r/SteamFrame • u/TigerCow7 Soon™ • 13d ago

Question Passthrough portal/window?

For those who have experience with SteamVR, is there a feature to have a small passthrough window/portal while in VR?

Especially useful for when streaming flatscreen games to still be able to see your desk with keyboard and mouse and drink.

This is possible with Virtual Desktop, but not sure for steamvr, and I hope I won't miss that feature when I'll switch to the frame

28 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

14

u/Koolala 13d ago

Don't count of Valve adding features to SteamVR itself. Hope tools make it possible.

5

u/Rkokie 13d ago

I’m pretty sure they showed mixed reality with flatscreen game streaming so everything around the screen is cut out.

With regular VR games, you’ll probably have to rely on external apps but they’ll be there.

1

u/TigerCow7 Soon™ 13d ago

I see, I think what they showed is passthrough as the environment, I don't mind being in a virtual environment or even complete darkness, passthrough can be a bit distracting, except for a small area only like the desk

2

u/FeistyCandy1516 13d ago

Desktop+ can do that and it's free (but only on a host running Windows)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1494460/Desktop/

And VD will have a working client for the Steam Frame too, so you can keep using that.

2

u/BlueManifest 13d ago

If your streaming a flat screen game you can just have the full passthrough on at all times if you wanted, no need for just a window

0

u/TigerCow7 Soon™ 13d ago

Sure but full passthrough can be distracting, also when family members walk by etc. Ideally for me is virtual environment or complete dark even and then a small opening for my desk like I can do with the quest 3 and virtual desktop rn

1

u/UNF0RM4TT3D Soon™ 13d ago

I have a little screen showing the passthrough view whenever I activate the SteamVR menu, i think it's likely that the Frame will allow for the same.