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PC VR users will today be able to experience City 17 in virtual reality as the fan made, third-party Half-Life 2: VR Mod by the Source VR Mod Team drops on Steam.

Having been worked on for close to a decade, the mod features full room scale presence and hand tracking with huge portions of the game modified to play appropriately in virtual reality.

The project is launching in public beta today and while the game is fully playable (providing you own the base HL2 package on Steam), more is planned as laid out in the developers roadmap including teleport movement, improved weapon handling and support for Episodes 1 and 2.

Rise and shine, Mister Freeman. Rise and... shine.

Half Life 2: VR Mod is a fan-made project, which adds full Virtual Reality support to the original 2004 PC gaming classic by Valve Software.

Become Gordon Freeman, pick up your crowbar, and immerse yourself in the world of Half-Life 2 like never before! Grab and throw objects with your hands, physically climb ladders and play catch with Dog as if you were really there. Fight the Combine in the streets of City 17 while manually reloading your guns. And even when you have the gravity gun, will you dare go to Ravenholm?!

Features:
Full room-scale VR with tracked motion controls. Physically walk around, pick up objects and climb ladders the way that only Virtual Reality allows.
Intuitive and realistic weapon interactions, with quick and easy weapon switching via a radial menu, ammo storage over your shoulder, functional iron-sights, two-handed weapons, and manual reloading.
Control options including; full left-handed support, a laser sight, and arcade style "quick reload".
Comfort features like motion vignette and 3rd person vehicle camera. (Note: there is currently no teleport movement option.)
Playable on any VR headset which is supported by SteamVR.

Half-Life 2: VR Mod requires that you own Half-Life 2 on Steam. Half-Life 2: VR Mod was not created by Valve Software.

Half-Life 2: VR Mod (Steam listing)
Official website

 

[Ryab]

Once we get the other HL2 games I can't wait to do the Gnome challenge again.

 

[ZeroFX]

I'll play it.

 

[Ol' Archimedes]

Valve ain't perfect but it just makes me feel all nice and fuzzy inside when I see fan projects like this come to life thanks in part to how they deal with this sort of stuff. Nintendo on the other hand...

 

[Ryab]

Valve ain't perfect but it just makes me feel all nice and fuzzy inside when I see fan projects like this come to life thanks in part to how they deal with this sort of stuff. Nintendo on the other hand...

Valve is one of the best companies when it comes to fan projects. Some of them even released on Steam such as Gmod and Black Mesa.

 

[tech3475]

Once we get the other HL2 games I can't wait to do the Gnome challenge again.

I wonder what being thrown out of the map will be like in VR?

 

[Ryab]

I wonder what being thrown out of the map will be like in VR?

What I'm unsure about is if this is a port to source 2 or is a modified source.

 

[tech3475]

What I'm unsure about is if this is a port to source 2 or is a modified source.

That is our intention. HL2VR is based on the publically available Source SDK 2013 edition and can, in principle, be open sourced under the same license terms.

Source:
https://halflife2vr.com/faq/#mod-support

edit:

Also:

Will Episode 1 and 2 be supported?​

Yes, but not at the initial release.

Right now, we are concentrating on the base game and are working hard to make it fully playable and get its public release out of the door. Once that’s done (and the first inevitable influx of bug reports have been processed), we will slowly move our attention to the Episodes and bring them to VR.

 

[Kioku]

Cool! I will play it when I catch a break!

 

[shaunj66]

Just spent a couple hours playing this. Overall it's pretty great for a non-VR game conversion - which is quite apparent.

Had a few glitches such as getting stuck in the floor and unable to get out and controller input not always being recognised and just general bad performance on my aging 1060 6GB which was quite surprising to me?

Very cool though and will probably complete a play through using it. Not looking forward to the vehicles though

 

[RedoLane]

Pick up that can.

 

[Jayro]

I'd rather have a keyboard and mouse mod for Half-Life Alyx.

 

[Xzi]

I'd rather have a keyboard and mouse mod for Half-Life Alyx.

Pretty sure one or two already exist? They're just...not very good, which is to be expected since you're missing a whole axis of depth that the game was designed around.

 

[nolimits59]

Pretty sure one or two already exist? They're just...not very good, which is to be expected since you're missing a whole axis of depth that the game was designed around.

Would be like asking a mod to play HL/HL2 in third person, you lose a ton of immersion and implication about the storytelling, can't even think about removing VR game mode.

I would rather not play it than play it KBM.

 

[Jayro]

Would be like asking a mod to play HL/HL2 in third person, you lose a ton of immersion and implication about the storytelling, can't even think about removing VR game mode.

I would rather not play it than play it KBM.

I can negate a VR element and still enjoy the story without the gimmicks.

 

[Xzi]

I can negate a VR element and still enjoy the story without the gimmicks.

If you can enjoy the story without the gameplay, might as well just watch a Youtube playthrough. Would be a better experience than struggling with the inability to properly aim or interact with objects the way it was intended IMO.

 

[Jayro]

If you can enjoy the story without the gameplay, might as well just watch a Youtube playthrough. Would be a better experience than struggling with the inability to properly aim or interact with objects the way it was intended IMO.

Well unless VR headsets become affordable (like, way less than the game console they're made for) then VR is still unreachable for many people.

 

[Xzi]

Well unless VR headsets become affordable (like, way less than the game console they're made for) then VR is still unreachable for many people.

If you view VR headsets more as dual display setups, which they technically are, the pricing isn't outrageous considering people will pay $1000+ for a single monitor. That said, I'm sure PSVR and a number of Oculus headsets can be found for cheap these days, and all should be compatible with SteamVR, even if that requires a bit of tweaking.

 

[eduall]

Team creators of this mod are like gods ! Amazing

 

[64bitmodels]

Valve ain't perfect but it just makes me feel all nice and fuzzy inside when I see fan projects like this come to life thanks in part to how they deal with this sort of stuff. Nintendo on the other hand...

they'd be perfect if they still reguarly released games.

Their storefront is peak, their hardware is amazing, they clearly care about fans and they're extremely innovative, pushing tech ahead.
If they still made games and each one of them was as innovative as HL Alyx, they'd be the best company in gaming as of right now