Why the liquids in Half-Life: Alyx look so dang good

When Half-Life: Alyx patched in these shaders to make bottles look like they had liquid in them, people rightfully lost their minds. Because they look really, really good - like there's a real physics simulation involved. But there's not! So, let's figure out how developer Matt Wilde made these stellar liquid shaders.
0:00 The liquid in Half-Life: Alyx is ridiculously good
0:37 A brief history of LIQUIDS
1:34 Shaders are magic
3:02 How Matt started on Alyx
3:45 How the shader is made
6:08 Breaking bottles
6:17 Reflection and refraction
8:43 So-called "realism"
9:39 This shader is art!
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#halflifealyx

[@polygon]

If you wanna keep learning how Valve is good at stuff, Jenna made an EXCELLENT video about their level design that you must check out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hHjWl3iMediGias

[@RhizometricReality]

Should have included a texture on the inside bottle bottom

[@NecrochildK]

"They also use shaders. Everything does." Second Life is so old it still doesn't utilize them, at least not for creators. But SL is so old at this point.

[@RhizometricReality]

@@NecrochildK second life needs to move on to 3rd life all ready lol

[@NecrochildK]

@@RhizometricReality lol Definitely agree. The engine it's running on is ancient because they want to use their own instead of something like Unity.

[@RhizometricReality]

@@NecrochildK its a real shame we don't have a SnowCrash style Metaverse, especially with vr.

[@CastleBomb44]

He said it is magic. Case closed. Liquid is magic 1:42

[@thechosenone9361]

If cats are liquid and liquids are Magic, then cats are Magic!

[@takahashierik]

videogames are magic

[@Rabbit-the-One]

Hmm. Fair.

[@Rabbit-the-One]

@@thechosenone9361 no, not fair.

[@Rabbit-the-One]

@@takahashierik kinda. Half fair.

[@snickeringtortoise]

This is actually like, dangerously interesting

[@polygon]

That's what I like to hear...

[@MountainsOfSadness]

Other industry folks thought so too. A whole load of other tech artists tried to recreate the effect in their spare time. For example, this is Ryan Brucks breakdown: mobile.twitter.com/ShaderBits/status/1268968994247249923

[@DerekCooper_]

?

[@Psychol-Snooper]

Learning how games work is a double edged sword. As a dev I can play a game and see how things are working, and defect invisible objects, mistakes, shortcuts etc, but as a player I have to have a split personality to forget everything I know and enjoy someone else's game.

[@snickeringtortoise]

@@Psychol-Snooper Oh yeah, that makes sense. I assume there’s still some enjoyment in going ”Oh, that’s how they did that!” though.

[@callibones]

they should officially license the gamer liquid of the year so i can drink it

[@funkopop_ofdoriangray]

I would be so sad if I ended up not liking it then, I want to appreciate their hard work

[@RhizometricReality]

Forbidden drink

[@daSEGAfanatic]

Fallout 76 did something like that didnt they?

[@chocolatemetalmilk2685]

Yeah but who would find the perfect gamer liquid? We'd need someone to figure that out. Someone to... Unravel the secret of the perfect gamer liquid... If only

[@atheaus3917]

@@chocolatemetalmilk2685 His journey was long, let him rest now.

[@sw0rdhyd350]

Simone not knowing the color of red wine was killing me.

[@AbsoluteTravisT]

I love how she just demonstrated his work as well in that you can just make a black wine bottle and say it's wine but shining a light through it makes it red wine

[@polygon]

killed me too

[@Dylan-br6ue]

Im pretty sure its green

[@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks]

Look! *smash* Isn’t that… odd? Red wine… isn't red… at all! It's sort of… brown… brown and blue! I never noticed that… What are you staring at? Haven't you ever seen an ACCIDENT BEFORE? you’re fucking right I made a Leonard Bernstein reference in this comments section for a video about graphics programming

[@felixparker6053]

She does not drink... Vine...

