Half-Life 2 VR mod with head tracking (download now)

[baggyg]

Hi Guys,

Hoping someone will be able to help out. Ive tried this and got this working with the main Half Life 2 game. However whenever I try to launch the Episode 2 VR mod it crashes right after the "fuzzy" loading screen. I sometimes get a message saying that

"steam content servers were not available". (abridged can post full error if its relevant).

Did anyone else have this problem? I can run episode 2 standard edition without problems.

Thanks

[drgroove101]

So I just played the crap out of this mod, played it off and on for about 3 hours today. First time I fired this up, I got to be honest, I thought it was broken, I couldn't get the Hydra's to calibrate properly, the guns sights seemed off, the controls on the Hydra were horrid I couldn't figure out a good button layout, and it was just unplayable. But the POTENTIAL! Ohhh the potential... it was so potent I could taste it!

So I got a hold of version 1.05 which added laser sights and I'm not sure what else. I created a solid MCE file with usable controls, and after a bit of experimenting I got the Hydra to calibrate properly. The controls with Hydra are definitely weird, it's like playing a game with mouse and keyboard for the first time after only ever using an xbox controller, or vice versa. It's a totally new control scheme and it took me awhile to learn, I actually picked it up and tried it again after playing the amazing Zombies on the Holodeck game. Anyway my point is, I. Love. It. I love it, it's amazing, being able to just point and shoot, or hold your arm up and over a railing and point the gun down to shoot, or move your arm out a window and shoot, or just point the gun at your feet and shoot those damn headcrabs... its amazing! First person shooters were getting kinda stale but this injects the fun right back into it! I don't think I can play FPS games the old way now.

So after playing for so long here is my opinions on some gameplay and mechanics that I feel would make for a more enjoyable experience, they may or may not have already been brought up;

1. Controls without the Rift: There needs to be a way to change the default inverted pitch control. Everyone has their own preference, some like inverted pitch, others don't, I'm in the non-inverted category and I had a hell of a time adjusting to inverted pitch! If there is a way to change it already and I'm dumb and totally missed it, please let me know!

2. The flashlight shouldn't peter out, just make the damn thing stay on all the time so you can turn it on and off as you please. I hate when it flickers out and I have to toggle it back on. Maybe this is just me...

3. Have a flashlight attached to the left Hydra you can turn on and off. This would just be so much fun! It would be cool to to scan around the scene Like you were holding an actual flashlight. I found myself wanting for this a lot while playing. This would be in addition to the weaponlight.

4. Dual wielding! After playing Zombies on the Holodeck, using dual pistols is so much fun, or the thompson and a pistol. Imagine in half life having a shot gun in your right hand, and a machine gun or pistol in the left, or 2 magnums, or 2 pistols, it would just be too fun! I know, how would you pump the shotgun while the other hand is occupied? I think the fun factor outways the realism but if realisim is an issue you could make the shotgun semi-auto. I think you could keep the shotgun as is though while dual wielding a different weapon, and it would be fine.

2 last notes: Missing the arms didn't really bother me at all, I think it will be extremely challenging to render and animate them correctly, and adding in some half ass ones would deter from the experience. Lastly using the shotgun with one hand was a ton of fun, didn't find myself wanting to use 2 hands at all. If Zombies on the Holodeck 2 handed control is any indicator, using 2 hands would tire out your arms pretty fast. Now I admit if your had a rod or something to attach the 2 hydra's together and actually managed to calibrate and have that work correctly, well then I would reconsider.

Thanks for reading for extremly long verbose post (congrats if you actually did! =P) Look forward to the next release! I've been holding off on playing episodes 1 and 2 until I get my Rift. I haven't played them in literally years so It's going to be pretty damn exciting...

TL;DR
This game is AwesomeSauce! Need to be able to change pitch control on right hydra. Flashlight shouldn't peter out. Add a flashlight to the left hydra. Add dual wielding guns ala Zombies on the Holodeck style.

[GameDev]

@drgroove101, thanks mate for your feedback on your experience with the game. Sounds fantastic.

