Vision Pro isn’t supposed to be able to play SteamVR games, although an independent software developer has been able to modify a popular Wi-Fi streaming app that could open the door to PC VR games like Half-Life: Alyx (2020) on Vision Pro–if it weren’t for the Apple’s strategic omission of tracked motion controllers.
Vision Pro can do an impressive number of things, including running over a million iOS apps along with a growing number of native visionOS apps. For all its uses as a general computing device, it’s not designed to hook to your computer to play SteamVR games, which is pretty unsurprising considering… it’s Apple.
Zhuowei Zhang, a developer who works on Android, iOS, and Web-based software, however has reportedly been able to install ALVR on Vision Pro, a third-party app for standalone VR headsets which lets you stream VR games from your PC via Wi-Fi–not unlike Steam Link or Meta’s Air Link for Quest.
Zhang didn’t have a Vision Pro headset to test it out, so the programmer enlisted others to try out what was originally only tested in the visionOS simulator provided by Apple to developers. James Abev, a programmer who goes by the name ‘shadowfacts,’ gives us a glimpse of SteamVR Home in action. Walter Weatherman’ (a reference to TV show
Arrested Developmentpic.twitter.com/376BIBkVkj
), calls the implementation “very rough right now, but it does function.”February 5, 2024
That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to jump into any of the room-scale games you’d come to expect, like The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners or
Half-Life: Alyx, because those require motion controllers. Update (9:45 AM ET). Here’s another look at X/Twitter’s ‘ShinyQuagsire,’ who shows how the ALVR hack works to use Vision Pro hand-tracking within VRChat. We’ve removed the ‘report’ from the headline to reflect our general confidence level that it’s indeed possible.YESSSS, I got ‘s ALVR visionOS port to be S M O O T H, I have conquered H264, I am unstoppable Apple is supposedly not planning on shipping VR controllers— Shiny Quagsire (@ShinyQuagsire)
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If you want to try installing @zhuoweiALVRpic.twitter.com/HUhZk8ZuQr
on Vision Pro, February 6, 2024
for detailed instructions and links to download all of the software needed. If you want to try installing
ALVR
on Vision Pro, click for detailed instructions and links to download all of the software needed.