‘Half-Life 2: RTX’ Remaster Could Mean Big Upgrades for ‘Half-Life 2’ VR

NVIDIA this week announced Half-Life 2: RTX, a community-made remaster of the legendary game featuring all-new assets, textures, and lighting. Pieces of the remaster are likely to make their way to the already existing Half-Life 2: VR Mod.

When it rains, it pours, as they say.

After years of delays, Half-Life and VR fans have been treated over the last 12 months to full VR mods of Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode Oneand Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

And now it seems that fans are in for another treat; the Half-Life 2: VR Mod is likely to get a range of graphical upgrades thanks to the newly announced Half-Life 2: RTX remaster.

Though it already featured improved graphics and lighting over the original Half-Life 2, the Half-Life 2: VR Mod largely focused on touching up the game’s existing assets, and enhancing some key 3D models while building out full support for VR.

Half-Life 2: RTX, on the other hand, is a complete graphical overhaul says Nvidia.

The project is described as being in “early development,” with developers consisting of a range of experienced Half-Life 2 modding teams, including folks from the Half-Life 2: VR Mod team. The teams are working under the banner Orbifold Studios and say they’re seeking more talented people to work on the project.

According to Nvidia, the project will see “every asset reconstructed in high fidelity,” textures built with physically-based rendering techniques, and RTX ray-tracing support.

And while the project will likely mean that high quality 3D assets will make it over to the Half-Life 2: VR Mod, unfortunately RTX ray-tracing probably won’t.

A member of the Half-Life 2: VR Mod team called modding the full Half-Life 2: RTX game to support VR “just a pipe dream at the moment.”

“Currently RTX Remix [the platform used to build Half-Life 2: RTX] is not compatible with Half-Life 2: VR Mod, since they both hook into the rendering pipeline and abuse it in different and incompatible ways,” they said.

But, the member says there are plans to “work with other members of this new super-team [that’s working on Half-Life 2: RTX] on back-porting as much of the shiny new HD content as we can to the old source engine, and putting them into our Half-Life 2: VR Mod graphics update.”

There’s no timeline at the moment for when that might happen, but hey, these things, they take time.

‘Half-Life 2: Episode 2’ VR Mod Gets Launch Trailer Ahead of April 6th Release

Following last month’s release of the Half-Life 2: Episode 1 VR mod, the Source VR Mod team is set to release Episode 2 on April 6th. A launch trailer shows how the episode has been fully adapted to be played in VR.

After years of starts and stops on various attempts to turn Half-Life 2 into a fully playable VR game, the Source VR Mod Team released the Half-Life 2 VR Mod to major acclaim last year. Since then the team has followed up with an equally well received VR mod for Episode 1.

Less than a month later, the team is set to release the Half-Life 2: Episode 2 VR Mod on April 6th, including a full set of VR features like hands-on weapons, comfort options, real ladder climbing, and—of course—a crow bar you can actually swing.

The Source VR Mod Team released a launch trailer for the game ahead of release, showing the classic Episode 2 action that players can now relive in VR.

The Half-Life 2: Episode 2 VR Mod is free, but requires that players own the original Episode 2 game in order to play. The mod supports all SteamVR headsets like Index, Vive, and Quest via Oculus Link.

Image courtesy Source VR Mod Teamsou

All three of these Half-Life 2 VR mods are built by volunteers who make up the Source VR Mod Team. If you want to support their current and future work, they accept contributions on their Ko-fi page.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two VR Mod Finishes The Job On April 6

Half-Life 2: Episode Two will soon join its predecessors in PC VR, arriving as a free Steam mod on April 6.

Having previously confirmed plans for an Episode Two VR port, the Source VR Mod Team revealed the release date for this final part (sorry Half-Life 3 hopefuls) of Valve’s iconic FPS last week when Half-Life 2: Episode One VR Mod released. Like the Half-Life 2 VR Mod and Episode One, you must own the base Episode Two game on Steam to access this. Furthermore, the Source VR Mod Team states anyone using someone else’s account via family sharing feature won’t work.

