Draft:VTOL VR

VTOL VR
Developer	BahamutoD
Publisher	Boundless Dynamics
Engine	Unity
Platforms	PC, SteamVR
Release	August 7th, 2017
Genre	Combat Flight Simulator
Modes	Singleplayer Co-op & PvP Multiplayer

VTOL VR is a virtual reality combat flight simulation game released on August 3rd, 2017, by Boundless Dynamics. It features multiple different types of aircraft, such as attack helicopters, fighter jets, and a VTOL aircraft. The game is designed specifically for virtual reality headsets, and cannot be played on a traditional flat-screen monitor. This is because the player is required to flip each individual switch and button in a vehicles cockpit using their handheld controllers (one controller in each hand), as well as to operate the throttle and joysticks of each aircraft.

The game received positive reviews from critics, and has one of the highest game ratings on Steam (91st as of June 2026) despite having one of the lower all-time peak playercount of flight simulators, at 1,777 players.

Gameplay

Each aircraft in the game has its own set of missions designed specifically for it, and typically revolve around the player taking off, completing one or more objectives, and then landing the aircraft.

The objectives vary from destroying targets, navigating to a specific geographic location, picking up and dropping off troops, air-to-air refueling, and other tasks that are either set by the mission editor or part of a preset mission.

An example of a series of in-game missions that are provided by default are the Desert Cobra missions for the FA-26B aircraft:

• Base Defense - The player takes off, intercepts some hostile fighter aircraft and a HB-106 bomber, then destroys moving ground targets (tanks), then lands back at the airbase.
• Retaliation - The player must stay low through a canyon river and neutralize multiple enemy airbases in the region. If the player gains too much altitude over the river, many enemies in the area will attack them such as ground radar and enemy fighter aircraft.
• Strike on Naval Test Lake - This mission requires the player to destroy enemy SAM sites, then at the end of the mission, find and destroy enemy ships in the ocean.
• Tanker Escort - Defending friendly bombers and tankers from numerous enemy threats.

There are four more missions after that in the series, that all follow a similar theme of making the player utilize different systems in the aircraft.

Development

Early in development, the game started out with primitive player models, and one singular vehicle, the AV-42C. The developer, Paolo Encarnacion, commented that the choice of a VTOL vehicle being the first vehicle was the result of the prototyping process, in that the first game environment he was using to test the cockpit was very small, so the first vehicle "...had to be a VTOL to prevent it from moving too fast and going off the bounds of the world. It was working so well so I built the rest of the game around that."

Early in the games development, Paulo already had a vision for other aircraft to be added to the game with dedicated missions and other features:

I would like to have at least one other flyable vehicle, such as a fast moving fighter jet, along with [dedicated] missions ... I’ll also have many more unique weapons to choose from, more environments to fly in, and eventually a scenario editor so players can create their own missions and share them with each other. As I used to be a mod creator, I think that the more moddable a game is, the better, so I’ll be working in that direction.

— Paolo Encarnacion

Additions

The amount of usable weapons and available missions expanded as the development cycle continued, and eventually the vehicles F/A-26B and F-45A were added as free expansion to the games existing content.

Through the games development, more capabilities and systems were added to each vehicles avionics and weapons systems, such as the ARAD system which provides aircraft the ability to perform SEAD operations against ground targets more effectively, number pads added to aircraft to be able to keep inter-aircraft communications on different frequencies and type exact numbers for data points (such as min. altitude limits, min. fuel) etc.

Vehicles added after the edition of the F-45A fighter jet (modeled off of the real life F-35) were added as Downloadable Content in the Steam store, those being the AH-94 (modeled off of the real life AH-64), the T-55, and the EF-24G (modeled off of the real life F-18 EW variant, the EA-18G).

Overtime the game had increased the quality of its overall package, adding features such as the Mission Editor which allows players to create maps and missions outside of VR, a weather system including volumetric cloud and wind, multiplayer which allows players to play with or against other people and communicate with them through in-game radio communications, and (through the EF-24G DLC) jamming systems which allow for suppression of enemy radars (both airborne and ground).

Vehicles

In the base game, there are three vehicles:

• AV-42C - VTOL Attack/Transport vehicle
• F/A-26B - Fighter/Attack Jet
• F-45A - Stealth Multi-role STOVL Jet

DLC

There are currently three DLC packages available which provide:

• AH-94 - Attack Helicopter
• T-55 - Training Jet
• EF-24G - Stealth Electronic Warfare Jet

Modding Scene

VTOL VR has always had an extensive modding scene. In early versions of the game, this was enabled by the "VTOL VR Mod Loader" which was a separate software that would load mods into the game. However, near Update v1.9.0, the Steam workshop became an officially supported way of installing mods to the game, meaning players would now have a one-click installation option.

Since the base game doesn't use real aircraft, there has always been a strong modding drive from the players to add real aircraft into the game, such as the F-16 and the A-10. Players had created third-party ways to add these types of aircraft into the game even before the modding tools were well-developed, but now that the modding tools have been updated, expanded, and more officially supported, there are a plethora of real aircraft mods to choose from such as the AV-8 Harrier, the AH-6, the F-22 Raptor, and more.

Reception

The game has been received very well by critics who consider the game to be the best flight experience in virtual reality. Some players have criticized the games lack of compatibility with HOTAS equipment, as it is the only flight simulator that requires the player to use the motion controllers of the virtual headset, and subsequently isn't compatible with any physical flight simulator equipment except for rudder pedals.