SteamVR News

We are thrilled that over the past four years developers have released more than 4000 OpenVR titles on Steam, supporting all major PC VR headsets.



The challenge we as an industry have faced with many of these titles is that for developers targeting multiple VR platforms, it requires extra time and effort to build polished applications that work across SDKs. In order to solve this and support the next generation of VR applications, we are moving forward to the OpenXR API.

OpenXR was created with the goal to enable engines and developers to target a single non-proprietary SDK, easing the friction in creating polished VR experiences. Valve has worked closely with VR hardware vendors, game engine developers, and graphics hardware providers to develop this new API and we believe it represents a big step forward in cross-vendor application support.

As a result, we expect new features on SteamVR to appear on the OpenXR side, rather than as new OpenVR APIs, and we want to outline exactly what that means for both developers and users.

First, it does not mean that OpenVR support is going away. OpenVR applications will continue to work not just on hardware that exists today, but also on the headsets of tomorrow. This is a key strength of the PC ecosystem and one that we intend to fully support with existing OpenVR applications.

We have been working with engine developers to ensure that OpenXR is well supported in the major game engines.

Epic has made exciting progress on this front with Unreal. The recently released Unreal Engine 4.24 includes built-in OpenXR support, and it's just a checkbox away.

On Unity, the latest SteamVR Unity Plugin (beta) supports Unity XR for rendering and SteamVR Input for controller processing, currently via the OpenVR API. We intend to continue development of this plugin in the push towards OpenXR.

The open source community, including Blender and Godot, have begun adopting the OpenXR API as well, and are making good progress in their implementations.

OpenXR support is now available in SteamVR Beta, and we would love to have developers try it out and give us feedback. You can find out more information about that here.

Thanks for coming on this journey with us. We're excited to see where this next chapter in VR takes us.

SteamVR 1.13 introduces a new experimental feature for Valve Index users, "Room View 3D".

Room View 3D uses computer vision techniques developed by Valve, Arcturus Industries, and Occipital to present a more accurate representation of your environment.

To enable this functionality, select Room View: "3D" from Settings -> Camera.





This functionality is rapidly evolving, so we want to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Expect to see more experiments over the coming months.

If you are interested in contributing to virtual reality and computer vision on Steam, Valve and Arcturus are hiring!

Valve is excited to announce our current and expanding support for OpenXR, the new industry-wide open standard for VR & AR.

Thanks to The Khronos Group and the extensive hard work of OpenXR's many members (AMD, ARM, Epic, Facebook, Google, HTC, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Unity, Valve, and many more) VR now has a consolidated API to enable developers to bring universal VR support to their applications.

With OpenXR, for the first time, developers will be able to build their content in a way that will allow them to span the myriad types of hardware and software platforms.

We think this is an extremely important and exciting step forward for the VR industry.

[h2]What does this mean for me as a developer?[/h2]

Valve is releasing initial support for the current 1.0.9 OpenXR release now, to enable developers to begin work implementing OpenXR applications that work with SteamVR, but it is not yet enabled for broad general use.

[h2]How do I get access to this developer preview?[/h2]

To get access to the OpenXR Developer Preview, opt-in to the SteamVR Beta.

1. Right click on SteamVR in your Steam library and select Properties
   
2. Click on the Betas tab
   
3. Pick "beta - SteamVR Beta Update" from the list
   

Steam will update SteamVR to download the beta, and from that point on you can run SteamVR like you normally would.

[h2]What does Valve's definition of initial support entail?[/h2]

Our definition of initial support is that SteamVR is currently passing 95% of conformance tests. This means now is the time to start testing things. If you run into any issues trying to use OpenXR with SteamVR we would love to hear about them in the OpenXR forum.

[h2]What are the current limitations of this release?[/h2]

• SteamVR supports at most one projection layer, and that layer must be the first layer specified in xrEndFrame. This restriction will be removed before a full release of support for this API.
  
• SteamVR's OpenXR implementation supports D3D11 and D3D12 (added 1.13.4) on Windows, and OpenGL (added 1.13.6) and Vulkan on both Windows and Linux. Support for D3D12 on Windows is on the way.
• Editing bindings for OpenXR applications is not supported. (This limitation will be removed before a full release of support for this API.)
  
• SteamVR supports the following OpenXR extensions:
  
  • XR_KHR_D3D11_enable ( Windows only )
    
  • XR_KHR_D3D12_enable ( Windows only. Added in 1.13.4. )
    
  • XR_KHR_opengl_enable ( Added in 1.13.6. )
    
  • XR_KHR_vulkan_enable
    
  • XR_KHR_visibility_mask
    
  • XR_KHR_win32_convert_performance_counter_time ( Windows only )
    
  If you are expecting widespread support for a specific KHR or EXT extension and intend to use it in your project, please tell us about it in the OpenXR forum.
  

[h2]Did we miss anything? Have further feedback?[/h2]

Let's chat over here in the OpenXR forum.

Today’s update includes a number of bug fixes and system performance improvements.

[h2]Full Update Notes[/h2]

SteamVR:

• Fixed Vive Pro audio control buttons.
  
• Fixed render model loading on paths with non-ASCII UTF-8 characters in the path.
  
• Fixed Windows Mixed Reality controllers missing textures or models.
  
• Fixed intermittent bug with Vulkan games on AMD where images fail to render in the HMD.
  
• Fixed status bar icons being stretch on two-line dashboard overlay titles.
  
• Fixed a rare vrwebhelper crash.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where production Index HMDs could incorrectly show a "prototype hardware" warning.
  

SteamVR Dashboard:

• Selecting the Play Area settings used to force chaperone bounds to be visible. Now it does again.
  

Lighthouse:

• Fix a case where turning on an additional tracked object while playing could lead to the world becoming tilted.
  

Oculus:

• Fix for application performance activating ASW.
  
• Improved reporting in the SteamVR mini-perf graph (orange = reprojected frame, yellow = ASW active, red = frame took three or more display intervals).
  
• Rendering throttled to 10Hz when headset is not worn (before going idle completely).
  

SteamVR has been updated with the following change.


SteamVR:

• Fixed Steam crash when starting SteamVR on Windows 7.