Half-Life 2 - Episode Two VR Mod screenshot

Offering full room-scale VR with motion controls, new weapon interactions, comfort options like motion vignettes and more, that’s compatible with any headset supported by SteamVR. You can check out the mod page for more information. Based on the quality-of-life updates Half-Life 2: VR Mod received post-launch, support for bHaptics TactSuit vests and Steam Workshop also seems likely.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two is available now on Steam for $7.99, and included in the The Orange Box bundle for $19.99 alongside the Half-Life 2 base game and Episode One.

Half-Life 2 VR Mod Resurfaces With New Gameplay, Details

The now somewhat mythical Half-Life 2 VR mod, HL2VR, has resurfaced again, this time with fresh gameplay.

There’s been multiple attempts to bring Valve’s classic shooter to VR with a full mod over the past few years. We first wrote about it back in 2017 (and I wrote about earlier versions at a different publication 9 years ago now) but, time after time, promising outlooks end up turning into vaporware. In 2021, though, popular VR modder DrBeef was confirmed to be joining the project alongside fholger. Last week, the latter shared updates on their progress, including new gameplay footage seen below.

Half-Life 2 VR Mod Returns

The gameplay is taken from an early segment of the shooter, and shows full motion control support and expanded features like long-distance grabbing, crowbar attacks with physical movement, and even weapon reloading manual input.

In a lengthy Reddit post, fholger — who is currently the sole developer on the project with DrBeef on leave — explained that large parts of the project’s past work had since been erased, meaning the developers have had to start from scratch in many areas.

“The problem, though, was that every single one of those components was broken and left unfinished,” the developer said of past builds. “The input bindings for the controllers were created in the days of the OG Vive and were basically unusable on something like the Index controllers. The hand models were bulky, completely flat and unanimated and placed at a weird spot slightly in front of the controllers. They were also coupled to a partial player body without any IK that behaved weirdly and often got in the way of the camera. Not a single weapon was actually functioning.”

The issues go beyond that, with fholger pointing to the Source engine’s archaic framework and having to lose some parts of the project that had already been built. “On the upside, we will now probably be able to release the source code for HL2VR at some point in the future,” they said. Currently, the start of the game up until the airboat sequence is playable and, in the developer’s words, enjoyable but still with plenty of issues to fix. The next milestone will be to get the full game working in VR with major elements like the vehicle sections performing comfortably.

“I am not going to promise any particular timeline for this (real life would interfere, anyway), but I will try to update you on our progress semi-regularly,” the developer said. “Please do not expect a perfect VR experience for this initial release – flat-to-VR ports will always have some jank remaining, and we will still be focussing on the most critical aspects to get the game playable.”

‘Half-Life 2’ VR Mod Shows Off New Progress with Gravity Gun Gameplay

Many years before the release of Half-Life: Alyx, a group of fans built a rudimentary Half-Life 2 VR mod which allowed the game to be played with early VR headset development kits. Unfortunately the mod eventually lost compatibility with newer hardware as the first consumer VR headsets began to hit the market. But last year a group of proven VR modders rebooted the mod for modern VR headsets, and now they’re showing the first signs of progress.

The HL2VR modding team seems to be making strong progress. Just two weeks ago the group showed off some early work on the revamped Half-Life 2 mod, including manual reloading and ladder climbing in an early section of the game. This week the group has shown off its latest efforts, including a weapon selection menu, a functional Gravity Gun, and a working vehicle driving segment.

The team had not expected to be working on these aspects of the game for some time yet, with u/fholger sharing they “got a lot more done than I anticipated,” after spending two prior weeks hunting down a “subtle, but annoying bug.”

The Gravity Gun is now fully functional, along with the SMG & Pulse Rifle (including secondary fire modes), as well as the RPG. u/fholger says the rest of the game’s arsenal still needs work.

“There’s still work to be done to get some of the weapons into a functional state. Revolver, shotgun, crossbow, grenades and bugbait are in various states of disrepair. Making them functional is currently my primary focus, since having all the weapons should (in theory) make the entire game playable, now that the vehicles are working,” they said. “After getting all the weapons functional, we want to make them great. That includes integrating updated weapon models with actual hand poses and animations. This work isn’t necessarily going to block a public release; we’ll get as far as we can and then keep working on them over time.”

And while the vehicle sections of the game are now functional, the team warns that even with the game adjusted to always keep the view upright, comfort is not guaranteed.

