The 3 Best VR Tennis Games On The Oculus Quest 3
Imagine having a tennis court in your living room. Well, you don’t need to imagine because with the magic of Virtual Reality that is already possible.
Tennis is a great sport, and I’ve played it quite a bit in the real world, but it can be kind of a hassle to get a game together and go out to the court.
VR Tennis games are great because you can just pop on your headset and enjoy a game of tennis whenever you want. It’s cheaper too, a decent racquet can cost you upwards of 100 dollars these days, but now with a VR headset and a few extra bucks you can enjoy a huge tennis court and a wide variety of opponents wherever and whenever you like.
Tennis in VR makes the game not only way more accessible, but faster. You don’t need to run after stray balls anymore, because the balls are digital and infinite.
With Virtual Reality tennis games you can have all the fun you want in this sport, and never even need to walk out of your front door. Though weirdly enough it doesn’t seem like many developers have taken advantage of how awesome a great VR tennis game could be.
Currently there are three decent VR tennis games on the Oculus Quest 3 (and Oculus Quest 2 of course) that are at least worth talking about.
I’ll tell you right now that there is a clear winner out of these three games, though these three are the best on offer at the moment. If you just want to see which game is the best then scroll down to our section on First Person Tennis. That’s the winner here.
Oh, and a quick disclaimer before we get into these games. You’re going to want a bit of space to play them. I already accidentally punched the ceiling with my controller at least once, and almost ran into the furniture a few times.
So if you want to enjoy VR tennis as much as possible with these games make sure you’ve got the biggest playspace you can get. Having enough space to swing the racquet around is important, even if there is no physical racket.
Anyhow without further ado these are the 3 Best VR Tennis Games on the Oculus Quest 3.
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Tennis Esports - VR Tennis Games On the Oculus Quest 3
Let’s start with the VR tennis game that I’d recommend you try the least, Tennis Esports.
Right off of the bat it seems like it’s got a lot going for it. Professional looking interface, upbeat music, and a good tutorial. All of your comfort and height options are set right at the start.
I had a lot of hope when first trying Tennis Esports, and had even already seen an article about a professional tennis player practicing with a tennis VR game (but not this one). A game with such a great name and marketing material looked like a great place to start.
Well whatever game they were using certainly isn’t this one.
Hitting the ball in Tennis Esports feels more like punting a baseball
You’ll notice the problem right in the tutorial, because the biggest problem of all in this game is the hitting.
You look around the court, see the net swaying in the breeze, and think “wow this looks pretty good” and then all of that hope falls away the first time your racquet makes contact with a ball.
It feels like you’re hitting the tennis ball with a baseball bat instead of a tennis racquet. It feels unnatural, and you’re hardly incentivized to follow through on your swings like when actually hitting a tennis ball.
The only way I found to get a ball to land somewhere in the opponent’s side of the court is to sort of tap it and stop the racquet just as it makes contact with the ball.
Everything else either sent the ball smashing into the ground or straight into the net, or worse somewhere off on the sidelines.
The bot hitting the ball in Tennis Esports
Tennis Esports has the worst racquet physics out of any VR tennis game on the market. I tried messing with the settings and hitting the ball in different ways, but no matter what I did it never felt right and I never got a satisfying or effective hit.
If that’s not enough to steer you away from this game then there’s a slew of other problems to warn you about too.
As in all of these Tennis VR games you move into range of the next ball coming towards your side of the court by teleporting or gliding over to where it will impact.
Tennis Esports decided that if a ball doesn’t land near enough to you that you just won’t teleport over to it, and you’ll never have a chance to make a shot back.
This feels pretty cheap, and takes the fate of the game out of your hands. Sure, you should have a disadvantage if your opponent made a good return, that’s part of the strategy and fun of tennis… but to give you no chance at all feels boring and ridiculous.
At least seeing yourself get closer to the ball would give some illusion of a chance, and let you reason that it was just too far away and too fast. Standing still and doing nothing doesn’t look good.
Returning the ball never felt so wonky
The AI opponents are either extremely easy or extremely hard. They’re either mostly incapable of returning balls that land right in front of them, or return most of your hits at 500 miles an hour.
Also they look kind of stupid, and their animations often glitch out and look unnatural, especially when a ball passes by them and their swing in the air a whole second later. They look weird.
There’s also a ton of other minor issues and bugs, like the reason for a point loss not displaying correctly on the scoreboard. Those would be criticisms of a game that actually functioned well, but for Tennis Esports are nitpicks because the other problems are so glaring.
