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Virtual Desktop 1.0 - Now available on Steam

guygodin
Protege
Virtual Desktop is a little utility that improves your VR experience on the desktop. By efficiently replicating your desktop into the Rift, the application allows you to see your desktop on a giant virtual screen. You can browse the web, watch movies or even play non-VR games. It also allows you to launch VR games and resume from them without having to take your headset off.




After you launch Virtual Desktop, a tray icon will appear in your taskbar. From there you can manage your list of games, change your settings.




You can also drag & drop executables or shortcuts to add more games to your list.

Requirements
- Windows 8 or 10
- Oculus 1.3 Runtime

Latest Changes
- Added ability to browse 360 photos
- Added mirror to monitor feature

Follow the link below to access the store page
Official website
Virtual Desktop Developer
1,844 REPLIES 1,844

guygodin
Protege
The DK2 (higher res and positional tracking) will help a lot I think. I'll have to experiment in July and see what works best. Thanks for the suggestions!

I just added a button as well as a global hotkey to reset orientation (F4). Eventually the global hotkey should be configurable as it may interfere with certain programs.
Virtual Desktop Developer

Qoheleth
Honored Guest
guygodin, in your research in creating the vr desktop, do you know if it's possible to get access to the image of a window (not the whole desktop), in gpu memory?

guygodin
Protege
"Qoheleth" wrote:
guygodin, in your research in creating the vr desktop, do you know if it's possible to get access to the image of a window (not the whole desktop), in gpu memory?

Unfortunately no, at least not with the desktop duplication API. You can however copy a sub-region of the desktop (a specific window's bounds for example) but if another window overlaps it, you will get the combination of both in your texture. It would have been cool to be able to copy individual windows; I would have been able to create depth effects between them and create a true "3D" desktop.

I've read that its possible to get individual window textures through GDI (even if other window overlap) but this is rather slow has the textures need to be copied from the GPU to system memory.
Virtual Desktop Developer

Hammerschaedel
Honored Guest
Cool Stuff^^ This is almost the Way i want for a VR Desktop. With the Positional Tracking of the DK2 it will be awesome.

But, the one Big Problem with every VR desktop i tryed till now, the resolution is way to small. I mean, when i already use a Desktop with a resolution of 1920*1080, why not make the workspace a lot bigger? 7680*4320 or so.... the viewfield would be still 1920*1080 but the space to put Big programs could be nearly endless. Of course would a startbutton or a Taskbar useless then...

mylescox
Explorer
"guygodin" wrote:
I'll add a keyboard shortcut to reset Rift orientation (something like F12?, is there a common key used by other apps to do this?). Curved screen is on my todo list.


F12 is the dedicated screenshot button in Steam games.

I was thinking something like CTRL+Scroll Lock.

guygodin
Protege
"mylescox" wrote:

F12 is the dedicated screenshot button in Steam games.

I was thinking something like CTRL+Scroll Lock.

I already implemented it, it's F4 for now but will make it configurable in the future.
I've also added a curved screen option, let me know what you guys think.
Virtual Desktop Developer

PatrickBauer
Honored Guest
Really nice, I like it really much! Do you plan to open up the source code on github?
I'd really like to see features like: neck-model integration (maybe obsolete with Dk2) and the ability to move the screen around (I'd like it to be further down, not straight ahead).

Additionally: Whats the real difference between distance and size? I know what each slider does, but in the end, both produce the same result, don't they?

And last but not least: I have a dual monitor setup and I'd really like to see the second monitor too. Maybe its even possible to emulate even more single desktops which can be placed independantly?

Thanks for your great software! 🙂

Edit:
The curved screen features doesn't work for me, the screen gets unresponsive and jumps around :S

guygodin
Protege
"PatrickBauer" wrote:
Really nice, I like it really much! Do you plan to open up the source code on github?

No plans no, I did release SharpOVR though (a NuGet package that contains a .NET API to libOVR)

"PatrickBauer" wrote:
I'd really like to see features like: neck-model integration (maybe obsolete with Dk2) and the ability to move the screen around (I'd like it to be further down, not straight ahead).

I'll keep that in mind, thanks for the suggestion!

"PatrickBauer" wrote:
Additionally: Whats the real difference between distance and size? I know what each slider does, but in the end, both produce the same result, don't they?

That's a good question, I was asked to add that but I have no idea how it feels since I don't have a devkit to test it. I was under the impression it helped focusing on stuff that was further away from your eyes.

"PatrickBauer" wrote:
And last but not least: I have a dual monitor setup and I'd really like to see the second monitor too. Maybe its even possible to emulate even more single desktops which can be placed independantly?

I do plan on adding multi monitor support. I am limited to displaying physical monitors only as Windows doesn't have the concept of a virtual screen like Unix/Linux has. So if you have 2 monitors in addition to your rift (and assuming they are all plugged in the same video card) you will be able to see both screens in VD. I was planning on replicating the position that is setup in windows for the displays in virtual space.


Hopefully this makes sense, on a side note I've tweaked a couple things that might solve the curved screen display, thanks for trying it out!
Virtual Desktop Developer

Infinimitsu
Explorer
I see that you've added the "Curved Screen" option, but when I tick the box the who thing becomes unstable and glitchy until I untick the box.

Also, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be able to play games from my library which run from my GPU but I've tried at it just shows a black screen on the Rift. I was hoping to be able to play games from my Steam library on a glorious huge curved screen.

Still, a much better experience than with Deskope. Can't wait to see this on DK2!

MiDAwE
Honored Guest
I gave it a try on Win8 64. It won't start; complaining about:

An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format.
(Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007000B)

Any suggestions?

Thanks