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<\/figure>\n As of last week, a long-held dream of playing Valve\u2019s landmark 2004 shooter Half-Life 2<\/em> in virtual reality has finally come to fruition. The journey began nearly 10 years ago, when a man named Nathan Andrews managed to hack together a functioning version of the all-time classic in VR. This was before any Vives, Indexes, Quests, or Oculi. With a primitive Sony HMZ-T1<\/span> and specialized motion-tracking gear, Andrews risked a resonance cascade scenario to splice together a working foundation for a full Half-Life 2<\/em> VR mod. Over the next decade, dozens of volunteers would contribute to the off-then-on-again project, all in hopes of one day bashing enemies with a crowbar in semi-lifelike virtual reality. <\/p>\n And now Half Life 2: VR Mod<\/em> is ready to play, thanks to the hard work of the Source VR Mod Team<\/span> and their free, open beta available on Steam<\/span>. There\u2019s more work to be done for sure\u2014a public roadmap<\/span> shows what\u2019s to come\u2014but the entire main campaign is already up and running, and pretty surreal to experience. Sharp corners and all, Half-Life 2: VR Mod<\/em> is well worth checking out right now if you can.<\/p>\n The differences are quite immediate. The G-Man\u2019s opening scene grants a whole other sense of scale since you have active depth perception. Images flash and appear inside of him as fully realized 3D spaces, which you can actually peer inside of and see with greater depth and dimension. This new presentation grants more weight to the whole scene.<\/p>\n <\/figure>\n As a video game graphics experience in VR, it\u2019s super cool. Your eyes can track flying debris and exploding barrels with the ease and speed of just turning your head. The violence and realistic physics of Half-Life 2<\/em> are no longer just simulations appearing on a screen in front of you; they\u2019re happening in a 3D space you feel a sense of presence and dimension in. It all feels so natural that it\u2019s easy to forget this is the end result of a decade of hacked tech created by enthusiastic fans.<\/p>\n And while there\u2019s still more work to be done on the weapons, it is a thrill to be able to virtually hold, examine, and fight with these classic video game armaments. Smashing the aggressive, flying manhacks<\/span> with a crowbar in VR is so obscenely fun that I want a mini spin-off mod of this alone. And my Fitbit tells me I\u2019m earning \u201cZone Minutes\u201d by whacking these things. The 9mm pistol feels fun to aim and shoot (and yes, I am only aiming with one hand). More modern VR games tend to have smoother reload mechanics, so this mod\u2019s feel a bit clunky sometimes, but the action remains just as hectic and fun.<\/p>\n In a way it feels like Half-Life 2<\/em> was always supposed to be this way. It is very easy to lose yourself in this mod, both as a VR experience and a Half-Life <\/em>one. It easily pushes past the status of \u201ctech demo\u201d or \u201cmod,\u201d feeling like it\u2019s shaping up to be a solid VR game in its own right.<\/p>\n The Half-Life 2: VR Mod<\/em> project is currently being worked on by users from the Flatscreen to VR Discord server, led by WormSlayer, whose involvement goes back to the earliest days of the project. Back then, WormSlayer caught sight of Andrews\u2019 early prototypes and offered his talents, starting with work on the gun models. <\/p>\n WormSlayer\u2019s description of the mod\u2019s early days sounds like something you\u2019d need to slap together to survive City 17 itself. The assemblage of tech included a \u201cSony head-mounted TV, a gun controller for a console, and a professional 3D tracking system [Andrews] had access to,\u201d WormSlayer told Kotaku<\/em>. That headset in question was the Sony HMZ-T1, which sported \u201can eye-watering resolution of 640×720 per eye, and a 45-degree field of view,\u201d WormSlayer said. That headset would be left behind in favor of the Oculus DK1<\/span>, the first hardware the just-incorporated Oculus (now Meta) ever released. You can see footage from those early days in a 2013 YouTube video.<\/p>\n