Planned Release Date: 2026

About This Software

See Your Real Hands in VR

TrueHands brings your real hands and arms into any SteamVR experience. It renders your hands and forearms as an overlay that blends seamlessly into your VR view, letting you see exactly where your hands are on your steering wheel, flight stick, throttle, or any other control. The mixed reality effect is produced by pairing TrueHands with a pass-through capable headset and a 3rd party chroma key solution such as Virtual Desktop* or ALVR*.

How It Works

TrueHands renders your tracked hands as a solid colored overlay inside SteamVR. Virtual Desktop's* or ALVR's* built-in chroma key feature then removes that color and replaces it with your real headset camera pass-through, creating a natural mixed reality effect where your hands appear directly in your VR world.

Features

• Full finger tracking with natural hand movement (controllers also supported, with limited finger poses)

• Forearm rendering with estimated positioning

• Two glove styles; slim and default (courtesy of Valve and SteamVR), with custom model support planned

• Adjustable hand scale to match your real hand size

• Custom chroma key color; set any color that works best with your setup

• Per-hand position and rotation calibration

• Easy mirrored calibration; adjust one hand and the other mirrors automatically

• Save your settings with one click, automatically restored every time you launch

• Works alongside any SteamVR game with no game modifications required

Compatible With

TrueHands works great in any seated or stationary VR experience where seeing your real hands adds immersion:

• Sim racing titles

• Flight simulators

• Space simulators

• Any VR experience where hand visibility matters

Enhance Your Setup

TrueHands pairs naturally with other VR overlay tools for the ultimate mixed reality sim racing or flight sim experience. Tools like OpenKneeboard* can display your physical dashboard, button boxes, cockpit controls and steering wheel as overlays in VR, complementing TrueHands' hand visibility to give you a complete view of your real world controls and environment. With SimHub* you can even add rotation to your steering wheel overlay!

Native integration with play space pass-through for steering wheels, shifters, and cockpit elements is planned for a future TrueHands update, allowing your real equipment to appear directly in VR without needing additional tools.

Requirements

• Any SteamVR compatible Headset (no mixed reality effect)

  • Or, for the mixed reality effect, a headset additionally compatible with Virtual Desktop's* or ALVR's* pass-through feature

• Virtual Desktop* or ALVR* for the mixed reality effect (available separately from their respective owners/stores)

• SteamVR

• A VR-Capable Windows PC

Setup (Reading the Manual is encouraged!)

Getting started takes just a few minutes:

• Get your headset ready

• Configure your preferred PCVR streaming app (hand tracking and correct chroma key passthrough color preferred, if available).

  • If Using Virtual Desktop; Enable Hand Tracking under Input. Under Streaming, enable Track controllers and Forward tracking data to PC, and disable Emulate Index Controllers for better finger tracking. Under VR Passthrough, enable Environment. Configure correct color, matching TrueHands chroma color setting.

  • ALVR: enable hand tracking and chroma key passthrough. Configure correct color, matching TrueHands chroma color setting.

• Launch TrueHands (SteamVR can also launch automatically if your headset is ready)

• (OPTIONAL) Launch your preferred Mixed Reality/Dashboard app for cockpit space

• Launch your VR game

• Use the settings panel to calibrate hand position and size to your preference

• Enjoy seeing your real hands in VR

FAQ

-Q: What headsets are supported?

A: Any headset compatible with SteamVR will run the overlay. For the mixed reality pass-through, a headset compatible with Virtual Desktop's* or ALVR's* pass-through and chroma key feature is required. Currently only tested with Meta Quest 3.

-Q: Do I need Virtual Desktop or ALVR specifically?

A: Only for the mixed reality effect. These two PCVR streaming solutions are currently the only 3rd party streaming applications I'm aware of that offer camera pass-through mixing directly into VR environments via chroma key. This functionality is essential for TrueHands to blend your real hands into VR. Without these streaming apps you will see your hands and forearms as a solid color. There are currently no short-term plans to develop a standalone pass-through solution within TrueHands itself. TrueHands may work with other SteamVR compatible streaming apps but has only been tested with Virtual Desktop* and ALVR*. Chroma key pass-through support may not be available on others.

-Q: Does it work with any SteamVR game?

A: Yes, TrueHands works as a SteamVR overlay alongside any SteamVR game with no modifications required.

-Q: Should I launch the app before or after my game?

A: Either order works. TrueHands is designed to work regardless of launch order.

-Q: My hands appear in the wrong position, what do I do?

A: Use the Hand Calibration sliders in the settings panel to adjust position and rotation until your virtual hands align with your real hands.

-Q: Does it support finger tracking?

A: Yes, full finger tracking is supported when using hand tracking. With controllers, finger positions reflect controller input instead.

-Q: Why is there a slight delay in hand tracking?

A: Hand tracking delay is caused mostly by the headset internal tracking data processing, followed by each PCVR streaming app internal rendering pipeline, at the moment of object injection in the VR environment. TrueHands has no control over this. The delay is present regardless of connection type or network conditions. Better lighting in your play space can help improve tracking responsiveness up to a certain point. A faster encoder method such as H.264 also helps.

-Q: Can I use controllers instead of hand tracking?

A: Yes. TrueHands works with controllers, but finger positions will reflect what the controller reports rather than your real fingers, so movement is more limited. Hand tracking gives the most natural result and is recommended, and some position and rotation calibration will possibly be needed with controllers.

-Q: Does TrueHands affect game performance?

A: TrueHands runs as a background SteamVR overlay and renders its own elements independently. Some small GPU overhead is expected but impact on game performance is minimal in most cases.

-Q: Is TrueHands compatible with Non-SteamVR games?

A: TrueHands works as a SteamVR overlay, so it is only compatible with games running with SteamVR. Non-Steam games that are launched through SteamVR could theoretically work but have not been tested.

Known Issues

Hand tracking freezes when SteamVR menu is open
When the SteamVR dashboard is open, hand tracking data stops being provided to TrueHands and your virtual hands will freeze in their last position until the menu is closed. This is a limitation of how SteamVR handles hand tracking data when the dashboard is active and is not something TrueHands can currently work around. Hand tracking resumes normally once the dashboard is closed.

Hand model alignment
Due to the nature of the SteamVR hand/glove models and the hand tracking provided by your headset, the knuckle joints may not perfectly align with the hand model mesh in all positions. This is most noticeable in extreme finger positions and is a cosmetic issue that does not affect functionality. There are plans to implement custom models in the future which should solve this issue.

Occasional Excessive Delay

On some occasions when a VR game is demanding too many resources from your PC, TrueHands may lag behind more than expected, the problem usually solves itself after a few seconds, though in occasion the app may need to be restarted, along with SteamVR and/or the game.

Future Plans

TrueHands is developed by one person, and user feedback directly shapes what gets built next! 

Native pass-through windows for physical controls

Planned support for overlaying specific areas of your physical space directly in TrueHands, allowing your steering wheel, shifters, button boxes, and cockpit elements to appear naturally in VR without requiring additional tools.

Custom hand/glove models

Custom models to fix current misalignments described in Known Issues. If you are a 3D artist interested in creating compatible hand models for TrueHands, please reach out!

Additional headset compatibility verification

Testing and verifying other hand tracking, and pass-through capable headsets beyond Meta Quest 3.

Community requested features

TrueHands is actively developed based on user feedback. Join the Discord community to suggest features and report issues!

*TrueHands is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the programs or games mentioned or shown. They belong to their respective owners. Software shown in screenshots and video is captured by the developer for compatibility demonstration only, and any software named is mentioned for compatibility purposes only.