“You do, unfortunately, still need solid VR legs for them. Vehicle rides involve artificial turning, and there’s little I can do about that without completely reimplementing how they work.”

However, the team has a plan to optionally make the vehicle sections of the game project into a flat 2D screen (as if you’re sitting in front of a virtual monitor) which could significantly improve comfort.

Once the game is at least technically playable from start to finish, the team has plans to put out an initial public release of the Half-Life: 2 VR mod to get feedback.

This week Source VR Team member u/fholger posted a detailed update on the HL2VR mod since the team started working on it last year. The group worked initially to salvage pieces which had been previously built, but had to fill in the blanks in a number of places. That included building a missing “bridge” which connected the inherited parts of the mod to the underlying Half-Life 2 game, as well as adding support for Vulkan rendering and MSAA anti-aliasing which u/fholger says “provides a significant uplift to the game’s graphics in the headset.”

While progress was slow at first, things started coming together toward the end of 2021 allowing the team to focus on making early levels of the game fully playable. u/fholger shared a new video showing the latest progress on the Half-Life 2 VR mod, including Index controller finger tracking, proper ladder climbing, and manual reloading.

While the game looks perfectly playable from the video, u/fholger warns that there’s still a lot to do elsewhere; the modders will need to continue progressing through the game fixing what’s broken and making specific sequences functional VR, like the vehicle driving sections later in the game.

The next step after this first milestone is to get the game at least technically playable from start to finish, and to bring more of the old mod’s VR enhancements to the new version of the mod. Once that’s complete, the team has plans to release a public alpha of the mod to find bugs and remaining issues to be fixed.

“Please do not expect a perfect VR experience for [the alpha] release—flat-to-VR ports will always have some jank remaining, and we will still be focussing on the most critical aspects to get the game playable,” says u/fholger.

For now there’s no timeline given for the alpha release of the HL2VR mod, but u/fholger says they’ll make an effort to be more communicative about the mod’s progress than was seen in the past.

The original article, which outlines how this new group of modders brought life to the long defunct HL2VR mod, continues below.

Original Article (September 17th, 2021): If you’ve been following the VR gaming space for a long while, you probably recall back in 2017 when the Half-Life 2 VR mod was announced to significant fanfare. The team that had made the original version of the mod (compatible only with older Oculus development kits) planned to update it for modern consumer headsets and remaster the game with VR-specific touches like a made-for-VR UI, multiple locomotion methods, and more. The mod’s original announcement trailer gives an idea of what they hoped to deliver:

Unfortunately, despite a blessing from Valve permitting the release of the project on Steam, the revamped version of the mod never got completed, having seemingly fallen into development hell.

Somehow between then and now Valve made an entirely new VR game, Half-Life: Alyx, which released in 2020 to widespread acclaim. But the Half-Life 2 VR mod may live on yet.

The project has purportedly been re-rebooted by a team including VR modder extraordinare Simon “Dr. Beef” Brown, who is behind VR mods of Half-Life, Doom, and plenty of others.

In a message posted to the Flatscreen to VR Mod Discord community earlier this Summer the team announced that it is working with some of the mod’s original team and building on work it had already done, with the goal of readying an open-source version of the code so that others can begin contributing in a structured way.

A couple weeks ago, @DrBeef and @cabalistic stepped up to see how we could revitalize the project and get it out the door. The goal has been to make sense of the existing work the previous team had done and to polish it enough to get some open source version released as soon as possible in at least an alpha state so that others could contribute to continue to polish it up.

In just the last couple weeks, DrBeef has re-written almost all of the VR code to run a whole lot better and even ported the engine’s VR implementation to use Vulcan instead of DX9 with the help of DXVK! (current VR APIs only work with DX11 and above). He also has fixed a lot of game breaking issues that were in the build. Cabalistic has also done some magic and has gotten MSAA working for textures too.

There’s no rough release date for the new Half-Life 2 VR mod, but one sticking point on the current development path is deciding which version of the Source engine to use as a foundation.

