Valve released an updated SteamVR today, version 1.11, which is the culmination of the last several weeks of smaller updates to the beta branch. The company calls this a “Spring cleaning” update in that it focuses on tweaks to the new dashboard, performance improvements, and bug fixes.

SteamVR version 1.11 is now rolling out to all SteamVR users. The most noticable changes are to the SteamVR Dashboard. It now includes a volume and mute control for the headset’s microphone, as well as an improvement for Audio Mirroring which allows users to independently adjust the volume of the headset and the mirrored output. The option can be enabled in the Audio section of the SteamVR Settings (when Advanced Options is enabled). Valve notes that this feature is still in beta.

The Play Area settings, which adjust the SteamVR “chaperone” boundary, also got some new capabilities, including a ‘Wall Height’ setting (to control the height of the boundary walls) and the option to turn on a visualization to show the Activation Distance (which defines when the boundary appears).

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The update also fixes some bugs in SteamVR Home and opens the Half-Life: Alyx Home environments to all users (originally they were released ahead of the game as a pre-order bonus).

Along with tweaks to the dashboard to “improve visual consistency,” the update also brings a heap of crash fixes, bug fixes, and performance improvements, the complete list of which you can see in the official patch notes for SteamVR 1.11.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Ad

    This dashboard isn’t very good, you still can’t add non steam VR games, and that better not be a storefront interface they’ve added in place of recent apps. If they don’t want to give you your full library inside the headset they shouldn’t give you the store inside the headset. Who even shops steam with the headset on their face?

    • VRagoso

      You said: This dashboard isn’t very good, you still can’t add non steam VR games. Well, I managed with Revive. Oculus games are appearing in the new dash board.

      • Ad

        I meant manually, Revive does it on its own through a separate openvr means, like viveport.

    • James Cobalt

      You can add non-Steam games to your library, and if you right click them, you’ll find a checkbox option to add it to the VR category. Then it shows up on your VR dashboard. Unless something changed in this update, this is how it’s worked since 2016.

      • Ad

        It stopped working when they updated the library to the new format. They no longer show up in headset when you do that.

        • James Cobalt

          !! Has anyone submitted a bug report for this? Can you add custom games to the Viveport or Oculus libraries? Those could provide a workaround.

          • Ad

            I no longer have Viveport, and are Oculus games automatically added or is that through Revive doing it?

          • NooYawker

            $27 for a year of viveport infinity? I just recently installed it for the first time in years.

          • Jeff Axline

            It’s actually $53.88 a year right now.

          • NooYawker

            Oh. That was a short sale they had. Still good value if you don’t have any of the original favorite VR games, like Arizona sunshine, and stuff.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Hmmm. weird, as I can remember me starting a non-steam game from the dashboard last saturday.

    • Rosko

      Overall it’s better visually but there definitely is a way to go with usability. It frustrates me that I can’t easily access my collections.

      • Ad

        I didn’t like Big Picture at all, so Valve needs to make a full UI as soon as possible. I’d be fine with it not having every feature of steam right there, but at least have my library.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        Mwa, I don’t think it’s visually much better than the Big Picture version, but IMHO the only thing they should have done was made the screen just curved or make that optional. I hate it now you only get to see much less and it also starts the game immediately instead of going to the details screen. I have so many games (installed) I can’t remember what they are, so before I start I first want to see what the game was about. So no, for me this display is a step back instead of forward..

  • impurekind

    Good stuff.

  • VRagoso

    I like this dashboard quite a lot. It is super smooth on the resources when compared to the Steam Home. Though, I still like the steam home feature, and be able to switch environments (very popular with my kid), which currently you have to manually start under the advanced tab.

  • HamsterNet

    YES to having a Wall height, for whilst my man cave is 4.5m x 4.5m play space the ceiling is LOW. Just hope we can get a chaperone ceiling

    • Chaperone ceiling is provided by Stop Sign VR, an app available on Steam. (I’m the dev.)

  • mark_burnes

    I wish they would bring back “reset seated position” but for all games

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  • LowRezSkyline

    It would be super cool if my audio didn’t stop working again after these updates… it’s usually minor like the mirroring option gets reset but still it’s f-n annoying.

  • Spectre

    I would really love to see some sort of EQ or maybe just a low-pass filter option for the audio mirroring. Really cool feature, but I only use it so I can take advantage of my subwoofer in VR. The rest of the frequency range is just a distraction.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Still think the new dashboard isn’t really an improvement over the old one (except maybe ofcourse for the extra settings available). it’s much smaller and when you click on an icon it immediately starts the game instead of going to the ‘details’ page.

  • NooYawker

    I really don’t care much about dashboards. As long as i can choose the game i want I’m good.

  • Simon Vermette

    “which allows users to independently adjust the volume of the headset and the mirrored output. ”

    Wow, it was about god damn time ! It was such a pain to ajust the mirrored volume at night.

  • Its getting better with every update.

  • mirak

    I don’t understand why we are still using a 2D dashboard, instead of a 3D shelf or library at room scale.