[@kabobawsome]

I've noticed they blur the movement of the liquid line just slightly to make it LOOK like it's moving dynamically. So if you slosh the bottle, you almost can't tell it's a static line, even though you know it should produce a rolling wave. And that's just brilliant. I would have never thought to do that, it already looks real enough to just completely skip over suspension of disbelief, but you can TEST it and it mostly holds up.

[@polygon]

well THAT'S cool

[@randomcatdude]

Doesn't it have some curve to it? I recall hearing something about that in the Alyx Dev Commentary that goes over this particular shader.

[@Fopenplop]

i coulda sworn the plane was warping at least a little bit, but I don't have the game so I can't really test it

[@FarhadHakimov]

@@randomcatdude I'd chalk it up to optic illusion. Like when you hold a pencil by the end and wiggle it, it kinda looks like the pencil is actually wobbling.

[@ChezzyKnytt]

@@FarhadHakimov There is some distortion, using sine waves. Mentioned in the Alyx Dev Commentary.

[@myrasis]

i learned in art history about how rendering a clear glass of water accurately was some kind of milestone for artists, that's what i always think of when i see these bottles

[@mxpofficial3443]

Yeah. Its like when children finally understand that glass is not blue

[@JohnGottschalk]

Of course a painter has to purely put it down, whereas a 3D artist, can pull from a lot of 3D aspects in the world, and abuse and iterate on them.

[@MolecularMachine]

@@JohnGottschalk I can conceptualize accurately painting a glass of water. I've painted glass before; it's a simple but challenging exercise in noticing every shadow and reflection. All this math wizardry just scrambles my brains.

[@Jukajobs]

i remember hearing that a lot of artists would basically paint glasses and jars and stuff like that as kind of a way to show off that they were just really good

[@rachelrachel9152]

It's always so wild to remember that for many years the knowledge of how to draw 'accurately' like was literally unknown. Like there were points where nobody knew how to draw things in persepective. Not just that kids didn't get it, but NOBODY knew, always messes me up

[@travisgatlin536]

I'm a 3D artist that primarily makes prerendered assets. Liquid inside a bottle or glass is actually a pretty challenging thing to get right even with things like path and raytracing, let alone a rasterizing engine like that. It takes some real genius work to make an effect like that even work, and this guy has made it even work well.

[@TehBurek]

Did a lot of both offline and real-time graphics, can confirm. Dude really squeezed amazing bang-for-the-buck from this, it looks great AND it also performs well, as it must, it (still) being a minor element in a VR game. It's like figuring out how to make a sportscar that is at least 90% as good as the highest end brands, but costing only $100 to construct. I love it.

[@hundvd_7]

@@TehBurek This is the one thing I feel the video should have focused on. It being a shader means that there is pretty much _no_ performance impact. If it were an actual liquid simulation that looks this good, performance would drop to around 0.01 fps

[@deviantartguy0]

I found the smart people comments.

[@AwkwardDemon]

Being a chemical engineer, I get excited thinking about how best to simulate fluid flows. You can approach it from 2 ways: vector and tensor fields or attempting to simulate every particle in a fluid. These tricks game developers are using is super cool (and necessary since we haven't found a general solution to the navier-stokes equation). Great video, Simone! I'd love to see more on what's behind these realistic simulations.

[@polygon]

I would love to get more into that too! - Simone

[@Simon74]

I love it when the need for a simpler solution creates a better one in the end. I don‘t think CFD could look this good in a game even with infinite computing power.

[@nawdawg4300]

The reason these types of solutions are necessary goes beyond the fact that we don't have a general solution to the navier-stokes equation. The real limiting factor is processing power. You gotta remember games target 30/60 fps, and in each frame all of the game logic needs to be processed (ok not really ALL of it but that's irrelevant). Something like simulating every particle will never be possible in a video game. The reason being those kinds of simulations take more than 1/60th of a second to process. A lot of people don't really realize it but this kind of "algorithmic complexity" is a huge part of Computer Science. Algorithms that are too complex (or in other words take up too much time) are not very practical at a large scale. That's actually how cryptography works in CS. There are algorithms that can defeat different forms of cyrptography, but they can take hundreds of years to actually finish processing and therefore aren't practical.

