SteamVR 2.16 arrives with a number of Linux fixes for VR fans

Valve just released SteamVR 2.16, the latest release bundling up lots of bug fixes and improvements to make the VR experience on PC a lot smoother.

Thankfully there's a bunch of general Linux fixes that came with this update too along with VRLink improvements on Linux too, so perhaps the experience won't be quite so rough. If you're using SteamVR on Linux, do leave a comment to let us know how you're getting on with this update. I'm hoping with the upcoming Steam Frame, which uses SteamOS, that we'll see more Linux improvements over time too.

Here's everything that's changed:

SteamVR:

• Fixed issue causing shimmering on the edges of the display on some headsets.
• Dashboard: Resolved some memory leaks on AMD hardware.
• Dashboard: Improved compatibility on some older (legacy) AMD hardware.
• Fixed an issue with older AMD cards or drivers that caused a memory leak.
• Streaming: Advanced settings UX now respects global toggle.
• Improved version compatibility handshake when streaming.
• Fixed HTC Vive users not being able to activate the laser mouse by clicking the HMD button after the dashboard is visible.
• Add protection from hangs in vrserver on exit.
• Speculative fix for Varjo headsets not having a display.
• Fix regression in Chaperone behavior that was impacting some 3rd party OpenVR plugins.
• Fixed an issue where SteamVR Home would drop frames on some systems.
• Fix a bug where the SteamVR dashboard would not start, particularly when using hardware that creates many devices at startup.

Linux:

• Fix a crash in SteamVR when a game crashes.
• Fixed texture leaks when mirror window was visible.
• Improved interop with gamescope overlay forwarding.
• The vrcompositor process is always a child of vrserver now (instead of whatever process first uses the compositor).
• Improved GPU synchronization implementation on Linux (now uses timeline semaphores).
• Stop invoking `pidof` internally.

VRLink:

• On Linux, pick the best GPU for VR and streaming rather than using first enumerated device. In particular, the NVIDIA open drivers enumerate in a different order and would not get selected before this change.
• On Linux, work-around to enable 240 MBit/s streaming on NVIDIA cards.
• Reduce performance overhead of Timing Debug Window.
• Adjust packet timings to reduce latency spikes.
• Fixed streaming certain OpenXR games on Quest (including Pavlov and Into The Radius 2)

OpenXR:

• Added support for XR_EXT_interaction_profile_battery_state_display.
• Fix OpenXR crash related to xrDestroyInstance.
• Improved XrCompositionLayerProjection support (fixes distortion when scene projection and display projection differ).

Developer/Internal:

• SteamVR won't kill UnrealEditor upon exiting VR.
• Reduce the number of uninteresting vrevents, especially under VR streaming.
• Cleaner driver shutdown sequencing.

Source: Valve