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Half-Life Alyx is the greatest gaming experience I have ever had the pleasure to witness. I now occasionally VR golf. It's a steep price for a niche with not a
by sporp 17d ago
Half-Life Alyx is the greatest gaming experience I have ever had the pleasure to witness. I now occasionally VR golf. It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games.
- Analemma_ 17d agoHL:A is incredible, and I think it's still the best single-player VR game ever made, but it's almost seven years old now. It's pretty clear that this software ecosystem is dead.
- allthetime 17d agoUntil the hardware is ubiquitous it will remain so. But low profile AR/VR glasses that actually look exactly like normal glasses or goggles could bring it back from the dead
- mentalgear 17d agoRather bring back the glass hole creeps
- ocdtrekkie 17d agoYeah the games I most want to play on VR aren't only old... the servers have been shut down.
- tibbon 17d agoI had the Oculus DK1, and now have a Meta Quest 2. I haven't had reason to boot it in the past... year? I love the idea of the Apple Vision Pro 2, but its wildly expensive and it sounds too heavy to wear for very long throughout the day unless you're reclined. I'd just use it for virtual screens for development and in my workshop ideally - but that requires me moving around, and the weight makes that a no-go. I'm into these things, but they still just aren't there yet- and the ecosystem is still lacking geniune investment beyond HL:A and some cool tech demos.
- nullishdomain 17d agoFor what it's worth, I use the Apple Vision Pro as my primary display for an average of 8+ hours a day without any issues. I have years of experience with previous headsets, but my wife has no issues with the AVP's weight either, despite having no prior experience.
- rowanG077 17d agoTBH in terms of intensity it maybe the best single-player game for me. The experience is so different from non-VR games that I struggle to even put it into the same category.
- RajT88 17d agoI suspect that the current design of VR/AR is not likely to get cheap enough and light/small enough to catch on in a big way. Kind of seems like diminishing returns on headset improvements at this point.
- bee_rider 17d agoThe Xreal augmented reality sunglasses type designs look a lot more interesting. I’m sure they sacrifice a lot of visual quality compared to a full gaming headset, but the general pitch makes more sense.
- RajT88 17d agoThose are the ones I am keeping an eye on most closely. In a few generations they might be where they need to be for a "floating monitors" experience in AR.
- probablyStimmed 17d agoJust my two cents, Xreal is a long way from a good product. There are other brands like Viture to consider which have more support for the limited software solutions out there. Make sure you do some looking into whether they are compatible with your setup. Or if any of the various features will work without buying additional hardware from the manufacturer.
- criddell 17d agoThe first VR system that many of us used was the W Industries / Virtuality system in the early 1990's. Those were $60k in 1991 which is $140k today. If the price of leading edge VR price drops two orders of magnitude every 35 years or so, it's probably only going to be another 10-15 years for $200 headsets. So it's not here yet, but will be soon.
- ngcazz 17d agoThe computer powering the Virtuality was an Amiga, which I've always found mindblowing.
- JeremyNT 17d agoThe race/flight sim market is still going strong, but I guess it's the exception that proves the rule. It's extremely difficult to make a non-vehicle-based game that actually plays well in VR.
- LarsDu88 17d agoIncidentally I made a vehicle based game in VR (https://roguestargun.com https://roguestargun.com), but currently I have no idea how to upload the APK to Steam to run on-device for the steam frame.
- moffkalast 17d agoSteamOS doesn't use APK files afaik, it's just desktop linux. Probably an AppImage executable? Ought to be explained in Steamworks somewhere.
- Craftyawesome 16d agoThe Frame can, presumably to allow easier porting of Quest games. It uses lepton, which is a fork of waydroid. Potentially related, IIUC Unity only has linux arm64 support for the embedded linux version. And to use that you have to contact sales.
- Craftyawesome 16d agoIt is in their documentation. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamhardware/steamframe/apk_upload https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamhardware/steamframe/...
