The SteamVR software has received a new update that allows us to configure the limits of our room and the space to move, in addition to adding support for direct mode in Oculus Rift, which still does not work well at all.
It seems that the next few months we are going to see a few updates to prepare the landing of HTC Vive and Lighthouse this Christmas, and the first step is a tool that will allow us to configure the limits of our room. SteamVR Room Setup is a program that we can find if we navigate to the SteamVR folder, and it allows us to configure the physical limits of our room. From what we have seen, it gives us the feeling that the Chaperone collision warning system could also work even if we don’t have Lighthouse, since we can manually define our sitting position and space limits.
The update also improves support for Lighthouse base stations, although that’s something developers with a kit will have to try out. It has also updated the tool VR Composer, the equivalent to the layers of Oculus, which is not yet compatible with the SDK 0.6, but it seems that it will be only a matter of time, since support for direct mode on Oculus Rift has improved, in fact the screenshot of the application Room Setup we have taken with the DK2 in direct mode. The virtual reality mode of Steam has also undergone a facelift, and it starts in direct mode on the DK2 showing a mirror in mono and without distorting on the monitor, as you can see in this image.
They still have to improve the support, since we noticed some instability in the image of the Oculus Rift, as if vertical synchronization did not work or as if there was something judder. Valve’s games also don’t work yet in direct mode, if we run them we are left with the Steam menu on the Oculus Rift and the game image on the monitor. We assume that, in addition to improving SteamVR, Valve will have to update the games to support the new SDK functionalities. We hope that they will soon be updated to the Oculus SDK 0.6 and that we will be able to get an idea in the coming months of the definitive operation of the Steam platform in virtual reality mode.
