OpenVRDesktopDisplayPortal Overlay for Oculus Rift - A Guide

[Exigeous]

What OpenVRDesktopDisplayPortal Provides
This will allow you to take virtually any Windows application and "overlay" it into the VR environment, specifically in Elite Dangerous. This is useful for a number of things, personally I use it to show an in-game browser so I can use various online tools without breaking immersion and having to take my Rift off and on. I also use it to watch videos which is great when you're doing longer tasks such as mining or long exploration trips.

Install Guide
Rather than post the entire guide here as it's rather long please follow the link below to the Reddit post with the full step-by-step guide.

--Click here for the full guide--

If you find any issues/mistakes in the guide let me know and I'll update it as quickly as possible.

Enjoy!!

-Ross

 

[Cliché]

Hmmm, I was just complaining about not having an in-game captain's log and someone mentioned this. It looks interesting, but I'd rather not mess with Steam unless it's absolutely necessary. Maybe there will be another option before I really need it. I have just a few questions, if you don't mind.

Would this work to open something like WordPad, and then typing in notes, maybe using a bigger font for easy legibility?

Can you use the mouse in the overlaid application, and stuff like cut & paste?

Can you resize the overlaid application bigger? It looks a little small in your guide.

Thanks - and thanks for the guide, too.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Good post OP.

But - isn't the Rift performance slower when running through Steam?

Need a Rift-native browser injection program...

 

[Exigeous]

I'd rather not mess with Steam unless it's absolutely necessary

IMHO you shouldn't be scared of using Steam for this as you can always go back to running Elite normally without it any time you want. Getting Steam to work with the Rift is pretty damn easy so if this interests you just follow the guide as you can try it out pretty easily.

Would this work to open something like WordPad, and then typing in notes, maybe using a bigger font for easy legibility?

Yup, you could absolutely do this, great idea.

Can you use the mouse in the overlaid application, and stuff like cut & paste?

Again yup, you have to enable an option to show the cursor but after that you can see it.

Can you resize the overlaid application bigger? It looks a little small in your guide.

And again yup, you can't really resize it on the fly but you can choose to make the overlay window whatever size and in whatever position you'd like. While you're right it's very small in my screenshot that was just a very quick/dirty shot to have something to show that it does in fact work. Also realize that the overlay may look very small in that shot but in VR it's large looking than that leads you to believe. When I put Chrome in overlay I set the display to 125% of normal to make things easier to read.

isn't the Rift performance slower when running through Steam?

While I'm guessing you lose some FPS by running Elite through Steam performance of the game in headset didn't seem to be effected at all. Things were still very smooth, you do get a fair bit of little visual glitches using this method so it's a trade off between that and getting to use an app via overlay. I played for several hours after enabling this and the little glitches I saw didn't bother me too much.

Need a Rift-native browser injection program...

Agreed, I can't remember the app but I did see that some company/person is working on an app for this, something that would be native to the Rift and not need a method like this. That said for now having this working is a good substitute until native apps show up.

 

[Cliché]

Thanks a lot for all the answers.