Subnautica VR Review and Setup Guide

Today we’re going to be looking at a fantastic survival game, Subnautica, and found out how well it plays in Virtual Reality without mods and with the Submversed VR mod.

Subnautica is an underwater themed survival game that is a well known and liked experience as a traditional flatscreen game.

In it you’re the sole survivor of a crashed spacecraft. You have to find out how to not only survive on an alien planet completely covered in water, but also uncover the mysteries of it as you head deeper and deeper below the depths.

Here we’re going to take a look at Subnautica VR both with and without mods. Without spoiling too much I have to say that the unmodded version of VR Subnautica only plays well when you’re using a traditional controller rather than moving your actual hands with VR touch controllers.

If you really want a fully immersive VR experience with touch controls I’d recommend using the SubmersedVR mod to improve the game.

Though it’s an independent mod and has some issues, Subnautica VR becomes a true VR game with the addition of true touch controls and some VR interactions.

Subnautica VR is very pretty

First we’ll talk about how Subnautica VR plays unmodded, and then go into how VR Subnautica plays with the inclusion of a Virtual Reality mod.

If you’re already set on playing Subnautica in VR with the SubmersedVR mod then check out our setup guide by scrolling below the review portions of this article. If you’re still on the fence then check out our review and see if it sounds like fun to you.

Oh, and one more thing. If you want to play Subnautica VR on an Oculus Quest 2 or Oculus Quest 3 then keep in mind that Subnautica is a PCVR game, so you can’t run it in standalone on your Quest headset. You’ll have to connect your Quest to a computer to try it. You can enjoy Subnautica in VR on the Oculus Quest 2 or 3 if you have a PC to connect to and run the game.

Subnautica VR Review Without Mods

First let’s take a look at how Subnautica VR plays right out of the box.

You don’t have to have mods to play Subnautica in VR. Though as you’ll see I would really suggest you play this game with mods for the best Virtual Reality experience.

The developers added VR support that works simply by launching the game using SteamVR while you have a headset connected to your PC.

Just select “Launch Subnautica in SteamVR mode” when you start the game.

Select this to run VR Subnautica

Running VR Subnautica without mods is incredibly easy, and the VR port is pretty good performance wise.

Where other VR ports like that for The Forest VR feel incomplete and tend to have a lot of performance issues, Subnautica VR runs with a great framerate and few performance glitches or slowdowns.

The main menu can be navigated with touch controllers immediately without changing any settings by using the thumbsticks and A button.

The Subnautica VR main menu

Though there are many downsides to running Subnautica VR without mods that immediately become obvious after starting a new game.

After making it through the intro cutscene you’ll immediately notice that the fire that usually burns inside your escape pod is not there, even though the warnings flashing on the wall and the fire extinguisher is on the floor as usual.

Your ingame cursor will follow whatever you are looking at instead of your hands, which isn’t terrible by any means, though the tutorial prompts on how to move and use items also all display controls for a controller or gamepad, like an xbox controller.

Luckily they will go away if you leave the escape pod by looking at the ladder and hitting A, though you’ll also see that the animation for climbing out of your escape pod is cut out, and you’ll just teleport to the top.

These tutorial prompts will not go away until you leave the Escape Pod

Opening your PDA will have it display very close to your face, and there’s no way to select items on your quick selection bar once you’ve put them there.

Though there are some good signs, like a physical body in game that stays with your head if you physically move around your playspace.

Having your head part ways with your physical body if you move around a little is extremely annoying in other VR ports of flatscreen games like No Man’s Sky VR or even the MotherVR mod for Alien: Isolation. Luckily Subnautica VR doesn’t have that problem unmodded or modded.

The difficulties with unmodded Subnautica VR are very apparent with the controls though.

There simply aren’t as many buttons on touch controllers as there are on a controller. Normally you would use the sideways buttons on the D-Pad to change which quick slot item you are using, but that .

You can play around with the controller settings and get a little more mileage out of touch controllers, but there’s really no point since you won’t be using them to move your hands in game anyway.

