IronWolf VR Submarine Simulator
IronWolf VR is a fully immersive submarine simulator. It’s easy to pick up and play, but hard to master. Managing your Submarine in the control room, lining up your periscope with enemy vessels, and shooting the deck gun are all incredibly satisfying.
It offers an engrossing single player campaign and a co-op mode. Unleash torpedoes on merchant ships and dodge enemy destroyers.
Gameplay
The controls are old timey WW2 dials, wheels and switches that you manipulate with your hands – sometimes in a frenzied hurry as you line up your periscope for an enemy ship above you, other times with cold calculation as you calculate the best position to drop your depth charges. This is what claustrophobic VR submarine gaming is all about, immersing you in the high seas of convoy raiding as you hunt down merchant ships on the edge of doom.
As you progress through the game, you’ll be able to unlock and upgrade additional rooms on your submarine. This allows you to manage the speed and engines in the control room, load your torpedoes in the weapons room, and even go outside while your sub is on the surface to shoot enemy planes with the deck gun.
The upcoming UBOAT: The Silent Wolf from Polish studio Titan Gamez is coming to Meta Quest 2 and PC VR via SteamVR later this year, with both a VR Submarine single player story mode and multiplayer underwater battles for up to four players. It looks like a fun, if occasionally claustrophobic, experience that will let you explore one of Australia’s most iconic shipwrecks while learning about its cultural heritage and history.
Controls
While the controls aren’t as tactile as they should be, the overall experience of swimming deeper and deeper beneath the surface of the ocean while watching the glowing flora and fauna of Subnautica float around you in Virtual Reality is enchanting. Subnautica is a fantastic survival game in its own right, but playing it with the SubmersedVR mod makes it a truly special and engrossing experience.
Unlike many VR games, which tend to focus on quick, clickable UIs that can be VR UFO Machine accessed with your hands, Submarine relies on old timey WW2 dials, wheels, switches and gauges that you actually have to manipulate with your own hands. Whether that’s in a frantic rush to dive as quickly as possible after hearing enemy aircraft scramble for your position or in the quiet calculation of lining up your periscope crosshairs over an unsuspecting merchant ship, it feels great to be a submarine captain in VR.
Even better, running it in VR is surprisingly easy. Simply launch it in SteamVR mode when you have your headset attached and it works perfectly. The mod also adds a lot of additional interaction that makes the most of the new immersion. For example, instead of bringing up the PDA with a button press, you can simply hold your hand up to bring it up and then navigate its menus with your pointer finger.
Sound
The classic ping of the submarine sonar is synthesised with an FM synth, with a high frequency noise filter and a tape delay. This produces a sound that is both clear and realistic. The ping is also filtered by a reverb effect in order to further enhance the sense of immersion.
The acoustic representation of the outside world in submarine films is generally one of deadly menace, an uncanny and alien environment, menacing the small, vulnerable boat. This threat can be represented either by the pinging of the sonar, or by the sound of the creaking ship’s hull as it strains under water pressure.
Another typical technique is the accentuation of specific sound events for their dramaturgical function: For instance, pistol shots in a submarine film are often heard louder than they would in reality. This is done in order to create the acoustic impression of a real gunshot and to generate suspense.
For our experiment, we wanted to determine which sounds could increase the feeling of presence in VR. In addition to the normal lab noises that are cancelled by the headset, we presented a natural soundscape and the sounds triggered by the participant’s steps on the treadmill. The results showed that presenting a natural soundscape and self-triggered step sounds had the highest effect on presence.