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Half-Life: Alyx releases on 23 March 2020

Romulus

Member
Fuck yeah. Pumped.

Just finished Half life 2 in VR and it made it exponentially better. Unbelievably better. The sense of scale in the cities, the gunfights, the gravity gun felt empowering, even the driving sections were actually fun and gave it this futuristic feeling despite it being an old game.

This from a game not made for VR. Alyx is.
 
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Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
VNN wrong yet again with the "early March" talk, what a killer streak!!! But I'm sure people will post his next "leak" too because hey, he said "maybe" and just about "end of March" is close enough to "early March" so hey, that's pretty close to legit (we already knew it would be March anyway), hah.

Edit: there are 3 high res screens too (omg, HL3 confirmed), you missed that and the opportunity for an appropriate meme title :p
 
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Vawn

Banned
This looks amazing. Too bad I don't have a gaming PC or PC VR headset.

I'll grab it day one if it comes to PSVR.
 

GrayChild

Gold Member
Half-Life, 3 new screenshots:

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Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Hope it works well on an Oculus Rift!
 

Romulus

Member
Hope it works well on an Oculus Rift!

According to the Tested video, the game is pretty damn scalable to each of the confirmed headsets.


Those screenshots tell more than I imagined they would

1) That 2nd screenshot looks like some sort of headcrab infestation area.? People new to VR will experience fear in a new way. Headcrabs in regular PC games were a joke for me, not scary at all. But in VR, its something else entirely.

2) The scale of the areas is larger than I expected and possibly bigger than HL2

3) More verticality than I imagined like the old games
 

pr0cs

Member
Fuck yeah. Pumped.

Just finished Half life 2 in VR and it made it exponentially better.
I tried gta5 in VR and was blown away how much better the game could be in VR, not surprised half Life is the same.

Any guide url to getting HL to work in VR?
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
What an odd release date. So close to doom eternal.
Why there is this notion that it's risky to release games close to another? We barely get any new releases nowadays and I think it's not a problem.
I need to get myself rift S....

btw - the screenshots look great in 4k... but it will look way lower quality/resolution ingame due to vr optics and resolution. Almost makes me wish there was a version of the game that plays of a normal monitor but with vr hands/controls
 
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Romulus

Member
I tried gta5 in VR and was blown away how much better the game could be in VR, not surprised half Life is the same.

Any guide url to getting HL to work in VR?

Theres a bunch of Gary's mods guides. Not sure which I used.
 

Type_Raver

Member
I was this close to pulling the trigger on an affordable 2nd hand Oculus Rift CV1 (surprisingly affordable 2nd hand), but I decided to hold off and wait for reviews after HL Alyx is released.
 

Wonko_C

Member
Fuck yeah. Pumped.

Just finished Half life 2 in VR and it made it exponentially better. Unbelievably better. The sense of scale in the cities, the gunfights, the gravity gun felt empowering, even the driving sections were actually fun and gave it this futuristic feeling despite it being an old game.

This from a game not made for VR. Alyx is.
Everything is better in VR. :)
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Tempted to borrow the Vive from work and take a 3 day weekend for Doom, AC and this.
 

INC

Member
Hope it doesn't have shit weight physics like boneworks and saints and sinners.

Who ever decided on weight physics in vr is stupid, small melee weapons I can understand, but it creates a massive disconnect and just doesn't work.
 
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Wonko_C

Member
Hope it doesn't have shit weight physics like boneworks and saints and sinners.

Who ever decided on weight physics in vr is stupid, small melee weapons I can understand, but it creates a massive disconnect and just doesn't work.
If that's what I think it is, (your in-game arms moving at a different speed than your real life ones) I haven't even tried a game that features it but I already know I would hate that.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
It's generally to stop you from flailing with bigger weapons/objects, balancing their speed and stats as they're balanced in non VR games when they obviously can't stop you from moving fast the way they can stop a third person character from animating fast after a button press.

You just learn to not move fast when using those and it generally works out (in S&S' case the game tells you even for small weapons you generally have to do wide swings for a hit to be the best it can be and go through skulls etc. rather than fast and violent ones, so that you don't have to exert yourself to play).

It's used in lots of popular games in varying degrees, from Blade & Sorcery to TWD: Saints & Sinners. I have no problem with the implementation in either of those, though I hated how it was done in Boneworks (but that game's problem was the content more than the controls still, dodgy as they were).

I like games that don't have it either and in games that do have it I do wish it was less pronounced in some specific cases. I'd like more 1:1 (or close enough to not notice a disconnect) light weapons in Blade & Sorcery for example but at least there are a couple.

