Exploring Watch Dogs’ Chicago map in REAL VR is a feast for the eyes

I love virtual tourist attractions. During the pandemic, I’ve been quenching my travel itch with great big sessions of Google Earth VR, retracing old vacation trails and exploring new places I’ve always wanted to visit.

But these little fantasy explorations pale in comparison to being able to actually walk around a fully realized virtual world as a tourist. This is basically exactly what I did in Luke Ross’ VR corner this week, thanks to a new update to his REAL VR MOD. By the way, REAL stands for “Reality Enhancement Augmentation Layer”.

We’ve featured many of Luke’s mods in VR Corner over the years, but his favorite ones have always been those with open worlds that feel like real places. Thanks to the level of detail in the Chicago map that Ubisoft built for his open-world hack game, Watch Dogs, it’s easy to imagine you’re actually there. There’s so much variety in the environments and buildings, and so many nice details to lean into and observe. These range from first-person interiors of the game’s cars, to some of the most delicious-looking muffins you’ve ever seen, and even Aidan’s pierced teeth.

Luke’s REAL VR MOD for Watch Dogs can be found on his site. Patreon page As always, it’s incredibly easy to install and run (if I could, I should!). There are a few shaky cutscenes here and there, and as you can see in my video, the light source can be a little bright at times, but in general it’s a great experience driving around Chicago in a nice sports car and taking in the scenery from there. Go outside to explore. CloseHis personal is so much fun!

Once you’re in there, it really feels like this game was made for VR, aside from a few UI issues. To be honest, I’m kind of disappointed that it wasn’t. Ubisoft has created many amazing recreations of past, present, and even future cities over the years, such as Assassin’s Creed’s London. Many of these are now just trapped on discs, gathering dust on people’s bookshelves, after new generations of consoles came along and took players away from them. What Luke Ross is doing here is unlocking these worlds and giving VR owners the chance to explore and enjoy them again (or for the first time) in a whole new way. You can see me doing just that in the video above.