{"id":170527,"date":"2025-06-09T15:06:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T15:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/170527\/"},"modified":"2025-06-09T15:06:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T15:06:13","slug":"unofficial-steamvr-driver-will-reportedly-enable-support-for-wmr-headsets-on-latest-windows-versions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/170527\/","title":{"rendered":"Unofficial SteamVR Driver Will Reportedly Enable Support for WMR Headsets on Latest Windows Versions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft pulled the plug on support for\u00a0its\u00a0entire WMR platform on Windows 11<\/a>\u00a0last year, putting an official end to the company\u2019s foray into PC VR headsets. Now, an unofficial SteamVR driver hopes to bring it back.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u00a0deprecated the\u00a0Mixed Reality Portal\u00a0app,\u00a0Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR, and Steam VR Beta when Windows 11 24H2 update rolled out last October, making a\u00a0fleet of PC VR headsets\u00a0from Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Samsung essentially expensive paperweights.<\/p>\n

Granted, if you haven\u2019t updated to Windows 11 24H2, or are still on Windows 10, Microsoft says you\u2019ll be able to play SteamVR content\u00a0through November 2026 before the plug is pulled for good. Still, that\u2019s a bitter pill to swallow for users of WMR\u2019s most modern headset, HP Reverb G2<\/a>, which released less than five years ago.<\/p>\n

Now, Reddit user \u2018mbucchia\u2019 claims an unofficial SteamVR driver is in the works, which aims to bring all WMR headsets back into the fold sometime this Fall. Below you can see the first HP Reverb (2019) in action:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Dubbed the \u2018Oasis\u2019 driver, mbucchia says the SteamVR driver \u201cdoes not need the Mixed Reality Portal,\u201d which was deprecated in Windows 11 24H2 last year alongside SteamVR beta support.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means it can work on Windows 11 24H2 and newer. It supports full 6DoF tracking along with motion controllers,\u201d\u00a0mbucchia says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs mentioned on another post, I don\u2019t have all WMR headsets to test with. Though I can tell you that it [also] works on the original Acer AH100. It should in theory work on any brand\/model,\u201d mbucchia says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The first wave of WMR headsets launched in 2017 | Image courtesy Microsoft<\/p>\n

Work on the driver is remaining behind closed doors, mbucchia says, noting that Oasis will be restricted to Nvidia GPUs due to the way SteamVR interfaces with the GPU drivers.<\/p>\n

Most interesting of all, though, is Oasis isn\u2019t being undertaken by just anyone. Mbucchia claims they are currently an employee at Microsoft who has previously worked in the company\u2019s Mixed Reality division.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am bound by NDAs and other obligations. I want to be clear that I have taken much care to NOT BREACH any of these agreements while working on this project. In particular, I am leveraging SteamVR for a lot of heavy lifting and I am not borrowing any Microsoft intellectual property,\u201d\u00a0mbucchia says.<\/p>\n

For these reasons, Oasis won\u2019t feature a beta, or similar early access, before its release in Fall 2025. It also won\u2019t be open source.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of the code is the result of deep reverse-engineer. Reverse-engineering that if shared, could be construed as exposing internals of programs like SteamVR or the Nvidia GPU drivers,\u201d mbucchia explains. \u201cNot[e] that here again, I am NOT BREACHING any proprietary\/intellectual property. Having respect for both Valve and Nvidia, I will not divulge any of the code that they do not consider public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mbucchia says they\u2019ll reveal more about the project in the Windows Mixed Reality subreddit<\/a>\u00a0leading up to its Fall 2025 release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft pulled the plug on support for\u00a0its\u00a0entire WMR platform on Windows 11\u00a0last year, putting an official end to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3162],"tags":[53,16,15,3243,3244],"class_list":{"0":"post-170527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-virtual-reality","12":"tag-vr"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114654031653276945","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}