Simple OpenVR Driver Tutorial

I created this driver as a demonstration for how to write some of the most common things a SteamVR/OpenVR driver would want to do. You will need to understand C++11 and some C++17 features at least to make the most use of this repo. It features:

• Central driver setup to manage addition and removal of devices, and updating devices each frame, collecting events, access to OpenVR internals, etc...

• Reading configuration files to load user settings

• Logging for simple debug messages

• Tracked HMD which is a tracked device that acts as a video output

• Tracked Controllers which is a tracked device that has mapped buttons, triggers, touchpads, joysticks, etc...

• Tracked Trackers which is a device purely meant for tracking the location of an object

• Tracking References (base stations) which is a base station or camera designed as a fixed point of reference to the real world

• Custom Device Render Models so your new controllers look cool

• Visual Studio Debugging Setup for SteamVR because a debugger is a developers best friend ^{(besides ctrl-z)}.

Building

• Clone the project and submodules
  • git clone --recursive https://github.com/terminal29/Simple-OpenVR-Driver-Tutorial.git
• Build project with CMake
  • cd Simple-OpenVR-Driver-Tutorial && cmake .
• Open project with Visual Studio and hit build
  • Driver folder structure and files will be copied to the output folder as example.

Installation

There are two ways to "install" your plugin:

• Find your SteamVR driver directory, which should be at: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SteamVR\drivers and copy the example directory from the project's build directory into the SteamVR drivers directory. Your folder structure should look something like this:

or

• Navigate to C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\openvr and find the openvrpaths.vrpath file. Open this file with your text editor of choice, and under "external_drivers", add another entry with the location of the example folder. For example mine looks like this after adding the entry:

{
	"config" : 
	[
		"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\config",
		"c:\\program files (x86)\\steam\\config"
	],
	"external_drivers" : 
	[
		"C:\\Users\\<Username>\\Documents\\Programming\\c++\\Simple-OpenVR-Driver-Tutorial\\build\\Debug\\example"
	],
	"jsonid" : "vrpathreg",
	"log" : 
	[
		"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\logs",
		"c:\\program files (x86)\\steam\\logs"
	],
	"runtime" : 
	[
		"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\SteamVR"
	],
	"version" : 1
}

Debugging

Debugging SteamVR is not as simple as it seems because of the startup procedure it uses. The SteamVR ecosystem consists of a couple programs:

• vrserver: the driver host
• vrcompositor: the render engine
• vrmonitor: the popup that displays status information
• vrdashboard: the VR menu/overlay
• vrstartup: a program to start everything up

To debug effectively in Visual Studio, you can use an extension called Microsoft Child Process Debugging Power Tool and enable debugging child processes, disable debugging for all other child processes, and add vrserver.exe as a child process to debug as below:

Set the program the project should run in debug mode to vrstartup (Usually located C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SteamVR\bin\win64\vrstartup.exe). Now we can start up SteamVR without needing to go through Steam, and can properly startup all the other programs vrserver needs.

Issues

I don't have an issue template, but if you find what you think is a bug, and can describe how to reproduce it, please leave an issue and/or pull request with the details.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2020 Jacob Hilton (Terminal29)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.