Half-Life 2 Adds Oculus Rift Support

Owners of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset can now battle the Combine. Valve has updated Half-Life 2 with support for the Kickstarter-funded peripheral.

To enable Oculus Rift support, open up the properties for Half-Life 2 through Steam and set the command line to "-vr." You also have to opt into the SteamPipe beta. That should be enough to get the OR up and running in the classic shooter.

Valve's Joe Ludwig warns on the OculusVR forums (via PCGamer) that the Rift support is still pretty raw. For example, the HUD is hard to read and the zoom UI isn't working correctly. Ludwig encourages you to report any bugs that you're experiencing.

Developer kits of the Rift began shipping this spring. Pre-orders for dev kits are still being accepted on the official website. The official consumer release hasn't been dated yet.

Video footage of a gamer using the Oculus Rift in HL2 is above. As is the case with most Rift videos, it doesn't really do the experience justice.

Pete Haas

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.