As of final week, a long-held dream of enjoying Valve’s landmark 2004 shooter Half-Life 2 in digital actuality has lastly come to fruition. The journey started almost 10 years in the past, when a person named Nathan Andrews managed to hack collectively a functioning model of the all-time traditional in VR. This was earlier than any Vives, Indexes, Quests, or Oculi. With a primitive Sony HMZ-T1 and specialised motion-tracking gear, Andrews risked a resonance cascade situation to splice collectively a working basis for a full Half-Life 2 VR mod. Over the subsequent decade, dozens of volunteers would contribute to the off-then-on-again mission, all in hopes of sooner or later bashing enemies with a crowbar in semi-lifelike digital actuality.
And now Half Life 2: VR Mod is able to play, due to the arduous work of the Supply VR Mod Workforce and their free, open beta obtainable on Steam. There’s extra work to be carried out for positive—a public roadmap reveals what’s to come back—however your entire essential marketing campaign is already up and working, and fairly surreal to expertise. Sharp corners and all, Half-Life 2: VR Mod is effectively price trying out proper now in case you can.
The variations are fairly speedy. The G-Man’s opening scene grants a complete different sense of scale since you’ve got lively depth notion. Photos flash and seem within him as totally realized 3D areas, which you’ll be able to truly peer within and see with better depth and dimension. This new presentation grants extra weight to the entire scene.
As a online game graphics expertise in VR, it’s tremendous cool. Your eyes can observe flying particles and exploding barrels with the benefit and pace of simply turning your head. The violence and real looking physics of Half-Life 2 are now not simply simulations showing on a display in entrance of you; they’re occurring in a 3D house you’re feeling a way of presence and dimension in. All of it feels so pure that it’s simple to neglect that is the tip results of a decade of hacked tech created by enthusiastic followers.
And whereas there’s nonetheless extra work to be carried out on the weapons, it’s a thrill to have the ability to just about maintain, look at, and battle with these traditional online game armaments. Smashing the aggressive, flying manhacks with a crowbar in VR is so obscenely enjoyable that I desire a mini spin-off mod of this alone. And my Fitbit tells me I’m incomes “Zone Minutes” by whacking this stuff. The 9mm pistol feels enjoyable to purpose and shoot (and sure, I’m solely aiming with one hand). Extra trendy VR video games are likely to have smoother reload mechanics, so this mod’s really feel a bit clunky typically, however the motion stays simply as hectic and enjoyable.
In a method it looks like Half-Life 2 was all the time speculated to be this manner. It is extremely simple to lose your self on this mod, each as a VR expertise and a Half-Life one. It simply pushes previous the standing of “tech demo” or “mod,” feeling prefer it’s shaping as much as be a stable VR recreation in its personal proper.
The Half-Life 2: VR Mod mission is at the moment being labored on by customers from the Flatscreen to VR Discord server, led by WormSlayer, whose involvement goes again to the earliest days of the mission. Again then, WormSlayer caught sight of Andrews’ early prototypes and supplied his skills, beginning with work on the gun fashions.
WormSlayer’s description of the mod’s early days seems like one thing you’d have to slap collectively to outlive Metropolis 17 itself. The assemblage of tech included a “Sony head-mounted TV, a gun controller for a console, and knowledgeable 3D monitoring system [Andrews] had entry to,” WormSlayer instructed Kotaku. That headset in query was the Sony HMZ-T1, which sported “an eye-watering decision of 640×720 per eye, and a 45-degree subject of view,” WormSlayer mentioned. That headset can be left behind in favor of the Oculus DK1, the primary {hardware} the just-incorporated Oculus (now Meta) ever launched. You may see footage from these early days in a 2013 YouTube video.
As such an early shopper VR experiment, the mission was destined for some roadbumps as new tech hit the scene, rapidly growing older out current requirements. “Valve and Oculus each deserted the concept of treating a VR headset as simply one other monitor,” WormSlayer mentioned. “This was a sound thought for a lot of causes, however it successfully broke VR help in Half-Life 2.”
