Has anyone tried bypassing SteamVR to play VR games on a Quest 3? I’ve tried OpenComposite, OpenXR, and the advice of some YT streams, but I can’t get Steam games to launch without SteamVR.
My goal is to play Il-2 BOX using my Quest 3 without the overhead of SteamVR.
Virtual Desktop seems run most Steam VR games that are OpenXR compatible. Unsure whether IL2 is, but in for the answer.
I am not at home but I am pretty sure I run IL2 with Open Composite/OpenXR. Although I had no issues with SteamVR running the game, the entire PC would lock up irrevocably if I launched the game without first launching SteamVR. Thinking that’s stupid, I worked around it. My memory is that it was pretty much automatic with open composite. But that must not be the case because it hasn’t worked in your case. I will look into my setup when I get home on Saturday.
In your Oculus app, go to Settings > General > OpenXR Runtime and if the button is dull, you are already using Oculus Runtime as the OpenXR Runtime. So, when a Steam game calls for OpenXR, the Oculus Runtime will load. < hope that I said that correctly
Also, some games are Oculus aware and will load Oculus as the Runtime when you launch the game in VR mode, or switch to VR mode.
Some Steam games let you manually choose Oculus or SteamVR as the runtime. I never load SteamVR unless I’m using Virtual Desktop, which I have little need for, because I usually use the Oculus Desktop. 3rd icon from the right on the Oculus Link toolbar thingy.
I use OpenXR as my default VD runtime, it seems to perform better than Steam VR for my hardware/network, latency wise.
I think I found a solution. For whatever reason, I never thought to launch Il-2 directly from the Oculus library on the desktop. So far, that’s working like a charm. No SteamVR, and great frames, even with MSAA.