- m4rtink 17d ago[dead]
- jerf 17d agoI'm looking forward to the modding community finally having full, unfettered access to a single hardware deploy target that will allow them to do a lot of interesting work that may be technically possible right now, but is very hard in a complicated and heterogeneous ecosystem, both because it is technically difficult to set up, and because the technical difficulty of doing the set up prevents any community from getting over the activation energy to grow and become self-sustaining. In particular, I don't know if the Steam Frame will have the power for this, but something like a native ARM build of Dolphin (so no FEX) that exposes the 3D nature of polygonal games is very interesting to me. If you can cross your eyes to get stereo you can see what that would look like for something like Super Mario 3D Galaxy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmgdqCL2toE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmgdqCL2toE (I find a conventional, unfolding phone to be a pretty good size for that. On a big monitor getting it small enough to cross eyes can be a challenge.) In general any emulation target that has 3D polygons is really interesting to me. I'm also pretty interested in what full 3D does to Skies of Arcadia (could be a complete disappointment, could be absolutely amazing) and Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, where I feel like the game that was a bit crowded and struggling with being 2D in SD might just come alive. (Assuming they didn't play too many games with the distance that doesn't work if we see it in true 3D.) I gather the modding community is already gearing up for modding more games to be true 3D in the VR space. That is, not necessarily VR (though there's a mod community for that as well), but having a visible screen floating in 3D VR space where the screen itself is fully 3D. There is also a wide variety of games from the past couple of decades that I suspect might be very difficult to "convert to VR" but might be relatively easy to trick into rendering full 3D instead of down to 2D. Nothing really stops any of this from happening now, but I've tried to set it up before and I was unsuccessful with my current stack. Being able to give out instructions that say "Install the Dolphin3D Build from the Flatpak Store and load up your ROMs" rather than the current set of ad hoc complex instructions that I couldn't even get through successfully could be a game changer. I will giggle like a schoolgirl if the reason why Steam Frames sell like hot cakes in six to twelve months is that they become recognized as the premier way to emulate 3D systems from the Playstation forward. Overclocking, texture packs, modding, all that's great, but how about all those things and true 3D for a lot of games?
- boringg 17d agoGonna try it out on my m1 mbp because of this comment. Been waiting to play alyx forever but I didn't know a way to get mac to work - theres a solution now. Also VR headset has limited re-playability ... table tennis was my VR golf.
- njovin 17d agoEveryone is missing maybe the biggest point - this isn't just a VR device. You can run some/many (depending on your library) of your regular Steam games on a 'flat screen' inside the VR environment, which makes this much more like a SteamDeck with a giant private screen for a lot of people.
- ninininino 17d agoThat's already true for most PC VR headsets. Edit: I missed the point here, see reply.
- everyone 17d agoAlso VR is just not somewhere you want to be.. Its worth it in short bursts for playing Alyx or golf with a friend, but it's not comfortable, you wanna get that thing off asap.. Playing a conventional 40+ hour game in it would be awful. I even downloaded some 3d movies to try watching in VR, pacific rim and avatar movies (there's not that many 3d movies) but I didnt get far into them, the 3d was more of a distraction than anything. Flat screen is just superior imo. Hopefully Valve make a sequel to Alyx to help sell the new headset.
- MattCruikshank 17d agoStandalone? No. Most PC VR headsets require a PC. The Steam Frame will let you play 2D games (and some VR games), with no phone or PC attached.
- ninininino 17d agoThank you for the correction.
- thefz 17d ago> You can run some/many (depending on your library) of your regular Steam games on a 'flat screen' inside the VR environment I can already run 100% of my Steam games on a flat screen in front of my real eyes
- thefz 17d agoVR is a solution in search of a problem
- stephen_cagle 17d agoI remember playing this on my Oculus Rift 1 I think. It was such a better game than the other games I'd played in VR that had you put it on my head in a darkened room and told me it was the newest hardware tech I would have believed you. Just the metaphors and "magnetics" for fiddling and dealing with your gun were so good. The conveyance system was also just so much more intuitive. I think they even seemed to have done something to deal with the very mild nausea I felt with some title. Oh, and the game was fun.
