A small patch to Half-Life: Alyx has added continuous turning, made adjustments to a key gesture for Windows VR users, and squashed a few bugs.

While continuous turning is never a default in VR games because it makes many people dizzy, there are those who find themselves unaffected by smooth turning and prefer to play that way for enhanced immersion. Though Half-Life: Alyx didn’t ship with a continuous turning option, Valve has added it in Update 1.1. With that addition they also renamed the ‘Quick Turn’ option to ‘Snap Turn’ to bring it in line with the common VRnacular, and added an option to disable controller turning entirely.

For Windows VR users, the update improves the ‘hand-over-mouth’ pose to work better with the WMR controllers. The pose turns out to be important later in the game.

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Update 1.1 for Half-Life: Alyx also improved automated detection of quality settings for some hardware configurations, which means users should get better default recommendations for the game’s graphical settings.

Valve says it also fixed some sound bugs and “several crashes.”

As ever, if you’re having unexpected crashes in Half-Life: Alyx or performance issues, it’s always worth trying to update to your latest GPU driver. You can find NVIDIA drivers here and AMD drivers here, or check your respective GPU dashboard software for the latest driver.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Rupert Jung

    Is there also a “shift turn” available (no snap turn but a fast animation in a fixed direction)?

    • Lord_Ader

      you can adjust speed of continous turn

    • Brian (Suitch)

      That is a thing? That sounds like the recipe for nausea, and I use smooth turning and movement as my default!

    • CazCore

      the faster the turning, the less nauseau you get. opposite of most peoples intuition. just like with “shift”-portation (it’s a VERY fast movement, that most are comfortable with).

  • plrr

    I’d be interested to see if they fixed the issue where the index fingers aren’t extended if you are using Touch controllers.

  • Tunk

    An option for running would be nice.

    • Brian (Suitch)

      Yeah. I have to teleport around sometimes even though I prefer smooth locomotion because of how slow walking is. Though, to be fair, my mind has gotten used to the mixed mode locomotion and doesn’t find it immersion breaking. I like a well tricked mind.

      • mirak

        Flash doesn’t teleport he just runs super fast.

    • NooYawker

      I agree, I’m being shot and and I’m strolling around. I have to use the teleport “jump” to get away.

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  • Gary Antel

    Any chance they fixed the controls for left-handed users?

    • Jukka Muhonen

      Whats problem with left handed? You can Set left handed at options, and steamVR controller binding allows you to change all buttons you need. But ofcourse it’s best If problems are solved offically.

      • mirak

        Just not beeing able to hold the gun with the other hand is bad in the actual vr standards.

  • Jack Liddon

    This game has been surprisingly bug free for me so far. Most VR games can be a bit janky, but I’ve had no real problems so far. Such a cool game.

  • NooYawker

    I read some reviews and people are ADAMANT about smooth turning, says it ruins the immersion. But doesn’t using the stick to turn break immersion in the first place? Just TURN you’re in VR.

    • mirak

      Their are probably playing in a chair because of handicap.
      Therefore smooth turning is the most realistic they can get.

      • NooYawker

        Ok now I feel like an ass.

    • Keith X

      I’m one of those, I hate snap turning. If you smooth turn it visually mimics real life whether you using the thumb stick or not. But snap turning is like continually losing your consciousness for a split second.

    • CazCore

      nothing is more immersion breaking than real life cable management. which happens pretty much immediately after you “just turn in real life”.

  • Good news… but I’ve already finished the game :D

    • mirak

      You can do it again then