[@daydream1nc]

Check out how Abzu animated all of the game's fish! It's done entirely with shaders

[@johnbotris8187]

"It's not really clever solutions to things, it's more like stupid solutions" software development in a nutshell

[@granite_planet]

Especially game development. "There was this complex problem that we couldn't really solve within our time/processing power requirements, so we built this terrible hack from chewing gum, shoestrings and particle effects. And hey, it passes casual observation!"

[@TigreXspalterLP]

Far more interesting is the Presidential Metro Train in Fallout 3’s Broken Steel DLC. It turns out it was easier to make the train car a piece of head armor and slap it onto an NPC than it was to make a working vehicle. The NPC (with train hat) can be spawned wherever it needs to be. All you see is the train car on the tracks, but under the surface is a person with a train on her head. There’s another trick when you actually board the train, and it’s almost as weird. Again, there aren’t physics for making a train car move in the Gamebryo engine, so you’re not actually on the train. Instead, the player is equipped with a piece of head armor that covers the field of view and looks like the inside of a train. Then a camera animation is played that makes it look like you’re on a moving train, but you really just have a helmet on

[@davescott7680]

@@TigreXspalterLP I mean, that doesn't surprise me as much as it should. Bethesdas engine is so dated and janky, it's as if the whole thing is held together with prayers and Dev tears at this point.

[@alfaaditya6357]

@@davescott7680 prayers and dev tears lmaooo

[@bigbodge]

@@granite_planet I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Im afraid not especially game development. Something you realise as a software dev is that the entire world is held together with string and duct tape and people that dont really know what they're doing, but know enough to make something work...most of the time...for now. That hacky gum and shoestrings (but probably not particle systems) are behind the worlds major banking and government systems as well, but they work...most of the time...for now

[@burningflurber]

i wonder how many new feral little tech artist babys this video is going to inspire...

[@burningflurber]

so much of graphics is lying about things that you think would be easy to represent and actually calculating things you think would be too much to deal with. learning how computers draw things is an inherently comedic endeavor.

[@susannam3923]

I feel so called out lmao I was just thinking I'm glad I chose computer science as a career path, I'm only starting out but making video games is so cool man

[@MJBella]

Polygon video team refuses to make anything other than absolute BANGERS.

[@JBCoops88]

Oops all bangers, indeed

[@edslushie570]

The wine glass really completes Simone's "crazy aunt" look. It's perfect.

[@fishmasmouse]

"It's not really a clever solution, it's a stupid solution." Never has the entire field of software development been summed up so perfectly.

[@henrygrant9650]

Matt must feel so appreciated to get an entire video about his work.

[@adamfalldorf1581]

Rightly so, it may be a small detail but it's one that I and many others not only noticed but took the time to stop and play around with.

[@hundvd_7]

Oh trust me, it's not just this one video. He's been noticed since that patch was applied to HL:A

[@arcknight_bk2o183]

@@hundvd_7 yep. Guys are just stuck on mainstream outlets to know otherwise.

[@meganellis5479]

I could listen to Matt and Simone discuss liquid for like at least two more hours, not comprehending a single thing about shaders but watching the liquid move around in the bottles like 👁👄👁

[@notAshildr]

I understand what they're talking about, and as someone currently studying this I wish they'd gone into more technical detail, but even I ended up just watching the liquid move around in the bottles like 👁👄👁

[@zeikjt]

@@notAshildr Apparently there's more info about this liquid shader if you listen to the Alyx Dev Commentary

[@notAshildr]

@@zeikjt I'll try to find that :) Thanks for letting me know

[@araisikewai]

Basically the regular approach to make wine bottle was to create 2 objects, the bottle with glass shader/material and then copy the bottle shape, make it smaller and cut the top to make the wine, and put in wine shader/material. But then animating the wine realistically would require Disney/Pixar unlimited resource, computing power and thousands of hours rendering to create, unfeasible for any real time rendering. That a single man managed to bypass all that and create 1 unique shader for 1 object is just pure revelation.

