Retired wrote on Mar 22, 2020, 00:32:

Well, we have been talking about HL3 for how many years? So yea sure, but please, tell me how the 3D movie thing went........weren't we supposed to have it in every home?

VR doesn't interest me in the least right now. It is not that I do not like it, I think it is cool, it just isn't where I want it to be to invest time and money into it.

I'm with you--VR is a fad destined for the dust bin--right along with the 3d-glasses stereoscopy fad (stereoscopy was born in the 1800's actually.) I predicted that "3d" would die on the vine chiefly because the effect fooled the brain into perceiving depth where there was none, and the process was one that just so happened to create very uncomfortable types of motion sickness in a high percentage of the people who used it. If you've ever been "sea sick" then you know just how bad that can feel at its most extreme! 3d glasses were DOA because of it, imo. I was also glad to see the fad die because of the way the marketing for it butchered the term "3D", which up to that point in time was the common acronym for discerning the difference between "2d" games (no simulated Z axis) and "3d" games (simulated Z-axis.) If you told these people what your own opinion about 3d glasses is, and you took the time to explain why you had that opinion, you'd think you had called their mothers "wanton lesbian prostitutes with AIDs", or something...;) It was unreal--quite vicious, at times. Stepping on sacred cows is like that, I guess, even if done inadvertently.

Anyway, if people wanted the kind of "immersion" VR markets and touts, it's my belief that people would have been strapping their televisions to their faces long ago...;) (People don't want that now.) Steve Jobs was pushing gray-scale Next/Macs long after color television had become the norm and other computers were shipping with color GPUs--the guy really had some rather large blind spots, RIP.

I ran the non-VR Alyx demo, and was fairly disappointed with the general graphics presentation--which seemed to me to look about like it looked way back when HL2 originally shipped. The FOV looked very narrow--too narrow, and I cannot think why anyone would see the little footprint-jumps, and the two disembodied hands always floating in the air as "immersive"...! It was very distracting for me. In one section of the Alyx demo, I think it was in a train car, the person recording the demo did this subtle, apparently unconscious left-to-right rocking motion, continuously, and I was surprised to see that even looking at the demo on my 32" 4k BenQ--I felt a slight nausea building in my gut! No exaggeration. I repeated it a few times to make sure--happened each time. It did, and I'd seen quite enough.

HL/HL2 were singularly the best games Newell, Valve ever did, imo. Can't imagine what's keeping them from continuing the saga, and it's too bad. Building a really "immersive" game is a lot of work--a ton of hard work. I can only think Newell is no longer interested in creating another HL because he isn't interested in doing the work. I'd love to think that HL3 development has been ongoing for years as a Valve "black" project destined for release in the near future! But for some reason, it just doesn't ring true. Summing up, I get the distinct impression that Newell is looking for gimmicks to sell (think Steam Machine, etc.) and simply isn't interested in the truism that creating a great game is 99% perspiration--and that's too bad--because regardless of the gimmicks that come to the fore and reach the market--that part of game developing will never change.