The first 'Half-Life: Alyx' update makes it easier to turn
Being able to move matters in a first-person VR game.
Now that people -- who have the proper VR-ready gaming setup -- can actually play Half-Life: Alyx, it's inevitably time to ask for more features and tweaks. While our reviewer Devindra Hardawar preferred using teleportation-style movement through the game to avoid motion sickness, players who used its immersive "smooth locomotion" mode that lets you glide the world guided by the analog stick complained about its turning.
A 1.1 patch that came out tonight that addresses those complaints with a new setting called "continuous turn" that lines up with other virtual reality games like Boneworks. There are various turning speed options to keep players comfortable with the new movement, and the old Quick Turn setting has been renamed to Snap Turn. There are a few other tweaks that you'll find listed below, and the update should be rolling out now via Steam.
Improved turning options in Preferences:
- Added "Continuous Turn", and associated turning speed options.
- Renamed "Quick turn" to "Snap Turn" to make its functionality clearer.
- Added option to disable controller turning.
Improved hand-over-mouth pose usability for Windows MR controllers.
Improved the resolution of impact decals on enemies.
Improved automatic detection of default Quality settings for some machine configurations.
Fixed an issue where some sounds didn't play as intended.
Fixed an issue where the main menu could become less responsive if you had many save games.
Fixed several crashes.