Someone ported a scene from Half-Life: Alyx to Quest 3, and we tried it out
UPDATEApril 8, 2025:
The article has been updated with numerous details and quotes from the developer, and rewritten from scratch.
A developer has ported the opening scene of Half-Life: Alyx to Meta Quest 3. MIXED tried it out and talked to the developer.
Boris Novikov presented an impressive project about two weeks ago: He ported the famous opening scene of Half-Life: Alyx from Source 2 to the Unity engine and optimized it for Meta Quest 3. A three-minute YouTube video shows the result in action.
"The main thing I wanted to see was how high the resolution and quality of textures Quest 3 can handle. And I was pleasantly surprised," writes Novikov in a written exchange with MIXED.
"After optimizing the graphics settings, baking lighting, and occlusion culling, I was able to achieve an acceptable level of performance of 36-72fps using 2x MSAA, 1.0 resolution scaling, with the depth buffer enabled for the volumetric fog effect and full res (2k-4k) PBR textures and 2k real-time shadows," Novikov writes.
How this unusual project came about
Boris Novikov, who also goes by the nickname "dnnkeeper" (check out his Github), describes himself as a "self-taught and self-motivated developer". He started working with Unity around 2014, developed mobile games as a freelancer, and was part of an AR startup. Currently, Novikov is working on a "metaverse-type project" for a small company.
During the pandemic, he became passionate about Half-Life: Alyx and PC VR. He was critical of the triumph of mobile VR games because the graphics became secondary.
"With each new version of Quest, I wondered how close we were to the capabilities of PCVR. Can Quest 3 already match the capabilities of a 2016 PC capable of running Alyx? What compromises can be made to achieve the same level of immersion on mobile VR? After all, not only hardware is evolving, but software is also evolving: new optimization tricks and new technologies for improving graphics are emerging," says Novikov.
Rumors about Valve's new VR headset, which could be standalone like Meta Quest, inspired the developer to experiment with porting parts of Half-Life: Alyx to Quest 3 and "prove to myself and others that mobile chips are already capable of approaching the level of immersion that impressed me in 2020".
Half-Life: Alyx on Quest 3 - First impressions
If you want to try out the port, you can find the download link in the comments of Novikov's YouTube video. MIXED tried it out and recorded a separate video of it (below).
According to Meta's performance metrics tool, the application runs at a stable 72 frames per second, but for some reason it doesn't feel quite as smooth. The resolution is a bit on the lower end, and some effects and shaders have been simplified. Many animated elements and interaction options have also been removed to ensure a smoother experience. Asynchronous Spacewarp is not enabled, so theoretically there is still some room for improvement. Overall, the port captures the mood of the opening scene and renders it reasonably well, though it doesn't quite match the quality of the original PC VR experience.
Despite its limitations, the ported scene is an impressive proof of concept and shows how far mobile chips have come since the release of Half-Life: Alyx five years ago. As a reminder: In March 2020, there was only the first Oculus Quest, running on a 2017 smartphone chip.
"All the technical solutions used in this amazing scene do not seem to go far beyond the capabilities of modern mobile chips, and the next technological generation of mobile VR devices will be able to deliver graphics at the level of Alyx at a high frame rate, and combined with eye-tracking technology, can achieve comparable clarity," predicts Novikov.
The developer provided MIXED with a detailed technical description of the steps required for this port. Due to its size and Novikov's intention to publish it in a separate blog post, we will not publish it here.
Novikov is considering porting missing elements such as the interaction system and animations next, but says that these tasks no longer hold much technical interest for him and that he will probably move on to other projects.
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