I still have not had the time to try this mod out, (actually i still have not tried the hydra out with any rift demo) so disappointed with myself

Hopefully i will try this tonight!

Thanks a lot for your Hydra controls file, that will definitely help save on time and messing around trying to configure my own.

[adoral84]

I've been out of town and then dealing with the fact that someone stole my bag with my macbook and all my work stuff so I haven't had much time to work on this in the last 5 days or so, but I'm looking forward to getting some time this weekend to wrap some things up on the mod. Now that everything is generally playable and hopefully all of the weapons will be fixed up before I jump into cool features for the left hydra etc I need to spend some time fixing some bugs and smoothing out some rough edges, rift-specific UI improvements etc. Specifically around the hydra and motion creator, it seems to be a huge problem for most people and I'm sure is causing people to have wildly inconsistent experiences as the mouse emulation mode is often on in addition to the rift tracking, etc. Not nearly as fun as dabbling with ways to use the left hydra controller but for the moment it seems to be a bigger issue.

1. Controls without the Rift: There needs to be a way to change the default inverted pitch control. Everyone has their own preference, some like inverted pitch, others don't, I'm in the non-inverted category and I had a hell of a time adjusting to inverted pitch! If there is a way to change it already and I'm dumb and totally missed it, please let me know!

Yeah I'll fix that, I just jammed that in real quick and assumed the gamepad controls invert look option would still work.

2. The flashlight shouldn't peter out, just make the damn thing stay on all the time so you can turn it on and off as you please. I hate when it flickers out and I have to toggle it back on. Maybe this is just me...
...
3. Have a flashlight attached to the left Hydra you can turn on and off. This would just be so much fun! It would be cool to to scan around the scene Like you were holding an actual flashlight. I found myself wanting for this a lot while playing. This would be in addition to the weaponlight.

It's certainly easy to change this, is this related to the different feel in VR, the control mappings on the hydra or just something you always hated? I'm trying not to change too much about the game unless it's really something VR focused, but I could add this as a configurable option. The left handed flashlight would certainly be cool and is something I'll look into.

4. Dual wielding! After playing Zombies on the Holodeck, using dual pistols is so much fun, or the thompson and a pistol. Imagine in half life having a shot gun in your right hand, and a machine gun or pistol in the left, or 2 magnums, or 2 pistols, it would just be too fun! I know, how would you pump the shotgun while the other hand is occupied? I think the fun factor outways the realism but if realisim is an issue you could make the shotgun semi-auto. I think you could keep the shotgun as is though while dual wielding a different weapon, and it would be fine.

I think my favorite part of ZotH was the way you could draw your pistol from your hip. Pumping the shotgun was cool but the aim was a little unwieldy, not a problem for that game where it sort of just adds to the tension, but half-life 2 is much more challenging as a shooter. For those who want a much cooler experience than air pumping with the hydras you can actually attach your hydra to a top shot elite (around $40) and actually pump the shotgun. This also frees up the left hydra to be used for something else (probably head positional tracking).

Dual wielding is definitely something I'd love to add, unfortunately there are a few reasons why it probably won't happen in the short term. Adding any new scene renders (which an additional viewmodel would) causes vireio to lock the output frame for several seconds at a time, I had the same problem when I added a functional crossbow scope, it works great in general but with vireio on it constantly locked up. Hopefully we'll eventually get the hooks necessary to do the rendering in game like TF2 but until then I'm pretty limited on what I can do.

2 last notes: Missing the arms didn't really bother me at all, I think it will be extremely challenging to render and animate them correctly, and adding in some half ass ones would deter from the experience. Lastly using the shotgun with one hand was a ton of fun, didn't find myself wanting to use 2 hands at all. If Zombies on the Holodeck 2 handed control is any indicator, using 2 hands would tire out your arms pretty fast. Now I admit if your had a rod or something to attach the 2 hydra's together and actually managed to calibrate and have that work correctly, well then I would reconsider.

