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How Garry’s Mod is prepping Half-Life 2 for the Oculus Rift

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Facepunch Studios have been showing off new player animations due for inclusion in Garry’s Mod’s next update. The animations expand the traditional camera-with-a-Colt FPS perspective to incorporate camera-arms, a camera-torso and camera-legs – just the ticket for a VR headset.

A Facepunch Studios staffer has uploaded a video of the results, as seen on a sprint through the underparts of City 17:

“[This is] more or less how it would look like with a VR headset (like the Oculus Rift),” said Facepunch’s Maxime Lebled. “They aren’t made with first person in mind, but they look pretty cool with it already”.

Future tweaks will begin with finger positioning, and Lebled is already musing ways to combat some of the “choppiness” visible in the video.

Lebled explained that Garry’s Mod’s player models relied on Half-Life 2: Deathmatch’s animation set until Gmod 13, at which point they were replaced with a “9-way blend system” – similar to that found in TF2. More recently, Lebled has been able to retrofit Valve’s movement macros into the sandbox mod.

It bears repeating: the above footage isn’t taken using Oculus’ lauded Rift VR headset. Rather, it’s an approximation of what Gmod might look like once Facepunch’s Rift dev kit arrives in the post.

Oculus Rift developer kits began shipping less than two weeks ago – though a Valve-madeTeam Fortress 2 VR mode is already in-game. Our Rob had a meander round Badwater with a headset glued to his face, and returned nauseous but happy.