Video games and sim racing have helped motorsports grow over the years, contributing to the sport’s evolution while giving drivers another way to sharpen their skills off the track. They have also allowed NASCAR to save significant resources by testing new ideas in simulation instead of physically building experimental layouts. Not everyone is on board with these changes, however. Dale Earnhardt Jr., despite acknowledging the progress, believes virtual reality carries some notable drawbacks.
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iRacing, a realistic racing game, supports the most popular VR headsets, including those from Oculus and HTC, placing drivers directly inside the cockpit and delivering a deeply immersive racing experience. But NASCAR 25, a standalone console game produced by iRacing, launched without VR support. The PC version uses Unreal Engine, which could enable unofficial VR modding, but it does not include native VR functionality at release.
Regardless of how impressive modern VR has become, Dale Jr. recently outlined concerns about its limitations, particularly in long-distance clarity. He noted that VR struggles to render distant cars and objects, causing them to appear blurry or “furry,” making triple-monitor setups preferable for competitive driving.
He said, “It’s amazing… I had a couple of different headsets that I went through over the last couple of years. But dude, what you put it on, and you look, everything is perfectly in perspective. Just the depth perception is dead on. You look around in this thing, you’re in it. You’re in the truck, right?”
Dale Jr. added that the issue reveals itself the moment a driver looks beyond the immediate surroundings. “And the only problem right now with uh VR is how much better triple monitors or even a single monitor is at distance. So, if I come up off the turn, everything in the car is very clear, crisp, sharp…”
“But it’s the if you’re coming up off of turn two, it’s the car that’s going into turn three that’s just a blurry, fuzzy ball, and it’s just not crisp enough. And when you’re racing on monitors, all that sh*t at distance is very clean.”
Because of that gap in clarity, Earnhardt Jr. understands why serious sim racers often resist switching to VR once they’ve experienced the sharpness of a multi-monitor setup. He acknowledged that VR delivers unmatched immersion and a powerful sense of sitting inside the vehicle, making it ideal for other gaming genres.
Still, Junior pointed out that racing demands precision, especially when judging cars a quarter-mile or half-mile ahead. Until VR can render distance with the same clarity as monitors, he is not ready to commit fully. For him, immersion cannot outweigh the need for accuracy when racing on the limit.
