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 practically 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 state of affairs to splice collectively a working basis for a full Half-Life 2 VR mod. Over the following decade, dozens of volunteers would contribute to the off-then-on-again undertaking, 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 Group and their free, open beta out there on Steam. There’s extra work to be achieved for certain—a public roadmap reveals what’s to return—however your entire fundamental marketing campaign is already up and operating, and fairly surreal to expertise. Sharp corners and all, Half-Life 2: VR Mod is nicely value trying out proper now if you happen to can.
The variations are fairly instant. 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 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 convenience and velocity of simply turning your head. The violence and sensible physics of Half-Life 2 are not simply simulations showing on a display in entrance of you; they’re occurring in a 3D area you’re feeling a way of presence and dimension in. All of it feels so pure that it’s straightforward 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 achieved on the weapons, it’s a thrill to have the ability to just about maintain, look at, and struggle with these traditional online game armaments. Smashing the aggressive, flying manhacks with a crowbar in VR is so obscenely enjoyable that I need 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 seems like Half-Life 2 was all the time purported to be this manner. It is extremely straightforward 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 sport in its personal proper.
The Half-Life 2: VR Mod undertaking 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 undertaking. 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 appears like one thing you’d must slap collectively to outlive Metropolis 17 itself. The assemblage of tech included a “Sony head-mounted TV, a gun controller for a console, and an expert 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 stated. That headset could be left behind in favor of the Oculus DK1, the primary {hardware} the just-incorporated Oculus (now Meta) ever launched. You possibly can see footage from these early days in a 2013 YouTube video.
As such an early shopper VR experiment, the undertaking was destined for some roadbumps as new tech hit the scene, rapidly growing older out current requirements. “Valve and Oculus each deserted the thought of treating a VR headset as simply one other monitor,” WormSlayer stated. “This was a sound thought for a lot of causes, but it surely successfully broke VR assist in Half-Life 2.”
After that change up, the group gave up for some time. Andrews retired from the undertaking solely. Keen VR group members, nonetheless, persuaded WormSlayer to rethink dropping all of it collectively. “[They] had been assured they might hack OpenVR assist into the outdated undertaking,” WormSlayer stated. And so the undertaking 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 group mustered up a brand new group. Now that the general public beta is out and playable, they’re focusing their efforts on bringing the undertaking to a completely polished and finalized state.
As playable and enjoyable as it’s proper now, Half-Life 2: VR Mod nonetheless has some points, primarily concerning efficiency. “The outdated engine may be very single-threaded and solely helps DirectX 9, so even with our hacked-together DXVK implementation, we’ve been combating to hit FPS targets in some locations,” WormSlayer stated. Whereas I’ve but to get to a number of the extra chaotic scenes of the sport’s latter half, I’ve discovered efficiency to date to be fairly good. Provided that there’s no teleport-style motion possibility, nonetheless, this mod is likely to be robust on the abdomen if you happen to’re new to VR.
Finally, 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 when it comes to the sheer quantity of interactable objects, but it surely suits in nicely as a VR-worthy prequel. And with the addition of the crowbar and a head-mounted flashlight, it has quite a lot of options and comforts of its personal. With the ability to just about manipulate objects on the planet is a refreshing approach to revisit most of the sport’s puzzles.
Essentially the most shocking 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. Enjoying 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 folks speak to him? How have I by no means considered this for all these years?
NPCs additionally have a look at you at eye stage in a really eerie method. This sense exists in different, extra trendy VR video games, but it surely’s shocking to search out it so current in a sport 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 sensible.
I’m not saying nodding, gesturing, and looking out folks within the eyes are the recent options you checklist on the again of the field (that’s saved for viciously beating the shit out of metallic manhacks with a crowbar and seeing this traditional sport in true 3D), but it surely certain does change the tone of Half-Life 2. One nitpick right here: It’s a disgrace you may’t see your arms whereas piloting the airboat. Not solely did my eyes by no means depart the G-Man as I blazed previous him in my escape from the Mix, I’d’ve beloved to stare and level lifeless at him, as if to say “I see you motherfucker. I see you.”
I’m trying ahead to enjoying by means of the remainder of Half-Life 2: VR Mod, recognizing the distinctive modifications the brand new format provides and conjures up. There’s nonetheless work to be achieved by WormSlayer and the group, together with extra enhancements to the weapons, tweaks to make the sport a bit simpler for people liable to movement illness, and even some AI-upscaled textures to offer the extra aged points of the graphics a little bit of a facelift. These modifications can be very welcome, however for now this primary playable model makes for an effective way to leap again into this traditional sport. If you happen to like Half-Life and personal a PCVR headset, you need to obtain this yesterday.
