Gaming communities have been engaged in discussions about Half-Life: Alyx being partly playable without a VR headset for the past month or two. The team behind the NoVR modification project has, as of late week, announced that the game's story experience - from start to finish - is totally VR free. This news should satisfy many excited fans who have been anticipating Half-Life: Alyx's campaign being displayed on the small/medium screen. Previous entries in the long running Half Life series have always been two-dimensional traditional monitor affairs.

The GB_2 Development Team cheerfully introduces its latest iteration of NoVR: "This is our biggest update yet and we have no plans on slowing down! With thousands playing Half-Life: Alyx NoVR we are happy to announce our largest update yet! As the titles state the entire game can now be played from start to finish, with the Gravity Gloves fully implemented along with combine fabricators providing weapon upgrades. Also since we are now updating the final parts of the game there may be spoilers! We will do our best to not spoil anything while ensuring we communicate these late game areas have been updated along with their gameplay mechanics."

GPU-accelerated physics is turning out to be the one part of specifications AMD is yearning for. One of NVIDIA's most profitable acquisitions in recent times, has been that of Ageia technologies, and its PhysX middleware API. NVIDIA went on to port the API to its proprietary CUDA GPGPU architecture, and is now using it as a significant PR-tool apart from a feature that is genuinely grabbing game developers' attention. In response to this move, AMD's initial reaction was to build strategic technology alliance with the main competitor of PhysX: Havok, despite its acquisition by Intel.

In the upcoming Game Developers Conference (GDC) event, AMD may materialize its plans to bring a GPU-accelerated version of Havok, which has till now been CPU-accelerated. The API has featured in several popular game titles such as Half Life 2, Max Payne II, and some other Valve Source-based titles. ATI's Terry Makedon, in his Twitter-feed has revealed that AMD would put forth its "ATI GPU Physics strategy." He also added that the company would present a tech-demonstration of Havok technology working in conjunction with ATI hardware. The physics API is expected to utilize OpenCL and AMD Stream.

On the 17th of November, Valve Software celebrated the 10th anniversary of the game that pretty-much made the company what it is, Half Life. Valve used the simple 3D first-person shooter genre, focused heavily on the gameplay elements to churn out an awesome game of its time. With the introduction of the Source game engine, Valve made additions to the franchise with Half Life 2 (HL2), HL2: Episode 1 and HL2: Episode 2.

While the company itself could be working on another addition, an independent community-driven group sought to commemorate the 10th anniversary, by remaking the original Half Life using the Source engine. This is not to be confused with the simple Source-engine port Valve created in the form of Half Life: Source. The game is to be called Black Mesa: Source, which is comes in the form of a Half Life 2 modification. The levels, characters, graphics and physics get a refresh to the latest Source has to offer. The game is set for release in 2009. The Black Mesa: Source team has released its official trailer that has been posted on YouTube here. To know more about Black Mesa: Source, visit its home page.