In late 2024 Microsoft removed support for WMR (Windows Mixed Reality), and they didn’t just cease development. As of Windows 11 version 24H2, headsets like the HP Reverb and others by Acer, Samsung, Lenovo, and Dell stopped working at all. But the good news is developer [Matthieu Bucchianeri] created the Oasis driver for Windows Mixed Reality which allows WMR headsets (and their controllers) to work again.
Oasis is available as a free download from Steam and involves a few specific setup steps in order to get working, but once the headset and controllers are unlocked and room setup is complete, the hardware will be usable again. Note that while SteamVR is handy, one’s headset and controllers are not actually tied to SteamVR. Any VR application that uses OpenVR or OpenXR should work.
It’s an extremely well-documented project, and anyone willing to read and follow a short list of directions should be off to the races in no time.
Now that there’s a way for folks to dust off their WMR hardware and get back in the game, it’s a good time to mention that if you have ever suffered from VR sickness, we’ve covered ways to help deal with and adapt to it.
I dislike that all HMDs basically live in these walled gardens software-wise, and thus they are easily orphaned and become useless if a company decides to abandon the walled garden interface, which of course they love to do. At least until some heroic individual comes along with an open-source solution, such as the one mentioned above.
If you have an HDMI monitor from some brand or another, you just plug it into the HDMI and it works. It’s a monitor. It doesn’t have a software portal like Meta or all the others which you have to start up so that the computer can talk to the headset display and display stuff on it. The drivers are generic.
For controllers and position feedback, stuff like USB HID doesn’t care about what kind of device you plug into the other side (obviously with some edge cases and exceptions), it just works. It talks to the OS. You (usually) don’t have to have a special Logitech™ walled garden software experience package requiring an account login to Zuckerface.com™ necessary to plug in and use your mouse.
Relics of a lost business model and design philosophy. I think that whoever does away with this and makes a more “universal” HMD will go a long way towards making them more commonplace instead of this niche consumer gimmick which people play with for a couple weeks and then toss in the closet.