dimensions are the same. There's an obvious drop in image quality with the VR feed here, due to a lower-than 1080p image being supplied to each eye, which is then dewarped for the social screen view in our social screen captures (which should be considered for content, not resolution). Compared to the single, native 1080p on the original DriveClub, there's no contest. But in terms of the core visuals, the first big difference between the two is obvious: the lighting.
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