I’ve started sim racing on Meta Quest 3 and I’ll never go back — here’s why

Sim racing in VR
(Image credit: Future)

Something I definitely got from my Dad is a love for motorsport — the mechanical intricacies of each car has always fascinated me, and the underlying layer of the on track racing adds an element of captivating drama to every event that I can’t look away from.

Whether it’s your simpler moves like simply out-braking your opponent into turn one, or faking them into a defensive line with a poor exit and taking them with more speed on the way out of a chicane, this V8 game of chess has been a passion for me since playing the original Gran Turismo.

Anyway, speaking of the PlayStation racing staple, that love of motorsport extended to an adoration of sim racing — turning this sport into something accessible to all who cough up for a wheel and pedals. Playing on a traditional TV was already a great experience for me, but the moment I got the chance to make the transition to racing in VR, I took it and I’m never looking back.

What’s my setup?

Sim racing in VR

(Image credit: Future)

So before I begin, I know that VR sim racing isn’t cheap to get into. You just have to look at the fact that you’re spending over a thousand dollars to get the best Gran Turismo 7 experience with a PS5 and PSVR 2, and that’s on the lower end of getting great immersive racing.

With that in mind, I want to be transparent with the setup I have — a general mish mash of powerful gear and entry-level peripherals. It all starts with the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8 and Meta Quest 3 headset, and let me safely assure you that the RTX 4070 in here is more than enough to run the likes of F1 23’s VR mode with medium graphics settings.

To connect it all, I could’ve gone with the rather pricey Meta Quest Link cable. But for half the price, you can snag JSAUX’s 5-meter link cable, which translates into so much more freedom of movement, while still supporting the fast data transfer speeds needed for gameplay.

Logitech G923

(Image credit: Future)

Moving over to the actual racing rig, you’ll find the Logitech G923 wheel and pedals attached to the Next Level Racing GTLite seat. Basically, this is one of the cheaper ways to get a sim seat, and one that is easier to pack away into a cupboard when not needed.

Finally, if you have sensitive hands like mine (don’t laugh), that’s where my Sparco Meca-3 gloves come in. Technically, they’re mechanic gloves, but they offer better durability and grip than any other more expensive sim-specific gloves I’ve tried. For a better grip on the pedals, I have a pair of Sparco Hyperspeed gaming socks — purely out of my own refusal to buy garish sim racing shoes.

In the hot seat

F1 23

(Image credit: EA Sports)

This hasn’t been my first real exposure to VR racing, as I did jump on a GT7 competition at IFA 2023 (spoiler alert: I beat them all). That glimpse gave me a hunger to recreate the experience for myself, and I went the PC route to get a wider array of sim experiences I enjoy: F1 23, DiRT Rally 2.0 and Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC).

So I settled in, and after a relatively pain-free setup process of connecting cables and connecting the Quest 3 to Steam VR, I was in. And after going through a quick season of F1 23, I fell quickly in love.

There’s immersive gaming, and then there’s this — a simply jaw-dropping experience that may be distracting at first. Trust me when I say you’ll get caught out watching everything pass you by looking left and right, only to then miss a braking point and go careening into a wall.

But once you get over that initial shock, the feeling of being sat in the car and putting the pedal to the metal in VR is unmatched in all of my years of gaming. Whether it’s watching obstacles like houses or trees breeze past you in DiRT Rally 2.0, or seeing all the minute details of the inside of your GT World Championship car in ACC, every second is incredible.

Once you get over that initial shock, the feeling of being sat in the car and putting the pedal to the metal in VR is unmatched in all of my years of gaming.

But it’s not just because of the immersion of this experience compared to playing on a standard screen, it’s the racing behaviors you realize you miss out on. For example, when braking and turning into a corner, it’s best to keep your eyes locked on the part of the apex that you’re steering towards. This element of VR sim racing helped me experiment with carrying more speed into every corner and start to extract the most out of every sector.

Close to pole position

There seems to be one unavoidable issue, though. No matter how much I altered in graphics settings, there was always at least one occasion of stuttering. Luckily, most of the time in F1 23, this happened on a straight, but when it occurred mid corner, you’re basically left saying a quick prayer that your car is still rotating around the corner!

Probably most problematic is when this happened in DiRT. Don’t get me wrong, it happened a lot less than in F1 23, but when it did, my lovely Subaru would usually end up wrapped around a tree in a hideous accident.

Where’s the bottleneck though? I’m not sure. Could it be that a more powerful RTX 4090 GPU will help with the situation? Or does the cable need to be able to support a faster transfer rate than Meta recommends? Answers to these will come from more testing.

Take regular pit stops

Gran Turismo 7

(Image credit: Future)

But that one issue aside (which doesn’t impact ACC), the difference between traditional sim racing and VR exceeded every expectation I had in the same way as watching the graphical transition between PS1 and PS2. 

Not only is it a ridiculously cool experience to be immersed in, but it’s a useful POV too, and shout-out to the Quest 3’s spatial audio for giving you a nice surround experience to know where competitors are around you.

Allow me to leave you one critical piece of advice, though. VR racing is great and all, but just like any VR game, motion sickness and headaches are real — ramped up by several levels when you go over 200 miles per hour. Make sure you take regular breaks after every race.

More from Tom's Guide

Jason England
Managing Editor — Computing

Jason brings a decade of tech and gaming journalism experience to his role as a Managing Editor of Computing at Tom's Guide. He has previously written for Laptop Mag, Tom's Hardware, Kotaku, Stuff and BBC Science Focus. In his spare time, you'll find Jason looking for good dogs to pet or thinking about eating pizza if he isn't already.

