I recently got an HP Reverb G2 VR headset. That’s not a brag--it’s really a compromise “entry-level” headset because I didn’t want to deal with Facebook and a Valve Index is just too expensive. HP is the only remaining Windows Mixed Reality headset to choose from, so I saved up some cash and blew it all on a fancy new toy.

I’m still on the fence about it, to be honest. If Facebook wasn’t a raging dumpster fire, I’d probably have gotten the Quest 2 as the best bang for your VR buck.

Anyways, the G2 is a fine headset to get one’s feet wet in the wild world of VR (although I’d wait for HP’s upcoming refresh of the Reverb to avoid a few minor headaches that I’m still dealing with). After I got it, I looked through my library of Steam games to see what I could play to break in my first taste of virtual reality, and one game immediately stood out: No Man’s Sky.

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Which was weird for me because I never really liked No Man’s Sky. I first played it back in 2017, long after No Man’s Sky’s rocky launch and near the beginning of the game’s journey to redemption, but I bounced off after just an hour of play. To me, it seemed like a walking simulator with frustrating inventory management, and the procedural generation wasn’t intriguing enough to keep my attention.

Like many fans, I’d heard No Man’s Sky had received VR support in one of its many, many updates, but I didn’t think much of it because VR was simply a curiosity back then. Fast forward a few years and a few hardware generations, and now No Man’s Sky seemed like the perfect game to test out VR. Thus, I installed No Man’s Sky for the second time, plopped on my headset, and dove back into its procedurally generated sci-fi worlds.

Related: With Every New Update, No Man's Sky Drifts Further Away From What Made It So Exciting In The First Place

Now, I’ve played VR games before, but they’d always just been simple rail shooters. No Man’s Sky was the first game where I could actually move around and explore, and I was immediately engrossed by the vivid wildlife and beautiful vistas that surrounded me.

But what helped me stay immersed wasn’t being able to tilt my head and look down at a cute, tentacled alien and offer it some creature pellets. What kept me playing was the new movement type that Hello Games added specifically for VR.

No Man's Sky Roamers
via Hello Games

The vast majority of VR setups only give you a few feet to freely move around in (assuming you’ve got the space, of course), so to play a sprawling game like No Man’s Sky, you’ve got two options to get around. You can move an analog stick to bumble around just like in most games, but that can lead to motion sickness. Or, you can opt for the solution most VR games employ which is teleportation movement. This is where you point your VR controller at where you want to go and just press a button to teleport there.

Suddenly, No Man’s Sky was no longer a walking simulator. My range wasn’t infinite--I couldn't just point at a distant mountain and suddenly appear there, but I could certainly arrive within a few jumps. This vastly cut down on the drudgery of No Man’s Sky, letting me zip around to various points of interest within seconds rather than full minutes.

Related: How To Get A Settlement In No Man's Sky

It turns out this was what I needed to get over No Man’s Sky’s initial hump. Rather than trudging my way across a barren alien landscape to gather resources in order to escape into the stars above, I just teleported from location to location. A full inventory wasn’t as big of a problem if all it took were a few quick teleports to get back to my ship and drop off my load before venturing out again. And if something caught my eye, I could just teleport there, check it out, and be on my merry way after I’d gathered whatever shiny resource had tempted me.

No Man's Sky VR 2
via Hello Games

Ten hours later and I’m still playing No Man’s Sky, but I’ve regressed back to my standard monitor. You’d think the benefits of teleportation would remain constant, but a few things have kept me from sticking with No Man’s Sky in VR. Foremost among them was a strange issue with No Man’s Sky and Windows Mixed Reality where your framerate will randomly drop to nothing for no particular reason. Second is that the G2 renders VR in close to 4K but even my new video card still prefers 1080p as the best intersection between graphics and performance. And third, I’ve found that inventory management eventually becomes more of a chore in VR than it is in standard def, losing much of the initial time gains you get from being able to teleport around a planet.

But even as I push an analog stick to get from point A to point B like a 20th-century gamer, I’ll always be thankful to VR for letting me enjoy the vast universe of No Man’s Sky.

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