NewsHardwarePCHalf-LifeHalf-Life: AlyxValveSteam Frame
Half-Life: Alyx adds PC foveated rendering and a Steam Frame improvement
Valve's update adds a graphics option for supported PCs, with different requirements for NVIDIA and AMD cards. It also addresses crashes and Steam Frame image quality.
Half-Life: Alyx players on PC have a new graphics setting to try. Valve’s October 26 update adds foveated rendering for supported hardware. The company says it can improve rendering performance and recommends enabling headset eye tracking for the best results.
What it does and how to enable it
Foveated rendering keeps the focus area sharp while reducing rendering work around it. The guide linked by Valve explains that the setting is off by default. Open Performance settings, select the gear icon for Advanced Performance, then enable the new toggle.
The patch notes specify NVIDIA GTX 16xx or RTX 20xx series and above for DirectX. Supported AMD cards require launching the game with -vulkan. Eye tracking can move the focus area with your gaze, but it is not required to enable the setting itself.
There is no promised fixed frame-rate gain across PCs. The guide notes that Alyx uses dynamic resolution, so spare rendering capacity may also go toward a higher resolution rather than more frames per second.
Before thinking about a PC upgrade, it is worth checking what the new setting does on your system.
A Steam Frame improvement, too
When running natively on Steam Frame, the update adds stencil-buffer tagging to help improve reprojection quality, the image adjustment used to account for head movement. This builds on existing headset support rather than introducing it for the first time.
Valve also fixed several rendering crashes common in Workshop content and a problem that stopped the Gnome Alone achievement unlocking for some players.
Comments