Half-Life: Alyx virtual reality hardware buying guide

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Half-Life: Alyx is the upcoming prequel to Half-Life 2, and the only way to play it is in virtual reality. Developer Valve says you should expect about a 12-hour experience, and finding the right set of peripherals is going to be key. Over the past two years, the landscape for VR headsets and controllers has expanded, so we’ve put together a quick buying guide to make your life easier.

If you don’t already have a VR headset and motion controllers, what follows are our top picks for the best options. If you do have a system of choice, you’ll also find a few options for upgrading your gear with Half-Life: Alyx in mind.

What you should expect

In Half-Life: Alyx, you’ll be spending lots of time holding a virtual firearm in your hand and shooting headcrab zombies and Combine soldiers. You’ll also be playing with physics and objects in the world in first-person view. The game accommodates full room-scale VR setups for standing, turning, and crouching, but you can also play it sitting down.

If you’re looking to take the leap into VR equipment for Half-Life: Alyx, you’ll want to take into consideration the shape and structure of the motion controllers on your shopping list. And if you already have a set of motion controllers, you might want to consider getting a different pair.

Best bet: Valve Index with ‘Knuckles’

Valve introduced its own VR system last summer. It’s called the Valve Index, and it’s been getting wonderful evaluations. The value level is steep: A full equipment will run you $999. It’s additionally in very quick provide.

We referred to as the Index “the very best VR experience but,” and it has solely improved with software program updates. The headset itself is comfy, with loads of decision. For a standing experience, the movement monitoring is great. However what places the Index excessive are its distinctive Index Movement Controllers, lovingly known as “Knuckles.”

Valve designed Half-Life: Alyx with the Knuckles in thoughts. Probably the most distinctive characteristic are the hand straps, which hold the controllers glued to the palms of your arms even if you happen to let go. Knuckles additionally options particular person finger monitoring, which makes gripping objects very pure and intuitive in VR.

As an added profit, Knuckles strikes all of the plastic bits of a conventional VR movement controller down and to the side, out of the best way of the palm of your hand. Which means you possibly can simply contact your arms collectively with out clacking bits of them collectively. As a result, utilizing a pair of Knuckles is nearly the very best one of the simplest ways to load and fire a handgun in VR. It also needs to assist with gripping and throwing objects, which early preview footage has proven to be a big a part of Half-Life: Alyx.

You too can purchase Knuckles individually for $279.

The full Valve Index VR Equipment contains the headset, two controllers, two base stations, and a obtain code for Half Life: Alyx.

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Runner-up: Oculus Rift S and Oculus Quest

The Oculus Rift S has nice decision, and the worth is true at $399, however availability is a matter. The place the Rift S excels is in its movement monitoring, because of its “inside out” design.

The earlier Oculus Rift mannequin required exterior sensors, however the Rift S doesn’t. That speeds the method of setup and calibration, and reduces the variety of USB 3.zero connections that you simply’ll want.

Oculus Quest can be answer, because it shares an analogous inside-out design and an an identical worth of $399 for the 64 GB version. It’s additionally natively wi-fi, however that’s not a characteristic that Half-Life: Alyx will help. You’ll must be tethered to your PC through USB 3.zero to make use of it. The way it will carry out when being fed a AAA-quality PC game is an open query, however count on the experience to characteristic barely decrease resolutions.

Each the Rift S and the Quest share the identical movement controller design, together with a big hoop that extends from the highest of the Oculus Contact controllers. That may get in the best way of some hand actions in Half-Life: Alyx, particularly loading and manipulating firearms. Fortunately, alternate button inputs are an choice.

In the event you can nonetheless discover one, the unique Oculus Rift may truly be the higher answer in terms of movement controllers. The ring on these is reversed, extending in entrance of and below the hand. That may make it simpler to control weapons. You’ll experience decrease visible decision, and in addition have to arrange at the least two USB 3.0-powered sensors round your play space. (Get three for finest results.)

Third place: HTC Vive Cosmos Elite and Vive Professional

The benefit of the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite and the Vive Pro (each $899) is the flexibility to play wirelessly. Half-Life: Alyx is a really lively game, and can lend itself nicely to a room-scale presentation. Early demos have proven a lot of ducking and sliding, with gamers bobbing and weaving to keep away from incoming fire. Being tethered to a PC in these conditions turns into a legal responsibility.

Sadly, to get that wi-fi functionality requires a $350 improve and a little bit of technical know-how. You’ll want to put in a separate PCI card inside your PC, and mount a further sensor to your monitor. The entire thing is a bit kludgey, in that it places more weight in your head within the type of an antenna, and requires an exterior battery pack that you need to put on in your belt. Availability of the headsets can be a difficulty.

What pushes the Vive gadgets right into a strong third place, nevertheless, are their wi-fi movement controllers. They’re lengthy, and have a big puck on high. From experience, I can inform you they make manipulating a virtual firearm difficult. Their palm grips are additionally a bit more durable to make use of than the trigger-style grips on the Oculus movement controllers. Valve has taken this under consideration, nevertheless, and affords alternate button configurations for taking part in Half-Life: Alyx on the Vive.

Valve’s Knuckles controllers are totally compatible with Vive sensors. They’re a superb improve for $279.

Fourth place: HTC Vive Cosmos

You’ll get comparable resolutions to the above headsets with the lower-priced HTC Vive Cosmos, and the inside-out movement monitoring itself is great. Nonetheless, the system doesn’t help full 360-degree monitoring of the movement controllers. In practice, that implies that when your hand goes behind your again, the headset might lose sight of it. A few of the actions in Half-Life: Alyx require that you simply attain behind your shoulder, so the monitoring could change into a legal responsibility whereas enjoying this specific game.

The Vive Cosmos’ movement controllers additionally share comparable options to the Oculus Rift S and Oculus Quest controllers talked about above. The highest-mounted hoop means you’ll have some problem loading and manipulating firearms within the game. Once more, alternate button configurations can be found in Half-Life: Alyx.

The HTC Vive Cosmos is totally compatible with the Vive wireless adapter, which can set you again one other $348.99.

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Video card and CPU

For the reason that Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive confirmed up on the scene in 2016, VR aficionados have been capable of get by with comparatively dated hardware. For Half-Life: Alyx, it appears like these early adopters might want to improve their rigs.

Valve’s minimal system necessities for Half-Life: Alyx specify an Intel Core i5-7500 or higher, and at the least an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6 GB of onboard video RAM. We’ve listed a couple of choices for you below, together with multiple cooler options from AMD.

In the event you’re on the lookout for a crossgrade or an applicable improve, Tom’s Hardware has an excellent GPU hierarchy that I rely on for my very own private builds. You may additionally need to swing by PCPartPicker to ensure your motherboard will be capable of make the transition.

Lastly, if you happen to’re constructing for the future and need to decide up a GPU that’s compatible with real-time ray-tracing — one of many splashy new results that makes games like Management so handsome — you may need to simply chew the bullet and take a look at a brand new RTX card from Nvidia. Remember that they’re a good bit more costly.

Tristan
Tristan
I am the author for Gaming Ideology and loves to play Battle Royale games and loves to stream and write about them. I am a freelancer and now is the permanent member of Gaming Ideology.

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