If you're stuck inside, and longing to go outside, it's always possible to simulate the great outdoors. Or else you could simulate Half-Life's dystopian City 17. It's up to you. Either way, the HTC Vive Cosmos is currently pretty cheap, and yes, it'll work with Half-Life: Alyx.
The Microsoft Store is currently offering the Cosmos for AU$1,149, which is AU$150 cheaper than its usual recommended retail price. It tends not to be discounted too often, so it's worth investigating if you're keen to get into VR - especially since Valve still isn't selling its class-leading Index headset into Australia just yet.
This isn't to be confused with the more recent HTC Vive Cosmos Elite, which is decent but very pricey. But keep in mind that the Cosmos series has modular faceplates, meaning if you want upgrade to the Elite version it will in theory be possible to do so for around AU$300. The HTC Vive Cosmos boasts a 2880x1700 LCD display and "inside-out" tracking, which means you won't need a base station.
A note on affiliates: some of our stories, like this one, include affiliate links to online stores. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which help support our work evaluating components and games.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
The collective PC Gamer editorial team worked together to write this article. PC Gamer is the global authority on PC games—starting in 1993 with the magazine, and then in 2010 with this website you're currently reading. We have writers across the US, UK and Australia, who you can read about here.