- dom96 17d agoIt's pretty good, but it would have been good enough as a non-VR title. The thought of digging out my VR headset to play it makes me shudder. I never even managed to finish it, played through most of it and then couldn't bring myself to get my VR headset out again.
- account42 16d agoI think without the VR-bait parts like the starting room I would consider it to be the worst Half-Life game. There were some people trying to make it run without VR but I don't remember how far they got.
- bsimpson 17d agoInteresting that Alyx is still listed as "Windows only" even though the reviews say it includes a native Linux port: https://store.steampowered.com/app/546560/HalfLife_Alyx/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/546560/HalfLife_Alyx/
- ripdog 17d agoFor good reason. Last time I checked (this year), Alyx crashes Mesa (i.e. your Vulkan layer) when the player enters an in-game load zone. This happens with native linux and the proton windows version.
- moffkalast 17d agoAh, definitely a subtle reference to Black Mesa. Bravo Valve.
- bsimpson 17d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics) Started by not-Valve in 1995
- account42 16d agoIt doesn't just crash Mesa but freeze the entire GPU last I tried. Kinda surprised that Valve has cared so little to fix this considering how much effort they have been putting in those drivers and into the game in the first place.
- krzyk 16d agoSo it doesn't work on Steam Machine, and also won't work when streaming from it to Steam Frame :( I don't have a windows machine for that. A bit disappointing.
- ripdog 16d agoWell, I think the issue is in the AMD GPU driver. So, presumably it works on the Frame natively? Surely... Right?
- borisgolovnev 17d agoPlays really well but it is very yucky.
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- t_gamer_kle 17d agoWhat do you mean?
- anonymars 17d agoAll the fun of headcrab jump scares and skulking through the dark but now with complete immersion!
- Yhippa 17d agoI have a recommendation in a similar vein: Gran Turismo 7 in VR on PS5. I have a headseat graveyard and never really used my headsets except for that game. I've heard good things about Half-Life Alyx and now your comment has me absolutely intrigued.
- embedding-shape 17d agoSimulation games in general reached a whole other level with VR, just the added depth perception makes it impossible to go back to "flat" screens again. The degree of freedom to move your head to look around is underrated as well. I dove into VR first with X-Plane 11 I think, which was janky at best, but nowadays Microsoft Flight Simulator has really good VR mode, and it's just such a great experience. Spaceflight simulators like Elite Dangerous are quite fun as well, but harder to relate to, so seems my brain doesn't get as fooled as more "real life sims".
- Tuna-Fish 17d agoI think having a horizon is very useful for the immersion. If flight sims were less of a niche category, I think VR would be mainstream. VR just improves them that much. Sadly, the entire flight sim market is probably insufficient to sustain the VR market.
- vel0city 16d agoStar Wars Squadrons has excellent VR support. Its awesome flying around in the cockpit of an X-Wing or TIE fighter.
- deadbabe 17d ago“Not a lot of games” will soon be a thing of the past once people find out they can just vibe code all kinds of VR games and experiences.
- krinchan 17d agoIdk. After having THREE Quest 3s brick themselves within the extended warranty period, I really want an alternative. I can do normal cardio but rhythm games like Beat Saber and more are just such a better time of knocking out a decent hour of cardio several times a week for me. Beat Saber is more easily modded on PC and while the number of games I play is really low, this is worth it for me.
- scrollop 17d agoYou may not realise that we are currently in the midst of a VR Mod rennaisance: https://pcvrcentral.com/ https://pcvrcentral.com/ Have you seen G-Rebels? Gunman-Contracts? NMS. Games such as Doom 2016, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Half Life 2, many many more are being modded currently. I'd also recommend games such as Pistol Whip and Synth Riders if you'd like to exercise at home. There are now many good quality games, and I purchased a headset only a month ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/VRGaming/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VRGaming/
- moffkalast 17d agoThat seems like a really good fit, since they might actually run onboard at a usable framerate?
- evo_9 17d agoInteresting, a lot of cool mods including Mass Effect Trilogy. Thx for sharing this.
