Half-Life 2 VR mod awaits Oculus Rift

With the Oculus Rift getting people all hot and bothered about virtual reality once again, one canny modder has prepared for its launch by whipping up a Half-Life 2 VR mod. Able to track the player's head and any plastic weaponry they may be holding, the mod looks jolly impressive in a new video.

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With the Oculus Rift getting people all hot and bothered about virtual reality once again, one canny modder has prepared for its launch by whipping up a VR mod for Half-Life 2 and its episodes. Able to track the player's head and any plastic weaponry they may be holding, the mod looks jolly impressive in a new video.

If you have some VR kit of your own, you can download it right now and get playing.

It's not as simple as adding tracking, oh no, as HL2 must be tweaked to better suit having the display fill your entire vision. The HUD is split into individual elements which fade in and out when relevant, and you can manually lower Gordon's gun so it's not always in your face. It also removes any head-jerking effects, like when shooting or hit by a shock baton, presumably because if your head snaps back in the game it also kicks back in real life and snaps your neck.

Creator Nathan Andrews himself controls the gun with a Top Shot Elite, a plastic gun controller which came with the Cabela's Dangerous Hunts games, with a tracker taped on top. Firing is entirely independent from where Gordon's looking, as you can clearly see later in the demo video. You can also use control it any old regular way, though he recommends an Xbox 360 controller over mouse and keyboard "because analog movement is an absolute must for a good experience with head tracking."

When the Oculus Rift APIs launch, Andrews will hook those into the mod. This isn't the only way to play Half-Life 2 with Oculus Rift, mind, as the open-source Vireio Perception also supports it and several other older games but lacks the fancy tailored touches.

I have no interest in wearing a VR headset myself, but the tracking and independent aiming do convey a fine sense of physicality, even just watching someone else play. Now, if more games would show you an actual body when you look down, that'd be gravy.

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  • reply
    February 4, 2013 12:45 PM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Half-Life 2 VR mod awaits Oculus Rift.

    With the Oculus Rift getting people all hot and bothered about virtual reality once again, one canny modder has prepared for its launch by whipping up a Half-Life 2 VR mod. Able to track the player's head and any plastic weaponry they may be holding, the mod looks jolly impressive in a new video.

    • reply
      February 4, 2013 1:12 PM

      HL2 is one of those games that gives me a headache and makes me want to vomit when I play it, especially sections of the airboat levels. I think this would multiply the barf factor by at least 10.

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        February 4, 2013 1:46 PM

        the opposite actually, the fov of halflife 2 was kinda shitty low around 75 back then and lower in the boat sequence with even more weird motion. most players who knew manually bumped the the fov to an acceptable 90-95 which has always been the standard on pc. later on valve implemented a fov slider in their engine after tf2 (there was a shit storm in the beta when they had locked it at 75 which is an absolute no go for most online gamers on the pc).

        the long story short; the fov of the occulus rift is around 110 which is a very wide and quakewordish fov without the the fisheye effect that comes on a 4:3/5:4 monitor.

        if anyone suffers from motion sickness in games, first thing he should change is the fov. most engines and games at least allow it in the cfg/ini unless the developer went full retard and locked the ini because they were dipshits. if that doesn't help adjust your position from the monitor by sitting further away than you normally would.

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          February 4, 2013 2:02 PM

          Low fovs always give me headaches and nausea in first person games after a few minutes. I remember one of the first things I did in HL2 was find the commands to bring it up to 100. And yeah, they eventually patched in the slider that goes to 90 in the advanced video options but I think it's still set to 75 by default.

          View bobbing is the next worst thing. I can't remember if HL2 has any bobbing but if it does it can be adjusted via the console too. Can't do much about the airboat bouncing around on the terrain but a larger field of view definitely helps.

          Not sure how even a 110 on the occulus rift would affect me. The screen is only inches away after all and the freedom of movement with it attached to your head would probably make me queasy.

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        February 4, 2013 2:37 PM

        Same I am not sure why, Blops 2 as well I can not play for more than a few minutes and feel like to vomit and my head hurts(even with multi screen adn FOV fix).

        Yet games like FarCry3, Dishonored, Doom 3 bfg e, and others I have no issues it is really weird.

        For the life of me I have no idea why certain games do this?

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      February 4, 2013 6:32 PM

      Thats pretty fucking cool.

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      February 5, 2013 11:45 AM

      This is what I've been waiting for since my obsession with VR began in the early 90's. Virtuality, lawnmower man, the VFX-1 (god I wanted one of those), the rudimentary VR programs on pc, all of that. Good times.

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