I’ve been flitting between plenty of completely different VR headsets during the last month or so, in my quest to search out the most effective VR headset of all. But who must spend upwards of 400 quid when the £12 / $15 Google Cardboard may also be used to play massive SteamVR games like Half-Life: Alyx?
Yes, you learn that appropriately. Thanks to the magic of VRidge, an app that streams VR games in your PC to your telephone display screen, now you can take pleasure in all of immediately’s best VR games for a fraction of the value. Well, type of.
Getting Half-Life: Alyx to run on my Cardboard wasn’t an issue. After downloading the VRidge app on my telephone and its accompanying RiftCat app on my PC, the 2 linked collectively nearly immediately over Wi-Fi (it’s also possible to do it by USB in case you want) and I used to be proper there, staring on the horrifying Valve man inside minutes. It was a reasonably spectacular sight, too. While the Cardboard’s rudimentary lenses typically gave me a little bit of double-vision at instances, the game’s opening display screen was simply as ominous and foreboding because it was on a correct VR headset just like the Valve Index. The drawback was understanding the right way to transfer and work together with its menu screens.
In case you’re unfamiliar with it, the Google Cardboard is de facto only a easy VR viewer whenever you get all the way down to it. It doesn’t have any controllers or enter controls, and the small press-in button on the highest of the headset solely re-centres you whenever you want re-orienting. Indeed, when Google first launched it again in 2014, you even needed to put it collectively your self when it arrived, a bit like Nintendo’s Labo toys for the Switch. These days, it comes ready-made in a small cardboard field. All you need to do is slot your telephone in and also you’re away.
Fortunately, VRidge helps plenty of management schemes, together with having the ability to use a gamepad, mouse and keyboard, and even one other telephone’s touchscreen as a makeshift cellular controller. You also can use the straightforward wand controllers from cellular VR headsets just like the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream, however they solely work with their respective headsets.
Of course, when the Google Cardboard additionally doesn’t have any form of head strap, this offered one other drawback. How do I maintain it as much as my face and use a controller? The resolution? Put the Cardboard on the sting of my desk and sit on the ground. Oh sure, we’re in enterprise.
The subsequent step was determining the right way to map VR controls to my Xbox 360 pad. I did strive utilizing a mouse and keyboard, however the latter typically received confused with what was occurring on my desktop, so utilizing a gamepad was undoubtedly the best way to go right here. Alas, the free model of VRidge solely presents previous Vive wand controllers so that you can reconfigure, which you will recall was the principle purpose why I solely gave the HTC Vive Elite Cosmos a measly one out of 5 in my best VR headset for Half-Life: Alyx article. The monitoring was high quality, however the Vive wands’ trackpads simply weren’t as much as the duty of maintaining with Half-Life: Alyx’s complicated and fast-paced motion choices.
You can remap Vive wand controls to your gamepad in VRidge, however complicated games like Half-Life: Alyx are a bit past its restricted capabilities.
And so it proved with attempting to get them to work on an Xbox 360 pad. Try as I’d, I used to be solely capable of get it to maneuver forwards, backwards and facet to facet. I couldn’t flip spherical, and I couldn’t change route, both. Even transferring the Cardboard round didn’t assist, which meant I used to be perpetually caught in these 4 planes of motion.
I used to be capable of map the hand controls appropriately to the d-pad (nearly), however even this felt like a little bit of a fudge. The easy act of choosing the Continue button on the title display screen felt like an monumental problem of high quality motor management, and don’t even get me began about attempting to goal my gun at a lone Combine. This was just about not possible – if solely as a result of one step to the facet on their half was all it took for them to outmanoeuvre me.
However, it turned out I had the higher hand all alongside. In all my faffing about attempting to get Alyx to shift her gaze even half a level to the facet, I abruptly discovered myself inside the closest wall, utterly and completely protected from the storm of Combine bullets that was raining down simply three toes away from me. I’d simply clipped by means of the complete factor, and the thought hit me. If I make a beeline straight for the top, the Combine gained’t be capable to even contact me! Take that, suckers.
Alas, simply as I used to be about to plough ahead in a very random route, my VRidge session got here to an finish and kicked me out. The free model solely offers you ten minutes at a time, you see, and there was no means I used to be going to cease and begin again and again like some mad, ghostly robo girl only for the sake of seeing if I may get to the top shortly.
Still, I used to be impressed that I used to be even capable of get Half-Life: Alyx operating in any respect on the Google Cardboard, and I’ll be intrigued to see if I can efficiently get another SteamVR games engaged on it as a substitute. You ought to, in fact, get a extra refined VR headset just like the Oculus Rift S in case you actually wish to play Half-Life: Alyx correctly, however I’d suggest mucking about with the Cardboard in case you’ve received one, if solely to get a sneaky glimpse of what’s behind Valve’s meticulously crafted curtain – or, certainly, the title display screen’s metropolis gate, which it seems is only a gray void.
I’ve additionally seen the face of the Valve Man and it’s TERRIFYING.
