Hi

The years of getting VR to work well in X-plane and now in MSFS have pushed me into technical skullduggery depths beyond my expectation and, probably, my ability.  But so far so good and I have been able to make the transition from Steam VR on XP 11 to native WMR on MSFS, including building and tweaking my own Games PC to make the latter perform beyond my wildest dreams.

But I'm stumped a little on a topic, especially given the expected forced closure of WMR later in the year with my still fantastically performing Reverb G2 being, potentially, unusable unless I block any and all upgrades and security updates of Windows 11...and that is assuming that Microsoft don't force those upgrades, which they may well do.

What I've been able to do successfully in MSFS so far is:

- Run the Reverb very successfully on WMR OpenXR Runtime, accessed through the 'normal' start up procedures

- Set up and run successfully a Pico 4 using Virtual Desktop, using the SteamVR OpenXR Runtime.  Pretty good, but, in my view, not as good as running on the Reverb above.

- Run MSFS on the Reverb in the Steam version of Virtual Desktop and Steam VR, using the WMR OpenXR Runtime...and that runs extremely well.

 

Now, I remember from the early days of MSFS VR implementation that - although XP11 would run on either WMR OpenXR or Steam OpenXR runtimes quite happily - MSFS would simply not boot up unless you switched the Steam VR setting to WMR OpenXR runtime.  But would it work on Virtual Desktop, I wondered?  Especially when I had a vague memory that Virtual Desktop has its own alternative OpenXR runtime?

Well, the answer at the moment seems to be no.  If I switch SteamVR to Steam OpenXR, MSFS simply won't boot up.  It gets as far as the 'update circle of eternity' and no further.

 

But - given the power of the Virtual Desktop - surely it must be possible, or close to becoming a possibility, to be able to run MSFS on the Reverb through the Virtual Desktop using an OpenXR version other than the WMR one?  And, if so, is that a route to survive a forced Windows 11 upgrade without binning the excellent Reverb G2?

And that's my question to the grand folks round here that understand this kind of stuff much better than I do...

  

Edited March 29, 20242 yr by AJZip

For the Pico 4, you can run that via Virtual Desktop using the VDXR runtime, you don't need SteamVR running. You will get much better performance this way.

2 hours ago, Donka said:

For the Pico 4, you can run that via Virtual Desktop using the VDXR runtime, you don't need SteamVR running. You will get much better performance this way.

Yes - and it works great.  In fact, I think it was you @Donka who guided me through the settings when I was trying to get the Pico up and running.  And forever grateful for your help with that too 🙂

My question is more about the Reverb G2 - which still has one or two characteristics I like over the Pico.  My understanding is that VDXR works only on wireless systems and that there is no equivalent of VDXR for a cabled system like the Reverb to run through Virtual Desktop (which I think is great).  Hopefully I'm wrong, but haven't been able to find one yet.  

 

 

I'm also looking forward to a solution to keep my G2 working with MSFS. Tried a Pico 4 during a week but never achieved the same picture quality and 0 latency due to wireless, so I gave up.

On 3/29/2024 at 5:49 PM, AJZip said:

Run MSFS on the Reverb in the Steam version of Virtual Desktop and Steam VR, using the WMR OpenXR Runtime...and that runs extremely well.

Could you detail a bit this implementation? Is it still possible to use OpenXRToolkit?

Edited May 29, 20242 yr by roland_lfor

3 hours ago, roland_lfor said:

I'm also looking forward to a solution to keep my G2 working with MSFS. Tried a Pico 4 during a week but never achieved the same picture quality and 0 latency due to wireless, so I gave up.

Could you detail a bit this implementation? Is it still possible to use OpenXRToolkit?

Gosh - I haven't used that method for a while...I'll have to delve back and try to work out again how it is done.  I'll try and recall (hopefully, I will have scribbled some notes) and retry over the next day or so.

2 minutes ago, AJZip said:

Gosh - I haven't used that method for a while...I'll have to delve back and try to work out again how it is done.  I'll try and recall (hopefully, I will have scribbled some notes) and retry over the next day or so.

Oh - and I'm pretty sure that still uses WMR, albeit the Steam version - and that, presumably, will disappear with the rest of it.

Nevertheless, I'll see if I can recall any of it.

1 hour ago, AJZip said:

Oh - and I'm pretty sure that still uses WMR, albeit the Steam version - and that, presumably, will disappear with the rest of it.

Nevertheless, I'll see if I can recall any of it.

Thanks

If it requires WMR then sure it's useless.

Joerg Neumann has said before Microsoft's decision to withdraw support for WMR in future windows versions wouldn't affect him. How exactly that will work out for WMR headsets though I have no idea.

Edited May 29, 20242 yr by turbomax

It won't affect him, no doubt, but it will affect us I'm pretty sure 

1 hour ago, roland_lfor said:

It won't affect him, no doubt,

it was obvious it was in relation to MSFS, not him in person when they were discussing MSFS and not his private life.