It's been half a decade

What are our thoughts on Alyx? Was VR a mistake? Is it "the best VR game" still? Is VR as of now effectively dead? Or overrated meh?

Further, should the next Halflife game be co-developed with VR/flatscreen in mind or purely flatscreen which is all but expected? Regardless, it will be modded most likely.

It feels like after instead of a boom VR largely floundered to me but in reality in 2024 Meta’s AR/VR division sales jumped 40%.

Still, can't think of notable software after Alyx, most of the stuff I play is modded older titles rather than new software, part in due to aggressive segmentation of software for a platform that already had limited software. Not buying a new headset to play Resident Evil 4 on meta or a PS headset to play "whatever".

Where does vr go from here?

as Captain Motion Sickness, I would prefer that VR just stop existing personally.

same, let VR die

It's great, and HL2 is best played in VR

SteamVR is awesome, Quest keeps finding more users somehow, glad I can play RE7, RE8, GT7, RE4 in VR

Boo on MS for removing VR support from Minecraft though.

Wouldn’t mind playing a non VR version as I have no interest in VR. I don’t necessarily love Half-Life but I do like it well enough.

Don't expect the rising prices will help it.

Loved my PSVR even if i didn't use that much, was really looking forward to PSVR2 .

VR is great, it's also a perpetual nightmare.

Its been Half decade since the release of Doom Eternal. HOLY CRAP!!.

VR is very similar to 3D televisions. A gimmick to tell people it's "the future", when in reality is woefully tedious and can be most certainly unpleasant for the majority.

Good reason Nintendo did away with the 3D gimmick a long time ago. & no one misses it.

Give it another few years and VR headsets will be as popular as Googles Stadia.

VR is just a fad that the nuts keep insisting "give it time, VR will go mainstream" for 15+ years now. The fact that Half Life: Alyx, being the so-called "best experience VR has to offer", yet feeling like such a flash in the pan that no one talks about anymore, goes to show not even major AAA games can help the sorry state of such technology.

I think HL2 is better than Alyx in VR.

Partially because (understandingly) Alyx is designed with a first time VR user in mind, thus, it is much slower paced to accommodate.

Whereas Halflife 2 is merely converted using the cloned mechanics of Alyx. It automatically elevates everything in the game, esp the shooting where it becomes far more engaging.

Halflife 2 is also far more varied. One too many times in Alyx it repeats the ball/wall puzzle. It changes it up, but it is the same thing.

Halflife 2 is in more of a flux chapter to chapter, even when dealing with many gun ships, it ensures each experience is designed differently.

Not dunking in Alyx, it is probably the best VR game, I just feel modding Halflife 2 over using cloning it's mechanics resulted in an even better game.

A positive Alyx adds is upgrading weapons ans resource gathering for said upgrades, but it's incredibly streamlines and concise and not a convoluted Ubisoft type mess.

One thing I wish it did have was an NG+, Valve seems to not care about that type of stuff.

@uninspiredcup: Completely agree

VR is niche, but it is still alive and kicking.

If Sony can't make VR popular then its deader than dead. You guys need to let it die in peace already.

VR is alive and well.....but only if you're a PC gamer that knows what you're doing. VR doesn't work in the mainstream, too nuanced, too technical, takes too much knowledge to make it work, so it naturally went underground. The underground VR scene will never die. Playing through 300 hours of Cyberpunk in VR was one of the best gaming experiences I've had. Going to jump in Far Cry 5 VR soon. So many dope games are getting converted all the time.

And Alyx kinda sucks because of the training wheels. Still fun, though.

I'd love to play it, but Valve's VR devices are still prohibitively expensive in my country, and VR isn't an easy cost to justify.

No interest in wearing a helmet to play games.

VR has been dead for about half a decade. Very few games were made for VR and the already small market was unnecessarily segmented. Couple this with the inaccessibility and how cumbersome the device has been, it was destined to fail in gaming.

PSVR2 flopped the hardest.😂

Alyx works on any headset, unlike Sony or Facebook, they were using their IP to promote the platform universally than just their hardware.

Index is (last time I checked) the upper end price of headsets. They are about the price of a mid end graphics card, more or less.

VR is great and a step in the right direction in terms of hardware and software.

I feel we've reached a point where more isn't yielding more in terms of visuals, so we need to start looking into alternatives in order to make improvements; better enemy and NPC AI, more interesting ways to interface with our games, and so on.

The issue with VR is that it would benefit most from a grassroots, open-source sort of beginning before it get's commodified to hell and back, and unfortunately our gracious billionaire overlords have put the cart before the horse on that one and more or less made VR dead. Gilded cages, walled gardens, and forced exclusivity will do that.

Valve had the right idea by making sure HL Alyx would work on just about any VR headset, and not just their own.

In either case, to make this short, let me just phrase it this way: if I could list five key memories or moments in my gaming history, HL Alyx would be one of them (and HL1 would be one, as would HL2). So the HL Franchise accounts for about three out of five of my key major memories. HL mods might count for a fourth...

Anyway, HL Alyx was insanely immersive, gorgeous, fun...did I mention immersive? It is worthy of the Half-Life label, and probably one of the best examples of what VR is capable of.

Yup.

If every developer, publisher, and hardware producer followed in Valve's steps, VR would be in a much better state.

Sadly, many of these companies involved in VR are publicly traded, unlike Valve, and therefore stock prices come before the health of the product and happiness of the consumer.

It certainly feels that way, but I still put mine to use here and there. There's a lot of VR use in the flight sim and racing sim communities, and for good reason.

The honeymoon phase has certainly been over for a while now, we can definitely say that.

I look forward to the next iteration or "gen" of VR. We'll get to Star Trek Holodecks some day!