There are such options in Saints & Sinners too, though I also don't like that it applies to large firearms, not just melee, but in the end I didn't use those much and stuck with one handed guns (that you can steady with two hands still for less recoil), the game lets you play how you want and I can forgive some mishaps, it's not a pure FPS like Onward which doesn't use such weight systems and plays blissfully or a plain shooter like Arizona Sunshine is either, but rather a light immersive sim with survival elements, they balanced it very well and it's one of the finest VR games yet. There's more disconnect when you stick a weapon in a zombie and have to get it unstuck and that's a feature I like (just as plenty games use sticky hands for interactions to be easier without requiring precision, pulling levers, drawers and such limits your hand movement to the object's intended range as long as you keep hold of it and only detaches if you let go or your real hand goes way too far from it etc.).

Anyway, I've not seen anything like it in Alyx (she doesn't even get a crowbar like Gordon though) but we also haven't seen the player grab any really heavy objects the way you can just press E to move crates and such around in non-VR Half-Life, plus maybe she uses her gravity gloves anyway and the game's simply balanced for it. They've also said they generally want guns to be usable with one hand so that you can do other stuff with the other and use them independently simultaneously and stuff like that so I doubt it incorporates anything of the sort, I dunno why it's brought up.
 
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INC

Member
If that's what I think it is, (your in-game arms moving at a different speed than your real life ones) I haven't even tried a game that features it but I already know I would hate that.

Yes exactly this, it's horrible and actually gives me a weird motion sickness feeling (not the same feeling of locomotion sickness), and I don't suffer at all from motion sickness, I can play FPS VR games for hours no problem, but seeing in game arm not do what actual arms are doing just feels all types of weird

Saints and sinners is the worst, for example pulling a shotgun from your back, the bun weight physics makes I wobble like it's made of rubber, and since your arms aren't matching up, it's just awful.

Things like weight for axes is borderline fine, but still it's a massive disconnect and makes it feel uncomfortable playing
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
The site mentions a locomotion option called "shift." I'm unfamiliar with it, is there anything out that can demonstrate this?
It explains it well enough there :p
Teleport
Fade out at point A, fade in at point B

Shift
Smoothly zoom from point A to point B

You choose a point like when you play with teleport but instead of blinking to that spot without anything but a fade inbetween it smoothly moves you there, regardless of your physical movement (ie you could turn around, whatever, it just keeps moving you there) almost like it's an on-rails game except you chose the rails.


It could vary, maybe the speed is much faster than the speed shown in that time stamp, maybe it's slower when you select points nearby and faster further away or maybe you don't even select a specific point B but rather just the general direction and it moves in pre-determined or in some way manually chosen chunks.

Red Matter has lots of different locomotion options, from free locomotion, to teleport, to stuff like having your astronaut do hops/jumps to the point you chose and one they call dash that could be interpreted as being very similar to some of the above methods but not nearly as slow as the implementation shown in that video.
 
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Romulus

Member
don't get used to 4k screenshots. All the detail is lost in vr

Hard disagree. I was just admiring the texture work in Asgards Wrath last week, its unbelievable and if anything you can appreciate it far more because of the scale of the environments in VR. Even with the low res psvr there are certain slimy walls that look completely real in VR, take off the headset and it looks like most any other game.

Resolution on a monitors/TVs is super overrated as to me. I got used to the jump from 1080p to 4k in a minutes. Years later I'm still blown away by VR.
 

MDSLKTR

Member
Hard disagree. I was just admiring the texture work in Asgards Wrath last week, its unbelievable and if anything you can appreciate it far more because of the scale of the environments in VR. Even with the low res psvr there are certain slimy walls that look completely real in VR, take off the headset and it looks like most any other game.

Resolution on a monitors/TVs is super overrated as to me. I got used to the jump from 1080p to 4k in a minutes. Years later I'm still blown away by VR.
Agreed, a simple generic foam texture in Boneworks is mind-blowing in vr.

nGrUjC6.jpg


It's hard to convey, but I wanted to scratch off the walls lol
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
lol this game convinced me to buy a VR headset but having used it i decided to sell it because i feel VR just isn't worth it and this is probably gonna be the biggest game for it. To be honest i'm not even that big of a HL fan. i'll go back to waiting for HL3 and maybe i can play it with my 144hz monitor + kb/m.

I decided to just sell it now before the game comes out. Might as well since there will be more people than usual trying to get a headset in time for this coming out. Got most of my money back which I'll use to play Doom/Animal Crossing/Persona 5 Royal :)
 
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Wonko_C

Member
The site mentions a locomotion option called "shift." I'm unfamiliar with it, is there anything out that can demonstrate this?
Sounds like what you do in Blood & Truth (you push a button and it automatically walks you in a straight line from point A to point B without being able to interrupt or change course, minimizing motion sickness), except you'll not be limited to designated spots.