- bsoqk 17d agoTangentially related: If I wanted to play Half-Life: Alyx, and spend as little money as possible whilst still having a good experience, what do I need? (I already own a beefy desktop computer)
- yobert 17d agoI played it with a Quest 1 and VirtualDesktop to steam it from my PC. It worked well enough to blow my mind. Of course a Quest 3 would be much better than that nowadays. That's probably the cheapest good experience.
- wlesieutre 17d agoProbably Quest 3S, and unless things have improved with the native solution you'll want to pick up the "Virtual Desktop" app for better wireless streaming. It's not very good resolution by today's standards but it's the cheap entry point. Quest 3 (non-S) has resolution comparable to the Steam Frame but costs $250 more. If you only want to use it for streaming, you might look a used Quest 2, which has similar optics and screens as the 3S. I'm not sure the state of software support or whether its worse CPU/GPU matter for streaming performance. But I bet they're very cheap secondhand by now.
- crooked-v 17d agoOf course, if you get a Quest you're also paying with the sheer amount of personal data shipped off to Meta the entire time you're using it.
- efilife 17d agohttps://youtu.be/-NBMdcUTC2M https://youtu.be/-NBMdcUTC2M here's a great video about exactly this, might be outdated as it's 6 years old
- tgsovlerkhgsel 17d agoQuest 1, the built in native streaming, with a wired connection from the beefy desktop to a WiFi 5 AP on 5 GHz in a low noise environment worked sufficiently. I'd get at least a Quest 2 if you're getting something new (not sure if the 3 is better than the 2).
- grahamburger 17d agoI played a few hours of Alyx and, I'll be honest, it started to kinda freak me out. I noticed myself getting a bit of anxiety when putting the headset on to play, and a relief when I took it off to see the real world was still there! I've never experienced something so immersive, but I haven't picked it back up to finish it yet. Someday. I also still mini golf regularly. It's such a fun, low effort way to hang out with friends and family that we wouldn't otherwise see all that often.
- rjh29 17d agoI know that feeling. I had it with Resident Evil 4 and other full games in VR. It's almost too immersive and I can't play more than an hour or so.
- SmirkingRevenge 17d agoEven though its fairly cartoonish, when you see the life size gore of dead bodies with face huggers on them, etc - it hits really different in VR, at least at first. Now imagine how intense that will become with even more realism. It could be actually seriously traumatic.
- baby 16d agoI used to feel like that when I was younger and playing intense games, it was hard to "get out" and "come back to real life". I guess VR brings some of that back.
- RomanKornev 17d agoYou can even run Half-Life Alyx on Steam Frame itself (standalone mode), albeit at around 36FPS according to Tested https://youtu.be/C9JyWAVj94E?t=3330 https://youtu.be/C9JyWAVj94E?t=3330
- tgsovlerkhgsel 17d ago36 FPS makes running it on the device a rather theoretical possibility for a VR game.
- zardo 17d agoA great option if you're having trouble throwing up.
- hnuser123456 17d agoSteamVR's frame interpolation and warping is extremely well-polished. I would go into VRChat clubs, enable everyone's full-detail avatar, and I could go down to about 20fps with head tracking still feeling comfortable. Not sure if the onboard processors can do as good of a job though.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 17d agoThe Arizona Sunshine series are also really great VR-native games. Not AAA but far closer to a complete game than most VR games.
