Vive Business Streaming 1.11.3 - BETA Release notes

[C.T.]

VIVE Business Streaming - 1.11.3 - Beta release notes
Released May 25^th, 2023

Release highlights

Mixed Reality mode with passthrough (Experimental) – available with VIVE Business Streaming only

With this release, VBS introduces Mixed Reality mode (MR) supported, allowing PC content to leverage the XR Elite's great color passthrough feature. Additionally, the passthrough feature is also compatible with the Focus 3 headset.

Now, users can easily enable passthrough underlay when streaming through VIVE Business Streaming while streaming PC content with just a simple click. By submitting the alpha layer to the SteamVR Runtime, which is already supported by many PC applications (such as Blender), the integration with VBS takes care of the remaining tasks, seamlessly streaming the alpha layer and blending it with the camera passthrough on the headset. This creates an immersive MR experience for PC users, enhanced by the XR Elite's high-quality color passthrough. Additionally, the support extends to the Focus 3 headset as well.
VIVE Business Streaming 1.11.3 marks the first release on the market to enable passthrough support with standalone devices streaming from PC as an experimental feature. (We still maintain camera privacy exclusively on the headset only).

We are excited to bring more MR features in future updates and encourage PC developers to explore the creation of MR content utilizing the powerful computing capabilities of the VIVE XR Elite.

Stay tuned for more updates from VIVE Business Streaming!

(captured with Blender with XR Elite via VIVE Business Streaming)

Dynamic bitrate improvements

VIVE Streaming services 1.11.3 revises the heuristic algorithm of Dynamic bitrate to avoid sudden drop when encountering network condition glitches. The Bitrate settings is also enhanced the bitrate setting to prevent pixelated images. These improvements help to maintain visual quality while VIVE Streaming is adapting to network condition.

VIVE Business Streaming - 1.11.3

• Added support for Mixed Reality (MR mode) with passthrough (Experimental).
• Enhanced Bitrate settings to prevent pixelated images.
• Improved Dynamic Bitrate to prevent sudden bitrate drops.
• Implemented server stability improvements to handle unexpected Windows file access exceptions.
• Resolved the issue where Console Settings could not be opened due to a missing Windows Startup folder.
• Fixed a potential issue that could cause incorrect Console setting values.
• Fixed potential texture inconsistencies caused by incorrect headset projection when the headset was changed or after an update.
• Resolved the problem where SteamVR Dashboard could not be opened on some PCs.
• [OpenXR] Reduced size by removing unnecessary libraries.

VIVE Business Streaming app - 1.0.17.5 (Please connect Focus 3 to PC via USB to update)

• Added support for Mixed Reality (MR) with passthrough (Experimental).
• Added support for left hand reverse pinch to open Steam Dashboard.
• Resolved a potential issue that could introduce extra controller latency in USB streaming.
• Improved prediction accuracy.
• Improved VIVE Business Streaming client stability.

[Hitmobile]

Just stopped by to say that I've tested this on the XR Elite and it shows a lot of promise!

Very cool to try out handtracking within SteamVR for the first time! I'm unsure if this was an intended side effect of turning on passthrough but I notice that some of the Steam VR backgrounds in my SteamVR Homes show passthrough. It actually think it's pretty cool.

The issue for me when turning on passthrough is how it effects performance on the highest quality of streaming. The performance dip is most noticeable on Ultra settings for me, but is a lot more performant and smooth when changed to Quality settings. 

Also, I am unsure if this conflicts with how the passthrough is implemented but would be great to have access to the camera via SteamVR settings where you would normally see a PCVR camera such as for the Valve Index.

I do wish there was not such a large jump in quality between Quality and Ultra settings, it would be great if there was something in between or that I had access to more advanced quality settings.

Mixed reality within blender was a cool experience! Very excited for this potential 🙂

Edited June 6, 2023 by Hitmobile

[Alex_HTC]

@Hitmobile

You can always tune the settings in unity's quality settings https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-QualitySettings.html

Also we expose an api to control the quality of passthrough https://hub.vive.com/storage/app/doc/en-us/UnityXR/UnityXRPassthrough.html#set-passthrough-image-quality