Half Life 2 Modded for Oculus Rift Virtual Reality — Independent Head and Gun Movement [video]

Here’s a brief video showing the work of Nathan Andrews who is modding Half Life 2 for virtual reality and the Oculus Rift. In almost all modern first-person shooters, where you look and where you aim are one in the same. Andrews has separated the two which enables the ability to aim your gun one way while looking another. Combined with a gun-prop and VR headset, this makes for an immersive and natural playing experience.

Andrews is apparently not keen to wait for Valve to talk about modifying Team Fortress 2 for virtual reality at GDC next month, so he’s started in on his own modding project for Half Life 2 and the Oculus Rift.

Using two Hillcrest trackers, a modified Sony HMZ-T1, and the Top Shot Elite gun-controller, Andrews hacked together a mod to decouple aiming and looking. He says that it also works with episodes 1 and 2 (expansions for the game), as well as other mods and maps.

Andrews stresses that the mod is still early work, but you can find a link to download it and track it’s progress over at his thread on the MTBS3D forums.

It’s amazing to see, even without playing yourself, how natural the player’s movements in the game look compared to traditional aiming schemes. If we’re lucky, Valve will soon be releasing an official implementation for the Oculus Rift / virtual reality for Team Fortress 2, and hopefully that’ll extend to the Half Life series as well.