Valve Deep Dives Into Half-Life: Alyx’s Locomotion Mechanics

It’s been a couple of weeks since Valve launched Half-Life: Alyx onto the world, with the title brightening the day of PC virtual reality (VR) players worldwide thanks to its immersive gameplay and gorgeous graphics. One of the core features for any VR adventure is the movement, which Valve has gone into further details about in a new deep-dive video. 

The company released plenty of details about Half-Life: Alyx in the run-up to launch, one of the those being the three locomotion options players can choose from: Continuous, Blink and Shift. These offer a range of options to make navigating  Half-Life: Alyx as comfortable as possible for most players, Blink offering the traditional teleport style while Continuous gives you proper FPS controls.

So you may think that there’s nothing more to learn about how you can run around in the densely packed City 17, but there is. This new video goes into the complexities of not only moving around a VR world smoothly but also paying attention to real world challenges like catering for a players height. This might be a fantasy sci-fi world yet there are areas that still need to adhere to normal physics, ensuring a realistic feel and sense of presence. Whether a player is really short or tall, the gameplay experience needs to be the same and consistent, something Valve worked hard to achieve.

There are plenty of other little interesting insights, both for fans of the videogame and for VR developers looking for locomotion advice or struggling with their own title.

VRFocus reviewed Half-Life: Alyx giving the title a full five-stars, saying: “A stunningly rich experience from start to finish, Half-Life: Alyx is one of the best VR titles available, a perfect showcase for what VR gaming is capable of. It doesn’t exactly break new ground, instead providing familiar Half-Life gameplay all wrapped up in a highly polished VR gift bag.”

Since the launch Valve has also released a couple of updates to further improve the experience for left-handed players and the turning options. Check out the deep-dive video below, and for further Half-Life: Alyx updates, keep reading VRFocus.

By: Peter Graham
Title: Valve Deep Dives Into Half-Life: Alyx’s Locomotion Mechanics
Sourced From: www.vrfocus.com/2020/04/valve-deep-dives-into-half-life-alyxs-locomotion-mechanics/
Published Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2020 18:33:57 +0000