This ‘Portal 2’ Mod Brings Full VR Support to Valve’s Award-winning Puzzler

Flat2VR, the modding team known for bringing unofficial VR support to games such as Final Fantasy XIV, Half-Life 2, Jedi Outcast, and Left 4 Dead 2, recently released a mod for Portal 2 which finally brings SteamVR support to the iconic puzzle game.

The mod is free, and posted to Giovanni ‘Gistix’ Correia’s Github, a contributing member of Flat2VR. If you need help installing, there are instructions on the mod’s Github page, howevrr you can also head over to the Flat2VR Discord (invite link) for help.

Another pretty handy coincidence: Valve has again put both Portal and Portal 2 on sale for just $1 a piece, or in the Portal bundle for just $1.50 total, giving you basically no excuse not to play this mod—provided you have a VR-ready PC and a headset such as a Valve Index or Quest 2 (with Link).

Check out this 20-minute playthrough showcasing just how fluid the VR mod is:

Pimax Delays VR Headset Shell for Its Nintendo Switch-style Handheld Portal

Pimax Portal, the Nintendo Switch-style handheld that can be used as a VR headset, is experiencing a bit of a road bump, as the company announced the VR portion of the device has been delayed due to a hardware redesign.

Update (July 19th, 2023): As first noted by MIXED, Pimax has delayed its View headset shell, which holds the previously launched handheld Portal device. In a blog post update, the company says the new VR shell takes inspiration from Pimax’s Crystal and ‘8K’ headsets, ostensibly offering better weight distribution and comfort. Those photos comparing the old design to the new redesign can been seen below this update.

“The Portal is an ambitious device and we want to make sure the headset is really great,” Portal’s product manager Snake Lin says. “The first prototype works, but we feel it’s not good enough to mass produce. Its weight isn’t distributed well and the comfort can be improved a bit. Also, we found some components are a bit weak if the user is rough with the device.”

View is coming in two editions: one with a battery pack on the back and one without, which are slated to ship to the 600+ Kickstarter backers sometime in Q3. At some point afterwards the company will open orders to the general public. The original article follows below:

Image courtesy Pimax

Original Article (April 18th, 2023): Over the years, the Shanghai-based company has been known for its wide field-of-view (FOV) PC VR headsets which include large, high-resolution displays and wide FOV optics, making Pimax one of the few to offer such devices directly to consumers. With the announcement of Portal and standalone headset Pimax Crystal, the company seems to be striking out in a new direction from its PC VR roots though.

As a hybrid device, Portal works as both a Nintendo Switch-style handheld (running Android), and a Samsung Gear VR-style headset which uses a dedicated VR shell housing and Switch-style controllers, which snap into their own bespoke housing.

While strapping an Android device into a headset shell is decidedly a throwback concept, Portal managed to attract over $350,000 from backers in the device’s 2022 Kickstarter campaign. Putting Gear VR comparisons aside, the device is being couched as a jack of all trades, as it’s set to offer both 6DOF head and controller tracking for VR gameplay on top of acting as both a handheld console and living room entertainment hub.

In a fresh status update, Pimax says it’s now finalized Portal’s hardware, with mass production set to start. Admittedly, Pimax says it’s currently optimizing the software for Portal, with heat dissipation, power consumption, and controller connection marked as areas in need of improvement. This also includes what it calls “rare” tracking issues and SDK-related game porting issues.

By the end of May, Pimax says it will have “more than 20 VR games” available for the Portal VR mode. Furthermore, Pimax says the QLED version of Portal will support native PC VR via HDMI, while other versions will support streaming PC VR content via WiFi e6 and USB-C.

This comes on the heels of the news last month that Pimax had secured a $30 million series C1 financing round, something the company says will aid in the rollout of both Portal and Crystal headsets.

Half-Life: Alyx Mod Brings Portal 2 Test Chambers To Life

A new addon for Half-Life: Alyx offers a couple test chambers inspired by Portal 2 that you can solve in VR without a portal gun.

The mod is called ApertureVR – Thinking Without Portals and it does a fantastic job recreating the look, feel and sound of Valve’s classic Portal 2 adapted with Half-Life: Alyx’s gravity gloves to pull cubes over to you. There’s no portal gun here, there’s only four test chambers and we were only able to successfully complete the first two — there seemed to be a progression bug with the third one at the time of this writing. Last year we looked at another mod that let you walk through a Portal 2 map and pick up some items, but this latest one actually offers a bit of gameplay and its creators hope it can serve as the basis of much more.

The first playable demo of the addon for Half-Life: Alyx was put together by four people in less than a month and features more than 200 models that are ported or new, according to the creators, and they’re offering the ApertureVR Source Pack with “prefabs, models, scripts, maps and more that allows creators to design more custom test chambers in VR.”

“With a bigger team, we hope we can integrate new puzzles, more unique VR-friendly mechanics and vastly improved assets,” the description for the addon explains.

We captured a six minutes of gameplay so you can check out how it looks:

You can find the addon here and there’s a Discord server you can join for more information about the effort. The Half-Life: Alyx community continues to build on Valve’s tools in every direction — we recently reported on more BioShock levels planned for release as an addon later this year.

