It has been 11 days since SteamVR has been updated, and now they have added a completely new system-level interface for everyone who has an HTC Vive headset (Spoiler: Not many).
Although Oculus Rift is much more widely used VR headset at this current moment, support was first added to HTC Vive, leaving other headsets waiting outside.
This new dashboard completes the most basic VR tasks like opening game’s information, guides, news, achievements. In the future Steam is planning to add even easier access to system-level features and to content while you are in VR.
As SteamVR is an open Kit, you can build your own overlay by checking out the latest API updates and an Overlay Sample.
Here are all the latest changes to SteamVR Beta:
Dashboard:
- Added the Dashboard, a system-level interface designed for quick access and simple interaction while in VR. Press the System Button on a SteamVR controller to activate it. (That’s the tiny black button on Vive Developer Edition hardware.)
- Added automatic activation of the SteamVR Overlay when VRMonitor starts, for presentation in the Dashboard. (This requires the next Steam Client Beta which will be available later this week.)
- Applications will now get the event VREvent_InputFocusCaptured when the Dashboard is made visible and VREvent_InputFocusReleased when it is hidden. Applications can also call IVROverlay:: IsDashboardVisible() to see if the Dashboard is active. When it is, application developers are encouraged to hide anything they are drawing that is attached to the controllers to avoid conflicting with the controllers that are drawn by the Dashboard itself. If appropriate, games should also pause gameplay (but not rendering) while the Dashboard is visible.
- Note: Dashboard activation is currently limited to Vive Developer Edition hardware. Support for activating and controlling the dashboard from Oculus devices is in the works.
Compositor:
- Fixed scene rendering upside down on some apps.
VR Monitor:
- Changed VR Monitor so that Quit will now cause a Quit event to be sent to all running OpenVR applications. Applications should respond to that event by either exiting or by calling VR_Shutdown. Applications that don’t quit after five seconds are killed. This behavior can be removed by adding -nomaster to the command line options for SteamVR in the properties.
- Added iconography to colored status indicators, for colorblind users.
- Improved Room Setup window, which can now be zoomed, panned and rotated, and can now measure distances and toggle visibility of certain elements.
- Changed <More Help> in the Status Report to link to a real website, but there is no content yet.
- Added logging files to System Report.
Room Setup:
- Updated Safe-Zone to include a choice of 3 specific sizes: 4x3ft, 6×4.5ft, and 8x6ft. Room Setup visuals show that this is a walking bound while including a 2ft horizontal reaching buffer on each side above waist height. Size can be cycled by pressing the pad or using the main menu button.
- Changed Reset to default the Safe-Zone to the smallest size and set hard bounds 2ft away from each edge.
API:
- Fixed TrackedDevicePose_t vVelocity and vAngularVelocity to have the correct values. (Previously they were reporting 0,0,0).
Lighthouse:
- Reduced CPU consumption of lighthouse related threads by 50%.
