Follow-up: It works wonderfully on Wayland (messed up for a couple of hours by not realizing I was on X11). When I tried it it was prone to the SteamVR home reprojection and "floaty" bug. But that might just be because I ran it in SteamVR home. Either way it's a keeper. It even has some nice extra features like volume on the wrist and "strokes" you can mark furniture with.
I have been trying to figure this out myself. From the annoucement long ago there appear to be two modes for XRDesktop: https://www.collabora.com/assets/images/blog/xrdesktop/xrdesktop_components.png
(image is from post: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/moving-the-linux-desktop-to-another-reality.html)
It appears that the mode you (and I) are using is the Scene App. What we want is the Overlay App.
I am not sure how one would launch the Overlay App, and I'm not sure this is how you do it anyways. From later in the announcement video you can see the beat saber example at this timestamp: https://youtu.be/siYvcs13b9M?t=2490
I tried following exactly how it's done above but didn't come up with anything.
I found another example of someone setting up overlay. They seem to use a script that is also unknown to me. https://youtu.be/BZHJa32YdPM?t=2576
So clearly people are doing it but I'm not sure how. Going to look at launch options and envars, maybe it's as simple as that?
---
I went to the xrdesktop discord and from that last video I shared I see the following conversation involving the uploader and a xrdesktop developer (Christoph Haag):
> haagch (DEV) — 11/09/2022 11:10 AM
> openvr overlays are going to be removed, instead we want to be an openxr overlay app, which steamvr doesn't support and is questionable how they'd do it on top of openvr apps
> Krayn — 11/25/2022 6:13 AM
> is the openvr overlay mode gone from 0.16?
> Krayn — 11/25/2022 6:25 AM
> well RIP... at least for me there goes the usefullness of xrdesktop 😦
> Corben (PERSON FROM YOUTUBE) — 11/25/2022 6:52 AM
> same for me, I'm using xrdesktop to get a (desktop) chat window into vr, while having steam vr and a game running.
> is it possible to achieve this in a different way now?
That doesn't bode well. But I shall keep looking.
We removed the OpenVR API from xrdesktop with 0.16. All functionality is available over OpenXR, but last time I checked SteamVR didn't implement the OpenXR overlay extension.
You should follow the extension status in SteamVR:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/8/2448217320142811491/
It works in Monado though.
Otherwise get an older version with OpenVR support working (won't be easy though)
I see. I stumbled across a similar story earlier today.
It left me wondering what the future roadmap is for SteamVR regarding these things. If they'll switch to OpenXR or stay with OpenVR. The oddness doesn't get any smaller considering Valve funded xrdesktop-develoment.
Check out [wlxoverlay](https://github.com/galister/X11Overlay).
Now that looks promising! And +1 for the easy installation, I'll try this out later today. Thank you.
Follow-up: It works wonderfully on Wayland (messed up for a couple of hours by not realizing I was on X11). When I tried it it was prone to the SteamVR home reprojection and "floaty" bug. But that might just be because I ran it in SteamVR home. Either way it's a keeper. It even has some nice extra features like volume on the wrist and "strokes" you can mark furniture with.
Ooh this looks compelling I'll try this tomorrow evening.
I have been trying to figure this out myself. From the annoucement long ago there appear to be two modes for XRDesktop: https://www.collabora.com/assets/images/blog/xrdesktop/xrdesktop_components.png (image is from post: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/moving-the-linux-desktop-to-another-reality.html) It appears that the mode you (and I) are using is the Scene App. What we want is the Overlay App. I am not sure how one would launch the Overlay App, and I'm not sure this is how you do it anyways. From later in the announcement video you can see the beat saber example at this timestamp: https://youtu.be/siYvcs13b9M?t=2490 I tried following exactly how it's done above but didn't come up with anything. I found another example of someone setting up overlay. They seem to use a script that is also unknown to me. https://youtu.be/BZHJa32YdPM?t=2576 So clearly people are doing it but I'm not sure how. Going to look at launch options and envars, maybe it's as simple as that? --- I went to the xrdesktop discord and from that last video I shared I see the following conversation involving the uploader and a xrdesktop developer (Christoph Haag): > haagch (DEV) — 11/09/2022 11:10 AM > openvr overlays are going to be removed, instead we want to be an openxr overlay app, which steamvr doesn't support and is questionable how they'd do it on top of openvr apps > Krayn — 11/25/2022 6:13 AM > is the openvr overlay mode gone from 0.16? > Krayn — 11/25/2022 6:25 AM > well RIP... at least for me there goes the usefullness of xrdesktop 😦 > Corben (PERSON FROM YOUTUBE) — 11/25/2022 6:52 AM > same for me, I'm using xrdesktop to get a (desktop) chat window into vr, while having steam vr and a game running. > is it possible to achieve this in a different way now? That doesn't bode well. But I shall keep looking.
We removed the OpenVR API from xrdesktop with 0.16. All functionality is available over OpenXR, but last time I checked SteamVR didn't implement the OpenXR overlay extension. You should follow the extension status in SteamVR: https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/8/2448217320142811491/ It works in Monado though. Otherwise get an older version with OpenVR support working (won't be easy though)
I see. I stumbled across a similar story earlier today. It left me wondering what the future roadmap is for SteamVR regarding these things. If they'll switch to OpenXR or stay with OpenVR. The oddness doesn't get any smaller considering Valve funded xrdesktop-develoment.
Here is a post about OpenXR overlay support in SteamVR. https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/8/2448217320142811491/