A lone Microsoft employee is unofficially working on a native SteamVR driver to bring Windows MR headsets back to life.
In October, Microsoft started rolling out Windows 11 24H2, the latest major version of its PC operating system which removed support for Windows MR headsets. This means you can no longer use Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, or Samsung PC VR headsets, not even on Steam, since Windows MR had its own runtime and only supported SteamVR through a shim.
David Heaney
Now, Software developer Matthieu Bucchianeri says he’s working on a native SteamVR driver for Windows MR headsets, which he calls “Oasis”. The driver would add direct SteamVR support, just like a Valve Index, HTC Vive, or Bigscreen Beyond.
Bucchianeri is a very experienced developer, having worked on the PS4 and original PlayStation VR at Sony, Falcon 9 and Dragon at SpaceX, and HoloLens and Windows MR at Microsoft, where he currently works on Xbox. At Microsoft he contributed to OpenXR, and in his spare time he developed OpenXR Toolkit and VDXR, Virtual Desktop’s OpenXR runtime. He was also an outspoken critic of Meta’s previous OpenXR strategy.
Bucchianeri says that his upcoming Oasis driver is the result of “deep reverse-engineering” alongside “a combination of luck and perseverance”. He claims that while his work isn’t breaching intellectual property laws, he won’t be releasing the source code to avoid accidentally breaching NDAs “and other obligations”.
Currently the driver is only confirmed to work with Nvidia GPUs, since AMD controls its VR direct mode more strictly, but Bucchianeri is in talks with AMD about this.
Jamie Feltham
Bucchianeri plans to release his Oasis native SteamVR driver for Windows MR headsets in fall for free. If the project succeeds, it could bring a wave of ultra-affordable PC VR headsets, although deep discounts didn’t help these headsets gain widespread adoption the first time around.
