When Half-Life: Alyx was released, it had one of the most interesting VR experiences ever patched onto it not long after: the ability to see the liquid moving in bottles. One of the game developers, Matt Wilde, explained how he was able to create such a vivid experience in a world that was dominated by VR.

At the very beginning of quarantine back in March of 2020, Half-Life: Alyx was released to the public on VR. Valve had been working on the game for some time and it released to positive reviews and plenty of people purposefully going out to buy VR headsets to play the game. Something that was added in after the fact, however, was the ability to see liquid moving inside bottles in the game, and there's a solid reason as to why - and how - that happened.

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Matt Wilde, a VFX developer for Valve, said recently in an interview that they wanted to launch the game with the effect in it but didn't have the time, so they launched it without it, patching it not long after. To make the liquid appear in the bottles, Matt studied how the bottles reacted to light and volume in his own home during quarantine, before using that same research and developing that into the game, adding shaders to the bottles, specifically pixel shaders, which tells the game program how to look, and what every single pixel to look like. Technically, there isn't actually anything inside the bottles, but from the outside, it seems that liquid is flowing back and forth.

Matt even hung out in the lobby of the hotel at the beginning of the game to test the bottles, and see how they would look. Matt went on to say that it wasn't really a clever solution, it was more like a "stupid" solution to things while still being "magical" to see, and that's why he enjoyed doing it so much. 

The game itself has done very well both commercially and critically, winning the 2020 VR Game of the Year Award at the fourth annual VR Awards. Whether these wins had anything to do with Matt's contributions to the game, no one will know. But it is certainly interesting to hear how such a cool effect in a game came to be.

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Half-Life: Alyx is available to purchase on both Microsoft Windows and Linux.

Source: Matt Wilde