We’re currently in the process of wrapping up the latest release of Half-Life VR, which will include HL2: episode 1 VR support. Over the last month a lot of work has gone into the mod, in both new features and fixing bugs (many of which are just elements of the source engine that just didn’t translate to VR very well). While the razer hydra is perfectly fine for our current work, we’re really looking forward to adding sixense STEM support when the developer kits come out next year and have plenty of ideas for ways to utilize the additional trackers.
In addition to working out the issues in Episode 1, here’s a list of some of the features that’ll be included in the next release:
- Hud integrated in-game – You’ll notice in the video the HUD is not integrated in-game and shows the weapon ammo information directly on the side of the gun. On the back of gordon’s right hand you’ll see an HEV overlay showing health and suit stats (like looking at a watch).
- Fixed aim vectors – the dirty little secret (or maybe obvious part if you played much ) of the last release was that the weapons were still shooting from eye center the same way they normally do in source games. This is corrected now (as it was in the older 2007 versions of the mod).
- Reworked gravity gun and physical interactions to allow more control with hydras
- Added dynamic lighting effects to muzzle flashes and tracers
- New barrel smoke (Left4Dead style) added to pistols and submachinegun
- Shell ejections fixed on all weapons and added to the pistol
- A lot of rework on weapons and animations
- FOV fixes for all cutscenes
- A bunch of hydra initialization / calibration bug fixes
Half-Life VR 
What are the ways in which you hope to use the STEM system?
Are you planning on making it more natural to throw grenades and similar weapons? Where you don’t press to make Gordon throw but instead basically throw it yourself?
The only way something like that should happen is because of motion creator or the razer drivers as far as I know. The gun aim should have no bearing on the body / view orientation when things are working right.
There’s only one thing missing on this site, and that’s a donate button 😉
Excellent work! I’m going to check out the latest release tonight and already look forward to upcoming features!
Great news ! Keep going on !
amazing work, cant wait to try it
Looking forward to see all new stuff and maby even à more stable vr experience, This FPS mod and another car sim called Dirt 3 has totally blow the sky regarding reatching à hole new level to gameing and this has all happen in such short timeframe and with a very fancy but yet low resulotion prototype Oculus Rift. 2014 is going to be the year that changes and dominates the game experiance forever and it’s just such greate fun to be part of that hole Journey due to gifted and openminded people like you Nathan !! I enjoing every second of it., and to be honerst bye no doubt you gona be forever known as one of the few people that made VR the ground faction and breakthrow and showing the world that the VR tech IS ready.. and the mankind is able to take an immersive 1:1 experiance in à virtual rendered playground / best of luck and many thanks Nathan from Andreas “andpal” Palsson
When will this be released? The latest i am using right now is doing more harm then good…
Thanks
I want to let you know that I bought the Razer Hydra and HL2 just to try this mode out. I could run the Hydra without the Oculus Rift in the previous version, although buggy, but I had a lot of fun with it. I already beat the game on hard mode, as a matter of fact.
I strongly ask of you, Andrew, you to give us the option to play the HL2 VR without the Oculus Rift for the moment because I don’t own the dev version. I’m sure a lot of people feel the same way, so please. I hope there’s not much trouble in your part for that.
Nevermind, just focus on the project and get it done. Good luck man.
Hi, I tried using the most recent release of your mod, great work, but I couldn’t get it to play right at all, controls didn’t work, also the FOV was dismally low.
Any help/updates would be appreciated, thanks!
You need to leave the FOV slider at 75 for the engine to use the hmd eye settings and give you a properly calibrated FOV (usually between 90 and 100 depending on your eyes/rift eyecups).
can we get an update on the next update? 😉
Yeah, I’ll try to post something soon on the things we’ve been working on.
Have you changed the maps at all, or will this work with custom/modified HL2 maps?
It should generally work with custom maps, I’ve played through several from planet-phillip and had no issues. If you find some that are particularly good in VR let me know 🙂
I will! I’m gonna wait for the consumer Rift to try it out. I want my first experience to be the best one possible. I may need to pick up a Hydra too.
2 questions, if you don’t mind answering them:
1) Does this work well for left-handed players?
2) Does the Hydra, or will the STEM have haptic feedback, and will this mod support that?
No sorry, no support for lefties 😦
And no, Hydra and STEM both have no haptic feedback, though the *Tactical Haptics Reactive Grip* will be compatible with STEM modules, and we plan on supporting it.
Dang. Guess I’ll need to learn to shoot righty… I use my mouse with my right, so it must not be too difficult.
I’ll look into that “reactive grip”, because feeling the guns fire will be worth it for sure.
Hi, great work. Im loving playing your mod, but i cant change the audio language. in the options there is only english audio. the Original half life 2 without the mod got the spanish language. can i do something. Thanks.
http://sixense.com/hardware/wireless
Turns out STEM will have haptic feedback afterall. Look at the paragraphs for the STEM controller and the STEM packs.
Please make a build of the half life vr mods that can function with just the hydra. i saw a video of this and bought the hydra to do this.