After playing ZotH quite a bit I found having the arms animated (sometimes in really awkward positions) was occasionally more distracting than immersive, some people I've talked to really care about the arms and others don't at all, but I don't have enough samples to know what the breakdown there would be. The two handed weapon controls are cool for a game like that where it's much more suspense than shooter, but I can't imagine trying to play through HL2 with the ZotH controls having played with them quite a bit. An attachment between the hydras would be a must for me as well, I'm sure that would resolve most of the awkwardness.

[baggyg]

Hi @adoral84,

Firstly thanks for all the hard work. Looking forward to getting my Rift and getting into this. Just read through 12 pages of threads to make sure I was right up to date with where you are. I had a few general questions that may help people like me when getting everything together:

1) Is there a list anywhere I can keep track of all versions and what features they have? I have currently had to go through the forum to get all the releases.

2) What is the best way to uninstall a version?
I see there is an uninstall link in the Steam Mods folder. However clicking this just seemed to remove itself and the links from steam itself.

3) Are there any plans to include links into freePIE or alternatively use freePIE to "spoof" one of the trackers (I.e. trackIR to HillCrest)?

4) My earlier problem:

Hoping someone will be able to help out. Ive tried this and got this working with the main Half Life 2 game. However whenever I try to launch the Episode 2 VR mod it crashes right after the "fuzzy" loading screen. I sometimes get a message saying that
"steam content servers were not available". (abridged can post full error if its relevant).

only occurred with the latest build (1.0.3). I presume I was just being stupid trying this without an actual rift (or hydra).

5) Am I right in saying that you will be releasing a version with Rift head tracking and YEI gun tracking (my future setup)?

Thanks in advance and sorry for these nooby questions. As I said it was quite hard to find information without trawling through the threads / reddit.

[ShoNuff]

Hey adoral84, amazing work

Has anyone had any luck with getting this to run WITHOUT a Hydra? All I have is a rift, and the weapon is big and dead-centre, occluding my vision. I tried the r_drawviewmodel 0 command, but then we run into the bug where the game stops rendering frames without a weapon model to draw

[pAnatiC]

Hey,

dont have my rift or hydra yet, but i have 1 question:

is it working with the cinematic mod?

[Teeks419]

Hey adoral84, amazing work

Has anyone had any luck with getting this to run WITHOUT a Hydra? All I have is a rift, and the weapon is big and dead-centre, occluding my vision. I tried the r_drawviewmodel 0 command, but then we run into the bug where the game stops rendering frames without a weapon model to draw

Here's what worked for me. Type "sv_cheats 1;fov 110" into the console.

[drgroove101]

@drgroove101, thanks mate for your feedback on your experience with the game. Sounds fantastic.

I still have not had the time to try this mod out, (actually i still have not tried the hydra out with any rift demo) so disappointed with myself

Hopefully i will try this tonight!

Thanks a lot for your Hydra controls file, that will definitely help save on time and messing around trying to configure my own.

Hey no problem, if you find it weird at first, just stick with it, once you get the hang of it it becomes really fun!

Also try these console commands;

To change the FOV; I found 90 good for non-rift, some might like 75. If you're using the Rift you want it to be around 110
"sv_cheats 1" (below won't work if sv_cheats is 0 I think"
"fov 90"
"fov_desired 90"
"modelview_fov 90" this one in important to match the viewmodel with the current fov

I found the shotgun is by far the most fun! Although your mileage may vary, here is how to get it with lots of ammo
"give weapon_shotgun"
"sk_max_buckshot 9999"
"givecurrentammo"

[drgroove101]

2. The flashlight shouldn't peter out, just make the damn thing stay on all the time so you can turn it on and off as you please. I hate when it flickers out and I have to toggle it back on. Maybe this is just me...

It's certainly easy to change this, is this related to the different feel in VR, the control mappings on the hydra or just something you always hated? I'm trying not to change too much about the game unless it's really something VR focused, but I could add this as a configurable option. The left handed flashlight would certainly be cool and is something I'll look into.

