You can play Half-Life: Alyx without VR glasses using a handy new mod

rockpapershotgun.com:

Right from the start, modders tried to make Valve's virtual reality shooter Half-Life: Alyx work without needing VR glasses. Now another such mod has reached the point of Alyx being fully playable from start to finish on a regular monitor with keyboard and mouse. This new mod looks more polished than some others, and claims it's the "easiest to use and most flexible" of the lot. I'm not too interested in a VRless Alyx but I'm sure it's welcome news to some.

The Half-Life Alyx NoVR mod has been in "early access" for a few weeks and, following Sunday's update, now offers the whole game playable from start to finish without donning even a singular cybermonocle. Keyboard, mouse, and monitor is all you need. Oh, and a PC. The mod is still a work-in-progress with bugs and missing features, and the devs plan to work on those across the year.

You can download Half-Life Alyx NoVR from ModDB. Then simply unzip the files to your game folder, fiddle with Alyx's Steam launch options, and away you go.

Several other mods have previously made Alyx playable without VR goggles. Going by what some players have said, this one is perhaps a pretty good implementation? Though the goggmod which most interested me was one released in March 2020, one week after Alyx's launch—and right as covid-19 was ramping up. At the time, that mod's creator explained:

"I made this mod for myself so that I could play and experience Half-Life Alyx before my death (If Corona Virus happens to me), and for those of you that fear that they might not live long enough to be able to buy a VR headset and play the game."

And that little time capsule of a story illustrates why I always read mod readme files.

Valve had always expected people to mod the VR out of Alyx, but