- KronisLV 17d agoI had the Quest 2 a while ago and did manage to play some games on it (PCVR through Virtual Desktop, cause they didn't have 1st party support for Intel Arc B580). In regards to shooting games, while some of them were nice (especially modded H3VR, all of the guns you could build etc.), the shooting and movement always felt off - rounds not always going where you'd think they should regardless of the game, aiming being a bit clunky especially with scopes and so on, same with some RPG combat games. I also tried out Into the Radius VR, CONVRGENCE, SUPERHOT VR and Zero Caliber VR. There was something weird going on, like the world scale feeling off and even when adjusting through the SteamVR options, the experience still being odd, no matter what IPD or height offsets or other settings I'd try. Never really got used to it. But let me tell you, vehicle games were on another level. It's perhaps the best way to fly in War Thunder because the proper depth perception completely changes the feel of it (if they'd fix the damn camera, I don't want to break my neck trying to look far back), same with VTOL VR and racing games like Dirt Rally and even Euro Truck Simulator 2. You'd think I'd get motion sickness or something but no, it just felt good and more proper than staring at a flat screen, despite the limited resolution and all else. Oh and oddly enough Derail Valley also felt nicer than the FPS games, despite you also moving around a bunch (though it's mostly a train game). VR is definitely a cool novelty, if sadly underpopulated. There was also some cool productivity software like Immersed but they kinda ruined it by removing support for multiple physical monitors and also the Virtual Desktop program and SteamVR won't let you display like 4x1080p monitors all at the same time, what's even the point of being limited to just one or two in VR? You have 360 degrees around you (well, or however much your neck can comfortably do)!
- Jordan-117 17d ago1. Try Google Earth VR if you haven't. I've poured hours into it and it can be an almost emotional experience. https://youtu.be/SCrkZOx5Q1M https://youtu.be/SCrkZOx5Q1M 2. There have been some big advances in converting traditional flat games to VR, especially UEVR (for Unreal games) and various custom mods. It takes a bit more work, but the experience is worth it, even for games you've played 1000 times before.
- FlowingRiver 17d agoI said it when it came out, Alyx was the single best chance VR had to prove itself. It was going to be either the launching pad of the future or the high tide mark. 6 years on, it is looking like the high tide mark. Unfortunately, it is a technical and artistic marvel but the relatively high cost to entry (decent PC and headset) meant that it was simply out of reach for most people. A high price takes it from an impulse purchase to try, and makes it a dedicated purchase and investment in the ecosystem. That killed any momentum.
- m4rtink 17d agoI really suggest looking a bit into VRChat for some of the worlds people have created there - some of them are very complex & are telling stories by their environments that could be comparable to standalone VR games. For some examples - PROJECT: SUMMER FLARE: https://vrclist.com/world/2924 https://vrclist.com/world/2924 Complex 7: https://vrclist.com/world/870431 https://vrclist.com/world/870431 (and Fins worlds in general) 1:1 model of an Oneil Cylinder space colony that cna be fully explored: https://vrclist.com/world/7780 https://vrclist.com/world/7780 (and Asagiris space/science worlds in general) Far Future Propulsion˸ Museum of Nuclear Starflight (1:1 models of space propulsion concepts all the way to Project Daedalus) https://vrclist.com/world/1270747 https://vrclist.com/world/1270747 Really, amazing things are being built in VRChat and most people even in the VR community itself are completely ignorant to that. At best they go "LOL SOCIAL VR APP" without actually checking what is possible with modern VRChat.
- FlowingRiver 16d agoVRchat is what Zuckerberg wanted out of Meta. It is impressive but still suffers from the barrier to entry problem. I think VR is in the same position the PC/Mac was in the mid 80's. It is finally technically capable enough to do some neat and useful things, it just struggles because of hardware costs. But I also said this about a decade back and progress has been neat but limited.
- broodbucket 16d agoBarrier to entry can't be that extreme given it's full of kids.
- chaostheory 17d ago> It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games. There are a lot of good games and unique experiences (Lone Echo). A lot of these games also get you moving i.e. you won't need to do cardio exercise if you play games. Many of these games aren't even considered fitness games Batman Beat Saber Mother Gunship Superhot Pistol Whip Gasland Thrill of the Fight Underdogs Synth Riders Guerilla Tag Blade and Sorcery Gorn Les Mills Body Combat FitXR Creed If you get a slip rig, just walking around Fallout VR or Skyrim VR will give you a lot of cardio while essentially enjoying a more immersive game than the flat screen version. Name a popular flat screen game and there is likely a decent VR version. There are lots of good racing games and FPS's Zero Caliber Arizona Sunshine Walking Dead Saints and Sinners Bonelab Pavlov Breachers Contractors Into the Radius Tactical Assault It's also worth for having your own private movie theater. YouTube VR is great There's a lot missing of games missing from my comment, and I didn't even touch on VR mods for games like Cyberpunk or even Zelda BOW What your comment tells me is that you didn't really use VR for more than a few days.
