This is what HelixVision should look like, when you first launch the app. This is the standard UI, where you will choose the game you would like to run. You cannot see this part of the UI in VR.



One the left, you will see all the games that are currently fully supported by HelixVision. Any game on this list has been fully tested, and expected to work without errors. The games that are greyed out, are ones that are supported, but not currently installed on your system.

In the center, you will see the Play in VR button. This is how you run a game, and have it show up in the VR environment on your headset. The goal of HelixVision is to simplify all the setup, so it should be as simple as clicking Play in VR to get your game into VR on the big screen.

After you click Play in VR, several things will happen.

• 3D Vision will be enabled in red/blue 'Discover' mode.
  
• SteamVR will launch to activate your HMD.
  
• On Oculus, Oculus Home will launch.
  
• The HelixVision VR environment named 'Katanga' will launch.
  
• The game will launch.

In general, the game will be automatically set to use exclusive full screen, because this works better for DX11 games. But a number of games can be run windowed using red/blue Discover mode.

With everything running, the game is now working in stereoscopic inside VR, so you can put on your HMD and see it live. You will play the game using either Keyboard+Mouse, or Xbox/PS4/Steam controller. Make sure that the game window is in front. You cannot play the game unless it is frontmost.

You do not use the VR controllers except to setup your Katanga environment for the screen location, size, and whether you want a floor or not.

With everything running, you can then don your HMD and play your game in Stereoscopic 3D on the big screen.


You can use the VR controllers to move and resize the big screen. You will see the help text for each control.

• Recenter- will put the screen squarely in front of where you are looking.
  
• Show/Hide floor- will remove the floor if you prefer the pure-black environment.
  
• Farther/Nearer- will move the screen.
  
• Larger/Smaller- will resize the screen in place.
  
• Up/Down- will move the screen vertically.

The VR controllers are not used to play the actual game, only to setup the environment how you prefer. The settings are saved, and restored the next time you run HelixVision.

You might have Steam's Desktop Game Theater force itself into your view. This is what it looks like.


This is not HelixVision. The screen will not be in stereoscopic.

The Desktop Game Theater can be aggressive about forcing it itself to be the environment showing the game, and in fact will force quit Katanga to do so. HelixVision mostly can avoid this problem, but there are some games that are affected. At present Valve says there is no solution to this problem.

To avoid this problem, disable Steam Desktop Theater altogether. Go to Steam menu, then Settings, then In-Game. Uncheck the Use Desktop Game Theatre when launching desktop games while SteamVR is active.


You can also disable the Desktop Game Theater on a per-game basis, if you want to use their theater.