Oh, and just so you know this game does have Multiplayer, and actually had a few people online one of the times I checked.
Unfortuantley the multiplayer suffers from all of the problems the Singleplayer has. My opponent was also contorted and strange looking the entire time.
It didn’t lag though, which was nice.
The multiplayer opponents always looked weirdly distorted and I don’t know why
At this point you might be wondering why I’ve included this game on a list of the “Best” VR Tennis games if it’s so bad.
Mostly this is here just to warn you to stay away from this game because it seems so good before you get your hands on it, but in a couple of matches you’ll feel cheated out of your money and time.
So steer away from Tennis Esports, either of the other games here are far more worth your hours and dollars.
Tennis League VR - VR Tennis Games On the Oculus Quest 3
Now for a somewhat better, but still somewhat difficult to enjoy tennis game on the Meta Quest 3, Tennis League VR.
I really want to like this game. I’ve tried to like this game. At first glance it seems like it should be the best in so many ways.
Right at the main menu it’s got a great look and feel to it, customizable avatars, a leaderboard, a trophy room. It seems like it’s got so many of the trappings of a professionally made and polished game that it should be very fun.
Unfortunately Tennis League VR falls short of being a great VR Tennis Game.
Hitting backhands is hard in Tennis League VR
Just like with Tennis Esports, the racquet physics is not quite there.
Even after playing around with the settings I could never dial in how to hit the ball properly and consistently. Trust me, I tried a lot, and it just never felt quite like hitting a tennis ball, but it definitely felt better than Tennis Esports.
I ended up lobbing the ball up really high a lot after kind of tapping it.
Still shots would seem to almost randomly veer off in odd directions at incredible speed, or suddenly barely go anywhere despite my slapping of the ball with a full force backstroke.
I thought that maybe this happened due to the incoming speed of the ball or where it contacted the racquet, but after testing things out with the ball machine training mode I could never figure out what was causing the random reactions of the ball.
Another shot that went straight into the net
Still this didn’t totally ruin the experience of the game, though it definitely made me feel that I could only ever get so good at it without being able to consistently land the ball where I wanted it to go.
There are other problems though, like how hard it is to see across the court at your opponent. Unlike the other games on this list it felt like I was straining my eyes the entire time just trying to see what the other player was doing.
The game also occasionally lagged, even when I wasn’t recording, for no apparent reason. Frames would drop and the ball would stutter in the air, which isn’t pleasant in any VR experience, let alone when you’re trying to smack a ball with a tennis racquet.
Also this game really wants you to hit buttons on your controller. You have to hit a button before you serve or before your opponent serves, and you have to hit a button to stand in the way of the incoming ball so you can whack it.
It’s a strange system and keeps you from holding the controller like you would a tennis racquet, because you always have to keep your thumbs on the buttons. It’s a little awkward.
Oh, and sometimes I would be teleported right into the path of the ball instead of beside it, so I could either step to the left and run into a desk or try to awkwardly hit it as it came towards my chest.
Trying to not double fault
Still, I did have a fairly good time with Tennis League VR. The opponents ramped up in difficulty fairly well and I really felt like I was making progress despite the feeling of randomness.
Despite all of that I did get a little better at the game over time, and felt good enough to try the Multiplayer.
Unfortunately no matter how many times I checked I couldn’t find another player online.
I could never find a multiplayer match in Tennis League VR
I would quickly forget about all of the good times I had in Tennis League VR and also figure out why hardly anybody was playing the multiplayer for it or Tennis Esports when I discovered the best VR Tennis game of them all, First Person Tennis.
First Person Tennis - VR Tennis Games On the Oculus Quest 3
Now for our final VR tennis game on the Oculus Quest 3, and if you couldn’t guess already the one that I’d recommend you try before any other on this list.
I’ve personally spent the most time with First Person Tennis because it’s the best virtual way to play tennis I have ever tried, and because it is a ton of fun.
Returning a ball in First Person Tennis
Let’s start with how hitting the ball feels. For once a game really nails it.
The feeling of hitting the ball is consistent, and after a few matches you start to recognize why the ball went the way that it did after a hit. The physics are consistent and make sense.
First Person Tennis feels close to hitting an actual tennis ball with an actual racquet, though the option for some haptic feedback through the controller for each hit, like a brief vibration, would be pretty cool.
How the bot looks after losing a round
At first I thought that my hits were maybe a little too easy and consistent, and the ball always seemed to land in the middle of the opponent’s court.