Right now the way it works (in v1.05) you turn on the flashlight and it will stay on for about 40 secs (my estimate may be off here), then it will automatically shut off. You can turn it back on again immediately, and have it run for another 40 secs, before it will auto shutoff again. My issue is, why it is auto shutting off if I can just turn it right back on again? In the vanilla game there is a battery bar, where you have to wait for the battery to charge again before you can turn it back on. Not sure what the point of this mechanic is really, I guess it is to add some challenge... but does it really? It's more of an annoyance.

But if others don't find this odd, then I guess it is just my pet peeve I'll have to research and see if there is a console command that will make it always stay on I could use.

[Arfenhaus]

Is 1.0.5 available to download and test anywhere, or is it still in the making?

Also was there a 1.0.4 or did you just go ahead and skip that altogether?

Amazing stuff man!

[K701]

How do I uninstall this? There is no right click option in steam to remove it from the list.

[gray]

Looking forward to seeing this integrated with the official HL2 Rift mode!

[LordJuanlo]

How do I uninstall this? There is no right click option in steam to remove it from the list.

You can manually delete it from SOURCEMODS folder inside your STEAM folder

Looking forward to seeing this integrated with the official HL2 Rift mode!

Mee to! I guess Adoral84 will have to disable his Rift headtracking support, as HL2 now officially supports it. And of course, Vireio is not need anymore for HL2.

[toresbe]

Looking forward to seeing this integrated with the official HL2 Rift mode!

Came here to say exactly this - I hope your development of this wonderful mod isn't discouraged by the official Rift mod, because the Hydra gun tracking is possibly the coolest part.

[donkaradiablo]

Yeah. Still looking forward to this 'cause it has hydra support for seperate gun control and a lot more, like optimisations for VR.

[GameDev]

Has the official update been released then?

Where do i go for instructions on how to use it? Isnt the official update through steam only? What happens to people like me that have a boxed copy only not linked to steam, can we still install this Oculus Rift update or not?

Thanks

[SteveB]

So wait, is the latest version 0.9.2, 1.0.3 or someone above mentions 1.0.5?

I'm searching here and at adoral's wordpress page and I'm seeing different versions all over the place.

Cheers!

EDIT: One more thing...my view (through the Oculus) in 'zoomed in' for lack of a better description. I'm not certain if I did something wrong, but as far as I know I've only altered the FOV (fov_desired 111). I thought perhaps it had something to do with the newly minted OR support from Valve, so I disabled the -vr mode and opted out of that beta just to be certain. Is there a way to do a 'reset' on everything and start from scratch (short of reinstalling the game and such)?

Thanks again guys

[Omarzuqo]

I hope your development of this wonderful mod isn't discouraged by the official Rift mod, because the Hydra gun tracking is possibly the coolest part.

Yeah. Still looking forward to this 'cause it has hydra support for seperate gun control and a lot more, like optimisations for VR.

Same here. The separate aiming with the hydra is what has me more excited about the mod.

[adoral84]

I hope your development of this wonderful mod isn't discouraged by the official Rift mod, because the Hydra gun tracking is possibly the coolest part.

Yeah. Still looking forward to this 'cause it has hydra support for seperate gun control and a lot more, like optimisations for VR.

Same here. The separate aiming with the hydra is what has me more excited about the mod.

I was hoping for official native support for the rift from valve since I found out the SDK didn't have the hooks necessary for me to handle the proper rendering adjustments in the mod, but that does hinge on valve releasing an update to the mod sdk that includes the new rift support so feel free to spam them Seriously though getting native support into the SDK would allow for not just this mod but things like VR Black Mesa and tons of other great mods. I can easily unhook the rift headtracking that I'm currently doing (that's a very small part of the mod at this point) and continue to work on adding new features for the Hydras etc.

I've played the new official HL2 VR a fair amount now and have obviously spent way too much time in my own mod and it's an interesting comparison between the two. None of the control schemes in the official mod feel right to me after having spent time with full 1 to 1 weapon control. The lack of more natural weapon controls really take me out of the experience and constantly remind me I'm playing a game with a keyboard/mouse (or gamepad). That said, properly adjusted the visual immersion is much improved, mostly because the vertical FOV isn't limited like it is with vireio. It is possible to get a good 3d feel in vireio but it takes a bit more work. Assuming both of them are both working as intended (they both have rough edges you have to tinker around with) it's a trade off at the moment, but I'm personally not that interested in playing a 'VR' FPS with traditional controls having spent quite a bit of time with more immersive controls. I really hope valve comes through on the mod sdk so I can work off the great work they've done as a baseline and continue to build out an awesome VR experience that is the best of both worlds.

