The written version from the site.There were clearly some missed opportunities for more Alyx/Alex (Battaglia) puns here.
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Half-Life: Alyx - The Digital Foundry Tech Review - A Game-Changer for VR?
- Thread starter RadioactiveLobster
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There were clearly some missed opportunities for more Alyx/Alex (Battaglia) puns here.
Love the drawings Dark1x haha
Looks like its moves VR forward. A thing i really was waiting for.
Article
Half-Life: Alyx tech analysis - a VR masterpiece that must be experienced
It's not often that a new title arrives that genuinely moves gaming forward - but that's exactly what Half-Life: Alyx d…
www.eurogamer.net
Half-Life: Alyx - The Digital Foundry Tech Review - A Game-Changer for VR?
The written version from the site. There were clearly some missed opportunities for more Alyx/Alex (Battaglia) puns here.
www.resetera.com
Can't wait to watch! This game is beautiful and extremely well-optimized, cross-posting my info from the OT:
Will wait until I finish it before I watch this. For now I think it is a wonderful experience, but I am let down by some of the limitations as a VR game. It has some strange design decisions considering it is a VR game by Valve.
I wish they'd keep developing it and provide some more options, so that the weapons exist as real objects you hold, rather than having a 'weapon-arm', and that melee combat is a possibility.
I wish they'd keep developing it and provide some more options, so that the weapons exist as real objects you hold, rather than having a 'weapon-arm', and that melee combat is a possibility.
Love the drawings Dark1x haha
Looks like its moves VR forward. A thing i really was waiting for.
Article
Half-Life: Alyx tech analysis - a VR masterpiece that must be experienced
It's not often that a new title arrives that genuinely moves gaming forward - but that's exactly what Half-Life: Alyx d…
I am still finishing up my performance video as well, so that should be up at some point too!
Yeah, I wanted to talk about this for awhile.
I've been playing Half Life Alyx for awhile and I'm kinda surprised how limited it is when compared to Boneworks.
Visually, Half Life Alyx looks amazing, but you're rather limited in what you can do and it feels like I'm playing an older VR title.
Definitely has a lot of polish though.
I've been playing Half Life Alyx for awhile and I'm kinda surprised how limited it is when compared to Boneworks.
Visually, Half Life Alyx looks amazing, but you're rather limited in what you can do and it feels like I'm playing an older VR title.
Definitely has a lot of polish though.
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Half-Life: Alyx - The Digital Foundry Tech Review - A Game-Changer for VR?
The review you've been waiting for. Armed with his Oculus Rift S, John Linneman takes on Half-Life: Alyx - a hugely important game for virtual reality... and a simply brilliant Half-Life game in its own right. Check out what makes this game so special right here. Love the drawings Dark1x...
www.resetera.com
OP
OP
And linking a thread created 7 minutes after mine means???Half-Life: Alyx - The Digital Foundry Tech Review - A Game-Changer for VR?
The review you've been waiting for. Armed with his Oculus Rift S, John Linneman takes on Half-Life: Alyx - a hugely important game for virtual reality... and a simply brilliant Half-Life game in its own right. Check out what makes this game so special right here. Love the drawings Dark1x...
Can't wait to watch this later! Thank you Dark1x and Dictator :-)
I'm curious about peoples' performance and I may as well ask here since there isn't a HL:Alyx performance thread.
I'm using a GTX 2060 + Core i5-9600K + 16GB DDR4 + Oculus Quest / Link and it seems to run really well on Ultra settings most of the time, but the game recommends Medium settings and I'm not sure why.
I'm curious about peoples' performance and I may as well ask here since there isn't a HL:Alyx performance thread.
I'm using a GTX 2060 + Core i5-9600K + 16GB DDR4 + Oculus Quest / Link and it seems to run really well on Ultra settings most of the time, but the game recommends Medium settings and I'm not sure why.
Great Vanna White hand action by John this episode ;)
And that bit at the end...if we can easily replace the pre-rendered videos on TV screens, omg :o
I bet the graphic settings auto-detect is very conservative. It recommends Low for me, but I played at Medium from Chapter 3 through the end with no issues.
And that bit at the end...if we can easily replace the pre-rendered videos on TV screens, omg :o
I bet the graphic settings auto-detect is very conservative. It recommends Low for me, but I played at Medium from Chapter 3 through the end with no issues.
A lot of interesting comparisons to Boneworks in there. I feel that in some ways Valve was fairly conservative with Alyx. They were probably prioritizing comfort for the large amount of players who would make this their first, defining VR game. I hope when they make another VR Half-Life they increase the interactivity further.
My bad. I saw that one first and it had more replies, so I assumed yours was made later.
