alvr-org
SteamVR "Display VR View" feature not working
Description
Feature for mirroring VR View on desktop "Display VR View" always display a black screen. I'm not too sure if this is a problem from ALVR or SteamVR, but I figured I should report it. I have checked the Wiki, searched thru Issues and Googled to see if people has similar problem, even on Windows, nothing seems to show up.
General Troubleshooting
- [x] I carefully followed the instructions in the README and successfully completed the setup wizard
- [x] I read the ALVR GitHub Wiki
Environment
Hardware
Note: for Linux, an upload to the hw-probe database is preferred: hw-probe -all -upload
https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=ea97c66bb6
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 5300G
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 6GB & AMD ATI Radeon Vega Series
GPU Driver Version: 580.95.05
Audio: None. This is a headless unit.
Installation
ALVR Version: 20.14.1
ALVR Settings File:
SteamVR Version: Tried on both 2.14.3 & 2.12.14
Install Type:
- [ ] Packaged (
exe,deb,rpm, etc) - [x] Portable (
zip) - [ ] Source
OS Name and Version (winver on Windows or grep PRETTY_NAME /etc/os-release on most Linux distributions): Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
IIRC it's an issue with steamvr still using X11 for the desktop view. If you want an alternative you can look at wlx-overlay-s: https://github.com/galister/wlx-overlay-s
Thank you for the suggestion!
My issue isn't that I can't access desktop while a VR game is active, I have a Sunshine server runs in the background that I can access thru Moonlight. What I want is to show what I currently see back onto the host machine so other people can watch. The "Display VR View" feature would be perfect for that if it works.
I am aware that the game window does show on desktop, but for some reason with SkyrimVR, the game only shows a vertical window that cuts off parts of the VR FOV, which isn't bad, but it is really annoying to watch a vertical game window on horizontal TV...
Now that I think of it, this is a headless setup, with a virtual display, idk if it can affect that feature, figured I should mention. The view desktop function from the VR glasses works perfectly though.
Oops sorry, I mistook VR view for desktop view.
I tried it, and I can enable "Display VR view", but as soon as I resize the window, vrcompositor crashes and steamvr fails with error -203. Maybe caused by Nvidia in my case, since there are graphics exceptions at the same time.
sample output from journalctl: journal.txt
and this line at the same time from vrcompositor.txt:
Tue Dec 02 2025 19:54:37.720961 [Info] - Failed Watchdog timeout in thread Render in WaitForPresent after 6.463192 seconds. Aborting.
I pretty much got the same error when resizing the window, but not much info was shown in journalctl on SteamVR startup and on ALVR client connect:
ec 02 21:07:38 overlord kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:01:00): 13, Graphics Exception on GPC 0: 3D HEIGHT CT Violation. Coordinates: (0x8, 0x100)
Dec 02 21:07:38 overlord kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:01:00): 13, Graphics Exception: ESR 0x500420=0x80000020 0x500434=0x1000008 0x500438=0x1900 0x50043c=0x0
Dec 02 21:07:38 overlord kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:01:00): 13, Graphics Exception on GPC 1: 3D HEIGHT CT Violation. Coordinates: (0x0, 0x100)
Dec 02 21:07:38 overlord kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:01:00): 13, Graphics Exception: ESR 0x508420=0x80000020 0x508434=0x1000000 0x508438=0x1900 0x50843c=0x0
Dec 02 21:07:38 overlord kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:01:00): 13, pid=40795, name=vrcompositor.re, Graphics Exception: channel 0x00000037, Class 0000c797, Offset 00000000, Data 00000000
Where can I find vrcompositor.txt ?