Something very special for this Gaming Friday: my first proper VR experience live on stream, finally trying out Half-Life: Alyx, which I wanted play ever since I first heard about it. A friend of mine lent me a PlayStation VR2 to try out so here we are, experiencing City 17 from the point of view of Alyx Vance, before she met Freeman in Half-Life 2.
And this looks amazing. The world is very detailed and you can interact with a lot of stuff. Only after watching the VOD myself I noticed that you guys actually see a bit less details in the spectator mode compared to what I see in the VR. I guess that’s because of the HDR or the ability of me to focus my eyes on some distant objects. But in turn you have an advantage: you see the subtitles and the UI that shows my health and ammo. I don’t actually see that. I have to actually look at my left wrist to see the hearts of the health bar and at my gun to see how much ammo is left in it. But that’s cool, I don’t mind. Also, you don’t see the loading screens the way I do for some weird reason.
But I only managed to last less than 2 hours this time before succumbing to the motion sickness (I was expecting even less to be honest). It made me feel worse and worse each time the 3D world “detached” from my head position for a split-second due to a lag or something. I hope I can get used to it more and stream for longer next time.