One thing we need to finalize before we get too far along is whether we want to continue the project with the Source 2013 SDK version (all the VR work has currently been done to that version). Or whether we want to switch to the newer CS:GO engine (all of [another modder’s] updated maps was done with that version). We’re not sure at this point how much of a setback switching engines would be. One side advantage of working on the CS:GO port is that that’s what a version of Portal 2 uses and it could mean one day making a Portal 2 VR port (or at least making that easier). The disadvantage to switching is that the project couldn’t be open source as that version of the engine requires a Valve signed NDA for anyone to have access to.

Just this week the team confirmed that work is continuing on the Half-Life 2 VR mod, and further noted that there’s yet a separate mod project in the works by another modder which is aiming to add modern VR support to a version of Source Engine which could be compatible with Half-Life 2.

“Currently, [the other mod’s author] plans to continue working separately, but perhaps there’s still things we can share between projects. If anything, competition could be nice along with options for players,” one of the modders wrote.

It’s been nearly eight years since the original version of the Half-Life 2 VR mod was released, and four years since the reboot was announced. For anyone craving more Half-Life in VR, you’re gonna want to keep your fingers crossed.

The post ‘Half-Life 2’ VR Mod Shows Off New Progress with Gravity Gun Gameplay appeared first on Road to VR.

Project 17 Alyx Mod Will Remake Half-Life 2’s First Chapter For VR

The opening chapter of Half-Life 2, ‘Point Insertion’, is one of the most memorable gaming experiences of all-time. And soon, with Project 17, you should be able to play it in VR.

Project 17 was announced last week — it’s a new Half-Life: Alyx mod, currently in development, that aims to remake the entire opening chapter of Half-Life 2 as a playable VR experience. The announcement came with a trailer, embedded below, that looks absolutely stunning.

Back when Alyx came out in March, some modders managed to port over the environment from the first chapter of Half-Life 2 into Alyx. While you could walk around and explore, it was just an environment — the story didn’t play it and it was just an empty playground. It also used the original assets from Half-Life 2, so it looked quite dated.

Comparatively, Project 17 is a much more in-depth and stunning recreation. The team is using the upgraded assets from Half-Life: Alyx, where possible, to recreate the scenes and environments from Half-Life 2. For missing assets, they’re creating new ones themselves and sharing them with the public in collaboration with the Half-Life 2: Remade Assets team.

half-life 2 project 17 vr 2

As you can see from the trailer and these screenshots, the recreation looks absolutely fantastic so far. Plus, it’s not just an environment you can walk around though — Project 17 should let you actually play through the entire opening chapter in full, rebuilt for VR.

The team does make it clear that they aren’t rebuilding a VR version of the entire game, stating that currently “the community does not have access…that would be required to create a truly faithful recreation of Half-Life 2 that is enjoyable for the player.”

half-life 2 project 17 vr

There’s no release date for Project 17, but the team says it will release “when it’s ready™”.

You can follow the project over on its website or on Twitter.

Half-Life 2 VR Is Getting Haptic Feedback With The Hardlight Suit

Half-Life 2 VR Is Getting Haptic Feedback With The Hardlight Suit

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about the much anticipated Half-Life 2 VR port being worked on by a group of fans, but this week haptic group HardlightVR confirmed some interesting news about the project.

The game will support the Hardlight haptic feedback suit that’s expected to start shipping this month. Just like having your very own HEV suit, you can pull on the device over your chest and arms to receive tactile feedback from every gunshot, explosion and head crab assault in Valve’s classic first-person shooter (FPS). The suit has 16 haptic feedback zones that target specific muscle groups for an immersive experience.

The suit itself costs $299 and will work with other VR games, including Vertigo Games’ Arizona Sunshine, which is being shown at GDC 2018 this week. The device also offers upper body tracking. It works with both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

As for Half-Life 2 VR, there’s still no word on when it will be ready for launch, though hopefully we’ll hear more news at some point this year.

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Hardlight VR Annouces Partnership With Vertigo Games and Source Team

Hardlight VR have announced a new partnership that will see their virtual reality (VR) Hardlight Suit bringing the sensation of touch and impact to even more titles. Vertigo Games’ Arizona Sunshine and Source Team’s VR port of Valve’s Half-Life 2 are among immersive VR titles that will support the solution.

