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Gordon Goes Virtual

Oculus have just announced via their Developer forums, that they’ve ‘shipped’ support for Half Life 2 in beta form at least. The update can be obtained via Steam, and you need to follow the below instructions in order to activate the new VR support:

To get it, open the properties for HL2 in Steam, set your command line to “-vr”, and opt-in to the SteamPipe beta. This should ship to everybody in a few weeks.

This is an early beta for VR support, as such the list of known issues are as follows:

The zoom UI shows up in a quad in the middle of the screen instead of on the edges of the screen.
The HUD is dim and hard to read.

It’s exciting to see official support for AAA titles (albeit older ones) starting to appear, certainly having an excuse to re-play this particlar classic, this time in VR is most welcome to this gamer.

Here’s some footage of the official implementation in action, thanks to YouTube user Tejnop:

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Paul James
Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • Clavus

    Just a heads-up: this is by far one of the best VR games out there right now. It’s like Half-Life 2 was built with VR in mind. Many of the enemies in the game attack up close, which is all the more intense with the Rift on. Plus the environments are fun to explore. And crawling through HL’s signature air ducts feels suitably cramped.

  • Andreas Aronsson

    Has anyone tried this on a mac, I know the latest Oculus SDK got some mac support but nothing more than that. Why I’m asking is because I have only my macbook available at the time :P and my Rift will arrive any day now…

  • Gerald Terveen

    Thank you – already installed the game, will try it in a few days. And I agree – this will be even more glorious than the first time I played it. Now how about that Hydra mod :)