That’s because of Arcade mode. It’s far easier to get good hits in in Arcade mode, but it really cuts into the difficulty.
If you really want a realistic VR tennis experience then I recommend you change it to Simulation immediately. Sure it’s a little harder and if you’re used to Arcade you’ll have to adjust, but it’s much more rewarding to master and lets you make far trickier shots.
Oh, and let’s also talk about the movement. Finally there are multiple movement options, and none of them involve hitting a button or randomly having no chance to catch a ball.
Serving in First Person Tennis
You can teleport to where the ball is coming next, or always move using your thumbstick, or automatically slide over to the ball and have the option to interrupt automatic movement by using your thumbstick.
Moving with the thumbstick can be really tricky to get right, and I never had the patience to really get the hang of it. Stopping yourself not too close and not too far away from the ball was not easy, and I would often accidentally hit the sprint button and lurch past the ball.
That’s really a skill issue though, and to mitigate that skill issue I just went with the automatic movement mode.
Though at first I felt a little cheated, because sometimes it would just decide to bring me up to volley range right up to the net.
I didn’t really want to do that often because jumping or diving far enough to catch most rallies would involve hitting the ceiling or wall, even with a fairly sizeable playspace.
Luckily when I discovered that you can still use the thumbstick to move in automatic movement mode I found that I had the comfort of easily sliding up to the ball and focusing on my strike, and still have all of the tactical options of deciding where I wanted to be to prepare for the next incoming ball
Hitting the ball in a practice match
Though First Person Tennis does fall a little short in the AI department. Unlike in Tennis League VR the AI start hard and stay hard.
They’ll hardly ever just miss a ball or make an unenforced error. Though occasionally they’ll just sort of stand next to a ball landing beside them, which may be a bug or maybe the bot not thinking that your ball was going to land in.
Generally the best way to defeat them, even when starting out or doing a practice match, is to hit the ball really fast on the opposite side of the court from where they are, or hit it behind them when they are close to the net.
Not to say those are the only ways to score, but it is awfully hard to get the good feeling of a win when you’re just starting out, especially when using Simulation physics.
There was also a difficulty setting in the Options menu, though I noticed all of this while playing on Beginner. Switching to Advanced didn’t seem to change much though.
It would be good to have a better range of difficulty options. Though I guess setting the physics to Arcade is the closest thing to that, though it will hamper you in the long run.
So it would be nice to have a bit more of a difficulty curve to the games AI, but overall that’s really a nitpick, and if you don’t want to play against the AI there’s always Multiplayer.
First Person Tennis has a pretty active multiplayer scene, mostly in Europe
While I never could find a match in Tennis League VR I can guess that the reason for that is because it’s an inferior experience to First Person Tennis’s multiplayer.
I was able to find a match whenever I got on. Though the most populated server seemed to be Europe.
Others were not so active, but it was always easy to find a game on the European server.
A real opponent returning the ball in multiplayer
It was a lot like playing First Person Tennis in Singleplayer. Easy to use, quick to start and quick to keep moving.
Though there was a strange constant lag. The ball would seem to bounce past my opponent, and then suddenly they would hit it and it would come towards me.
It was uncanny and a little unpleasant, not to mention kind of a disadvantage as it cut seconds off of my ability to react, but I did get used to it.
Still, this wasn’t ideal. There were a few times that I would miss the ball due to this constant lag on each return from my opponent.
Hopefully if you try First Person Tennis’s multiplayer you don’t have the same problem, mine might have been largely due to playing on European servers an ocean away from my location.
The bot returning a ball out of bounds
If it wasn’t already obvious I have to say that if you try any of these 3 tennis VR games on the Oculus Quest 3 or 2 it should be First Person Tennis.
There really is nothing like it, and it blew the other two contenders out of the water in almost every way.
There’s even a Mixed Reality Mode!
The mixed reality mode is pretty sweet too
Before we end this article, a quick shoutout to Court Time Tennis, which does have some VR tennis gameplay that you can try for free!
Unfortunately it didn’t make it as one of the 3 main games on this list because it’s really lacking in features and still needs some tweaks. Hitting the ball feels a lot like launching it out of a cannon, but one day it could be a truly great VR tennis game.
Anyhow, those are the 3 Best VR Tennis Games on the Oculus Quest 3, though they’re all the top 3 out of what there is to have, there’s really one that’s a truly great Virtual Reality tennis experience. Enjoy!
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