  • asifzk
    I'm so tempted, just need the PC 😃 but motion sickness is no joke and really important you mentioned that.
    Reply
  • IndiSPENCEable
    I have to admit sim racing has been one of the biggest things I miss since loosing both legs due to sepsis. I've only just started to use my vr again in the past few months and I thought about getting back in to it and due to the cost of a modified racing wheel (just wheel not the wheel base) I'm looking at over £500 then add a good wheel base its well over £1200 but hopefully in the future I'll be able to get back in to it as I miss it so much and might be able to watch the btcc again as it makes me want to do it more and more 😆
    Reply
  • RobFisher11
    asifzk said:
    I'm so tempted, just need the PC 😃 but motion sickness is no joke and really important you mentioned that.
    You can train yourself out of motion sickness. I gave up on sim racing because of it, until I read an article explaining how to cure it.

    Most important point: don't power through it. First minor symptom like feeling weirdly hot: stop. Your brain can very quickly associate the VR headset with feeling ill and you won't even be able to look at it.

    Training: take a week. Drive an oval slowly in a car with a roof. Do laps until you feel weird. Repeat the next day. You'll go further. When you feel ready, introduce a track with twists and turns. Gradually increase speed. Tracks with undulations and cats without a roof make it worse, so save those for last. And find the game setting that locks the horizon. Eating ginger biscuits helps. I can now do an evening of practicing and a race no problem.
    Reply
  • boulard83
    You do not need a cable to connect your MQ3 to a PC as long as you have wifi6 or better. I play Alyx and many other game on my Quest3 on wifi without any issue at all.
    Reply
  • pr1970
    IndiSPENCEable said:
    I due to the cost of a modified racing wheel (just wheel not the wheel base) I'm looking at over £500 then add a good wheel base its well over £1200 but
    Sorry to hear your illness has stopped you enjoying sim racing. why don’t you look at a fanatec wheel base and an McLaren GT3 wheel that has analogue controllers on the wheel for throttle and brake? I have both although haven’t tried the analog setting.
    Could probably find base and wheel used for under £500.
    Reply
  • pr1970
    asifzk said:
    I'm so tempted, just need the PC 😃 but motion sickness is no joke and really important you mentioned that.
    I use to get terrible vr sickness but found sim racing something that I wasn’t too bad with as you are sat in a cockpit. I bought a £10 usb fan and stuck it on top of my steering base to blow air into my face when racing . It helped believe it or not. Just take it in small steps, 15mins racing and stop , then next day again slowly increasing time.
    Reply
  • d0x360
    Remote desktop running on PC and quest over wifi using av1 @ 120 mbps generally always provides a superior experience to a link cable though wifi6 or better may be required but it won't hurt to test on something lower provided signal isn't an issue and even on WiFi6 you should have the PC wired to the router. It uses the encoder in a 4000 series GPU to do av1 but I think the 3000 series supports is as well and the dual encoders in a 3070 should be more than sufficient to handle transcoding the video with av1 and using 120 mbps makes sure image quality is uncompromised.

    I've been using remote desktop since the Rift S or perhaps the original Rift.. it's hard to remember really but the main benefit even back then was oddly better performance in steam vr vs native oculus (meta uhg) software. I definitely used it with my Quest 2 starting immediately, I've had WiFi6e for years now and then when I got the quest 3 shortly after it launched I started using it on that and I've never had an issue despite my router being 20ish feet away and behind 2 walls... I have a high end pc though and a really high end router.

    Ryzen 7950x3d CCD0 @ 5.2ghz CCD1 @ 5.9ghz
    32 gigs DDR5 @ 6600mhz CL20
    RTX 4090 +240 core +1100 mem
    ROG Crosshair x670e Extreme
    4 Samsung 990 pro m. 2's (1 for windows, 3 for games)
    8TB Seagate barracuda storage drive
    4x1TB RAID SATA3 WD SSD's for swap and video editing/storage/playback.

    Its almost time for Zen6! I'm an addict I need help lol...
    Reply
  • d0x360
    pr1970 said:
    I use to get terrible vr sickness but found sim racing something that I wasn’t too bad with as you are sat in a cockpit. I bought a £10 usb fan and stuck it on top of my steering base to blow air into my face when racing . It helped believe it or not. Just take it in small steps, 15mins racing and stop , then next day again slowly increasing time.

    Yeah my wife had vr sickness within a couple of min in most games thankfully I never have... Iron stomach I guess. We eventually solved the issue by making sure she only played games in a high frame rate (90fps-120fps) that didn't fluctuate a lot. Then we started with her playing till basically right before she thought she would get sick then she took a 15 min break and went back in. It took about 3 weeks and maybe 4 days per week a couple hours a day but now she's fine so there is always hope!
    Reply
  • IndiSPENCEable
    pr1970 said:
    Sorry to hear your illness has stopped you enjoying sim racing. why don’t you look at a fanatec wheel base and an McLaren GT3 wheel that has analogue controllers on the wheel for throttle and brake? I have both although haven’t tried the analog setting.
    Could probably find base and wheel used for under £500.
    Hi thanks for the recommendation, I've not seen that wheel with the analogue controllers I think that will be perfect, think it's time to ask for more hours at work to fund it 😆 thanks so much hope I can get one sooner rather than later 🤞
    Reply
  • FriendlyPasserby
    IndiSPENCEable said:
    Hi thanks for the recommendation, I've not seen that wheel with the analogue controllers I think that will be perfect, think it's time to ask for more hours at work to fund it 😆 thanks so much hope I can get one sooner rather than later 🤞
    Hi, I happened to come across your comment while reading this article. Very sorry to hear that your illness has stopped you from enjoying sim racing.
    Reply