Newbie Issues with Half-Life 2

[CrazyDolphin]

Hello there!
I’m a newcomer to vorpX, but have managed to get it up and running, and have been able to play Dead Space and Aliens: Colonial Marines (via Steam) so far.

Prior to using vorpX on any game, I always try to play it on a monitor first, before applying an vorpX profile to the game.

When trying this approach for Half-Life 2, trying to use vorpX results in a black screen, although audio works just fine.
I do get a couple of messages from vorpX indicating ‘you may have to exit Steam and restart the game’. I tried this and nothing changed: a black screen with working audio.
The other message was something along the lines of ‘vorpX will initialize the game/start up Steam’.

Deleting the game and re-installing it has done nothing to change the situation, but Dead space and A:CM still work fine.

Does anybody have any tips or advice for the situation I am facing?

[CrazyDolphin]

Tried screwing with it some more, and unfortunately nothing has changed.
The game plays fine without vorpX/Steam VR active.
I’m using the default voprX profile for Half Life 2.
Upon starting the game with vorpX, the game audio seems to be fine, but both the monitor and Valve Index HMD are black (the monitor has some specific voprX messages).
I’ve gone back into the game and adjusted from a 16:9 to a 4:3, but getting back in with vorpX still leaves with a black screen on both the HMD and monitor.

[Nightmare -_-]

When it says exit steam, maybe try making sure you FULLY exit steam. If you are on Windows, open your tray icon and right click on steam and press exit. Or you can just kill the background process through task manager. See if that helps you or not. I have also heard from a few places that Windows 7 does not work well with HL2 although I cannot confirm this myself.

[CrazyDolphin]

@NightMare-_-,

Thanks for the tip.
A method that seems to work for me for Half-Life 2 is to start voprX 1st, plug in the headset 2nd, start Steam 3rd, and then start the game 4th.
This is strange in that any other game I’m trying to vorpX, I: start Steam 1st, plug in the headset 2nd, start vorpX 3rd, start Steam VR 4th, and then start the game.
Now I can finally see Half-Life 2 in the HMD. Unfortunately, in Full VR mode the image was shifting too much and I could not see 360 degrees, but doing some ‘Direct VR Scan’ (as hinted by vorpX) solved both of those issues, and now the image is steady and I can look in all directions without feeling like everything is moving with me.
Now to tweak some settings.

Thanks again.

[Ralf]

There isn’t really anything to tweak besides potentially setting a higher (4:3) resolution for better image quality, everything else is handled automatically by vorpX’s DirectVR functionality.

Re the unusual start procedure with SteamVR:

You have to launch the game without SteamVR running, that’s a unique issue with HL2. Normally vorpX should show an according hint if SteamVR is already running on launch.

With SteamVR running on launch the game tries to initialize the SteamVR runtime for whatever reason, causing a conflict with vorpX. Simply launching the game without SteamVR running solves the issue. SteamVR auto-launches when vorpX initializes it during its init process.

[CrazyDolphin]

@Ralf,
Thank you for the response. You were right, I did not have to tweak any further settings. It was probably a leftover thought from all the tweaking I was doing prior to doing that ‘Direct VR Scan’.
I do appreciate the explanation on how HL2 is a unique case.
Thank you for such an amazing software program.

[Author]

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