Some of you may remember the Portal-themed VR demo Valve flaunted around last year, and maybe some of you were lucky enough to actually try it. Now Valve has released a snippet of the demo on Steam as a program to determine whether or not your computer is fully VR-capable. Some code-diggers have looked through an earlier version of the performance test, and found a hidden treasure trove of weirdo early-phase VR demos based on other previous Valve games, as well as new models and textures.
A selection of the demos include a mish-mash amalgamation of Aperture Science areas, complete with a jittering Atlas:
The skeleton of a Left 4 Dead map:
And finally, a bizarre, disquieting, Salvador Dali-esque landscape created with Half-Life materials and intended to be some kind of shooting gallery:
As detailed in these ValveTime forum posts, the program also contains a large amount of new models and textures, most based on the aformentioned games. There’s an updated, more complex model of Half-Life 2’s Dog, and previously unseen high-quality textures for a playable character named “Retired Engineer,” which are in a directory named L4D3. Make your own assumptions.
Sure, this doesn’t prove that new installments in these series are in development, especially considering most of these assets are from the older games, but it doesn’t disprove it either. If nothing else, these demos show that Valve is at least toying with the option of bringing old franchises into the VR realm, and honestly, launching with the third installment of any of their well-known franchises would do wonders for their VR sales. After all, those Left 4 Dead items are looking pretty dang good in this Source 2 engine.
