Something to stay up for: Developers and modders have been attempting to make Valve’s seminal Half-Life 2 playable in VR for nearly a decade. The newest try, long-dormant, nonetheless has a methods to go earlier than full completion however will hit a serious improvement milestone subsequent month.
This week, a crew of modders introduced they’re releasing a VR mod for Half-Life 2 into public beta in September. The major features of the mod appear to be full however the crew nonetheless desires to enhance it.
The beta will let Half-Life 2 homeowners play the primary story from begin to end in VR. All the weapons will help VR capabilities like reloading by hand, twin wielding, and non-obligatory laser sights. Players can even have room-scale motion, head or controller-oriented motion, snap turning, clean turning, and an non-obligatory vignette to stop movement illness.
Half-life 2 VR ought to work on any headset that helps Steam VR, together with the Index, Quest, Vive, and Pimax. However, the beta won’t come to Steam. The modders plan to supply an unbiased installer that can require an present Half-Life 2 set up. Hopefully, the ultimate launch could have a Steam web page from which customers can simply add it to their libraries like many different Half-Life 2 mods.
After the beta, the modders plan so as to add the Half-Life 2 episodes, which require a unique construct to repair some bugs. They additionally need to enhance the hand animations, motion controls, textures, lighting, and different particulars. The crew guarantees the visible upgrades – utilizing AI upscaling and guide touch-ups – might be devoted to the look of the unique 2004 traditional.
Half-Life 2 VR will ultimately be open-source if nothing legally prevents the modders from doing so. Any different Half-Life 2 mod that does not use customized DLLs must be playable in VR, which might embrace some customized campaigns.
The first Half-Life 2 VR mod launched in 2013, however lapsed Source engine VR help made it incompatible with more moderen VR headsets. The present effort, which began improvement in 2017, seeks to right this by shifting frames from the DirectX 9 sport into fashionable headsets that require DirectX 10 or 11.
The mod disappeared after getting caught in improvement hell, however new crew members revived the undertaking final yr and have since offered common progress updates.
It’s unclear if Half-Life 2 VR will borrow concepts from Valve’s official Half-Life VR title, Half-Life: Alyx, however that would not be shocking. Alyx can even obtain a mod later this yr within the type of Levitation, a customized marketing campaign.