After that swap up, the crew gave up for some time. Andrews retired from the mission fully. Keen VR neighborhood members, nonetheless, persuaded WormSlayer to rethink dropping all of it collectively. “[They] had been assured they might hack OpenVR help into the previous mission,” WormSlayer mentioned. And so the mission sparked to life once more, making nice progress earlier than as soon as once more resuming its slumber as important contributors moved on.
Fortunately, the nascent Half-Life 2: VR Mod would certainly see a second resurgence when the Flatscreen to VR neighborhood mustered up a brand new crew. Now that the general public beta is out and playable, they’re focusing their efforts on bringing the mission to a totally polished and finalized state.
As playable and enjoyable as it’s proper now, Half-Life 2: VR Mod nonetheless has some points, primarily relating to efficiency. “The previous engine could be very single-threaded and solely helps DirectX 9, so even with our hacked-together DXVK implementation, we’ve been preventing to hit FPS targets in some locations,” WormSlayer mentioned. Whereas I’ve but to get to a number of the extra chaotic scenes of the sport’s latter half, I’ve discovered efficiency up to now to be fairly good. On condition that there’s no teleport-style motion choice, nonetheless, this mod may be robust on the abdomen in case you’re new to VR.
In the end, the physics and tech of Half-Life 2 are nonetheless a pleasure to play with 18 years later. VR solely amplifies the physicality of its world, with the flexibility to just about decide up and manipulate objects. Half-Life 2: VR Mod is not any Half-Life: Alyx by way of the sheer quantity of interactable objects, however it matches in effectively as a VR-worthy prequel. And with the addition of the crowbar and a head-mounted flashlight, it has various options and comforts of its personal. With the ability to just about manipulate objects on the earth is a refreshing technique to revisit lots of the recreation’s puzzles.
Essentially the most stunning factor for me, nonetheless, was how this expertise is affecting my notion of the sport’s characters, particularly the silent protagonist himself.
Gordon Freeman is a quiet man even when he’s frantically destroying shit. However even simply having the ability to nod at an NPC marks a 100% enhance in inter-character interplay. Taking part in Half-Life 2 and having the ability to wave at Dr. Kleiner as he shouts with pleasure upon seeing you makes me surprise: Is Gordon Freeman even a waver? Does he give a thumbs as much as point out he understands? Does he shake or nod his head when individuals discuss to him? How have I by no means considered this for all these years?
NPCs additionally take a look at you at eye stage in a really eerie method. This sense exists in different, extra trendy VR video games, however it’s stunning to seek out it so current in a recreation from 2004. The simplicity of the fashions, with light head animations and eyes that give a touch of persona and consciousness, simply barely inches the sport out of the uncanny valley into one thing that begins to really feel real looking.
I’m not saying nodding, gesturing, and looking out individuals within the eyes are the new options you record on the again of the field (that’s saved for viciously beating the shit out of steel manhacks with a crowbar and seeing this traditional recreation in true 3D), however it positive does change the tone of Half-Life 2. One nitpick right here: It’s a disgrace you possibly can’t see your palms whereas piloting the airboat. Not solely did my eyes by no means go away the G-Man as I blazed previous him in my escape from the Mix, I’d’ve cherished to stare and level useless at him, as if to say “I see you motherfucker. I see you.”
I’m trying ahead to enjoying by way of the remainder of Half-Life 2: VR Mod, recognizing the distinctive adjustments the brand new format provides and evokes. There’s nonetheless work to be carried out by WormSlayer and the crew, together with extra enhancements to the weapons, tweaks to make the sport a bit simpler for folk vulnerable to movement illness, and even some AI-upscaled textures to present the extra aged elements of the graphics a little bit of a facelift. These adjustments might be very welcome, however for now this primary playable model makes for a good way to leap again into this traditional recreation. In case you like Half-Life and personal a PCVR headset, it is best to obtain this yesterday.
