How Virtual Reality is Changing the Soundscape of Gaming

The world of VR in games is still relatively new and as such game developers are still exploring the ripe and still largely untouched grounds for innovation. Boneworks (2017) redefined how far immersion could be pushed in VR with extremely realistic physics, Budget Cuts (2016) advanced the way spacialised audio was used in games, and Vertigo Games’ Thief VR: The Dark Project (2025) is the sum of a decade of exploration into how audio can be utilised in virtual reality for greater immersion and tension.

The Thief games have been playing with the stealth genre since their inception in 1998, with Thief: The Dark project (Eidos Games, 2018). However it was not until 2025 that the franchise turned its attention to Virtual Reality with Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow (Vertigo Games, 2025). Like all games in the franchise, Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow involves infiltrating a series of large buildings and passing guards to grab loot. The various degrees of stealth with which the player can complete each mission is tied to tiers of rewards (Hayden, 2025). However, this latest instalment utilises the developments in VR that were pioneered by games like Budget Cuts (2018) to further immersion and heighten the information the player receives from the game. 2016's Budget cuts made great use of spatialised audio to inform players of an enemy’s location as well as what sort of location they are in. The way sound reflects around the space allows the player to strategize based on what they are hearing from reverberations that convey not just the source of the noise in the next room but the size of the unseen room and where the enemy is in the space (Kjellberg & Antani, 2019).

Ray tracing is a technique often used in video games to create realistic soundscapes that inform the player of their surroundings by firing off many ‘rays’ from the player which bounce around a space and returning to the player an appropriate sound level depending on how many rays reached the source (Vercidium, 2025). While ray tracing could be used to achieve the aforementioned effect in Budget Cuts it requires a lot of CPU usage, especially in a VR game, therefore, given that players only needed to receive information from doors with enemies on the other side, the studio decided to manually place portals on windows, vents and doors. The game would check for paths from the sound source to the listener via this portal, thus running a much cheaper alternative to ray tracing (Kjellberg & Antani, 2019). While the use of reverb and occlusion in games is not new to VR, the 3D space necessitates innovative approaches to achieving as immersive an effect, if not more so, than in non-VR games. Bonelabs and Half Life Alyx are further examples of VR games that pushed proprietary physics frameworks further to aid audio. In the case of the former, Stress level Zero developed a framework, Marrow, for use in Unity (Client Challenge, 2025) and designed to imitate real world physics with incredible precision (Ovrdoz, 2025).

Thief VR is able to exploit the same techniques; there are frequent points in the game when the player needs to hear if there are guards behind any given door, how many there are, what the shape of the room they are in might be and how far from the door the guard is. All of this information can be conveyed to the player via the levels of muffle or reverberation on footsteps and conversation (Vertigo Games, 2025).

Gameplay trailer for Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow (Playstation, 2025)

Another feature to the audio of Thief VR, a feature exclusive to VR games to this extent, is its ability to detect noises made by the player outside the game. For example, the footsteps of a player in their living can be heard by the game and can alert the guards (Vertigo games, 2025).

As previously mentioned, Boneworks (2017) and the latter game Bonelabs (2022), is a Physics driven VR game. These games were some of the first to really push the bounds of physics in VR, with a fully locomotive body. So to match this the game required a clear vision on how the audio in the game could match and enhance the innovative physics engine. The dev's describe using ‘analogue synths’ to produce sound effects with a ‘crunch and growl’ aiming for ‘audible physicality’ rather than standard computer-generated audio. This approach makes audio a carrier of mechanical information: sounds communicate weight, force, material, and resistance in ways that mirror the underlying physics engine. This shows that they intentionally crafted sounds to convey physical weight and material to help the audio be part of mechanical feedback in the game.

Bonelab expands on this by linking audio feedback to the player’s avatar identity and physical stats, meaning sound subtly communicates changes in size, weight, and strength as players switch between avatars. The games approach and design philosophy of the game was for it to be ‘Physics to the core’, because of this the game has multitude of differing ways for a player to interact with the virtual world around them. With this game, the player can customise their avatar and their stats along with it, for example they could be 7 foot tall, This creates the need in the game for a unique context-sensitive soundscape where feedback changes in real time based on how the player interacts with the world. The result is an innovative application of audio in VR, as the sound becomes a functional tool for reflecting realistic sound helping mirror and reflect the realistic physics deepening immersion with accurate spatial awareness, embodiment and mechanical sounds, guiding player decisions moment-to-moment.

References

1. Boneworks, 2017. Stress Level Zero. Windows[Game]. Stress Level Zero

2. Budget Cuts, 2018. Neat Corporation. Multiplatform [Game]. Neat Corporation.

3. Client Challenge. (n.d.). BONEWORKS Wiki | Fandom. https://boneworks.fandom.com/wiki/1Marrow_Interaction_Engine

4. Kjellberg, Antani, J. L. (2019). Spatial Audio in 'Budget Cuts': A VR Stealth Game. GDC Vault. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1026098/Spatial-Audio-in-Budget-Cuts

5. Hayden, S. (2025, December 4). 'Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow' Review – So Close to Stealing My Heart. Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/thief-vr-review-quest-3-psvr-2-steamvr/

6. Ovrdoz, R. (2024, September 9). Boneworks - An Immersive and Realistic VR Experience. Ovrdoz. https://ovrdoz.com/en/boneworks-vr-game-physics-immersion/#Graphics_and_Sound

7. Ovrdoz, R. (2025, June 24). Bonelab VR – Review, Gameplay, Pros & Cons. Ovrdoz. https://ovrdoz.com/en/bonelab-vr-review-gameplay-analysis/

8. PlayStation. (2025, October 30). Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow - Gameplay #2 Trailer | PS VR2 Games [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QdiMNE_dM8

9. Thief: The Dark Project, 1998. Looking Glass studios. Windows [Game]. Eidos Interactive.

10. Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow, 2025. Maze Theory. Multiplatform [Game]. Vertigo Games.

11. Vercidium. (2025, April 5). A First Look At Raytraced Audio [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6EuAUjq92k [Last Accessed 09/12/2025]