Rockstar Games, the mega studio behind Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and plenty more, are officially bringing Oculus Rift support to its first VR title, L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files. The game, which previously launched on HTC Vive via Steam late last year, is an adaptation of L.A. Noire (2011), which has had a number of its missions reworked specifically for VR.
Update (03/28/18): ‘L.A. Noire VR’ is coming to Rift March 29th, replete with official support for Oculus Touch. Before, it was only possible to play on Rift by using a clever workaround provided by the creator of Revive. While the workaround is likely to no longer necessary on Steam as well, thanks to official Rift support, the original article detailing it follows below in the event Rockstar has decided not to update the Steam build with official Oculus support.
Check out why we gave it [5.8/10] in our review here.
LA Noire is a unique game to say the least—designed as a sort of action-detective game, the title employed some of the top facial motion capture of its time to present believable characters for players to interrogate as they investigate crimes on the streets of 1940’s LA.
The LA Noire: The VR Case Files VR adaptation presents seven cases from the original game which Rockstar says were “picked for their suitability to the virtual reality experience.” The studio says the game also features upgraded visuals, textures, and effects, as well as being made for interaction with motion controllers, and further that more than 500 props have been upgraded for close handling in VR, along with more than 100 custom hand poses and animations for item interactions within the game.
LA Noire: The VR Case Files is available now on Steam, Viveport, and Rockstar Warehouse. Expect a full review of the title from Road to VR soon.
Rift Support, Minimum Specifications, and Hardware Incompatibility
While most games built for OpenVR/SteamVR inherently support the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift (even if not optimized for the Rift’s controls) early reports indicate that LA Noire: The VR Case Files VR explicitly doesn’t support the Rift, presenting players with a “headset not supported” message when trying to boot the game a headset other than the Vive.
Update (12/16/17): An unofficial workaround has emerged which adds support for the Rift and Windows VR headsets to LA Noire VR. The workaround was developed by the creator of Revive. Original article continues below.
Unfortunately for those running on systems just meeting the baseline ‘VR Ready’ specs, the game’s minimum and recommended specifications exceed that line by roughly one GPU tier. The studio advises the following:
LA Noire: The VR Case Files VR Minimum Specifications
- OS: Windows 8.1, Windows 10 64 bit
- Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K @ 3.6GHz
- Memory: 8GB
- Video Card: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1070 8GB
LA Noire: The VR Case Files VR Recommended Specifications
- OS: Windows 8.1, Windows 10 64 bit
- Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.0GHz
- Memory: 16GB
- Video Card: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1080 8GB
Despite being delayed roughly a month from its initial release, the game still has some odd hardware compatibility issues with specific CPU and GPU combinations, including total lack up support for AMD GPU and CPU combos. Rockstar advises:
Due to current performance issues with AMD hardware, only specific combinations of AMD and NVIDIA/Intel Hardware will allow the game to play as intended:
- If using an AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (or above) graphics card is required to play
- If using an AMD Vega 56 graphics card, an Intel i7 6700 (or above) CPU is required to play
- Attempting to use an AMD CPU and GPU together to play the game is not supported at this time
The studio further says “over time programming changes will change the system requirements for this game,” hopefully for the better.
