Half-Life: Alyx - It's PC gone mad - The Bear and Badger

Tempy

LivDiv wrote:

Why are people angry about this? Because it's not HL3 proper?

Mainly because it’s locked behind VR which is a big buy in for kit and space

Tempy

I’d be vaguely glum if it was Half Life 3, but i’d get over it in minutes

trippy

n0face wrote:

mistercrayon wrote:

And an empty room in your house.

Don't underestimate how important this is.

I've got a pretty small flat, could it theoretically be played in the bath?

mistercrayon

To me VRs real big issue is the friction of doing it at all.

An empty room means that you can have it ready to roll and not have to tidy up just to play.

This is all before having to put all the things on your head getting everything turned on etc etc etc.

GurtTractor

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

Just out of interest if i wanted to build my own super pc, and get the headset and knuckles what would i be looking at roughly. For the best possible experience - not parts that will just about do the job? Genuinely intrigued.

Here's a rough idea for the PC -

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor (£106.38 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard (£98.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£65.58 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£145.97 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB WINDFORCE OC 3X Video Card (£458.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case: Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case (£91.49 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G3 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£70.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (£79.97 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1117.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-23 18:33 GMT+0000

You can easily shave off a bit, but that will a very solid PC that should be able to handle most things, and can be easily upgraded when necessary.

I don't think we know how demanding HL Alyx will be yet though..

acemuzzy

+ headset + controllers...?

Lord_Griff

A grand?

GurtTractor

VR is not something I keep on top of much at all, so I don't really have an idea of the prices for those, I'm sure others know the details better. If you needed to cut a couple of hundred off that list and keep the performance then you could, I just always like to recommend a good upgradable 'future proof' platform.

bad_hair_day

mistercrayon wrote:

To me VRs real big issue is the friction of doing it at all.

An empty room means that you can have it ready to roll and not have to tidy up just to play.

This is all before having to put all the things on your head getting everything turned on etc etc etc.

Just to be devil's ocado, not all VR set ups are a faff or require an empty room. The Oculus Quest would use only one cable and just need to move the coffee table. The 'Guardian' system keeps you away from the walls and furniture.

Lord_Griff

Seems like Index is the only way to go.

bad_hair_day

Not for the fourteen badgers who've got a Quest.

SpaceGazelle

But the Quest isn't designed for long PC titles. It's not true that Index was meant to be the absolute greatest hmd and be damned the expense. Other headsets have better resolution, fov etc. The Index was designed for fairly modest gaming PC's.

What it has is years of experience. It's hard not to appreciate the intelligence behind it. The more I use it the more I love it. The large fov, the increased Hz, the padding, the off-ear headphones, it's all been developed for one thing - a VR headset you use comfortably and naturally for hours. Years of work researching pixel persistence, frame rates etc, the goal is making it as natural as possible. No wonder the devs love it.

SpaceGazelle

And of course all this is to make you more immersed. It's easy to be pulled out of VR but if it's comfortable - physically, visually and mentally - you're more likely to forget it's all just screens. It doesn't take much to pull you of VR.

Dark Soldier

Told the missus I'm saving up.for an Index. Cannot wait.

bad_hair_day

The Index should be a better headset it's over double the price.

The pundits are saying Alyx should be perfectly playable on a Quest as there's no noticeable difference to the 90hz Rift S using a correct cable.

Pays yer money.

ShabbyMcCrabby

Tempy wrote:

LivDiv wrote:

Why are people angry about this? Because it's not HL3 proper?

Mainly because it’s locked behind VR which is a big buy in for kit and space

It is for index but not so much for quest link. People are just never happy. Considering this is a fully fledged game, not just a demo length thing, I'm super keen. I'd be a little miffed if they returned to the half life world for a little nothing tech demo

I'd like to try an index one day (a friend of mine is likely to get one) I'm pretty sure my quest will suit. I wonder if oculus knew Alyx was coming. Interesting timing for quest link beta to start and the announcement to come out.

bad_hair_day

Haven't even mentioned the very real possibility of streaming Alyx to the Quest. No wire.

SpaceGazelle

bad_hair_day wrote:

The Index should be a better headset it's over double the price.

The pundits are saying Alyx should be perfectly on a playable on a Quest as the there's no noticeable difference to the 90hz Rift S using a correct cable.

Pays yer money.

It's not one thing like Hz that makes it great. It's all the things. A big initial investment is the tracking, but that'll carry through for future headsets. I use my old Vive base stations for the Index. I'm not having a dig at the Quest, it's great, but it's designed for different experiences.

SpaceGazelle

Your right though, the Rift S is utterly redundant now the Quest has Connect.

SpaceGazelle

ShabbyMcCrabby wrote:

I wonder if oculus knew Alyx was coming. Interesting timing for quest link beta to start and the announcement to come out.

It's more that Oculus knew that a walled garden is bullshit, and by Oculus I mean Carmack. He did a good thing before he left.

SpaceGazelle

It's probably fair to say that Boneworks and Alyx have shared resources. Should be a good indication of what the Index controllers can do.

https://youtu.be/w8a1BAolFIk

SpaceGazelle

Stand alone controllers sold out in America, The Index selling like mad. Finally some normals are getting excited about PCVR.

SpaceGazelle

I didn't realise that in Blade and Sorcery you can grab ropes, walls, corners etc. Apparently it works great. So that send probably along with your choice of locomotion - teleport, blink or smooth. I don't suppose natural is in but it can be modded in I guess.

SpaceGazelle

Blimey, everything but the full kit has sold out and kit is biggest selling thing on Stream.

Blocks100

Are we saying that Half Life not-3 is set to become a 'system seller' then? Remember those?

LivDiv

They've probably just not made enough units.

Armitage_Shankburn

Blocks100 wrote:

Are we saying that Half Life not-3 is set to become a 'system seller' then? Remember those?

"System sellers" sell a minimum of 200k units, surely. I doubt more than 10k units of this thing are shifted.

SpaceGazelle

It was always the plan, I think. Nobody else had the experience to pull all the little VR things that work into a game, but once it's out other developers can build on it I guess. Valve themselves seem to be suggesting their VR expertise is now enough to start banging out software again. Newell said they were "re-energised". Expect more HL stuff.

Armitage_Shankburn

Yeah I think it is more of a "loss-leader" rather than a system seller.

SpaceGazelle

Armitage_Shankburn wrote:

Blocks100 wrote:

Are we saying that Half Life not-3 is set to become a 'system seller' then? Remember those?

"System sellers" sell a minimum of 200k units, surely. I doubt more than 10k units of this thing are shifted.

It's selling out in N America. Come the Alyx lauch I don't think 500k is out of the question but we'll see.

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