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Accessing games without steamVR

MojoNoahGamer
Honored Guest
I got some games from Steam (Ex. Duck Season and Space Pirate Trainer) and I don't know how to play them without going to SteamVR to play them.
15 REPLIES 15

Syrellaris
Rising Star
If you bought VR games on steam, you would need to have steam VR installed and running for it to work. There is no way around that I am afraid.

MojoNoahGamer
Honored Guest
darn

Syrellaris
Rising Star
Is it that big of a deal though? I mean the Rift works fine with Steam VR so, nothing is preventing you from playing other then having to open both the oculus application and steamvr

YoLolo69
Trustee
From my experience (and lot of other I read on the internet) SteamVR+ Oculus = fps-- and lag++, lot of posts speak about that on forums. A lot of games I bought on Steam appeared on Oculus Home so developers can, if they want, give you an Oculus Home key to install it on Home instead. Space Pirate Trainer exist on both so you may try to get in touch with them to get that key. All others games I own on Steam (Aerofly FS2, HHH, Asseto Corsa, etc.) bypass SteamVR and run on Oculus VR mode directly. I uninstalled recently the last one using it, "The Lab", so now I'm SteamVR free 😉

“Dreams feel real while we are in them, it's only when we wake up that we realize something was strange.” - Dom Cobb

"Be careful, if you are killed in real life you die in VR too." - TD_4242

I7 10700K,  RTX 3070, 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz, Oculus Rift CV1

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
Just cause a game is on steam does not mean it uses steamVR. I don't have space pirate trainer so I don't know which it uses there, but I do have games on steam with native Oculus support. My recommendation is to turn off the steamVR home beta though. SteamVR itself is pretty light and doesn't eat performance measurably as far as I can tell, but having Oculus home + steamVR home + whatever game you want running all at once is likely to cause some issues. You may also want to disable Oculus Home from auto launching whenever you put the headset on or start a game. No reason to have that running if you aren't using it. 😉

OmegaM4N
Expert Trustee
Little tip for Rift users and Sream vr,start up steamVR then go into the Steamvr setting, then into the developers options and make sure "Start Steamvr when application starts" is unticked, this thing is a hog and can really impact on your vR games performences, so make sure it is unticked.
CV1/Vive-knuckles)/Dell Vr Visor/Go/Quest II/ PSVR.

DarkTenka
Trustee
Depending on the game, it may support what we often call "Native Oculus Mode". If the game supports this, often you can right click on it in your Steam Library and there will be an option "Launch in Oculus VR mode". Not to be confused with OpenVR mode which is something completely different (and still SteamVR). If the game has that option, using it will not launch SteamVR and it will work with better framerate and tracking.

Syrellaris said:


Is it that big of a deal though? I mean the Rift works fine with Steam VR so, nothing is preventing you from playing other then having to open both the oculus application and steamvr


It's a huge deal, SteamVR's support for the Rift is terrible and as mentioned causes lots of lag and stutter even for a typical high end VR system. Unless you have an absolutely top of the line system you are going to get sub par performance. This is in part because your system needs to run both SteamVR and Oculus home at the same time, both of which are very processor and memory hungry.

Another way to look at it is that SteamVR gives us the same kind of treatment that Revive does for Vive users.

hanney
Explorer
Space Pirate Trainer uses Native Oculus Mode, so it is possible to play the Steam purchased copy directly in Oculus Home. 

Just follow these steps:

1. Launch the Oculus Home app from your desktop, Start menu, or taskbar.
2. Click Library (menu bar at the top left).
3. Click the Filter drop-down menu (top right)
4. Click the switch next to "Include Unknown Sources" so that it turns blue (On).

All Steam VR games can be accesses directly from Home, you just need to do as @hanney says and allow unknown Sources, then play the game once via Steam... it'll then appear in your Oculus Home library.


Be aware though that Home doesn't always get the shortcut details right and often adds unwanted launch parameters. For example, for Project CARS 2, you have to make sure the relevant .json file in your Oculus\Manifests folder looks like:


{"canonicalName":"D_ProgramFiles(x86)_Steam_steamapps_common_pCars_pCARS64","displayName":"Project CARS","files":{"D:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\pCars\\pCARS64.exe":""},"firewallExceptionsRequired":false,"isCore":false,"launchFile":"D:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\Steam.exe","launchParameters":"steam://launch/234630/OtherVr","manifestVersion":0,"packageType":"APP","thirdParty":true,"version":"1","versionCode":1}


....otherwise it won't run. Similar edits are needed for many games that are added. My default Steam installation is on my D drive, so change that to suit your install.


You may also want to edit the images in your Oculus\Software\StoreAssets folder to make them look pretty in your Home library. There are some icons and images in this forum and on Reddit that people have done for many games if you search. There are also posts on editing the .json files for many games that don't get added correctly.


Edit. here's a few I did earlier:

sem2kttrz5ug.jpg

all of the above are either Steam games or in the case of P3D and NoLimits 2, not Steam nor Oculus games, but they all run fine from Home.