Summary
AHalf-Life: Alyxfan has done something really impressive, bringing the opening City 17 scene of the game to a standalone Meta Quest 3. While a Meta Quest 3 connected to a PC has been able to playHalf-Life: Alyxfrom the get-go, it can’t be used to play it all on its own.
The Meta Quest 3 is an impressive piece of technology, but it has its shortcomings. Due to it being a wireless, standalone device, it’s not capable of playing some graphically advanced VR games unless it’s connected to a PC that’s doing the heavy lifting. However, that doesn’t keep fans from pushing the device to the limit, as one has done now withValve’s VR hit.
A developer named Boris Novikov has done something few thought was possible and brought the opening City 17 scene to the Meta Quest 3. It wasn’t a simple matter of just getting the game to work on the device without a PC, though. Instead, Novikov tookHalf-Life: Alyx’s assets, including sound, some physics interactions, and models, and put them into Unity. With the scene rebuilt, he then managed to get the opening running on the Meta Quest 3. A brief video demonstrates him walking throughCity 17and interacting with objects. While there are some frame rate drops, at some points, the game ran with an FPS as high as 72.
Could The Meta Quest 3 Play Half-Life Alyx Without a PC?
The reason Novikov looked into this concept was because of how technology has progressed since the release ofHalf-Life: Alyx,as well as the original Oculus Quest. Novikov theorized that theXR2 Gen 2 chipset in the Quest 3was powerful enough to handle the scene, and it seems his hunch was correct. Meanwhile, Valve is rumored to be releasing a new VR headset that will also function wirelessly, and will have a chip similar in capabilities to the Quest 3. It’s possible that VR gamers could end up playingHalf-Life: Alyxand similarly demanding VR games on purely wireless standalone devices in the near future.
There’s good news for those who own a Quest 3 and want to try out the experience for themselves. Novikov has made the APK containing the Unity version of the experience available, so those who are familiar with installing custom APK can give it a try on their headsets. The link can be found in the YouTube demo video. Those with other Meta Quest devices, such as the Quest 2 or the Quest Pro are out of luck on this one, as those devices aren’t as powerful as the Quest 3. However, given theMeta Quest 3S chipsetand RAM are the same as the Meta Quest 3, it might work on that device. Regardless, this experiment demonstrates that the phone GPUs the Quest line has relied upon are becoming more capable all the time, and it could spell a strong future for VR.