Facebook: Oculus Quest 2 Outgrew The Original In Less Than 7 Weeks

The head of Facebook’s efforts in VR and AR wrote that there’s “no looking back” after the pandemic year of 2020 and his team’s “conviction in the work we do has only grown.”

“Quest 2 surpassed the original Quest’s monthly active people in less than 7 weeks, and more people are using it to stay fit, play games with friends, and collaborate for work,” Andrew Bosworth wrote in the blog post dated January 6, 2021. “There has never been a better time to get in the lab and build products that deliver meaningful social presence, and to do so in a responsible, privacy-centric way.”

The post seems to be designed as both a rallying cry to those within Facebook and a reiteration of policies the company opted to pursue in 2020, like the policy which requires a Facebook account representing your real identity be used with all Oculus gear going forward.

“We also implemented some product changes that were key in giving people a better, safer experience in VR — starting with introducing a single way to log into Oculus using your Facebook account, which makes it easier for them to find, connect, and play with friends in VR. This allows us to deliver multiplayer and social experiences and stronger privacy and security measures. In 2021, we’ll offer more options and control over how to show up in VR, including persona and privacy controls.”

In 2021, Bosworth writes that Facebook will “take steps to make immersive experiences more social with Facebook Horizon. And as the office concept evolves, we’re building out our capacity for meaningful social presence in virtual work spaces.”

The post also says Facebook’s first smart glasses from Ray-Ban “will arrive sooner than later” as the company focuses on building out a platform for AR.

You can check out the full post here.

Explore Aperture Laboratories From Portal In VR Using Half-Life: Alyx Steam Workshop Mod

Now that Half-Life: Alyx has Steam Workshop support, one modder has managed to bring an entire map from Portal 2 over into Half-Life: Alyx, allowing you to explore a small slice of Aperture Laboratories and pick up the Portal gun.

Official Half-Life: Alyx modding support launched last week, and we’re already seeing some awesome content on the Steam Workshop as a result. While a lot of the best content available on there at the moment is stuff that’s been ported over from the unofficial tools that were previously available, we’re also starting to see some new things trickle through, like the lightsaber mod and this Portal map.

The mod — titled ‘Portal 2 – Speed Ramp’ ports over the entire sp_a3_speed_ramp map from Valve’s 2011 title into VR. However, don’t get too excited — you can’t properly play through the map or shoot any portals. The most you can do is walk around and pick up a few items, including the titular gun.

You can check it out in the video above, but it doesn’t quite do the experience justice. There’s something to be said for the immersion that comes with walking through Aperture Laboratories in virtual reality. For one, the companion cubes are absolutely huge when viewed to scale — much larger than expected, especially compared to your body. The moment where you discover the Portal gun sitting near a portrait of Cave Johnson is also very exciting. Even though the gun isn’t usable in any way other than a prop, it’s awesome to be able to pull it towards you with Alyx’s gravity gloves.

To try out the map for yourself, head over to the Steam Workshop page and check out our guide for installing and playing Half-Life: Alyx mods and maps.

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Valve Looked At Portal VR ‘But We Didn’t Get Very Far’

It sounds like Aperture Science needs to go back to the drawing board if there’s to be a Portal VR game.

In an interview with IGN surrounding the release of Half-Life: Alyx, Valve’s Robin Walker revealed that Valve had experimented with a Portal VR game, but it hadn’t got very far with it.

“We [looked] at our various IPs when we started… before we selected Half-Life… which is a really standard thing for us to do,” Walker explained. “When you’re trying to explore something new, of course you start with ‘What are all the tools we’ve got from the past that could help us rapidly learn here?'”

One of those tools was the Portal franchise. But, as exciting as that sounds, Valve “didn’t get far in that,” according to Walker.

“It was pretty clear when we looked at Portal as a whole… If we can’t do player movement, not as a result of their choice, but by launching them… momentum…standing on things… all that sort of stuff… then a whole swath of Portal’s puzzles… the whole back half of Portal, or more… goes away, and we’d need some alternative thing.”

Valve has done ‘alternative things’ with the Portal universe in VR, of course. 2016’s The Lab compilation of VR minigames was set inside the mad world of Aperture Science, and even featured a character from Portal 2. Plus the recently-released Aperture Hand Lab utilized the world to showcase Valve’s new Index controllers. But the core concept of Portal itself, of walking through freely-placed portals and experiencing the physical effects of that, does sound intensely uncomfortable for VR.

“The whole point of using existing IPs is to get a head start on trying to understand and learn, and if we start by taking away one of the most interesting things from the IP we’re looking at, then it doesn’t seem like we’re making a good choice there,” Walker concluded.

As much as we’d love to see Portal VR, this sounds like a wise choice on Valve’s part. Besides, it just cleared the way for Half-Life: Alyx, which is absolutely fantastic. Following its release, Valve confirmed to us that it doesn’t have any other VR games in direct development right now. Still, who knows what the future holds?

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