 
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rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Hard disagree. I was just admiring the texture work in Asgards Wrath last week, its unbelievable and if anything you can appreciate it far more because of the scale of the environments in VR. Even with the low res psvr there are certain slimy walls that look completely real in VR, take off the headset and it looks like most any other game.

Resolution on a monitors/TVs is super overrated as to me. I got used to the jump from 1080p to 4k in a minutes. Years later I'm still blown away by VR.
You cannot hard disagree with that. vr games look like aliased, pixelated, chromatic aberration crap. That's a fact. You are looking at a zoomed in, lens deformed pixels with sweet spot, god rays and glare. The best I've had was Rift S. It looks ok but it's nowhere near even 1080p monitor.
I would love to play new hl in 4k.
In vr, You just get impression of detail because stuff is huge and 3d but You can't even read all the text right
 
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Romulus

Member
You cannot hard disagree with that. vr games look like aliased, pixelated, chromatic aberration crap. That's a fact. You are looking at a zoomed in, lens deformed pixels with sweet spot, god rays and glare. The best I've had was Rift S. It looks ok but it's nowhere near even 1080p monitor.
I would love to play new hl in 4k.
In vr, You just get impression of detail because stuff is huge and 3d but You can't even read all the text right

You said:

All the detail is lost in vr

Hard disagree. That's simply not true. I switch back from 4k to VR alot and the higher resolution is crazy overrated. I can see details in VR like never before, anyone who's played VR knows that. Textures are actually impressive in VR unlike high-resolution monitors. Hell 90% of the time in flat gaming I pass right by incredible texture work without noticing it.

If you can't read text right, that speaks volumes to me. I can and my vision is compromised. You might have the IPD settings off or a combination of other things.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
What are we even arguing about now? Are You trying to prove that vr has great resolution? It's good enough but I will repeat myself that even ingame text is hard to read unless you often get closer to it.
My eyesight is not too good but Rift S has fantastic close focal range and it's the first headset in which I don't even have to wear contacts and everything is as sharp as can be.
But sharpness(however pixelated it is in vr) is only in the center. Sides can show distortion, glare or other lens issues. It is a weird feeling playing great looking vr game like for example Obduction. It looks fantastic but anything a bit further away turns into a pulp.
Of course not ALL detail is lost but it's ALL greatly reduced compared to traditional means of displaying image. It all comes down to magnification and lenses.

I agree - it looks ok, it's serviceable and usable... I am a huge vr apostle and had many headsets but all I am saying is that showing 4k marketing images is not representing the game in slightest since vr looks like this:
 
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Romulus

Member
What are we even arguing about now? Are You trying to prove that vr has great resolution? It's good enough but I will repeat myself that even ingame text is hard to read unless you often get closer to it.
My eyesight is not too good but Rift S has fantastic close focal range and it's the first headset in which I don't even have to wear contacts and everything is as sharp as can be.
But sharpness(however pixelated it is in vr) is only in the center. Sides can show distortion, glare or other lens issues. It is a weird feeling playing great looking vr game like for example Obduction. It looks fantastic but anything a bit further away turns into a pulp.
Of course not ALL detail is lost but it's ALL greatly reduced compared to traditional means of displaying image. It all comes down to magnification and lenses.

I agree - it looks ok, it's serviceable and usable... I am a huge vr apostle and had many headsets but all I am saying is that showing 4k marketing images is not representing the game in slightest since vr looks like this:


You said ALL detail was lost before.

I agree with your current statement though, its good enough. But I don't agree with your previous statement that all of it is lost, not even close, and I think for many things, you see more than you'd ever see on a monitor. 8k or whatever.
 
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Grinchy

Banned
I definitely notice way more details when in VR. A ruined wall isn't just some background element anymore. You can walk up and see the layers of the destruction in a way you'd never really think about in a non-VR game. You may find yourself moving your head around to look at wooden beams that in non-VR you'd have just sprinted past.

The idea that all detail is lost because of the reality of the resolution decrease from a small screen being 1 inch away from your eyeballs is a pretty strange way to try to downplay what VR is doing. But hey, whatever floats our boats, I guess...
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
You said ALL detail was lost before.

I agree with your current statement though, its good enough. But I don't agree with your previous statement that all of it is lost, not even close, and I think for many things, you see more than you'd ever see on a monitor. 8k or whatever.
All good. Just bad wording on my previous post
 
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