I recently added an Intel Arc B580 card, any 'goalpost' to eventually add suport for Intel graphics cards to work with SteamVR

[Bud]

I'm asking as I truly did not know that the latest Intel cards wouldn't work with SteamVR or even the 'god awful' Meta system but the card should run with them. I understand that there are workarounds with "Visual Desktop" but is there any work being done to have the PC (SteamVR) to eventually work with the Intel Arc graphics cards.

I couldn't imagine that this would be excruciatingly hard due to the Intel cards being both stable and strong enough to outdo a great deal of both Intel and AMD graphics cards in the "3dMark" benchmark software.

With that being said and as I said, Meta is awful, is Steam or even SteamVR going to do yet another 'backdoor' to fix a compatibility issue to have something that isn't working, to actually work like it should have been already doing - in the future?

I'm just curious on this one, is there even an 'expected' timeline to possibly fix this issue or even a guideline to what work needs to be done with this issue?

[Bob Loblaw]

Originally posted by Bud:

I couldn't imagine that this would be excruciatingly hard due to the Intel cards being both stable and strong enough to outdo a great deal of both Intel and AMD graphics cards in the "3dMark" benchmark software.

Different makers handle GPU calls differently. Sometimes it causes a problem. The benchmarks in common usage might not test the routines your VR game uses. Bug fixing resources are allocated based on the number of users with the problem. Even if Valve works on ARC compatibility, small VR devs generally won't devote time to that.

I hope you find this anecdote illuminating:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/0/2970650017901586073/?tscn=1617383130

[orbatos]

Originally posted by Bob Loblaw:

Originally posted by Bud:

I couldn't imagine that this would be excruciatingly hard due to the Intel cards being both stable and strong enough to outdo a great deal of both Intel and AMD graphics cards in the "3dMark" benchmark software.

Different makers handle GPU calls differently. Sometimes it causes a problem. The benchmarks in common usage might not test the routines your VR game uses. Bug fixing resources are allocated based on the number of users with the problem. Even if Valve works on ARC compatibility, small VR devs generally won't devote time to that.

I hope you find this anecdote illuminating:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/0/2970650017901586073/?tscn=1617383130

I hate to tell you this, but that analogy simply isn't isn't correct. There is *some* truth to it, but the claim is generally false because corporate executives support not just what generates profits, but also what they like to support or are lobbied to do both internally and externally. This includes face to face negotiations and deals we never hear about.

There's also the matter of what issues actually affect a given platform and what the hardware vendor (int this case Intel) has done to support VR and OpenXR specifically. In several cases, like Meta/Oculus Link, they are being blocked because the application uses a GPU whitelist. e.g. there's no bug, this is trivial to fix.

One Workaround is using ALVR and Streaming hardware encoded h265 or AV1 video to your device with that. Your B580 has hardware support for both, and if you have a Quest 3 it does too, use AV1 if possible, it's much more efficient for data, raising the possible quality you can stream.