For those who are lucky enough to have a VR kit, Valve's Half-Life: Alyx has today hit one year old and so Valve are doing a small celebration. Despite it still not advertising Linux support on the store page, just a reminder that Valve did add a Linux version with Vulkan support back in May 2020.
The community around the game has built up since Valve updated it post-released with Steam Workshop support, with over 800 mods now available for Alyx. Sifting through it, Valve teamed up with guest writer Craig Pearson to point out some of the top mods going.
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Valve noted in their celebratory post that it gained a number of awards including:
- GameSpot: Game of the Year 2020
- Destructoid: PC Platform Game of the Year
- The Game Awards: Best VR/AR Game
- VR Focus Awards: Game of the Year
- 2020 VR Awards: Game of the Year
Since it's a Half-Life game and it was meant to really showcase a true VR experience, it's not exactly surprising that it did well overall with over 45,000 user reviews on Steam giving it an Overwhelmingly Positive score which makes it number 15 currently on the Steam Top 250 chart.
Additionally Half-Life: Alyx is 40% off until March 31 to celebrate, which is the lowest price for it yet.
Hopefully though, for those of us where VR is out of reach for various reasons that some of Valve's upcoming games that Gabe Newell mentioned will be more…flat so we don't miss out.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: barottoQuoting: ArtenXen granades... i love bring box full of thease thinks with me :-)
So I was not the only one!
Exactly. I hope for something like this for next game, just for fun :-D
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Quoting: peta77The reason why they officially don't support Linux, was that it only worked 100% on AMD GPUs for Linux. Do I remember that correctly? Does anyone know what the current status of that is? Because if it doesn't work as good with an Nvidia GPU even the current price is way too high for me.Async re-projection isn't supported on nvidia, so you need a GPU that is fast enough if you don't want stuttering. But it ran flawlessly on a 1080ti at max settings.
On the AMD side I experienced various rendering bugs and graphics glitches so ... meh.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: LanzIs VR still a major pain to get running on Linux?
I picked up a second hand HTC vive for 300€. All I had to do was to switch away from wayland, pending this protocol: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/67
It generally works quite well, but I don't think reprojection is supported on my card? Loading times can be soo long in stuff like the lab, but I haven't tried a proper VR game yet. I bought Superhot VR a few weeks ago, will try it when I have time.
I will probably buy Alyx, I was waiting for a discount... I don't feel like paying 1/6 of the HMD cost for a game, as good as it might be... I guess I won't buy beat saber that soon.
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slaapliedje Mar 24, 2021
Quoting: ArtenOh my, why didn't I think to try that???Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: Guestwish they released a version that didn't need vr. can't see it being hard to make it usable with a mouse and keyboard.Having recently beaten the game... it is full on designed around VR. You have 'gravity gloves' that yank things into your hands from a distance. There are fights where you have to duck behind objects and shoot at enemies. It's incredibly intense, and the experience wouldn't be anywhere near as good with a mouse / keyboard. There are even alien exploding balls that you can hold in your hand, until you squeeze them, then you have a few seconds to throw them before they blow up. Even cooler, you have to try to snatch them quickly from the grasp of the weird tentacle thing that is holding them.
Even the feel of throwing actual grenades is enhanced by having it in VR.
Xen granades... i love bring box full of thease thinks with me :-)
Its another VR think. In one hand you can hold basket/box/... with items (granades, medkit),... how do this without VR?
Yeah totally only something you could do in VR!
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: ArtenOh my, why didn't I think to try that???Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: Guestwish they released a version that didn't need vr. can't see it being hard to make it usable with a mouse and keyboard.Having recently beaten the game... it is full on designed around VR. You have 'gravity gloves' that yank things into your hands from a distance. There are fights where you have to duck behind objects and shoot at enemies. It's incredibly intense, and the experience wouldn't be anywhere near as good with a mouse / keyboard. There are even alien exploding balls that you can hold in your hand, until you squeeze them, then you have a few seconds to throw them before they blow up. Even cooler, you have to try to snatch them quickly from the grasp of the weird tentacle thing that is holding them.
Even the feel of throwing actual grenades is enhanced by having it in VR.
Xen granades... i love bring box full of thease thinks with me :-)
Its another VR think. In one hand you can hold basket/box/... with items (granades, medkit),... how do this without VR?
Yeah totally only something you could do in VR!
I don't even know if its planed feature, or just coincidence of physical engine do it's thing :-D But because shadows are casted only by granades, so we see shadow of levitating granades i think it's just coincidence :-D One of thinks what just work in VR and with keyboard and mouse someone need implemented it :-)
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Seeing how utterly amazing the experience of alyx was, i really really hope, they stick to VR for the next games, too. There are more than enough great flat games, it would be a shame to limit their genius because not everybody has a headset yet ^^
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slaapliedje Mar 24, 2021
Quoting: EikeI would guess some of this is because it has to use Vulkan on Linux, and it seems to work better than OpenGL in general, and converting from DirectX in particular.Quoting: BeamboomIt's also worth noting that VR games - for whatever reason - seem to work particularly well on Proton. There's not many (Windows) VR games at all I've not gotten to work straight out of the box.
Interesting observation. Wonder if it's by chance or something systematic. I guess the company's start applications don't play a big role in VR. And maybe something about the 3D they're forced to do right for VR?
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slaapliedje Mar 24, 2021
Quoting: TermySeeing how utterly amazing the experience of alyx was, i really really hope, they stick to VR for the next games, too. There are more than enough great flat games, it would be a shame to limit their genius because not everybody has a headset yet ^^Remember, they announced they were working on three VR games, and Alyx has only been the first one.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: poisondQuoting: peta77The reason why they officially don't support Linux, was that it only worked 100% on AMD GPUs for Linux. Do I remember that correctly? Does anyone know what the current status of that is? Because if it doesn't work as good with an Nvidia GPU even the current price is way too high for me.Async re-projection isn't supported on nvidia, so you need a GPU that is fast enough if you don't want stuttering. But it ran flawlessly on a 1080ti at max settings.
On the AMD side I experienced various rendering bugs and graphics glitches so ... meh.
OK, I bought it now; about half an hour into playing it. Best looking VR game I've seen so far. Up til now runs flawlessly on ultra-settinsg. Really great how they reproduced they Halflife universe in VR and how many details there are. Though many of the stuff is not really usable. But still nice and adds to the atmosphere. Guess I'll be spending some time on it the next days...
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Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: EikeI would guess some of this is because it has to use Vulkan on Linux, and it seems to work better than OpenGL in general, and converting from DirectX in particular.Quoting: BeamboomIt's also worth noting that VR games - for whatever reason - seem to work particularly well on Proton. There's not many (Windows) VR games at all I've not gotten to work straight out of the box.
Interesting observation. Wonder if it's by chance or something systematic. I guess the company's start applications don't play a big role in VR. And maybe something about the 3D they're forced to do right for VR?
One of us is missunderstood something. Beamboom was talking about Windows/Proton...?
Last edited by Eike on 24 March 2021 at 6:32 pm UTC
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