[@catlamp9894]

This video is just an excuse for Simone to drink wine and say it's for work

[@Neimonster]

"research"

[@Fopenplop]

@polygon bring back video game theatre

[@7asme669]

Liquid Snake : "I'm YOU. I'm your shadow."

[@khylle1]

God I love this weird magic arising from compulsiveness and boredom

[@powergannon]

The technical artists at Valve managed to make a VR game one of the best looking games out there. It’s hard to overstate how impressive that is.

[@ivyssauro123]

Exactly, if you look at other VR games and how heavy they are to run HL:A is a miracle

[@niks660097]

@@ivyssauro123 yeah, lighting and animations are better than most modern games, but at 90fps on a gtx 1060 on 2 2k screens lol, and it even looks good at low settings..

[@Kiloku2]

Is there a series for these more technically-oriented videos? If not, could this be the start of one? Game development is awesome, and the way the information was conveyed in this video was marvelously accessible to laypeople.

[@fapman4878]

Look up GDC talks. It's basically developers explaining how tech like this works, except an hour long.

[@jolanpiep]

To be honest, if you wanna get into the technical stuff, you should get into making it. There are plenty of Unreal and Unity shader tutorials out there.

[@user-iv4dt1yg9f]

This is great liquid content. Thanks, Simone.

[@Jacksongirard]

I think the vodka bottle in the underground section looks so SO good, I can't believe how much time I've spent looking at it

[@itssrhii]

queen of matching makeup to outfits

[@gsnedders_legacy]

Was literally just scrolling through the comments to make sure nobody else had said it. But damn. And it goes with the red/black wine too!

[@user-tt7uq9qj3r]

This video is fascinating and so well produced! I've been learning a lot about real-time signal processing recently, and the cleverness of this shader technique is inspiring

[@polygon]

Thank you so much! I was just completely starry-eyed when he was explaining it to me and I'm glad his cleverness comes through! - Simone

[@mathmatucla]

An explainer video that doesn’t over simplify, doesn’t misdefine industry terms, and is absolutely fascinating? Simone you nailed this!

[@melody3741]

She has what that game top ten channel doesnt. And i think you described it perfectly. She really seems like she cares, not like she is acting.

[@FKProds]

Right!

[@lauraeleven7417]

This video is about people jiggling bottles for 10 minutes and I am so entertained

[@benizok3621]

I just watched a 10 minute video about how someone rendered liquids that I’ve never drank in a game I’ve never played.

[@VarenRoth]

Sounds like life goals added to the list

[@avivaelena9143]

in a way i don't understand

[@aaron4820]

Okay it's official, this shader developer just said shaders are magic so no one is allowed to be angry at people for asking for shader help on forums by saying they are magic from now on.

[@wenscael2166]

Simone: "Ok listen... I need a bottle of whiskey to be budgeted for this video. Brian's gotten weirder stuff approved!"

[@ivyssauro123]

8:43 THIS, this is what (realistic) games are about to me, not an actual simulation of anything, but a really cool and convincing magic trick.

[@Stevonicus]

As Zoolander so wisely taught us, wetness is the essence of beauty. That's why liquids look so good.

[@JonathanSharman]

As someone who's dabbled in shader programming, the fact that he achieved such convincing results with just a fragment (pixel) shader is absolutely incredible to me.

[@portalpiggy]

lol I cant actually see the shader correctly because my pc is so terrible it can barely run the game at all

[@veno_net]

to be fair, even a brand new, but average gaming pc will have trouble running it. ALYX will probably be playable by most people in 5-10 years

[@Demmrir]

@@veno_net Are you kidding? Even mid-end PCs can run it amazingly well. You don't NEED to run it on Ultra--I'm literally unsure what it even adds. Running it on Low is still wonderful, and High is pretty much good enough for anyone and millions of people have the GPU power to do that.

