A console command found in the Grand Theft Auto remasters led to claims of an “unfinished VR mode”.
The command, gta.vr.1, was discovered by RockstarINTEL writer Ben Turpin. Turpin himself didn’t make any grandiose claims as to its purpose or significance, but some gaming news outlets described this as an “unfinished VR mode” and that claim may not hold true.
There is a debug Unreal command for GTA VR but it looks a little bit unfinished. Maybe it would be cool if they implemented this as a first-person option? It plays pretty well. Gunfights and punching will need tweaking, would be super cool for screenshots! pic.twitter.com/pxq5ivwGOA
— Ben Turpin (@videotech_) November 20, 2021
Yes it’s true that San Andreas is announced for Quest 2, but that’s being developed by Video Games Deluxe, a completely different studio located on a different continent to Grove Street Games.
All the gta.vr.1 command actually does is switch to first person view when not inside a vehicle. It doesn’t even enable virtual reality and doesn’t seem to actually do anything else. Some players say they use it for better screenshots.
The GTA remasters are built in Unreal Engine, which has full built-in support for VR if developers choose to enable it. But no GTA modder or hacker has found any reference to this VR support, or the APIs for SteamVR, Oculus, or OpenXR. There is no evidence of a VR user interface, motion controller support for weapons, or any other VR features being present in these games.
In fact, the first person view the command enables looks like Unreal Engine’s default first person camera controller. While it is possible Grove Street Games once worked on VR support for these games, a single console command name simply isn’t evidence of it. To describe this as an “unfinished VR mode” would be like describing a book with a title on the cover and nothing on the inside pages as an “unfinished novel”.
