Half-Life: Alyx has a built-in developer tool that allows you to play without a VR headset, using the traditional mouse and keyboard controller scheme, albeit in a limited and rather wobbly fashion, as you'll see in the video below the non-VR action. This was discovered by Tyler McVicker, the founder of Valve News Network, who stumbled upon the headless experience and ran a console command ("vr_enable_fake_vr_test") to display the player's "virtual" hands. This paves the way for a mod in development that could facilitate a smooth non-VR Alyx experience, or at least smoother than this clip. Maybe, just maybe... After all, Robin Walker, one of the programmers who worked on Half-Life: Alyx, has already anticipated the release of a non-VR mod, and is even waiting for this development. Because? Because he thinks it will illustrate exactly why Valve made the decision to produce Alyx for VR only, because people will realize exactly what's missing when you return the game to a standard mouse and keyboard shooter.
RV only
Valve has always said that Half-Life: Alyx is meant to be a VR experience only, with inherent elements and design decisions closely tied to the direction they've taken with the game. Trying to do it for both VR and non-VR players would have been too much of a commitment for VR players, was the argument. And it was quite a showcase for what VR can really do, and critics and critics have justified Valve's approach here. We call it an "authentic game changer that could only have been done in VR," no less. Of course, all of that doesn't stop many gamers who don't have VR hardware from being very disappointed that they won't be able to play the latest Half-Life game. And these disillusioned people are exactly the audience any potential mod would target. If such a mod comes along, of course, but the discovery of this development tool has apparently made the possibility of such a thing more likely. And perhaps it could happen sooner than it otherwise would have, since many of the necessary gubbins are apparently already in place within Alyx. Via PC Gamer