Half-Life Alyx

[Tisky]

Oh my god. 

https://mobile.twitter.com/valvesoftware/status/1196566870360387584

[Furiosa]

How about pc?

[PogoP]

Fuckin VR? Get out.

Before anyone jumps in to defend VR, I just wanna say that I worked on VR games for just over a year and I couldn't stand it. Made me feel sick and gave me huge headaches. It was always awkward with my glasses on underneath too... 

I'm interested to see what Valve have done with VR though. Hopefully it's more of a success than Artifact

[Seldoon182]

[Radu]

Never experienced VR, but I can't say that I have high hopes for this. Hopefully I'll be wrong just as I was about danger zone maps for csgo. Time will tell, but in the meantime, a half-life game?

[Tisky]

Could it be for VR but, playable without VR? ONE CAN DREAM

[dux]

It's going to be VR only, this is Valve's gambit to get everyone onboard the VR Train. While I'm as equally blown away as everyone else with this out of the blue announcement, now I've had time to think about it... I don't really want to pay £1000 to play a new Half-Life game. This is a bittersweet feeling at the moment. But I'll wait to see what is shown Thursday, maybe it will be the second coming of Jesus and I will repent and buy an Index.

[blackdog]

They are deffo going exclusive VR or that would be no point in the whole Vive/Index development; I bet features they developed for the second model are derived by their needs in developing the game.

I’m curious to see if it’ll be Index exclusive or just VR… you don’t want to cut an already small audience further, and they both have finger tracking now, no?

Maybe they’ll release for the mortals in a year or so? No idea how harder it would be to do so though… I imagine that if you’ve built the character movement around teleportation you would have to rebuild most of the maps so you can walk around and don’t feel it’s a tiny map? 

Edited November 19, 2019 by blackdog

[Interfearance]

Vive gang? I have 3 motion trackers too, wonder if you can do anything with that.

[FMPONE]

I'll drop the dough to get a new Index, hl3, etc.

VR does indeed suck, I mean we can just be honest about this, we're all friends here. VR sucks. It's not good. It's bad. You're strapped to a computer, you might not have room for room-scale (doesn't sound like this one will be room-scale), it takes forever to get everything unpacked and ready to go, it's barely worth the hassle once you get "presence". All of this is objectively true. VR sucks ass. It's not good. It's very bad.

THAT BEING SAID, it's a Half-Life game, it will probably be very cool. It will be, hopefully, the "best case scenario" for VR. I don't want to dismiss it outright because I hate VR. (but I do hate VR). I'm hoping it will redeem the entire premise of VR, which heretofore has only been cringe.

It's obvious that decades in the future VR will be all there is, and I suppose we don't get there without these kind of necessary steps.

[Radu]

Always imagined VR to get to a point similar to 3D, where you can go watch films 3D, get a 3D setup for your home and have support for it in some games, but not necessarily having it widespread into everything. It's just a gimmick. To be honest, I don't like 3D either. Especially here, try watching a 3D film with subtitles up in your face.. 

I'm expecting the reveal to hype people because it's a half-life game and we haven't seen one of those in a long time. There's gonna be some "wow" VR moments probably and everyone in the press will talk about it because clicks. But I don't think it will have the impact that valve expects it to have.

[Minos]

Completely unrelated, but VR lost a lot of charm for me when the paradigm went from the user being a "camera in a virtual world" to it being "a person in a virtual world". When I got my Oculus DK2, there was a website called Oculus share where people were posting free demos and experimental stuff, and most of it was awesome and super immersive and fell into the first category. Stuff like, you are sitting behind a desk and stuff is happening around you, or you are a camera moving on rails on a cyberpunk city, a submarine ride to the bottom of the ocean or you are inside a cockpit of a giant meccha on Mars. Then I bought a Vive and could never get the same sense of immersion with room scale, since it's so easy to break the simulation and sense of disbelief when your hand goes through walls and things don't behave as expected. I guess with the camera paradigm, you have a lot more limitations and fewer ways to break the simulation, whereas with the person in a VR world paradigm it's quite hard NOT to break the simulation. I still dream that one day I'll have the time and drive to make some immersive VR experiences that are just about chilling in a futuristic apartment, or being in the middle of a chaotic urban sprawl.

Anyways, very curious about this, I'm sure it will look gorgeous at least ;D

[Radu]

The thing about being a stuck in a static position while events are unfolding around you sounds pretty limiting tbh. How many games or experiences until you'd get over it? But to invest so many resources into VR to do something that's purely just that, like valve has done - I don't think it would be worth it.

Edited November 19, 2019 by Radu

[Interfearance]

Invest in a room and wireless mod

Also stop buying the quest or Oculus anything really. Most of it is pretty sub par, and they made the wrong sacrifices.

My only problem with the Vive has been that the resolution can be better. I didn't really want anything else, it's good fun and pretty seamless imo.

[Zarsky]

Bought a Oculus Quest and I've had a blast playing with it. They just launched Oculus Link which gave Quest the ability to connect to PC and essentially become a Rift. I'll probably be playing this game on it if Valve doesn't give me a good enough reason to get the Index.