Nullspace VR - Hardlight Suit_1

Announced back at the start of 2017, the Hardlight Suit offers a new way to experience VR titles with a complete set of haptic feedback senors at work within the suit creating the sensation of touch and impact. After a successful Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign the Hardlight Suit has become closer to release with a permanent price reduction to $299.99 (USD) at the start of this year. Now, with the news of the company partnering with Source Team and Vertigo Games on support for Arizona Sunshine and Half-Life 2 VR the Hardlight Suit has new opportunists to create excitement.

Hardlight VR co-founder Morgan Sinko commented on the announcement by saying: “We’ve always aimed to partner with the best games in the industry, the titles we’re announcing now represent some of the most fun, high-quality work being done in VR and we couldn’t be more excited to be working with them. These are titles our community has been clamoring for since our inception and we’re thrilled to finally be able to say we’re bringing cutting edge haptics to these excellent games.”

Arizona Sunshine LBVR (horizontal)

In addition to partnering with the above titles, Hardlight have also been the exclusive haptics provider for an innovative Game Developer Conference experience in collaboration with VR tracking pioneers Optitrack and Vertigo Games. This is a brand new, fully tracked, four-player co-operative version of the popular Arizona Sunshine that will see players blasting away at hordes of zombies all while the Hardlight Suits provide immersive, location-based haptics to maximize the impact and experience. You can always read VRFocus’ Editor Kevin Joyce’s review of the PlayStation 4 version of Arizona Sunshine here.

VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest on Hardlight VR in the future so make sure to stay tuned for more.

7 Most Wanted Virtual Reality Videogames For Oculus Rift

Oculus Rift is undoubtedly a great bit of kit, but for some there are some essential titles that really need to make the jump and become available for the virtual reality (VR) gadget. Some of the ‘most wanted’ that we have compiled here, for your reading pleasure, are more obvious than others while some will make you think “ooooh, yeah!”. This is not a wish list, by the way, these titles are coming for Oculus either as official releases or by way of ‘mods’, as are the following 7 most wanted compiled by the team at VR Hire company VRE:

Half-Life 2 VR

Others may not list this one first, mostly because of its unofficial status, but HL remains a cult classic and changed the genre the genre and the way FPS titles went about their business – Half-Life was the first FPS game to introduce physics based play. With Half-Life 3 never coming (sorry), a VR experience is the next best thing as far as many are concerned. Half-Life 2 lends itself to the technology, visually at least, much more than the original ever could and so here we are. Updated effects & textures, a redesigned UI and HDR lighting await.

Half-Life 2 - VR screenshot 2Transference

Live action video games are something of a niche, with only a small handful of titles taking that approach. Transference is a psychological thriller from SpectreVision, in partnership with Ubisoft. Players delve into the memories of an obsessed, self destructive man. Working through these memories you try to solve the riddle of a troubled family and attempt to escape the maze like house, solving its mysteries as you progress. Slated for a release in 2018, around spring time, Transference is expected to support all three major VR platforms.

TRANSFERENCEMarvel Powers United VR

Oculus has donned their cape and teamed up with Marvel and Disney to bring VR fans another quality title. The development of the game is being handled by Sanzaru Games, who have worked with Oculus before. The game itself looks pretty impressive, and we can only guess what it will feel like to hulk out on your front room while you throw bad guys around. Everybody wants to be a superhero, and now they can.

MARVEL Powers United VR Group

ARK Park

If you are familiar with ARK: Survival Evolved, then you will have some idea of what ARK Park is about if I said it’s akin to a safari park. This rather unique VR experience is based on ARK: Survival Evolved, and allows players to get up close and personal with the dinosaurs that inhabit the world of ARK. As well as being able to take a closer look at the animals, you can learn more about them and also explore the habits that they call home, too; from tropical rainforests to mountain ranges and plains. Developed by Snail Games Peacock Studio, ARK Park is available on Steam and PS4.

Ark Park Screen 12L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files

Available for the HTC Vive, The VR Case Files answers a lot of rumours surrounding L.A. Noire and VR. A lot speculation was made as to whether the original game, from Rockstar games, would make the transition to VR – the answer is no, it won’t. Instead, The VR Case Files is a game specifically designed for virtual reality, to take advantage of everything the tech. has to offer, rather than retrofitting an existing title. Smart move, if you think about it. Seven cases from the original were chosen for the VR version, to properly showcase the game and the technology.

