Instructions

Installing the mod

Download and run the latest installer on https://vrmods.wordpress.com/downloads.

After the install, if you restart steam you’ll have Half-Life VR and Half-Life VR: Episode One in your steam library.  You’ll need to right click them and select Properties -> Set Launch Options and add -vr -novid to the textbox ( -novid kills the startup video that isn’t rendered in stereo and can be really disorienting).  Aside from that you should be good to go, just make sure your hydras are on the base station when you start the game.  Also make sure you don’t have motion creator or the razer hydra tray apps running as they will try to inject their own gestures and control schemes that will completely ruin the experience.

Configuring the movement modes

The following options can be set either in the game console ( accessed by pressing the ~ key) or by adding them to your autoexec.cfg under {steam}/steamapps/sourcemods/halflife-vr/config ( or the folder for the episode you’re playing).

mt_control_mode 0

By default things should work with a hydra in each hand and a pretty standard gamepad controls scheme.  This is probably the easiest way to play the mod but only leverages the left hydra as a controller so it lacks the full positional tracking you can get from the other modes.

mt_control_mode 1

If you have an xbox 360 controller (or even better a ps move navigator with drivers to emulate one), this control mode will allow you to use that in your left hand rather than the left hydra.  Just enable your controller (before starting the game, the source engine doesn’t hot-load controllers), and in the game options map your controller buttons to the normal left hand functions. Now you’ll need to find a way to keep the left hydra in a fixed position on your chest ( use the calibration location outlined in the default calibration step below as the ideal position to fix your hydra to your chest, at the base of the neck will get you the best results as your movements will be closer to 1-1 than they would further down your chest).

mt_control_mode 2

If you don’t have the spare xbox controller around but want to try out the positional tracking, you can use mt_control_mode 2 instead.  In this mode, you’ll use the left hydra attached to your chest just like the previous control mode, but the right hydra will now include all the necessary controls to play the game.  Since there aren’t enough buttons on the hydra to cover all the necessary commands, the right bumper behaves as a shift key and remaps the button and stick behaviors.  For example, the stick x-axis defaults to strafing, but when the bumper is depressed it turns the player instead.  This is admittedly less intuitive than the other control modes but it’s a good way to get a feel for how much positional tracking can add.

Calibration

To calibrate for mt_control_mode 0, make sure that your head and torso are both facing forward relative to the hydra base station, hold the left hydra up to your collar bone and press the right hydra start button (See example picture below) .

Tip: The actual specific orientation of the left hydra isn’t important but here’s how I tend to hold it for consistency.  While the orientation of the right hand during calibration has no bearing on the calibration itself, if you hold your right hand in front of you, you can repeatedly calibrate while making slight movements with your left hand until you find the “right” position, when the virtual hand and your own hand are in the same place.

 

To calibrate in either mt_control_mode 1 or 2, the hydra should already be fixed to your chest in the correct position.  As long as it is, just make sure you’re head / torso is facing forward relative to the hydra base and press the right hydra start button.

HMD Calibration / FOV Adjustments

I’ve had several questions about how to adjust the rift IPD and FOV settings in the mod.  Currently the best way to do this is to use the TF2 calibration utility and then copy the settings from TF2 over to the mod since HL2 doesn’t currently have it’s own calibration tools.  Hopefully this is a short term situation.

Instructions on calibrating TF2 can be found here.  Once you’ve made it through that, browse to your TF2 config folder and open config.cfg:

{steam}/steamapps/common/team fortress 2/tf/config.cfg

Now copy all 8 settings that start with vr_ipdtest_ to your clipboard.

vr_ipdtest_left_t "157"
vr_ipdtest_left_b "672"
vr_ipdtest_left_i "624"
vr_ipdtest_left_o "118"
vr_ipdtest_right_t "163"
vr_ipdtest_right_b "679"
vr_ipdtest_right_i "617"
vr_ipdtest_right_o "106"

Now you’ll need to put those into the mod config, which can be found at:

{steam}/steamapps/sourcemods/halflife-vr/config/config.cfg

Find the same settings in this file, delete them, and paste in the values you copied earlier. The same will need to be done for any other halflife-vr-* folders for the episodes etc as well.  The paths may vary if you use custom source install directories.