[@ardenorcrush649]

@@Demmrir Average PC user doesn't have a mid-range, it has a low-range. Mid-range is in relation to available tech not in relation to population.

[@NickJerrison]

@@ardenorcrush649 I'd say a 1060 is pretty mid-range by now. Yet it runs Alyx flawlessly.

[@Danyaveltan]

Reminds me of how I've heard magic explained - "I'm doing stupid things to trick you into thinking I'm doing smart things"

[@hummingmostbird]

Can I just say how much I love that Simone matched her eyeliner to her sweater, just because she could? Because I love it a lot

[@oliviamanning2344]

listen, all these liquids look great, but let’s talk about how great SIMONE looks! the hair! the makeup! impeccable

[@Grrizo]

For anyone who's in 3D design with software like Blender, this is actually incredibly smart. Based on the fact that trying to do something with real-life liquid simulation means literally putting a nuke on your computer.

[@r2-dj420]

This was a really fucking cool video. I genuinely could watch these funky bottles all day

[@Psysium]

If anyone is interested in learning about different graphics simulations, the channel Two Minute Papers has some fascinating stuff. Like how honey is supposed to react when you drop something in it, or how it behaves when it's poured while hot. Or pulling a bunny through jelly. Plus, the host is super enthusiastic. Make sure to watch Jenna's other Half-Life video first though! 😁

[@359339]

10 hour edit of just shaking bottles in Half-Life Alyx please

[@judgese7s]

Half Life Alyx is one of the best games I played in VR. The immersion is just on a whole other level!

[@ShutItKyle]

"To simulate an apple pie, you dont first have to simulate the universe." - Carl Sagan

[@Elvalley]

That last bit is exactly what I was expecting. The more you look the further away from absolute, perfect realism it may seem to be, and it's why I think knowing when to stop (or knowing when to tell your underlings to stop) and consider it good enough is a top managerial skill.

[@qtep6335]

I can't believe I'm gonna buy a VR headset and Half-life: Alyx just to see how the bottles feel.

[@wparo]

You explain things very well. I enjoyed this even though I don't own a vr or even drink.

[@kevinwillems8720]

Ah, the making of point behind something mentioned in a Jacob Geller essay about half life Alex. This is top notch!

[@dandon1968]

what about the liquid's physical behavior of the liquid inside? not just the horizontal tracker, but also how the surface distort/shakes/displaced. i am most curious about that but it wasn't explained at all

[@funkopop_ofdoriangray]

I loooove to see Simone when I open a video.

[@SpacePrez]

"One of the things I find so cool about this shader is that it passes a mental threshold for realism even though its not actually based on any physics of how liquid behaves or looks, just Matt's obsessive observation of how it behaves and looks" What do you think Science IS? :P

[@occidere8437]

I really need to get around to playing Alyx...

[@BrentBlueAllen]

The one and only game that's pushing me towards buying a VR headset

[@butifarras]

Get around to buy the 1000 dollar index first lol

[@klurikon3004]

@@butifarras 200 $ Lenovo WMD headset here on a 1060 , no probs

[@coffin7904]

@@butifarras bought my rift CV1 for 300$ used and it's been treating me so fucking well. you dont need an index.

[@hmrdev-billnye8166]

@@butifarras you can get a Oculus Quest 2 for 300. Plus 30-40 Euro link cable and boom.

[@PeterSikachev]

Haha, thanks for mentioning me guys, that's the first official citation for my research work! :-D

[@inceptional]

It's the best liquid in a bottle in a video game I've ever seen.

[@TheInternetIsDeadToMe]

Really nice piece. The creative process is one of the most interesting parts of a game to me. It’s fascinating how a few visual tricks one on top of the other end with something that looks so awesome. Nice work Matt! Get this man a bottle of Red.

[@ma276]

i really love these behind the scenes videos where developers explain a cool thing they did, and the context around it is explained beautifully by the fine folks at polygon. thank you for the content!