LA Noire VR Case Files (Thin Version)Brass Tactics

Expected early 2018, the RTS Brass Tactics brings a 5 mission solo campaign as well as co-op play and a full fledged online RTS experience. Starting off as commander, you take control of units around your base, bringing your hands into the world so that you can pick up and move your units around the game world. Immersive titles like this, with a top down view of the world, are expected to become more commonplace as time goes by. Hidden Path Entertainment aim to bring more unit types and progression trees into the game before final release, toward the end of February 2018.

Brass TacticsBudget Cuts

Budget Cuts has probably generated as much hype as Watch_Dogs did in the run up to its release, first debuting as an incredible demo, in 2016, and nothing has been seen since for over a year. One of the best VR experiences available, at that point, the demo for Budget Cuts simply wowed everybody that it came into contact with it. While  Neat Corporation have been busy, and annoyingly quietly, working away on the game, the hype train keeps on chugging. The problem now is, can Budget Cuts live up to expectations? All we can do right now is wait, and find out for ourselves.

Budget Cuts 2

‘Half-Life 2: VR’ Mod Gets Green-lit on Steam in 4 Days

Half-Life 2: VR, a revamped version of an older mod which will adapt the beloved Half-Life 2 for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, has been green-lit, signifying Valve’s official acceptance of the mod for distribution on Steam.

Although Steam Greenlight’s days are numbered, the Half-Life 2: VR mod which we reported on last week has managed to squeeze through the program in just four days. That means the team behind the mod has the official thumbs-up from Valve to distribute the mod to players via Steam, making distribution, promotion, and updates of the mod much easier than releasing it directly via the web.

The mod team reports that nearly 16,000 people had voted for the mod’s approval around the time it was green-lit, with a 95% ‘Yes’ vote, they said in an update on the mod’s Greenlight page today:

Having the project on Steam will make it easier for us to develop, and of course much easier for people to install and update when we start releasing builds. We know the top question on everyone’s minds is when exactly that will be, but these things they take time, especially with a team of unpaid volunteers. The best we can do for now is “soon”, as soon as the hands of our programmers and artists allow it.

Now the developers have set off to finalize the mod, telling Road to VR that the release will be “in the ballpark of months.” In the meantime, the group has released a gallery of 4k screenshots showing off some of the remastered lighting that’s being done. To demonstrate some of the work involved in preparing the game for VR, the team also showed an example of what the original weapon models look like (consisting of only partially complete geometry), and how they are being built out fully and remastered so that VR players can view them from all angles (as they will be wielded by VR controllers):

Last week we delved into the background of the Half-Life 2: VR mod and what the team was promising with their revamped approach.

Those who have been following the modern VR era since the beginning may recall the original HLVR mod launched in 2013 that was well ahead of it’s time, offering motion-controller input via the Razer Hydra, literally years before Oculus or Valve would announce their own VR controllers. Here’s some gameplay from the original mod played on the Rift DK1.

Back then we said that the mod “turned Half-Life 2 into one of the best virtual reality experiences available today.” Sadly, it wouldn’t last. While Valve had added support for the Rift development kits to their Source engine, as the software that the headsets relied on advanced over time, Valve didn’t update the Source implementation, leading to the present situation which is that the mod can’t be played on anything but old development kit headsets.

After several years of the mod in dormancy, members of the original mod, with some new help, have devised a method to make the mod work with the latest Rift and Vive. Watch the trailer above. Not only will it allow players to step into the world of Half-Life 2 in VR, it will also add motion controller support to make the game function much like a modern VR title. The mod team is further promising the following:

  • HDR lighting
  • Updated effects, textures, models & maps
  • A made for VR UI
  • Realistic weapon interactions
  • Multiple VR locomotion methods

The mod team is sensibly calling the package Half-Life 2: VR (not to be confused with the original mod’s name, HLVR). It will be released entirely for free, though it does require a copy of Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 & 2 to work correctly. Luckily you can pick up all three, along with Portal (2007) for the entirely reasonable price of $20 via The Orange Box.

Read on to learn more about the mod and the team behind it.

The post ‘Half-Life 2: VR’ Mod Gets Green-lit on Steam in 4 Days appeared first on Road to VR.