Hey everyone,

this month, we have prepared a new update for you with a number of new features and bug fixes that we hope you'll enjoy!

Physical hands
Your hands now collide with the environment and will no longer pass through walls. You can also tip over bottles and other objects. A short controller rumble will indicate when your hands make contact with something.

Please note: due to technical and gameplay reasons, the hands do not inflict damage on objects directly, and they do not collide with NPCs or enemies.

This feature can be disabled in the gameplay options if you prefer the hands the way they were before.

ProTubeVR support
Do yo own a ProVolver or ForceTube device from ProTubeVR? Then this update enables native support for them - enjoy your guns' recoil on a new level!

dxvk update and stutter fixes
HL2VR uses dxvk to translate the old D3D9 API (which is not supported by VR runtimes) to Vulkan. We have updated our version of dxvk to 1.10.3. In the process, we also discovered that the async patch we applied to avoid dreaded pipeline compilation stutters was too conservative in its decision when pipelines could be compiled in the background. As a consequence, it could still happen that the game's rendering would occasionally freeze for a short moment while waiting for graphics pipelines to be ready.
This wasn't really an issue on NVIDIA cards, but it did affect AMD cards more often. We have adjusted async compilation to be used more aggressively, and these situations should no longer occur.

So, if you've had issues with the game's rendering occiasionally stuttering or freezing during normal gameplay that didn't coincide with a level transition and could be observed in e.g. fpsVR as spikes in the CPU time, this update should hopefully resolve the issue.

Miscellaneous

• Fixed the SMG firing animation sometimes playing when in the weapon selection menu
  
• Added controller rumble effects when ejecting a magazine, grabbing a mag from the sholder, inserting a mag or grabbing a weapon with your second hand

Hello everyone,

welcome back to the Citadel! Are you ready to swing the gravity gun once more, stabilize the reactor core and bring yourself and everyone else to safety?

Since the release of Half-Life 2: VR Mod, we have been hard at work behind the scenes to bring the episodes to VR, as well. Today, we can finally bring you Episode One, and we hope you will enjoy the experience as much as we enjoyed preparing it for you!

So, without further ado, go ahead and download Episode One for VR. You need to own (but not install) the original Episode One; in case you do not, now is a great time to buy it as it is heavily discounted thanks to the Steam Spring Sale. In fact, you might want to grab the Orange Box or the Valve Complete Collection to, well, complete your collection while you are at it! :)

If you haven't played the base game in VR, yet, you may want to head over to our Half-Life 2 VR Mod and start there.

And once you have completed Episode One, you will be pleased to know that the VR Mod for Episode Two is not far behind and will release on April 6th, just in time for the Easter weekend. Go ahead and wishlist it now!