Valve adds Oculus Rift DK2 support to SteamVR

Valve has announced an update to its SteamVR beta, adding support for the new positional tracking system used in the Oculus Rift Developer Kit 2 (DK2) design.

Oculus VR's latest hardware design is an undeniable improvement over its first-generation hardware, boasting a more accurate means of tracking the user's head movements and a higher-resolution display that dodges the visible-pixel problem of the first generation. To make the most of its new features, however, client software needs to be updated - and Valve's SteamVR middleware has received just such an update.

According to the company's official change log, the latest release of SteamVR - which is still a beta - adds full support for the Oculus Rift DK2 hardware, with positional tracking supported on both Windows and OS X but not Linux or Valve's own Steam OS platforms. The update also fixes an issue that could cause the middleware application itself, vrserver.exe, to run even when no head-mounted display is detected and to slowly increase its share of CPU time until the system is bogged down completely.

As a beta, it's unsurprising to see that there are still some issues that need to be resolved: as well as adding support for DK2 head-tracking on Linux and Steam OS, Valve has confirmed that the current beta still only supports the 'Extend Desktop' multi-monitor mode and can take a good few seconds to gracefully fail if the Oculus driver application isn't running when a head-mounted display tries to contact it.

Those who have been lucky enough to receive their Oculus Rift DK2 hardware over the last few weeks will need to manually opt-in to the beta through the Steam desktop application in order to take advantage of the latest improvements.