SteamVR is a 6+GB download. Why so enormous? :: SteamVR General Discussions

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vt-dbnz

Mar 28, 2021 @ 5:36pm

SteamVR is a 6+GB download. Why so enormous?

As if those Electron apps where a simple image writer tool is hundreds of millions of bytes weren't bad enough... It is as big as the whole Talos Principle game. Yes, i am complaining.

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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments

dktronics

Mar 28, 2021 @ 7:36pm

You'll need workshop, as well. And that is another 11Gb, which can rise quite considerably if you start subbing to VR environments.

peremptor

Mar 29, 2021 @ 1:35am

It's the price of doing business. It's not that much compared to AAA games that are 50gigs+ at least.

Heck HL ALyx is like 60+ gigs just installed it. I'm expecting a lot of big things in great detail.

vt-dbnz

Mar 29, 2021 @ 8:09am

Originally posted by peremptor:
Heck HL ALyx is like 60+ gigs just installed it. I'm expecting a lot of big things in great detail.

I completely understand why games can be big. MS Flight Sim is so big it can't be installed, it has to remain in the cloud. That is normal. Requiring that much space for a piece of software that is only a middle-man between the headset and the game to enable controller support and rendering is something i completely fail to comprehend. I bet it can be fitted into a few megabytes, a few dozen megs at worst, with maybe additional 100M or so for the small 3d world steamVR has built in. But where do the rest come from??

6GB is comparable to the whole Windows OS installer, which has all the burden of legacy code and is a bloatware. (yes i know, it does blow up a lot both during installation and afterwards over time with all extra software and updates and drivers and logs etc... and i'm worried SteamVR may do the same)

GmoLargey

Mar 29, 2021 @ 8:45am

No different to Oculus, it does a fair chunk more than just handing over controls, it is the API, it'll have a collection of runtimes in on itself that goes way back, much like youd fill up your control panel with seperate runtimes for all those old games you install

I'm sure you can strip out steam vr home if not using and various other non essentials but that's going in as a power user, most people will just want the 'chuck on your head and go' compatibility approach which is where those files are bundled into the initial download.