Minecraft the most popular video game since its launch in 2011 comes to Virtual Reality thanks to Vivecraft, a mod created to play it like never before.
In this tutorial I will show you how to download and install everything you need to play Minecraft in Virtual Reality with any VR viewer.
I will also make some brief references to the configuration and differences between the versions of Minecraft that we can find.
What is Minecraft?
It is unlikely that you still don’t know what Minecraft is as it is the best-selling game in history with over 200 million copies sold since its launch in 2011.
An open world construction video game based on Pixel art theme that has been evolving since its creator Markus Persson published it in 2009.
It has also had several sequels such as Minecraft Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeon or its own Augmented Reality version Minecraft Earth.
What is the difference between playing in VR or flat?
We could say yes, the Virtual Reality version of Minecraft is still Minecraft. But it plays and feels like a completely different game.
Imagine the possibility to break blocks with your bare hands, or fight with a sword and even shoot a bow with both hands.
Not only that, but every lever, button or pressure plate or door has sensitive interaction with our hands creating a more immersive experience.
All this is optional since we can also use our Virtual Reality controller as if it were a mouse so we don’t get tired of chopping 3 million stone blocks to find diamonds.
How can I play it in Virtual Reality?
Playing Minecraft in Virtual Reality is not a new experience since Vivecraft was born in 2016 for the HTC Vive platform. On the other hand Oculus also launched a month later its own official version based on Bedrock.
This time I’m going to focus on teaching you how to install and play Minecraft in Virtual Reality through Vivecraft, the reasons we will see once the tutorial is completed.
What we need:
- Minecraft: Java Edition. Available at the Minecraft website.
- Java. Available from here.
- Steam with SteamVR installed and configured.
- A SteamVR compatible viewer (Can be standalone with Airlink or Virtual Desktop).
- A VReady PC with a graphics card of at least GTX 10XX series or equivalent.
- The latest version of the Vivecraft mod compatible with your version of Minecraft.
How to install ViveCraft:
The following steps to install Vivecraft are exactly the same for both the first installation and subsequent upgrades.
1 – The first thing to do is to download and install both Java and Minecraft Java Edition.
2 – Before starting to install the mod we have to open the game at least 1 time to create the folders we will need.
3 – Close the game completely and run the Vivecraft installer with Java (it may run with Winrar by default when you click on it).
4 – Normally we leave everything by default and we would give to install although I recommend to change the Ram assigned to 4Gb or 8Gb if we plan to use lighting Shadders.
5 – Click on the Install button and it will download files and automatically configure the launcher for our Virtual Reality input.
6 – Open SteamVR before opening the Minecraft launcher.
7 – Enter the launcher and make sure that Vivecraft is selected and hit play, otherwise we will run it from the Install tab.
What is the optimal configuration?
This will depend on the PC we are using to play Minecraft in Virtual Reality with Vivecraft. I am going to give you some tips and tricks so you can optimize your experience yourself.
If your PC is powerful you can even add lighting shadders and texture packs that will load your graphics card even more.
In the Vivecraft options menu we find the classic options and also a new drop-down menu for Virtual Reality settings.
If your PC is medium-low range I recommend that you set the graphics to “fast” quality and play with the Anti-alising and dynamic lighting or shadows.
It is worth mentioning that even if Minecraft was previously smooth in its monitor version, Virtual Reality will be much more demanding on your PC.
But if your PC is a last generation one, you won’t have any kind of problem unless you start cramming packages like crazy until you push its GPU to the limit.
Playing seated in Virtual Reality
Finally we are going to make a brief review of the Virtual Reality configurations, especially the Comfort section, since this can be one of the games that cause motion sickness or dizziness.
We can configure several things including how we want to play standing or sitting. I recommend that if you are going to play seated never change the game mode.
Because when you set the game mode to seated VR controllers are disabled so we can use keyboard and mouse.
What you must do to play sitting down is once seated press the calibrate height button in the main menu, and then in the VR settings set the world scale to between 1.20 and 1.50 depending on your size.
This way you can still enjoy Minecraft in Virtual Reality with our immersive VR controls.
What differentiates the Bedrock version from the Java version?
If you are hesitating between playing the Vivecraft version or the official Oculus Rift store version let’s take a look at the main differences between the two versions.
First of all there is the compatibility with systems that it has and the cross play:
-Minecraft Java: Windows (all versions), MacOS, Linux and any operating system on which Java can be installed.
-Minecraft Bedrock: Windows 10, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS and other devices.
The Java version has plenty of additional components such as skins, shadders and graphics packs that we can find for free.
While the Microsoft version has its own store with packs, skins and entire universes, that if, at a price that varies depending on the content.
Another factor to keep in mind is that if you have friends who already play Minecraft you must make sure to play in the same version as they are not compatible with each other.
And finally in terms of functionality they are usually the same, but there are small subtleties such as the operation of the redstone that is different in both. This means that if you want to follow a tutorial and you don’t have the same version it is possible that it won’t work.