The PDA gets very close to your face

There is awkwardness in other areas as well, mostly with items being way too close to your face when you use them, like the PDA.

While the VR Subnautica port runs well right out of the box and works in theory, it’s really intended for you to use a controller to play Subnautica, and enhance your experience with a VR view through your headset.

I couldn’t even figure out how to open the main menu to save or quit the game.

While this is serviceable when using an Xbox controller, and made even better with the VR Enhancements mod, there simply aren’t enough buttons on touch controllers to fully experience Subnautica in VR without a gamepad or xbox controller.

VR Subnautica without mods isn’t bad if you bring a controller

So to get the most modern VR experience out of Subnautica, we’re going to have to install the SubmersedVR mod, which will add touch controls to make a true Virtual Reality experience out of this survival game.

Of course if you’d prefer to play Subnautica VR with a traditional controller while viewing the world in Virtual Reality, then check out the VR Enhancements mod and enjoy.

However for this review we’re going to be a little more particular and focus on the most immersive VR mod for Subnautica that includes motion controls and other immersive enhancements, SubmersedVR.

VR Subnautica Review with the SubmersedVR Mod

Now for the real meat of this Subnautica VR Review, how it plays with the immersive Virtual Reality mod SubmersedVR.

Right out of the gate I can tell you that if you want to play VR Subnautica with touch controllers then this mod is the way to play it. With it you can use your hands to point at objects to use them, and do other things like hold your tools and PDA.

No more looking at stuff in order to use it, now you point to it with your dominant hand and press the A button to use an item. Even the main menu works with touch controllers.

With the SubmersedVR Subnautica VR mod you get actual hands now

Of course there’s still some of the original VR mode’s slight issues. The tutorial prompts are fixed and function as you would expect for touch controller input, but little things like the fire in your escape pod being missing are still present.

Still, SubmersedVR really does bring a lot of new VR interactivity to VR Subnautica. For instance, opening your PDA.

Instead of a static animation that just brings the PDA up to your face, it is now tied to your non dominant hand, and you use your other hand to interact with it.

Kind of like you are actually holding a tablet in your actual hand! You can press the buttons to use items or navigate menus with your pointer hand.

The new and improved PDA that you hold with your real hand

Even more importantly a lot of basic Subnautica actions are accessible with touch controllers.

Like the quick items menu. Now you can press the joystick on your dominant hand and move your hand over an item to use it anywhere. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s interactable with hand controls.

The same goes for the pause menu. You can now open it through your PDA.

Though it is a shame that the physical body we had in the unmodded version didn’t seem to make the cut. At best you can see your feet if you’ve got flippers on.

At least there continues to be no issues with your VR view becoming decoupled from your VR body.

Even if you physically walk around your VR “head” won’t stray away from your body. Your body in the game will move to keep up, which is a problem even a lot of otherwise very good VR mods for flatscreen games still have, like the MotherVR mod for Alien: Isolation VR.

I’d call that a win for any flatscreen to VR port.

Also watching the Aurora blow up in VR is amazing

Though you can’t expect full VR interactivity with this Subnautica VR mod.

Your ingame hands are mostly limited to just pointing at things or holding objects to point at things.

For instance, breaking a limestone outcrop still involves just pointing your hand at the outcrop and pressing A until you mine it into a resource.

Breaking a limestone outcrop in Subnautica VR

Taking a sample of something with your survival knife comes down to just holding the knife, pointing it at something, and pressing trigger to collect a sample.

Also sometimes, especially with the scanner, it’s not always obvious where the pointer coming from your hand is pointing, which gave me a few awkward moments where I pointed my scanner at something and pressed the trigger to scan, but nothing happened.

It turned out that the scanner was pointing further downwards than it seemed, and I had to awkwardly tilt my hand up to scan something in front of it, but it didn’t take too much getting used to.

The scanner can be a little awkward, but it’s not too hard to get used to

There are certainly technical limitations with modding Subnautica VR with more immersive VR interactions. More immersive interactions like, for instance, allowing you to swing your knife holding hand into a piece of flora to collect a sample.