[@Zepdos]

This is actually a really well put together and informative video, I definitely want more in this style that break down how tricks and effects like these in games work.

[@DancingWithChickens]

I love that he tested the bottles in the lobby of the hotel. I remember on my first play through I was chilling in that same room for about a half hour just playing with the bottles and testing the piano out in the corner

[@Dexemplu]

This video is great, genuinely insightful. You should more of these kinds of videos, focusing on a micro element of a game and getting the insight about the approach of achieving that element from the guy who made it. Really cool stuff

[@CamCommand99]

Stupid solutions, the mark of a programmer

[@Thetacomply]

"Perfectly rendered gamer liquid of the future" is clearly bathwater, because gamers were a mistake.

[@ardenorcrush649]

Bathing was the real mistake.

[@schillingspree49]

This was an awesome piece Jenna! Really exciting creativity on display here. More of this content please!

[@weedlebacaws8613]

Server: "Red, white, or rosé?" Simone: "Uh, black?"

[@hetajoy9104]

This video helped me be incredibly less nervous and way more excited for my 3D Texture mapping and Digital Lighting course next semester! Thank you so much :D

[@Darleer]

I played with shaders a little in college and absolutely fell in love with it. Almost became a shader programmer myself but couldn't find a job at that time so I ended up doing programming still, but in a different industry. This video is amazing Simone!

[@explanoit]

I appreciate these technical videos. It could go even deeper and I'd still be interested. Thanks!

[@rjs3493]

These video essays explaining cool aspects of video games that I don't often think about while playing are some of the best content that the polygon youtube channel puts out imo. And while I love this type of content from everyone on the video team I just KNOW the second Simone shows up that I'm about to become obsessed with the incoming video game mechanic for at least a week. Thanks for giving me an excuse to boot up every single game I own and ignore all story and quest options in favor of staring at all the liquids!!!!

[@a52productions]

What I want to know is how he got the liquid boundary so good, how it moves and sloshes above and below the waterline when disturbed. That's physics right there, you can't just observe your way out of it

[@MrOgMonster]

From what I've read I think it's a blurred sine wave based with an amplitude based on an agitation value.

[@malicoate13]

I love seeing content like this! Although I'm no game designer, this makes me think about how I can similar ideas in my own design and video work. Super cool stuff coming out of Polygon recently!

[@shockofthenew]

Absolutely loved this video. I know next-to-nothing about the technical side of game design, though I do find it very interesting. This was so well-presented I felt like I could just about follow along, so it was satisfying to watch but also sparked my curiosity and left me wanting to learn more. Great job!

[@leitecunha]

Everything said is pretty standard. The impressive thing in this shader is the liquid line moving like it was physics simulated, it doesn't stay a horizontal line related to the bottle, it warps and wobbles... aaaand they didn't talk about it. Nice job Polygon.

[@randomcatdude]

... yeah, that really frustrated me too

[@hedwyn8137]

I love these kind of videos Polygon have been putting out, you guys are killing it!

[@eiyuuousubs]

utterly gorgeous realism on what seems like a small part of a game... i love the effort put into it, never adding the patch wouldnt have lost them reviews, but its such an amazing detail with so much challenge behind it

[@takahashierik]

"Why did you buy so much booze Matt? That's it, you're going to AA" "It's for research, I swear!"

[@Undeadwolfy_]

This is great. I really love this video and the way it's explained. Would love to see more like this.

[@RyanGatts]

Thanks for making this video :D Writing shaders like this is literally my job, and it's nice to see a good public-facing explanation of some of the thought that goes into this sort of work. Remember that this sort of attention also goes into eyes, hair, blood smoke, fire, leaves, mud, snow, and fog; as well as the basic math behind how in-game lights and cameras work (and a whole lot more besides). Shader artist literally touch every single thing you see in a modern game.

[@Normanette]

Matt: When you start looking through glass, things go a bit weird. Simone: *aggressively chomping on the bottle*

[@moev29]

This was fascinating. Great topic, Simone!

