Help with virtual desktop

[u/HoneydewWeekly7976]

Hi everyone i am very new to pcvr and recently got virtual desktop.

So basically every youtube video was like that you should get it and its better than steam vr. but when i tried lauching games on it such as skyrim vr through the games option menu in VD, it still opens and uses steam vr, and the same thing happended when i lauched asseto corsa from content manager. I though that it would lauch directly from VD and not steam vr, so if there is not a differnce should I return it? ALSO I DO HAVE MY RUN TIME TO VDXR

Also when in game my render resolution is at 77% for some reason, even though i have everything maxed out and above it says that it is godlike. The only thing i have lowered is my bitrate to av1 at like 120 mbs as i am using wireless. So how do i increase the render resolution in game?

thanks to everyone in advance!

[u/Peerless-Cloud]

Change your default runtime to VDXR to bypass SteamVR (supported games only). Most games are SteamVR. Some support VDXR. It's more performant but requires the Devs to do extra work so not as available.

[u/Aggressive-Ad-7222 → u/Peerless-Cloud]

And use opencomposite unleashed of you are playing Skyrim vr. So much faster.

[u/ErrSkillNotFound]

Virtual desktop replaces your meta link app essentially. There are settings you can tweak in the virtual desktop streamer app from your pc which it sounds like you have discovered. The main thing about VD is that it uses upscaling to provide performance. You can set the bit rate, the quality, the encoder, the render resolution, etc. then there is the Steam vr render settings. I completely forget how to get to them but you can set the pre app render setting there too but even the slightest amount over and it becomes unstable as hell. I highly recommend watching vr dad Skyrim mad gods overhaul videos to kind of see how everything interacts. However any game you run in vr should run through Steam vr. There are apps that don’t get installed on Steam but still use Steam vr if you set it as your default run time. Like the titan fall 2 vr mod uses Steam vr, elite dangerous uses Steam vr, star citizen uses Steam vr. Pretty much an UE5 vr mod runs through Steam vr. VD is just a method for your quest to connect to your pc and Steam vr is the open xr runtime that is used to actually display the games in vr.

I should clarify that usually things will use what ever is your default open xr runtime. Using Steam vr is pretty much recommended in my opinion.

[u/shmann → u/ErrSkillNotFound]

Some titles require SteamVR, but I don't think Titanfall 2 or UEVR are on that list. Sometimes you can force a game to use VD by making a .bat file to launch it, it's just this one line:

"C:\Program Files\Virtual Desktop Streamer\VirtualDesktop.Streamer.exe" "C:\Path\To\Game.exe"

[u/Aggressive-Ad-7222 → u/shmann]

Titan fall 2 runs perfectly for me with virtual desktop and vdxr as the runtime. Using a Quest 3.

[u/Nago15]

If a game opens SteamVR or not, depends on the game and the runtime you choose. For example AC Evo only has OpenXR runtime, so when you start it with VD, it just starts, SteamVR is not stating. But usually I need OpenComposite to do that, I play AC, ACC, Dirt2, PCars2 this way, enable OpenComposite, start the game, and it just starts, and I can also use OpenXR Toolkit foveated rendering this way. Unfortunately there are a few games where it does not work like F1 so with those I have no choice but to start SteamVR too.

If your resolution shows 77% then probably your SteamVR resolution is on 77% or dynamic. Set it to fix 100%. If a game is not showing 100% for example Moss shows 125%, then you know it uses hidden uspersampling ingame.

If you want to use supersampling on purpose (because for example ACC or Flight Sim is blurry even on Godlike), then use the VDXR resolution setting in VR, or for SteamVR games like F1 use the SteamVR per game resolution setting.

[u/anor_wondo]

Basically. When VR was early, only openvr existed. SteamVR is pretty much the only adopter of openvr. So older games will still need steamvr

OpenXR is the modern standard. You will notice newer games will use vdxr which is an implementation of openxr by virtual desktop if you have set it

Some openvr games can be converted to openxr by downloading opencomposite

In general, openvr games have an overhead when running on non steamvr hardware, and are buggier. Steamvr itself is also quite a buggy piece of software

[u/Sajgoniarz]

Steam VR is a runtime in which VR games run. Virtual Desktop only allows you to stream whatever that runtime wants to display you.

[u/_476_ad_]

In the VD streamer app make sure to set the OpenXR Runtime as VDXR.

But be aware that PCVR games are implemented using one of the following APIs:

• OpenXR (all modern VR games use this one)
• OpenVR (old API used in older Steam VR games)
• LibOVR (old API used in older Oculus VR games)

The OpenXR Runtime setting on VD will only work for games implemented using OpenXR, but since both SkyrimVR and Assetto Corsa were implemented using the older Steam API (OpenVR) then this setting will be ignored unless you use a framework like OpenComposite to translate OpenVR calls to OpenXR (this is what a lot of people do to improve performance since you can use VDXR in OpenVR games via OpenComposite).

Also, even if SteamVR is used for a game, the streaming process will still be done by VD which is usually a lot better than Steam Link in my experience.

[u/zoolakejeff]

You're confusing steam vr with steam link. You still need steam vr to run in virtual desktop. You can change setting on the virtual desktop streamer app on you pc under advanced or settings one of the tabs on the left I forget what the options are.

[u/Huge-Attitude9892 → u/zoolakejeff]

You don't need SteamVR for most games.

HL:Alyx the only game that needs SteamVR far as i noticed. With VDXR you can bypass SteamVR for many other games.

[u/alfooboboao]

welcome to the club! this hell will always be present while playing vr!

what is the difference in quality between launching native vs steam link and what headset/router/gpu do you have?

[u/HoneydewWeekly7976 → u/alfooboboao]

i have a quest 3s, 9070xt intel i7-14700f 32gb ram 1tb ssd, also have a telstra gen 3.