Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Gets VR Support With Hand Tracking in a Mod

Climbing into a car and physically grabbing the wheel with both hands, honking the horn, twisting a motorcycle throttle, leaning into a turn — that's what driving around Vice City looks like in the Vice City VR mod. The project has a single developer, known only by a Discord handle, and the result looks more like a studio-grade remaster than an amateur reworking of a 2003 game.

The key difference from typical VR mods is that this isn't a generic wrapper slapped over the old executable. Vice City VR is built on reVC's reverse-engineered code and librw, an open-source implementation of RenderWare, with the game's entire graphics pipeline replaced outright: Direct3D 12, a single stereo render pass for both eyes, foveated rendering via variable-rate shading, and support for DLAA and FSR 2 upscaling. The original missions, data, and overall game structure remain untouched, though — the mod doesn't include any Grand Theft Auto: Vice City files, and you'll need a legally purchased PC copy to run it.

Separate work went into the weapons. Guns can be held one- or two-handed with a remembered second-grip point, tossed between hands mid-air, and drawn from hip and chest holsters. Melee fights use real swings — fists, a bat, a blade, a chainsaw. Grenades and Molotov cocktails are thrown with a trajectory guide, and the detonator for remote-controlled explosives simply appears in your free hand. The scope works if you actually raise the weapon to your eye — same goes for the camera from certain missions. Manual reloading, with a physical magazine insert into the receiver, is a separate toggle and currently only covers the Colt .45, TEC-9, Uzi, and Ingram.

There are three driving modes: classic with standard controls, immersive with actual wheel or handlebar grabbing, and a middle-ground option where the car steers based on controller rotation. Seat distance is adjustable per vehicle model, and horizon lock is enabled by default on motorcycles to prevent motion sickness. Shooting out the window also works through controller motion.

The project is currently in alpha and under active development, so there are rough edges. Nobody has finished the full campaign on the current build yet, old ASI and CLEO plugins don't work, and the primary tested headset is the Meta Quest 3, connected to a PC via Link or Air Link. Other OpenXR-compatible devices should work in theory, but they've been tested far less.

Would you strap on a headset to dive back into Vice City, or is the classic better left untouched? We're waiting for your thoughts in the comments.