SteamVR 2.17 arrives – ready to go for the Steam Frame

General:

• More in-game Steam features are now accessible in VR, including viewing achievements, community guides, and notes.
• The Quick Access Menu (familiar to Steam Deck users) is now available on the VR Dashboard bar, integrating notifications, volume, brightness, and battery status.
• The VR Dashboard bar now exposes shortcuts to common tasks on hover, such as exiting and redocking.
• Added new slider in Quick Access to control environmental and camera brightness.
• Overlay apps can be quit directly within the dashboard.
• Improved orientation of overlays positioned above or below the player.
• Quick Access Menu shows batteries for additional VR devices.

• Refined appearance of grab handles (for moving / resizing frames).
• Grab handles (theater / dashboard / torn-off / keyboard) can be moved in depth using thumbstick.
• Keep floating frames centered when resizing.
• Updated Laser Mouse appearance.
• Updated theater mode placement.
• Recenter (long press system button) is cancellable (B button).
• Fixed cases of SteamVR dashboard bar disappearance.
• Show user notification when headset framerate changes.
• Move less frequently used window controls to “Additional Options” Menu, and added option to toggle curvature.

• Improve dashboard placement and motion behavior. New user preference tune laser pointer length (Advanced -> Dashboard -> Laser Pointer Length).
• Fix missing dashboard icons for non-Steam VR apps.
• Fix stale Per-App Video Settings when switching the dialog from one app to another, then back again.
• Environment dimming now handled in a unified manner. Users may tune environment brightness in both theater and non-theater modes under VR Settings.
• Fixed some rendering issues related to dashboard / overlay cursor visibility.
• Room view now only pauses input to apps when intentionally enabled and set to a style other than “Translucent”.
• Fix for crash when taking screenshots.
• Fix bug with headset initialization on 3rd party headset when many body trackers are in use.

Steam Link (Streaming):

• Improved VR streaming on slow connections.
• Fix stutters when using Steam Link on NVIDIA cards.
• Fix an issue causing 1 frame to be dropped every few seconds.
• Fixed being unable to switch active laser pointer hand when using hand tracking.
• Numerous stability improvements.
• Adds initial support for USB streaming. Note: Requires new Steam Client Beta.
• Fix loading spinner flickering when framerate in game is low.
• Fix case where wrong framerates could show in SteamVR Settings.
• Latency improvements.
• Fixed scene dimming when dashboard is up.
• Added support for Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) prior to encoding. Can be tweaked in SteamVR Settings -> Steam Link -> Sharpen image before encoding.
• Prevent several cases that would cause video corruption on NVIDIA cards when using Steam Link.

OpenXR:

• Fix XR_EXT_view_configurations_changed event returning width for both the recommended width and height.
• Fix XrEventDataUserPresenceChangedEXT’s session parameter being unset when using XR_EXT_user_presence.
• Improved integrations between HMDs with cameras and chaperone.
• Added support for 32-bit OpenXR applications. Users will be prompted to set SteamVR as their default OpenXR runtime after installing this Beta, which will set up the 32-bit runtime alongside the 64-bit runtime.

Linux:

• Additional improvements to wired headset support on Linux (which previously required third-party add-on layers).
• Improvements to stability and logging of error states on Linux.
• Fix crash using Steam Link on Linux when games submit invalid textures.

• Improve streaming recovery when using Steam Link on Linux.
• Improved support on vrgames that invert nearZ/farZ.

Developers

• Added setting to disable vr streaming auto-connect on resume.
• Added setting to disable chaperone bounds.
• Fix for EVROverlayFlags.MinimalControlBar overlay handling.
• Fix OpenXR bug with image submission for certain non-standard image sizes.