Faceless

A proof of concept OpenVR driver for using VR controllers without an HMD.

The goal is to guesstimate the position of the HMD based on the controller positions, or use a tracker for the head, so you can interact with the virtual world without needing to wear the HMD at all.

How to use

To build, open the solution is Visual Studio 2019 and build both 32 and 64 bit targets in Release mode. The output driver will go to bin/drivers/faceless. This driver (the whole faceless folder) can be put in Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/drivers for use. Alternatively, grab the latest release, and make sure to get the right folder in place after unzipping (the faceless folder containing bin and resources folder).

To use this, you must open your Steam/config/steamvr.vrsettings file and set the activateMultipleDrivers key true under the steamvr sections:

"steamvr" : {
      "activateMultipleDrivers" : true
}

This will allow the driver used for the VR controllers to work concurrently with this driver. Finally, enable the driver in the Startup section of SteamVR settings.

Tracker support

You can use an extra tracker to track your head. This functionality can be disabled by setting useTracker: false in the driver_faceless section of your Steam/config/steamvr.vrsettings. If you use full body tracking, you might want to disable it, as it defaults to enabled.

To use this in practice, first calibrate using room setup like you would normally. After this, your orientation will very likely still be off, so use the following keybinds to adjust it:

Saving the orientation will cause it to be loaded automatically next time the driver is started.

Playspace mover is strongly recommended to adjust your height/position.

Using only controllers

The original intent of the driver was to use only controllers, with no HMD or trackers. This is currently supported, but is a not very usefull work in progress. Currently, the orientation of the head is just bound to the orientation of one hand. To use in this mode, just install the driver and connect controllers.