So tempted to call it Half Life 3 but I resisted.

Will be VR only. Coming out in March 2020. Not sure where in the timeline it will sit - more news coming out soon.

https://www.pcgamer.com/rumour-valve-are-about-to-announce-a-vr-game-called-half-life-alyx/

could this be VR's killer app?!

I have long wondered if HL3 might be the thing to really drive VR as a platform. This is a big brave move by Valve (although I find it very hard to believe that the game won't work on non-VR rigs, at least not after some community hacking anyway).

I am no longer convinced VR is the ultimate, uh, endgame for gaming. At least not with the current generation of tech and not for the mass market. So I am not sure how much impact this will have, but I look forward to seeing how it goes.

Could this be the Diablo Immortal of Half-Life? Surely this is just going to piss off a heap of people dreaming of Half-Life 3.

I guess, but Diablo Immortal never had any chance whatsoever of being good whereas this does. Here's hoping.

wouldn't be in keeping with Half-Life 2 lore without d0g

Here's the trailer. I reckon you are right about it being VR's killer app trog. Shame if you don't have VR though!

vid looked cool, aussie and kiwi accents?

sounded like rhys darby!

Shame if you don't have VR though!

That would be me. :(

I will add it to the list of things I want
- ultrawide 1440p monitor
- 2080 ti to make it all purdy like.
- decent VR system

why the floating hands. I find this almost a dealbreaker for me in VR games. I want to look down and see my virtual body and have my virtual arms articulate. Otherwise it just really breaks the immersion to the point that I'd rather not bother.

I'll be honest, I am a bit underwhelmed by that, although I am not on a good link at the moment so wasn't able to watch it full screen high def. I'll try again later when I'm back in my hotel on fibre.

why the floating hands. I find this almost a dealbreaker for me in VR games. I want to look down and see my virtual body and have my virtual arms articulate.

I actually thought that too.

I would hazard a guess cause its really fiddly to display the arms/wrists correctly and not look weird/impossible. Not showing your body in FPS is very common for this reason, it saves a bunch of time/money in development.

oh yeh i am sure it is super super hard

Will it work with the Quest?

yes, it will work with any steamvr compatible headset.

Kind of interesting that they went with floaty hands for a A³ VR title.

The Inverse Kinematics problem in VR is hard because of the low number of reference points, and when its wrong the mismatch between what your body is doing and what the headset is seeing becomes massively jarring.

... But lots of people have been attacking it for years and Valve should have the resources to leverage the work done.

The Inverse Kinematics problem in VR is hard because of the low number of reference points, and when its wrong the mismatch between what your body is doing and what the headset is seeing becomes massively jarring.

Yes I was wondering how different the arm actions need to be before it becomes really awkwardly uncomfortable. But I reckon you'd get used to it pretty quickly anyway - as long as it looks OK I feel like that would be good enough in the short term?

Lone Echo did the limbs inverse kinematics thing really well

Just as an interesting side note: Lone Echo 2 is released March 2020 also