Half-Life: Alyx update adds liquid to bottles and it looks good enough to drink

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Because who doesn't want to shake a wine bottle around in VR

Half-Life: Alyx
(Image credit: Valve)

The latest 1.4 update for Half-Life: Alyx has just been released and its biggest highlight is the addition of liquid in bottles with incredibly realistic looking fluid physics. 

You can shake the bottles around in VR, and see the liquid slosh about in various alcoholic bottles much like it would in reality. It looks so good, in fact, that you can just imagine it quenching your thirst in this virtual world in between all of the survival action in City 17.

Valve's visual effects developer Matthew Wilde worked on the new feature that was added in the latest update and posted some footage showing off the liquid in motion on Twitter. The short clip shows various wine bottles being shaken at different angles to demonstrate how the liquid reacts to your movements in a very realistic way. I can just imagine how fun it is to spend far too long messing around with every bottle you come across and shaking and sloshing the boozy beverages to your heart's content. 

Wilde also posted another video that shows how the liquid's fluid movement also takes into consideration changes in gravity. The way the light catches on the bottles and shines through the liquid is really very impressive. 

Outside of the sloshing bottle of fun times, the update also adds a variety of quality of life fixes and UI improvements. The UI now appears faster when returning to the main menu screen, and improvements have also been made to the addon management section. Subtitles have been added for Brazilian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese, as well as several fixes and features for the Half-Life: Alyx workshop that enables you to find addons created by the community. 

You can see the rest of the update notes right here. 

If you're jumping into the VR adventure, here are all the Half-Life: Alyx tips you need to help you survive in City 17.

Heather Wald
Heather Wald
Evergreen Editor, Games

Heather Wald is the Evergreen Editor, Games at GamesRadar+. Her writing career began on a student-led magazine at Bath Spa University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in English literature. Heather landed her first role writing about tech and games for Stuff Magazine shortly after graduating with an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. Now with almost seven years of experience working with GamesRadar+ on the features team, Heather helps to develop, maintain, and expand the evergreen features that exist on the site for games, as well as spearhead the Indie Spotlight series. You'll also see her contribute op-eds, interview-led features, and more. In her spare time, you'll likely find Heather tucking into RPGs and indie games, reading romance novels, and drinking lots of tea.