[drgroove101]

Has the official update been released then?
Where do i go for instructions on how to use it? Isnt the official update through steam only? What happens to people like me that have a boxed copy only not linked to steam, can we still install this Oculus Rift update or not?
Thanks

Here is the original post from Joe at Valve: https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/v ... f=42&t=957 You will need to download HL2 on Steam to get the mod. Once you activate the beta as per the instructions, launch the game and the new content will automatically download.

So wait, is the latest version 0.9.2, 1.0.3 or someone above mentions 1.0.5?

I received v1.05 directly from WormSlayer. During CymaticBruce's last live twitch stream we were talking about it and he gave me a link to download it. Not sure if I would make anyone upset by posting it so I won't! I don't know if there is a newer version available; adoral84 if you're reading this, please post the latest version as it's pretty fun in its current unfinished state! v1.05 is quite playable, but only the crowbar, pistol, magnum, gravity gun, shotgun, submachine gun, and grenade are fully modeled. Some other guns like the Pulse Cannon you could rotate around properly but the right side of the gun wasn't rendered. And the other weapons like the RPG, you couldn't even rotate around, so it hasn't really been touched in this version. In a few posts above this one adoral84 says he's working on the game this weekend, so hopefully we'll see an updated release Sunday or Monday (but who knows?) I'm looking forward to the next release for sure!

[drgroove101]

Quick notes, when i opted into the beta for HL2, i was worried it might break the VR mod, im happy to report it does not. It even fixed the the pitch controls! You can now toggle them to your liking in the options menu. I could've swore this did not work before in the non-beta HL build, but when I tried it again after installed the beta it worked... Also it improved the rebuilding of the outdated node graph (whatever that is?) often time when a new section loads, the game will freeze and the sound will stutter quite badly as the node data is being rebuilt, this new beta version seems to fix that, it still freezes for a sec, but the sound doesn't stutter anymore. That's all I've noticed for now.

[SteveB]

Thanks drgroove...

...any advice on my issues with my 'flat, zoomed stereo view'? (re: my 3D sucks!! ) I don't have a great way to explain this other than I have no real sense of depth (like the official version) even with an fov of 110 - 111.

I seem to be unable to do much with the SHOCTS that would affect this, so I'm thinking I'll just reset everything, so is there an efficient way to ensure that I have indeed reset everything as if it were a fresh install, or must I do a fresh install?

Thanks again!

[drgroove101]

Thanks drgroove...

...any advice on my issues with my 'flat, zoomed stereo view'? (re: my 3D sucks!! ) I don't have a great way to explain this other than I have no real sense of depth (like the official version) even with an fov of 110 - 111.

I seem to be unable to do much with the SHOCTS that would affect this, so I'm thinking I'll just reset everything, so is there an efficient way to ensure that I have indeed reset everything as if it were a fresh install, or must I do a fresh install?

Thanks again!

Have you made sure you set allow cheats to 1 (sv_cheats 1)? the fov cvar won't do anything unless you do. Also make sure you match the cvar viewweaponmodel_fov to your actual fov, or the gun won't look right.

To reset everything you can try deleting and reinstalling the mod, so goto your steam dir \Steam\steamapps\sourcemods\ and delete the halflife-vr, and also the vr-ep1 and ep2 dirs, then reinstall.

Unfortunately I don't have my Rift yet so I'm insanely jealous of you!

[Xerion]

Has the official update been released then?

Where do i go for instructions on how to use it? Isnt the official update through steam only? What happens to people like me that have a boxed copy only not linked to steam, can we still install this Oculus Rift update or not?

Thanks

There is no such thing. All copies had to be activated on steam.

