Valve introduces the highly anticipated SteamVR 2.0, a game-changer in virtual reality.

In an exciting development for VR enthusiasts, Steam has announced the release of SteamVR 2.0, bringing all the new and exciting features of the Steam platform into the virtual reality realm. This update marks a significant step in the ongoing effort to create a more unified Steam ecosystem, providing users with a consistent experience across devices. Additionally, this update will enable faster and more frequent integration of new Steam features in the future.

Among the highlights of this release are the incorporation of most current features from Steam and Steam Deck">Steam Deck into SteamVR, an updated keyboard with support for dual-cursor typing, new languages, emojis, and themes, integration of Steam Chat and Voice Chat, an improved Store that prominently showcases new and popular VR releases, and easier access to Steam notifications.

To experience the latest features of SteamVR, users are advised to ensure that their Steam client is updated. This can be done by navigating to Steam > Check For Client Updates. The SteamVR team expresses gratitude for the valuable feedback received from players during the beta period and invites interested users to participate in future SteamVR betas by following the provided instructions.

In addition to the new dashboard interface, this update brings several changes and fixes. Some of the notable ones include fixing a crash on exit for certain Unity titles, increasing the system layer resolution limit, localizing controller configuration in the user’s preferred language, prompting users to install the Bigscreen Beyond Driver when the headset is detected, improving double click reliability in desktop view, adding a button to toggle multitasking view for desktop overlays (Windows 10 and 11 only), resolving scaling issues with floating dashboard overlays, refining laser pointer smoothing, click, and double-click functionality, supporting dual-laser typing on the new keyboard, fixing bugs related to dismissing the keyboard in controller binding UI, showing actual icons for desktop windows in addition to their names, refreshing styling of VR Settings and Now Playing overlays when using the new 2.0 UI, making sound effects more consistent across SteamVR UI elements, and fixing various issues with Index Controller Firmware.

Furthermore, there are Linux-specific improvements in this update, including transitioning to the Steam Linux Runtime 3.0 for enhanced compatibility, fixing runtime configuration to address startup issues on some systems, and ensuring that SteamVR Home launches under the legacy scout runtime.

The drivers have also received attention, with enhancements such as defaulting to true for drivers that provide a manifest but don’t specify “resourceOnly,” adding a manifest entry to force a driver to appear in the “addons” settings, loading a forced driver even if it is disabled, and allowing only the forced driver to activate an HMD when specified.

In a separate release, the Steam Client has also received updates related to VR changes. These include removing warning messages when starting a 2D game in VR, fixing crashes caused by certain notifications, ensuring notifications show up when a game’s desktop window is focused, enabling horizontal scrolling for dashboard tabs with a large number of desktop windows or dashboard overlays, improving the reliability of clicking on Dashboard and Steam UI elements with the laser mouse, displaying clickable arrows instead of bumper glyphs for tab bars, fixing issues with the dashboard UI when Steam is in a Logged Out state, hiding the search bar from the header in a Logged Out state, resolving problems with purchase flows not appearing in the Dashboard when initiated from within a game, and adjusting the UI to take up the full width of the display in various cases.

Lastly, there is a fix for an issue that prevented SteamVR from starting on Debian/Ubuntu systems for Linux users.

With these updates and improvements, SteamVR aims to enhance the virtual reality experience for users and create a more seamless integration with the Steam platform.

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