Valve Expands Support for Oculus Rift to Half-Life 2

Earlier this spring, Valve’s Joe Ludwig announced that the company’s Team Fortress 2 would support the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Now, Valve is expanding that support to Half Life 2, as well.

In a post on the Oculus Rift developer forums, Ludwig said that Valve “just shipped” a beta for Half-Life 2 that includes Oculus Rift support, and he added some simple instructions on how to get it. He noted that it wasn’t perfect yet by saying, “This port is a bit more raw than TF2 was when it shipped, so we would appreciate hearing about any bugs you find.”

Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 (Image credit: Polygon)

Indeed, from his instructions and updates, it would seem that the beta is a mite shaky, but hey, that’s why it’s in beta, and that’s what a dev community is for. And to be clear--some Oculus forum posters seem confused--this isn’t some mod built by the Oculus Rift folks; these capabilities are being created by Valve. Polygon notes that this update brings support for SteamPipe, the Steam content distribution system.

Clearly, we have a ways to go before the Oculus Rift headset is tidied up and released into the wild and Valve finds a way to more seamlessly and smoothly create support in games for the virtual reality device, but the progress surely is exciting to watch.