[drgroove101]

Download the latest version here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments ... e_of_both/

Look for posts by WormSlayer. He provides a direct link to it.

Cheers!

[gray]

Have you agree with you Adoral, I haven't been able to play the official VR mode for long after playing your version with full motion control it just doesn't play as well. Hopefully they'll add SDK support in (or hire you ).

[Ziggurat]

Adoral84, have you tried contacting valve at sdk@valvesoftware.com to see if you can get them to help you help them?

Oh and the email address for licensing is sourceengine@valvesoftware.com which I doubt is useful (put them at CC?)
and questions regarding academic license goes to academiclicensing@valvesoftware.com (CC them as well?)

Think if you could get an academic license to use until -vr comes out of beta, and the sdk is updated!!!! Think of the goodness!! Think of the immersiveness!

[adoral84]

I've contacted valve and while no one was able to officially confirm sdk vr integration I feel better about the likelihood of it happening. Being able to play the Half-Life series from Black Mesa through EP2 in vr is so close to happening, I'm going to give valve the benefit of the doubt that they'll come through I'm not sure how long it will take to get things into the sdk but there's still plenty of work I can do on the mod related to VR hydra features etc in the meantime.

[the_wretched]

So do I understand correctly that ATM there's no way to Play the VR Mod with the official Rift-rendering-mode? If so then I sure hope Valve comes through with adding VR to the SDK, because I find the native mode much more impressive than using Vireio (no offense tot he Vireio devs, they're doing awesome work considering the circumstances).

[yunti]

That said, properly adjusted the visual immersion is much improved, mostly because the vertical FOV isn't limited like it is with vireio. It is possible to get a good 3d feel in vireio but it takes a bit more work. Assuming both of them are both working as intended (they both have rough edges you have to tinker around with) it's a trade off at the moment, but I'm personally not that interested in playing a 'VR' FPS with traditional controls having spent quite a bit of time with more immersive controls. I really hope valve comes through on the mod sdk so I can work off the great work they've done as a baseline and continue to build out an awesome VR experience that is the best of both worlds.

I know we haven't talked about it for a while, but your crysis mod does the vireio have the same limitations with regard to FOV, 3d feel as per Half life 2 as you mentioned above?

[SupaDave]

How are you interfacing the gun sensor with the game? Would it be possible to use an arduino set up?

[cp_clegg]

adoral84, thanks for your fantastic work on this and for the hydra integration. I have a hydra and I will be trying it out soon.

However, I also purchased a Top Shot Elite and a Yei 3 space sensor hoping to try it that way, but now I"m not sure if your mod supports that anymore. Can you confirm if it does and are there any special or different instructions at this point to get it working?

[GameDev]

Hi adoral,

please could you keep the first post of this topic up to date with the link to the latest build please, as the most recent build number and link are easily lost in this topic.

Thanks

[LordJuanlo]

I'd like to know what's the "official" site for this mod, it looks like adoral84 isn't posting here anymore, and I had to chase and download the latest version on reddit. Is there any site to download and provide feedback and comments?

[Lilwolf]

Anyone know if this mod works with the official mod? Or if you have beta turned on?

I love the official mod, but would love head tracking (and the calibrate command).

[gray]

Mod site;

http://vrmods.wordpress.com/

[LordJuanlo]

That web is terribly outdated. It still points to the 1.0.3 version of the mod. I'm using the 1.0.7 posted by wormslayer on reddit.

[Frimmi]

The Mod w hydra was working absolutely great...but now I have a weird problem.
I hope someone has a hint for me:
The movement of the two hydras is swapped. I move the gun with the left hydra, but button (like shooting/calibration etc) are on the (standard) right hydra.
I reinstalled HL2/VR-MoD/Sixsense MotionSW, tried several MCE-Files...but it stayes this way.

Any idea?

Thanx!

[LordJuanlo]

It just happens sometimes, as far as I know there is nothing that you can do to fix it. Sometimes unplugging the base from the USB port and plugging it again helps. I have also tried to open the Simple3D demo from Motion Creator and leave it open in the background, but in the end I think it's completely random. Just keep trying.