How spoilery is the video? I'm at chapter 5, don't know if I should wait, but I love these analysis!
Hmmm...a couple things after chapter 5 are in there. Nothing too spoilery but it's there.
Just play through it, there's definitely a huge gameplay spoiler in there, the video is not going anywhere and you're already halfway through the game :)
Dude, camera smoothing almost made me barf. I had to turn it off just as fast as I turned it on.
Are you going to talk about the Source Engine and why textures in this game look better than most VR games?
Thank you Channel, i have a 970 and was putting off buying this (despite it being my favourite games series). I might just have to pick up the game now.
Fantastic review, Dark1x! I'm eating up Alyx content way more than the time I've spent playing it, partially because I want to artificially prolong the game. Still haven't run into spoilers somehow, but I think it may be time to go ahead and finish up the game.
I've been a huge proponent of VR since the consumer VR's inception, so much so that I went back to grad school with a high focus on spatial/immersive tech HCI/UX research. This video is a great rundown of VR's unique features that are working to close interesting gaps between the player and game. Although there are still barriers to entry when it comes to the tech right now (cost, early phase technical problems, other implications of early adoption phase), I think the underlying intuitiveness of interactions will begin to considerably expand potential user base demographics. I think VR will (eventually) be the first medium to be considered as both the most hardcore end of the gaming spectrum in regards to interactive complexity, immersion, variety, even competitiveness, but at the same time intuitive enough to be able to execute complex mechanics with little or no experience which will appeal to more casual players as well.
I personally think HL: Alyx is the most significant watershed moment for VR games/software thus far because it harnesses so much of the design ingenuity cultivated by other VR devs over the past half decade or so, and it happens to be a franchise that people care about and love.
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You're welcome! The game looks fantastic even on Low, and there's probably room to downscale even further.
Video title: A Game-Changer for VR?
Thumbnail: A Game-Changer for VR!
Question asked and answered. I just thought that was funny.
I'm a few chapters in and so far, the more I play, the more I like it. I'm having a blast at this point. It all feels so new and exciting, like we're looking at the start, the foundation of something.
Thumbnail: A Game-Changer for VR!
Question asked and answered. I just thought that was funny.
I'm a few chapters in and so far, the more I play, the more I like it. I'm having a blast at this point. It all feels so new and exciting, like we're looking at the start, the foundation of something.
Seeing the comparison to Boneworks was interesting. One going for the better experience and the other going for more ambition. I'm very curious to see how they both push and refine the directions they have chosen. In the meanwhile I think it's time for me to join the PCVR crew :P
Really appreciate John showing us fundamental differences between a well made VR game vs a conventional one, I thought that extremely insightful. My only issue was that I had to stop watching as I started to feel motion sickness. Tech is unusable for me, but I do like how creative you can be, picking up a chair or box in VR is infinitely more engaging and visceral than a normal game could possibly offer. Loved how you can break out a window on a door, clear broken glass and use it as a shield, that's a level personal world interaction that is completely reliant on your intuition that's impossible to pull off on normal games, amazing level of detail.
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What's so bizarre to me is that, somehow, there are folks (not here) that think the video was 'sponsored' by Boneworks due to its inclusion. Like, holy shit, what is WRONG with people?! Can I please just talk about the things I want to talk about? I loved that game and never got a real chance to showcase what made it so interesting so this was a good chance.
Also, when sponsored content happens, it usually means we get to spend more time creating a video which is enjoyable from a creation standpoint and also means a really nice edit. God, this stuff has to stop.
Right but that's not the video I wanted to make and wouldn't have been able to do two. Not enough time. Alex has a vid on the way as well.
It's fair to say but it's unfair when people think there's something more to it when it's just something I wanted to do.
Yeah I agree with this post.
Half Life Alyx as a non VR game would basically be a completely different game - JOhn showed that perfectly. If they made it, it would be a game stripped of all the unique minute gameplay systems to the point where it feels barren, empty, and boring beyond the story.
It would be like a 2d demake of a 3d game.
I thought it was illuminating, I enjoyed the inclusion of Boneworks, a game I had no idea exists and the breadth of interaction (picking up the head grabbers and bashing them) blew me away tbh. All in service of showing how far interaction could push the experience, rather then one trying to undermine the other. What a strange interpretation of what was shown.
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I liked the Boneworks comparison as it had value beyond 'look how pretty it is'. Half-Life: Alyx is Great but it doesn't obliterate all other VR games. Arguably the most impressive physics aspect of Boneworks was not mentioned though in that grip strength matters. If you hold a crowbar with both hands and you grip slightly stronger with one, you can slowly drag the more relaxed hand along the tool.
