Project CARS Falls Victim to the VR War

Slightly Mad Studios has released its 1.3 Oculus Rift SDK support for Project CARS this week, and with it revealed that crossplay between Oculus and HTC Vive users is not possible. While Project CARS supports both VR headsets, the HTC Vive – co-developed by Valve – is locked to Steam, while the Oculus Rift version of the game is only available from the Oculus homestore.

“Hey guys,” wrote Project CARS Director Stephen Viljoen on the game’s official forum. “Regarding MP and the various platforms, they are indeed separate platforms and we cannot support MP matchmaking between these two platforms. It’s not ideal, but that’s just how this platform separation works.”

So, while Slightly Mad Studios is certainly not to blame, its game is the first high-profile victim of the emerging VR war, which is sure to stoke the ire of gamers during the technology’s embryonic period.

Slightly Mad has been selling the VR capabilities of Project CARS hard for some time now, boasting that the game is one of the most feature-complete titles available for the new wave of headsets.

“Whenever I buy new hardware, whether that’s a new computer or console or sound system, I wanna show it off. And I want something to really test it,” Andy Tudor, the studio’s director, told iDigitalTimes. “So for those that are getting the Rift and wanna have a game that they can really dig their teeth into and pulls out all the stops both technically and graphically, Project CARS is the one for you.”