It's that time again! New SteamVR Home collectibles are now available for Moss, Apex Construct, Nevrosa: Escape, and Trains VR. As always, play these games to unlock their collectibles in SteamVR Home.

Vive users now have access to the Vive Pro headset avatar, and we also have a special guest in SteamVR Home: a Steam Summer Salien!

The SteamVR Beta has been updated with the following changes.

SteamVR Home:

• Added Knuckles EV2.0 bindings and controller model.
  
• Force correct controller model when user starts SteamVR with controllers off.

In May we announced the new SteamVR Input system to allow developers to more easily support existing and future controllers, enable gamers to more easily customize their controls, and empower hardware makers to continue to innovate on VR input. But there’s another aspect to controller input unique to VR that we did not address at the time: extra information from the controller about what the player’s body is doing. Current hardware can tell us a lot about where the user’s hand is and the pose of their fingers, and that information is only going to get more accurate and detailed as the industry continues to innovate. To facilitate this innovation, we’re proud to announce the release of the first beta of SteamVR Skeletal Input.

The Skeletal Input system will allow controller makers to capture the pose of the user’s hand as accurately as their sensors are able, and provide it as a stream of animation data to the running app. App developers can then use this stream to animate the hands of the user’s avatar on its own or in combination with their own animations.

What this means for users is that they will be able to get the full benefit of their investment in new VR controllers in their favorite games without the need for the developers to release a patch to support the new controller. App developers will not need to create unique animations for each controller they intend to support when their game is released, or issue patches to support new controllers. And hardware makers can continue to innovate in this space, and write their drivers so that their controller will work with any game that supports the new Skeletal Input system.

Controller drivers will be able to provide two animation streams to apps for each controller: one stream intended to track the estimated pose of the user’s hand as accurately as possible, usually meaning with the controller in-hand. The second stream is intended to provide a range of motion for the hand as if it was no controller in the way, ideal for cases where the user’s avatar is not currently holding anything in-game. The app developer can then choose which of these streams to sample based on the current context of the game.

SteamVR Skeletal Input will also provide the option to convert either data stream to additive animation. Additive animation can be useful to app developers because it can be layered on top of other animation to provide additional, more dynamic motion. For example, you could use the additive finger animation from SteamVR Skeletal Input as a layer on top of an artist-created pose of the hand holding an object, to allow users to appear to adjust their grip or gesture while holding an object.

We also wanted to ensure that multiuser experiences would be able to take advantage of this new system, but networking an entire animated hand skeleton can require too much bandwidth for many users. So we have included as part of the API support for compressing the animation down to a size that is more practical for networking.

This initial beta release is intended as an opportunity for developers to try out the API in their games and provide us with feedback. Vive Wands, Oculus Touch, and the new Knuckles EV2 are already supported, and we invite other input makers to work with us to add support for their controllers during the beta as well.

A full SDK for all developers will be released soon, but for now Unity developers can access the Skeletal Input API with this early release of the SteamVR Unity plugin. The documentation is available on the OpenVR GitHub Wiki. We look forward to hearing your feedback!

HTC Vive Wands


Oculus Touch Controllers


Knuckles EV2

The SteamVR Beta has been updated with the following changes.

SteamVR Input:

• Fixed a performance issue in SteamVR that would occur before controllers were turned on. This particularly affected Linux, but was present on all platforms.
  
• Fixed issue with haptics in some apps that use the legacy TriggerHapticPulse function.
  
• Fixed issue with apps that use SteamVR Input not having any input the first time they run.
  
• Fixed some issues with black screens or other artifacts appearing instead of the controller binding screen.

Vive Pro Firmware:

• Fix audio quality issue after pass through cameras have been enabled.

The SteamVR Beta has been updated with the following changes.

SteamVR Input:

• Improved CPU usage when using the new input system.
  
• Changed handed controllers (Windows MR, Oculus Touch, Knuckles) so they are detected as left/right hand immediately instead of waiting for them to start tracking.
  
• Fixed a rare vrserver crash when Steam is closing.
  
• Fixed issue that prevented local bindings from showing up when Steam is offline.
  
• Fixed deadlock that could occur in legacy games with particular call patterns.

The SteamVR beta has been updated with the following changes.

SteamVR Home:

• Collapsed left/right action sets.
  
• Split off movement actions into the “move” action set.
  
• Bound center press on Vive trackpad to teleport by default (in addition to north press).
  
• Fixed map compile regression.

Today we are excited to introduce two new spawnable panels to SteamVR Home: Steam Big Picture and Desktop. These are the same overlays that are accessible from the SteamVR Dashboard, but with the convenience of placing and saving them in your SteamVR Home environment.

Both of these panels are accessible under Things > Panels in the content browser. Simply click to spawn, then reach out and grab the panel to adjust its location and position.

This feature is currently only available in the SteamVR Beta. To opt into SteamVR Beta, find SteamVR under Tools in your Steam Library. Right click to bring up Properties, then select 'beta' from the dropdown in the Betas tab.

As always, we'd love to hear what you think in the discussion boards.

The SteamVR beta has been updated with the following changes.

SteamVR Input:

• Added intermediate filter data to the input debugger.
  
• Fixed issue with trackpad input not working in SteamVR Home after bringing up and dismissing the dashboard. (Other apps may have had similar issues with dpad mode inputs.)
  
• Fixed haptics on Vive trackers
  
• Simplified Vive Tracker management by collapsing the two dropdowns into one.
  
• Vive Tracker controller types and bindings will now update when editing tracker role in the UI.
  
• Added “front” pose for trackers that points out the USB port of the tracker. This is useful when using the Hyperkin Blaster to point in the dashboard.
  
• Fixed issue with scroll wheel continuing to appear on Vive controllers after dismissing the dashboard.
  
• Fixed crash that could occur in legacy apps that call PollNextEvent/PollNextOverlayEvent from multiple threads.
  
• Changed SteamVR Input bindings so they no longer appear in the workshop on the web.
  
• Changed “autosave” and “personal” bindings to be private so only their owners can see them.

SteamVR Home:

• Added Steam and Desktop panels (same as SteamVR panels, but movable)
  
• Changed all spawnable panels to be grabbable from anywhere (was just the edges)
  
• Added Vive Pro headset avatar item for HTC Vive owners

The SteamVR Beta has been updated with the following changes.

SteamVR Input:

• Fixed issue with the same active action set appearing in the list multiple times with different restricted device values.
  
• Fixed issue with the Vive Tracker management UI showing a black screen if no trackers were managed.
  
• Changed the system button on Vive Trackers to a “Power” button so it can be used by applications.
  
• Fixed broken trackpad click on Knuckles controllers.

The SteamVR Beta has been updated with the following changes.

Windows Mixed Reality:

• Fixed driver incompatibility introduced in the last beta.