For players who spend hours hanging out in Final Fantasy 14's major cities, an upcoming VR mod may help make the MMO's familiar pastime a little more immersive.

According to a tweet from modding community Flat2VR (opens in new tab), a fan-made Final Fantasy 14 VR mod will be released "soon" in alpha.

The VR mod supports full first- and third-person movement and motion control; Marulu, one of the mod's creators, said on Flat2VR's Discord server that the first-person mode is largely experimental, while the third-person mode is probably the actual way you want to play the game, he wrote. Zoom-in view is not ideal during combat, as attacks and environmental hazards happen all around you.

In a video released with the announcement, one can see how the busy UI of the MMO is translated to VR. The grid of abilities and the minimap are superimposed on the character's third-person perspective. In some shots of combat, you can see how tilting the head essentially emulates turning the camera with the mouse. However, the in-game camera is still functional and can be rotated independently of the headset.

For the average MMO player who does not stare at a hot bar for long periods of time, the shaky view will not be a problem. Most abilities are set and remembered in key bindings, but keyboard and mouse users may struggle. The initial release does not include full keyboard and mouse support due to the misalignment of the cursor and VR UI. It can still be turned on, but it is not possible to select objects or NPCs in the world without key bindings. Gamepad users would have an advantage here - FF14 has impressive gamepad support, which is why so many people use it on PC - but a lot can be mapped to buttons by having the trigger act as a modifier, like pressing Shift.

VR mods support motion control with Steam VR button remapping. You can move your character with the left stick, or point and click to get where you want to go if you are in first person view. The alpha release has a profile for the Valve Index controller. For everything else, you will need to do your own button mapping.

You'll need a fairly heavy graphics card to use this (when it's released); Marulu recommends RTX 3070 or later to achieve a stable 90 fps (the fps floor allowed in VR to avoid motion sickness). You will also need to install a custom FF14 launcher called FFXIV Quick Launcher (opens in a new tab) and install the XIVR plugin which can be found in the search bar. The game's TOS does not technically allow both launchers and VR mods, so it is up to you to decide if you want to take the risk. Many FF14 players use mods of varying levels of complexity, whether it be to track DPS in raids or to wear custom clothing, but Square Enix has yet to consistently punish anyone who uses mods outside of streamers (open in new tab). According to Marulu, the mod uses completely original code and is "undetectable and fully usable on live servers," but admits that it can get you into trouble.

The Flat2VR community, which has helped popularize FF14's VR mod, is also home to the recent VR port of Jedi Academy (opens in new tab) and similar mods for Left 4 Dead and Valheim. But FF14 is an ambitious choice. Hopefully (and if not banned), there are many beautiful places in the game to walk. Drop me in the snow covered streets of Ishgard and let me take first person photos of people coming and going, or take me on an immersive tour of the magical Crystal Tower. In the old MMOs people ran private servers to do this sort of thing, and it would be great to be able to do that in the main game.