Sheer luck. SteamVR core functionality has repeatedly broken for me, as I have begun to document. And they have not fixed it right away.
One of the more recent examples is this.
So now, there is no way whatsoever to properly record VR experiences to post on YouTube and such, without any benefit to the VR use cases that were under pressure for performance.
SteamVR is so bad, controllers and base stations have become unusable with Pimax hardware as a result.
Architecturally, SteamVR, by all appearances is an abomination. For starters, the limitations and performance issues imposed on overlay applications work are extreme and totally unnecessary.
But where it really gets unacceptable is that SteamVR, on any given week, could introduce a 30% performance regression, at the same time an app like DCS World introduces a 30% regression. Then it turns out the Beta version also has the same regression. This leaves me… in an unfortunate situation which I don’t have the margins for… upwards of a few weeks.
There is the horrifying prospect that one day, SteamVR will cause a 30% regression to do something the devs think is clever, permanently destroying my VR software stack.
Because of that, it is worth spending $400 on extra disks, connectors, licenses, etc, to have an offline copy.
This is just ridiculous.
EDIT: To top it off, the workaround to force a SteamVR downgrade is to use a program called Cheat Engine to do hex memory editing. Great way to get banned from multiplayer!
EDIT2: By the way, SteamVR hardware, also sucks. The mechanical Lighthouses just aren’t reliable, or scalable, while the Oculus Constellation system was both. Also, the Oculus Constellation system had weeks of battery life, required no radio traffic, and used coded sequences rather than laser pulses that could be fouled up all kinds of ways. I have now had 2 of 4 Lighthouses fail, one within six months, the other DOA and still awaiting RMA.