The tracking was fine, but the Vive wands' trackpads just weren't up to the task of keeping up with Half-Life: Alyx's complex and fast-paced movement options.
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Alas, the free version of VRidge only offers old Vive wand controllers for you to reconfigure, which you may recall was the main reason why I only gave the HTC Vive Elite Cosmos a measly one out of five in my best VR headset for Half-Life: Alyx article. I did try using a mouse and keyboard, but the latter often got confused with what was going on on my desktop, so using a gamepad was definitely the way to go here.
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The next step was figuring out how to map VR controls to my Xbox 360 pad. How do I hold it up to my face and use a controller? The solution? Put the Cardboard on the edge of my desk and sit on the floor. Of course, when the Google Cardboard also doesn't have any kind of head strap, this presented another problem. You can also use the simple wand controllers from mobile VR headsets like the Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream, but they only work with their respective headsets. All you have to do is slot your phone in and you're away.įortunately, VRidge supports a number of control schemes, including being able to use a gamepad, mouse and keyboard, and even another phone's touchscreen as a makeshift mobile controller. These days, it comes ready-made in a small cardboard box. Indeed, when Google first released it back in 2014, you even had to put it together yourself when it arrived, a bit like Nintendo's Labo toys for the Switch. It doesn't have any controllers or input controls, and the small press-in button on the top of the headset only re-centres you when you need re-orienting. In case you're unfamiliar with it, the Google Cardboard is really just a simple VR viewer when you get down to it. The problem was working out how to move and interact with its menu screens. While the Cardboard's rudimentary lenses often gave me a bit of double-vision at times, the game's opening screen was just as ominous and foreboding as it was on a proper VR headset like the Valve Index.
After downloading the VRidge app on my phone and its accompanying RiftCat app on my PC, the two linked together almost instantly over Wi-Fi (you can also do it by USB if you prefer) and I was right there, staring at the horrifying Valve man within minutes. Getting Half-Life: Alyx to run on my Cardboard wasn't a problem. Thanks to the magic of VRidge, an app that streams VR games on your PC to your phone screen, you can now enjoy all of today's best VR games for a fraction of the price. But who needs to spend upwards of 400 quid when the £12 / $15 Google Cardboard can also be used to play big SteamVR games like Half-Life: Alyx? I've been flitting between lots of different VR headsets over the last month or so, in my quest to find the best VR headset of all.