Does the Steam Deck VR?
Yes, I got it to work!
Should we be doing this, though?
Probably not.
Going into this, I already knew it would NOT perform well because while the Steam Deck
is powerful for a portable gaming console, it doesn’t really have enough horsepower
for VR games.
But still, I had to try it.
For science!
And I found it does run VR games, better than I expected.
I was able to play Beat Saber, VRChat, Compound, and even Half-Life Alyx.
Just with my Quest 2 and the Steam Deck.
Wirelessly.
This is extremely interesting because the Steam Deck is Valve’s new portable gaming
device available from 399 US dollars.
They call it a stepping stone to what one day could be Valve’s standalone VR headset.
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So if it wasn’t clear yet, the Steam Deck isn’t actually made for VR.
It’s a handheld gaming PC with support for Steam games, and many flat games work great
out of the box.
But it runs a version of Arch Linux called SteamOS, a pretty open operating system with
a Windows-like interface.
So you can see the Deck as basically a PC.
This means you can install anything and tweak it how you want, like a PC.
Even if you mess things up, you can just reformat it.
Valve, being the good guy they are, even -condones- tinkering with it.
So I did.
I’ve spent all week experimenting, and today I want to share the results and show you what
Steam Deck VR is like with gameplay precisely as I saw it.
So you can decide for yourself, whether it’s worth it to go through the trouble.
What I didn’t want to do was install Windows on the Steam Deck.
I saw that other Deck owners had to install Windows for VR, probably for the drivers needed.
Windows was going to be my last resort.
I wanted it to work on the Steam Deck as it was delivered, on the OS that was optimized
for it so that I could tap into its full power.
Since SteamOS is Linux-based, it should be possible as Linux has VR support already.
It isn’t great, but doable.
Now, SteamOS is a bit different, but at least it comes with Steam so I was able to install
SteamVR without problems.
So the first thing I tried was plugging in my Valve Index using a powered Docking Station
with a USB-C cable.
But I encountered a common Linux SteamVR problem.
It showed the game on the Deck, running well, but it was black inside the headset.
SteamVR would constantly ask me to ‘Enable Direct Display,’ which I tried, but it would
not enable.
So I’ve spent a few hours finding out if I could solve it but eventually decided to
try something else first.
ALVR was suggested to me as it has a Linux build.
ALVR is a tool that allows you to stream PC VR games via WiFi to your VR headset.
It’s similar to Virtual Desktop and Oculus Air Link.
Except, ALVR is open source and free to download.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out of the box.
But after lots of tinkering and the developer’s help, it worked!
Here, you can see gameplay captured from the Quest natively, so this is the actual video
stream coming in from the Steam Deck.
This includes all the streaming artifacts, stuttering, lag or latency as I saw it.
I also enabled the SteamVR performance graph for your reference.
Basically, as long as this number stays green, it can hold its fps.
If I get green lines here, that’s also good.
Red is not good.
Pink lines mean the Steam Deck is having display performance issues.
This is what I’m getting a lot throughout my gameplay.
I guess I’m asking a lot of the Deck here.
But yes, this is the PC version of Beat Saber, and as you can see, controller tracking was
not that bad.
Yes, there is noticeable controller tracking latency, but I could complete Expert songs.
I actually think I could get better latency if I played around with the ALVR settings
more.
VRChat also launched.
Of course, I wanted to try a world only available on PC.
So I entered a bit of a sketchy club that had warnings everywhere about flashing lights
and possible elliptic attacks.
Being the risk-taker I am, I accepted it without reading too much.
But I’m guessing this does not promise a great optimized world.
So after dancing a bit as my sexy furry self, my Deck froze.
I’ve tried it again with a different world, but I think VRChat PC worlds might be too
much for the Deck as I crashed again.
So then I also tried Half-Life Alyx.
I mean, why not.
I was astonished that the game even launched and that I could play it—sort of.
I don’t know what I saw the whole time—green flickering, lots of compression artifacts,
stuttering, and lag.
So I tried lowering my ALVR video settings, and it was better, which is what you’re
seeing right now.
It still wasn’t without stuttering, and of course, compression was very noticeable,
but it ran, which is an incredible achievement for a tiny portable PC.
Right?
Leave me a like on this video if you agree!
I wanted to note, though.
The gameplay shown here does actually look a bit different from what I saw in VR.
Like, the stuttering didn’t feel as bad as it seems from this flat video, but the
compression artifacts were more present, so it looked a bit more blurry in the headset.
However, it was okay enough for me to see what I had to see.
So yea, if you have a gaming PC, I still recommend playing it on a desktop PC.
I also noticed that when I had ALVR running for a while…
My Steam Deck would act up, like have trouble loading SteamVR inside the headset.
Sometimes the Steam Deck screen would turn itself on and off.
That’s when I think the Deck got too hot because if I let it cool off for a bit, it
started to work again.
MAYBE it was a bit unfair to try such a big VR game.
So I also tried COMPOUND.
A very well-optimized PC VR game as it has a simplified yet detailed retro artstyle.
The game is TINY, only needing about 350 MB to install.
Don’t be fooled, though; the game is a pretty tough rogue-lite.
On a separate note, COMPOUND is also coming on the Quest 2 natively, and I highly recommend
checking it out.
But Compound ran pretty well on the Deck.
Still, there are evident streaming artifacts, like blurriness, stuttering, and reprojection,
but it wasn’t bad for me while in VR.
I thought it was playable, and it was a ton of fun.
Interestingly, the recording shows a lot of stuttering, but I didn’t notice this as
much while in VR.
It was pretty cool.
But what makes this whole setup really incredible is, of course, that you can do this...
I should be able to use my Steam Deck wirelessly.
And play Steam VR games!
That’s the that’s why it’s so special right?
Look I’m running SteamVR wirelessly on the Quest 2 with ALVR and uh.
I’m able to play this SteamVR game.
That’s pretty incredible.
Okay, it lagged a little bit.
*Awkward laugh*
But STILL!!
Such an incredible little thing.
This experiment just makes one thing very clear to me.
Our future for standalone VR is going to be amazing.
The Steam Deck in its current form is clearly not built for VR, but even so, it’s possible
to do it, which is really incredible.
This predicts an awesome future; maybe the Steam Deck 2 would be able to run it natively?
Or is Valve really secretly working on a standalone VR headset?
Argh, I look forward to what’s to come.
Before we end this video, I was wondering, are you still interested in a tutorial on
how to set up ALVR on your Steam Deck too?
If so, please leave me a like on this video and comment down below so I know there’s
enough interest to make one.
For now, I personally still want to test ALVR more.
See if we can get the latency better with a dedicated router.
Maybe we can get it to work with tethered headsets, and it’ll be more playable.
I just LOVE figuring out these kinds of things and I’m a big fan of Valve.
So I’m not a massive dodo in Linux, as it used to be my weapon of choice as a developer.
But I’m definitely not a pro.
So if you are and want to help me figure this out, join our Discord or reach out to me via
Instagram or Twitter.
I would love to figure this out together.
The links are below.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this experiment.
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as it supports us tremendously.
As always, VR on!