Valve adds Room View to SteamOS 0.5.8 beta for Steam Frame

Valve expands Steam Frame passthrough

Valve released SteamOS 0.5.8 to the Steam Frame Beta channel, adding Room View support for PC streaming and enabling OpenXR mixed-reality features for compatible streamed games. The update is limited to the Frame, and Valve has not announced a stable-release date.

The beta changes the behavior of camera passthrough while a PC is connected. Remote desktop content and the remote game theater can remain visible while passthrough is active; previously, enabling Room View hid remote content. SteamOS 0.5.8 also allows PC VR games that support OpenXR mixed reality to blend rendered content with the Frame’s camera view, with X-Plane 12 cited by Valve as an example.

Mixed reality requires a second beta

The new mixed-reality capability has a separate access condition. Users must opt into the SteamVR beta branch on the PC as well as install SteamOS 0.5.8 on the headset. The beta also adds support for the OpenXR `XR_ENVIRONMENT_BLEND_MODE_ALPHA_BLEND` mode, allowing streamed applications to mark parts of their output as transparent so the camera feed can show through.

SteamOS 0.5.8 is available through the headset’s system-update channel after users select the Beta option. Valve describes the build as a test release and has not said when it will leave beta.

SteamVR update repairs streaming regressions

Alongside the headset update, Valve released SteamVR 2.19.2 to the beta branch for PC users. The runtime update restores the ability to lower encoding resolution to 512 and fixes overlay and game-menu regressions introduced in SteamVR 2.19.1.

It also addresses an occasional crash and transient visual artifacts associated with changes in streaming resolution, along with resilience to brief network interruptions. Other changes include a fix for launching the SteamRT3 client on Linux without the Legacy Steam Runtime in the default library and a correction to the Quick Access Menu battery tab, which could list the right controller twice under some third-party drivers, including those used with PlayStation VR2.

SteamOS beta also carries headset fixes

Beyond Room View, the SteamOS build improves eye-tracking self-calibration and addresses low-end gamma-response problems, including inconsistencies between the eyes on some headsets. Valve also fixed a permission issue that had prevented WebXR from working in Chrome version 157.

For Steam Frame, overlay render quality is now fixed at Low and the corresponding setting is hidden. Valve said this resolves problems that occurred when Ultra quality was selected. The release notes do not say whether third-party applications can read camera frames directly, leaving that question unresolved in the reviewed reporting.