These limitations don’t make the SubmersedVR Subnautica mod a bad experience by any means. You should just know that you’re going to be doing a lot of pointing and button hitting.

Other things don’t translate completely too. For instance your seaglide. You only hold it with your dominant hand, and can’t hold it with your other.

It also doesn’t really work how you might expect it to. Moving while you have your seaglide equipped is just faster.

Only the lights on the front are affected at all by where your hand is actually pointing it. You can swim forward while your seaglide is pointed straight up, which doesn’t make much sense.

Again, there are probably technical limitations here. I habitually held it in front of myself anyway. It was just easier.

Seagliding around the ocean floor

Still, overall modded VR Subnautica is fantastic. A lot of comfort and gameplay options are included with the mod that can make playing it more immersive.

They’re all accessible from the options menu and if you do try this mod I highly suggest you take a look, some of them are great.

For instance, if you don’t want your view constantly obstructed by your oxygen, health, hunger, and thirst bars there is an option to put them on your wrist instead of the bottom left corner of your view.

You can even turn on animations for things like climbing ladders, though those can be pretty uncomfortable as they artificially snap your view around and shake your screen as the animation plays out.

They’re all great options to have though, and Subnautica VR with the SubmersedVR mod is an extremely enchanting experience.

The Submersed VR options menu

Swimming deeper and deeper beneath the water and watching the glowing flora and fauna of Subnautica’s world float around you in Virtual Reality is truly amazing.

As we’ve said the controls aren’t the most tactile, though they are very serviceable, what makes Subnautica VR truly amazing is exploring its world with the immersive feeling of Virtual Reality.

The controls and interface being updated to allow for the use of touch controls just makes it easier to sink into that world and be able to play the game without awkwardly carrying a controller in both hands while standing up.

All of those fantastic Subnautica moments of discovery and dread, like the first time you enter the Kelp Forest, or the first time you see one of the underwater behemoths, or when you see the Aurora explode.

All of these moments look and sound and feel so great because they feel like you’re actually there.

It also helps that even with mods the game looks and runs really well in PCVR. No big performance issues like some other VR games.

Collecting Creepvine by pointing my hand at it and hitting trigger

Subnautica is a game that never really grabbed me until I played it in Virtual Reality.

It looked good on a flat screen and was fun and even relaxing to play and wander around, but being in it in Virtual Reality really sold me on its gameplay and made playing it feel more adventerous.

Finding new resources, making new items, and uncovering the secrets of the world piece by piece turned from an interesting distraction into a real adventure with the inclusion of VR.

So if you have the ability and desire to explore the depths of an alien planet I highly recommend you try out Subnautica VR and play it with the SubmersedVR mod.

Sure it’s got some limits, but they’re things you can easily become used to, and doing that is worth it to see things like this.

Seagliding around the Kelp Forest. This picture doesn’t do the feeling of having been there justice.

So if you have Subnautica installed and are interested in trying it with the SubmersedVR mod, here’s how.

How To Mod Subnautica VR with SubmersedVR

SubmersedVR is the best way to get a fully immersive VR experience out of VR Subnautica. Though if you’re trying to play Subnautica VR on the Oculus Quest 2 or 3, or any standalone VR headset you’ll need to connect your Quest to a PC to play this. Subnautica VR is PCVR only.

Unlike other Subnautica VR mods like the VREnhancements mod, SubmersedVR focuses on using touch controllers instead of relying on a traditional console controller like an Xbox controller connected to your PC.

So here’s how to install the SubmersedVR mod to mod your Subnautica game to be as immersive as possible in Virtual Reality. The biggest downside to this mod is that it currently only works on the Steam version of Subnautica.

We’ll be using the nexusmods.com mod manager called Vortex for this. It’s the easiest way to install the SubmersedVR Subnautica VR mod.

Oh, and if you already have some Subnautica mods installed like VREnhancements or the previous Motion Controls Mod, uninstall them before continuing. To make sure nothing goes wrong with mod compatibility issues you might want to uninstall and reinstall Subnautica. Starting from a fresh installation is the surest way to make sure nothing goes wrong.