- HDBaseT 17d agoI've never understood the whole VR game ecosystem. There is a handful of titles (outside of Half Life Alyx, which even then looks pretty shit and clunky) that are worth playing on VR. Most are short bursts of fun and don't really have any moat.
- chaostheory 17d agoThere are a lot of titles that both look great and are fun, but you wouldn't know because you don't use VR. That doesn't included mods to existing games ever since Unreal made it easier to make most games, running on their engine, VR compatible. It also depends on whether you're using standalone or PCVR. Why critique something that you're not very familiar with? VR still has a lot of problems. Some of which may never be solved, but lack of content is no longer a problem.
- xarope 16d agoPistol whip, beat saber and audio trip are in my rotation. Also I expect you to die I/II/III or whatever the numbering is.
- matheusmoreira 17d agoPC is the flight simulator platform. They're probably amazing to play in VR.
- Arn_Thor 16d agoMy biggest use case for the Quest 3 is Euro Truck Simulator 2. That is, until I got a wheel and pedals to replace the controller, at which point I got immediate motion sickness with the headset and had to go back to big screen and head tracking. Bit disappointing, and will keep me from jumping on the Steam Frame until I can try it properly
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- mrheosuper 17d agoI spent 5 min in Alyx and almost vomit :(. Mean while i can play beat saber all day.
- 14 17d agoI have owned a quest 2 and now 3 and have always heard about that game but yet to try it. I forgot about it. I don't often get to play the quest as my kids seem to have taken over it. But there are definitely some gems out there. Echo VR was so fun it was sad to see it shut down. I also love Google Earth vr on the quest.
- utopman 16d agoIf you enjoyed alyx , and did not play anything else interesting on vr headset you likely missed the huge pc vr flat 2 vr comunity that let us play incredible vr expériences like cyberpunk 2077. The trend these days is some random dev creating ok to full fledged VR mods for a lot of games viecoding these things. Check reddit virtualreality sub to see each week many more awesome vr content don't miss uevr too with an extensive game list ready : https://myuevr.pages.dev/ https://myuevr.pages.dev/
- krzyk 16d agoI was wondering, what could I play with it. But besides Half-Life Alyx (never played any of HF games), No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous, I couldn't find anything bigger (well, there is also SUPERHOT: VR). I wonder why there are not that many 3D shooters, or 3D RPGs that use VR. The idea sounds great. Never used any of VR headsets and I was wondering if I should try out Steam Frame and if I don't like it I assume I could resell it later. Also I wonder how well it would work with my headless linux gaming rig that I use for Game on Whales/Moonlight playing on my 3060ti card. On the other hand, I still have Steam Deck that I used to play about 3 games total, it is unused besides that. But the initial investment is pretty high (well, it is AFAIR +50% from the Steam Deck 512GB price when I bought)
- rubicon33 16d agoThere are TONS of VR shooters. What subgenre interests you most?
- sandworm101 16d ago>> a steep proce for a niche with not a lot of games Porn. This, like every other vr device, will see more use streaming 3d porn than it will vr games. This is not unussual. Porn has often been at the forefront of the internet, from the first cc transactions to the first streaming video.
- moritonal 16d agoVR would be a perfect device for sharing or an arcade if it wasn't for the usual issues with sharing anything.
- Aeolun 16d agoI recently did a moon exploration in VR with a whole bunch of other people. They had a whole bunch of those pico headsets somehow syncing all their locations to each other, overwriting selective parts of the environment, and simultaneously showing the same location in English and Japanese. That was by far the best VR experience I’ve ever had.
- jfoster 16d agoI feel like Valve will sell a lot more Steam Frames if they can get HL Alyx to run well on it and have every Steam Frame come with it.