[@tientam779]

Love this! More content like this showing what goes into game dev and how its done!

[@haliku9705]

I love this deep dive polygon videos. All of these techniques I never even knew existed!

[@cogspace]

What an incredibly clever solution to this problem! The fact that this is all just happening on the surface of the bottle using shader magic with the liquid NOT EVEN EXISTING as a mesh is just astonishing.

[@rebus_01]

It’s all gamer girl bath water

[@intestinalobstructiongamin157]

for all you thirsty bois

[@funkopop_ofdoriangray]

Always has been.

[@beezymeech]

selling gamer girl bath water extract 20k

[@deceseze]

i'd drink alyx's bath water

[@2clam4jam67]

I find it really funny that they really went “Matt spent quarantine looking at bottles of alcohol for hours and hours”

[@catlord8568]

This has helped me take an entirely new angle on my recreation of this for my game. Thank you so much! Besides for this fact, I genuinely enjoyed the video!

[@polygon]

Ay, glad you found it useful!!

[@IGameChangerI]

"You could go on forever" It will be the work of many a lifetime

[@aaronkimberley2008]

This was a really fascinating video Simone.

[@DominicGo]

It’s insane how this was accomplished with shaders, this is **peak** game dev

[@FebruaryGhost]

This video was so cool! Those liquids look amazing, it’s interesting to know how it was done!

[@Astfgl]

Great job on this video, Simone. Shader programming is always an advanced topic that's hard to explain in layman's terms, but I'm glad to see you didn't dumb it down to the point where it gets inaccurate. Yes the story is simplified somewhat, but it still gets the point across very well.

[@andreasotto1977]

I think it's amazing how much roomscale VR changes the perspective in games (besides the obvious visual one). I mean, who would have thought shaking bottles would become such an important and immersive detail? Also, I don't remember playing any game before where I spent so much time just looking around and "touching" things. For years I've been using VR googles for sim racing only and wasn't even interested in roomscale gaming, but titles like Alyx and Budget Cuts were massive game changers. I hope there will be more VR based titles like these in the future!

[@NimjaIV]

Excellent editing and humour in this one!

[@svenbtb]

This was awesome, Simone makes such cool stuff!

[@Jesse__H]

Good stuff, Simone. Very interesting! Cheers 🍻

[@StraveTube]

Never have I been more thrilled to have a bunch of unused liquor sitting in my kitchen. Now excuse me while I shake these bottles and stare at them for a while.

[@BenMclean007]

This is a great video, well done Simone and Polygon!

[@AreYouShore464]

This was SO interesting, I'd be really happy with more mechanics videos

[@coey2]

SIMONE WITH THE GOOD CONTENT!! I didn't know I wanted to know about this but now this is the only thing I'll be thinking about for the next week

[@disky01]

Wonderful piece, Simone! Thank you!

[@SunnyOst]

That's an amazing work! Hats off

[@ryanmac1228]

Just got to the part where he called it a stupid solution, I think he says this because if he had a lot more time he could make something highly more advanced. The problem was obviously time as they said in the beginning so with the time he had I think the solution is pretty clever.

[@plumune1705]

it's probably more to do with limited computing power. after all, this was after the game had already shipped.

[@nathandts3401]

The smart solution is actually to get complex fluid dynamics implemented in a way that people can actually run them without a supercomputer.

[@ryanmac1228]

Yeah, time, money, and computing power limit what we could with video games. Take out the money factor, since half-life alyx is probably one most funded games or at least valve, so I wonder if the time factor was extended by putting him on when they first started making the textures and shaders. I think that plus the time of the delay would have allowed him to get some better optimization with about the same look or better looking liquid with about the same optimization. Trying to make anything more complex as Nathan mentioned would need more computing power so optimization is always a big factor to make these super high end games run. *cough* cyberpunk *cough*

[@wrOngplan3t]

Hard not to notice those amazing bottles in HL:A! Very interesting video, didn't know that's how it was done. Amazing work! He's right, shaders are magic.