So first go to the Vortex Mod Manager download page and click on “Download the latest version now.”

You’ll be brought to the “Files” tab of the Vortex Mod Manager page.

Scroll down and click “Manual Download” under “Main Files”.

If you don’t have a nexusmods.com account then it’s time to make one. Don’t worry, an account is free. Either log into an existing account you have or make an account and log in to download Vortex.

Once you’re at the download page hit “SLOW DOWNLOAD” and the installer .exe should be downloaded to your Downloads folder in a moment.

When it’s done downloading, run the installer. You can indicate a custom installation path if you want, but the default should work just fine.

Launch Vortex after it is done installing.

In the Vortex window you should see a notification bell in the top right corner.

Click on it to reveal your notifications. If you see one that asks you to restart Vortex then click on the Restart button.

Alright so now that you’ve got Vortex installed it’s time to link your Subnautica installation to it.

Click on the “Games” tab on the left side of Vortex and in the “Search for a game…” search bar type in “Subnautica.”

You should then see it appear, click on it and then on the “Manage” button that appears in the center. There’ll be a little popup box asking you to Download some files for it. Keep going and accept everything. Vortex will restart.

After Vortex restarts you will get this prompt.

Click the “Continue” button and a file explorer window should pop up.

In that window you need to find your Subnautica installation directory. The default path is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica. If you’ve installed Steam in a different folder then follow the filepath from the “Steam” folder onwards.

Once your game has been successfully found by Vortex another prompt will appear.

Click the checkbox and then hit the “Get BepInEx” box. Without BepInEx you won’t be able to install any mods for Subnautica, including the SubmersedVR Subnautica VR mod.

You’ll be taken to the page for Tobey’s BepInEx Pack for Subnautica. Hit the “Vortex” button near the top.

This should bring you to a downloads page.

Download the latest version of the BepInEx pack for Subnautica by hitting the “SLOW DOWNLOAD” button.

A popup should appear shortly in your browser. Hit “Open Vortex” on it.

The package will download and install automatically, though if you haven’t logged into Vortex with your nexusmods.com account then you’ll be asked to log in to link your account to Vortex.

After it’s done you should see some notifications pop up in the top right corner underneath the notification bell.

If not click on the bell and you should see a prompt asking you to Elevate the deployment. Click the “Elevate” button.

Now BepInEx should be installed for Subnautica.

To make sure that it is installed correctly start Subnautica (not in VR just yet). Shortly before the game starts you should see a little console pop up and some text scroll across it.

The console can be very fast and easy to miss.

It’s a little black box with white text. If you see that appear before the game starts, even for a moment, then you’re good to keep going.

So now head over to the SubmersedVR Github page and click the “Releases” button on the right hand side.

In the releases page under “Assets” click the first .zip file name that appears.

Make sure you’re doing this on the latest release, you can see the release numbers at the top of each release section.

The .zip file will download to your downloads folder, unzip it and open it. You should see some other folders inside.

These folders will have the same name as some others in your Subnautica installation directory.

So head back there. The default installation path is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica. If you’ve installed Steam in a different folder then follow the filepath from the “Steam” folder onwards.

Drag these two folders into whatever folder in the Subnautica installation directory has folders with the same name.

They should copy over with no problems and put all of their files into your Subnautica installation.

At long last you have finally added the SubmersedVR mod to Subnautica! Congratulations, though there is one more thing.

If you’re using an Oculus Rift or Quest headset then make sure that you run Subnautica from SteamVR, and not in Oculus VR mode. One way to make sure of this is by running SteamVR and then running Subnautica from SteamVR.

You can also add the -vrmode openvr option to Subnautica’s Launch Options in steam by right clicking on Subnautica in your library, selecting “Properties…” and adding -vrmode openvr to the launch options text box.

Now you can run Subnautica VR in Virtual Reality and enjoy all that this game has to offer with immersive motion controls! Enjoy!