All in all I think Valve had the right priorities with Alyx in reserving the physics implementation a bit (to hit a greater crowd of users and to avoid glitchy behavior). The physics are still really impressive despite not using it as the key system underlying all gameplay. But at the same time I think the game lacked some transitions (i.e. un-mounting a ladder, could have been done with just shifting camera alone but instead it's a blink). They could have implemented melee as well but maybe make it really weak (so that headcrab encounters don't became a wash).
UploadVR put the question to Valve about physics and they had this to say:
"I think one of the things is the property of VR, right," Mitchell said. "In Half-Life 2 of course, there was no expectation of force feedback. We were watching the Gravity Gun and then the physics took over and cool stuff happened, right? In Alyx if we have the player hold something large and rigid there's a lot that's gonna happen in a physical simulation that's not gonna feed back into your hand."
It's true that sensations like weight and force are missing from current consumer VR headsets. Boneworks tried to workaround that issue by asking players to literally simulate the lifting and pushing of heavy items, acting out the motions slowly. It doesn't sound like that was going to work for Valve.
"So basically you're not going to have any kind of haptic feedback" Mitchell continued. "Don't even worry about bludgeoning and impaling something; even something just as simple as tapping a tool on a desk or whatever. You don't get the force feedback from that sort of thing. I think it's just inherent in VR that we aren't in the sci-fi future exoskeleton level of VR where every bit of our sensory input and output can be manipulated. So it's not a strength of VR systems now, so we decided not to lean into it for that reason."
All in all I think Valve had the right priorities with Alyx in reserving the physics implementation a bit (to hit a greater crowd of users and to avoid glitchy behavior). The physics are still really impressive despite not using it as the key system underlying all gameplay. But at the same time I think the game lacked some transitions (i.e. un-mounting a ladder, could have been done with just shifting camera alone but instead it's a blink). They could have implemented melee as well but maybe make it really weak (so that headcrab encounters don't became a wash).
UploadVR put the question to Valve about physics and they had this to say:
"I think one of the things is the property of VR, right," Mitchell said. "In Half-Life 2 of course, there was no expectation of force feedback. We were watching the Gravity Gun and then the physics took over and cool stuff happened, right? In Alyx if we have the player hold something large and rigid there's a lot that's gonna happen in a physical simulation that's not gonna feed back into your hand."
It's true that sensations like weight and force are missing from current consumer VR headsets. Boneworks tried to workaround that issue by asking players to literally simulate the lifting and pushing of heavy items, acting out the motions slowly. It doesn't sound like that was going to work for Valve.
"So basically you're not going to have any kind of haptic feedback" Mitchell continued. "Don't even worry about bludgeoning and impaling something; even something just as simple as tapping a tool on a desk or whatever. You don't get the force feedback from that sort of thing. I think it's just inherent in VR that we aren't in the sci-fi future exoskeleton level of VR where every bit of our sensory input and output can be manipulated. So it's not a strength of VR systems now, so we decided not to lean into it for that reason."
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What was your CPU and headset? I think that would be the real prob!
I think it was your 7700k, what memory you running there what frequency? :D
Woah
Something is wrong here. My 1080ti is smooth sailing on ultra
I'm running a 1070 Ti and i5-8600K (O/C to 4.5Ghz) and I ran ultra with no problems whatsoever.
Yes, and I have it installed on an SSD.
I will try reinstalling Windows. Thanks for the help.
Dark1x
Since there is currently a small VR hype thanks to Alyx, perhaps you could take a look at Asgard's Wrath? It's a completely overlooked game, virtually unknown outside the VR bublle and it has very high production values. No pressure ;)
www.metacritic.com
Also, thanks for reacting to my tweet about FLOPS vs FLOP. I noticed all recent DF articles are using the correct form - TERAFLOPS :)
Since there is currently a small VR hype thanks to Alyx, perhaps you could take a look at Asgard's Wrath? It's a completely overlooked game, virtually unknown outside the VR bublle and it has very high production values. No pressure ;)
Asgard's Wrath
Asgard's Wrath for PC game reviews & Metacritic score: Unleash the wrath of the Gods in a mythical Norse adventure that can only unfold in VR. Forge your destiny as both a mortal hero and living god in an action rol...
www.metacritic.com
Also, thanks for reacting to my tweet about FLOPS vs FLOP. I noticed all recent DF articles are using the correct form - TERAFLOPS :)
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I believe he said he played it, but while good didn't think it was incredible. May be misremembering thoughDark1x
Since there is currently a VR hype, perhaps you could take a look at Asgard's Wrath.
Asgard's Wrath
Asgard's Wrath for PC game reviews & Metacritic score: Unleash the wrath of the Gods in a mythical Norse adventure that can only unfold in VR. Forge your destiny as both a mortal hero and living god in an action rol...
