Venture 0.2.0

Less stutter

• Translated game code is saved between launches, so a game's second launch skips most of the work that caused hitches. You can turn this off in Settings > Runtime > Keep translated code.
• Spare CPU threads translate code a game is likely to reach next, at low priority.
• Shaders (graphics pipelines) are built on background threads and cached on disk for every game, instead of stalling the frame that needs them.
• Compressed textures in GLES games are decoded off the main thread and cached.
• Many smaller speedups in the translator and in common Android functions (locks, sorting, file checks).

New

• Controls page. Your actual controller, drawn from the 3D model installed on your PC, with a line from each Quest button to the button it uses. Every Quest button can be moved to any button, a held button or two buttons pressed together, globally or per game. One set of defaults works the same on every runtime and never uses a button the runtime keeps for itself.
• Resolution and frame rate overrides, globally or per game: a percentage of your runtime's size, a custom size or a Quest headset's size, and any frame rate from 60 to 240 Hz. By default games still use your runtime's choice.
• Mixed reality on more setups. Venture uses whatever passthrough your runtime offers: Quest Link and Air Link, SteamVR headset cameras, Steam Frame through steam-link-native-passthrough, color-key tools (Virtual Desktop, ALVR) and Monado or WiVRn on Linux. It's on by default.
• Desktop mirror. Games show the left or right eye in a normal window on your PC. Choose the eye and cropped or full view, or turn it off, globally or per game.
• Audio on your PC too. An optional setting (off by default, globally or per game) also plays the game's sound on your PC's default output while it plays on the headset.
• Texture compression per game. Choose Always, Automatic or Off, globally or for one game. Turning it off can use up to 4x the video memory, so Venture asks first.
• Install any version of a game Meta published, beside the ones you have.
• Your language. The launcher can be translated and follows your system's language, or pick one in Settings > Appearance. French is included.
• Sign in from any browser when the built-in sign-in window doesn't work. On Linux without WebKitGTK, sign-in opens in your default browser instead of failing.
• Show save data in a game's ⋯ menu opens the folder its saves live in.
• Library search ignores case, accents, punctuation and word order.
• Imported games get their store name, art and description. Venture finds the store listing of an imported APK (Settings > Library > Look up imported games online sends only the package name), or link one yourself with Link to store page in the game's ⋯ menu.

Fixed

• Games play and record audio on the headset your VR runtime names, even when your PC's default output is something else.
• Batman: Arkham Shadow had no sound on PCs whose audio device runs above 48 kHz.
• Running low on memory no longer ends a game: textures that don't fit move to system memory or get compressed, and when Windows refuses more memory for translated code, Venture clears its translated code and carries on. When memory gets tight, Venture also pauses background translation and compresses textures sooner. Reported on Resident Evil 4 and AC Nexus.
• A game's first launch no longer piles up translated code waiting to be saved (AC Nexus held almost 1 GB), which also made Deadpool VR hitch on its first launch.
• When a game sits on a black screen waiting for a Meta sign-in (Pinball FX VR), the launcher now says the game needs you signed in.
• Third-party Vulkan overlays and capture hooks (Steam, Epic, GOG, OBS, Overwolf and similar) are kept out of games by default; they caused crashes and stutter. Driver and system layers still load.
• Iron Man VR's distant ocean rendered black on NVIDIA.
• SUPERHOT VR Demo and other 32-bit Unity 2018 games now run.
• Games that use the microphone (The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and others) now record, or record silence when your PC has no microphone, like a muted Quest.
• Pickleball One, Open Brush and Unity video players start or play correctly.
• A game that loses the GPU (driver reset) now closes with a reason instead of hanging.
• AMD GPUs: fixed lost GPU work when games share one graphics queue, and garbage vertex reads in games that draw without a vertex buffer (Moss). These caused device-lost crashes on Radeon cards.
• Games that show an Android dialog Venture can't display (such as Unity's graphics warning) no longer hang: the dialog is answered and the launcher shows what it said. Kaiju Battle Simulator and others hung here.
• On laptops with two GPUs, a VR runtime that refuses the game's GPU no longer stops Unity games from starting.
• When the graphics driver can't create a game's device, the game closes with that reason instead of crashing.
• Movies and in-game videos play in more games (Batman: Arkham Shadow, Syberia, Attack on Titan VR).
• A sound that ended at an unlucky moment could leave a game waiting forever; fixed.
• Curved menus, 360° backdrops, cube skies and other overlays a VR runtime can't show exactly are now drawn by Venture at their true shape instead of disappearing or turning flat. Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge showed a black screen at its menu on SteamVR, and AC Nexus showed no menu backdrop or loading video on Virtual Desktop.
• Windows: the launcher works on networks that block certificate checks; before, every sign-in, update check and debug report upload failed there with an SSL error.
• Linux: sharp text at fractional scaling, icons everywhere, the launcher's window buttons no longer cover the library toolbar.
• Beat Saber mod loaders (Scotland2 with Flamingo) start: hook libraries can make heap memory executable, change file modes, and find the mods they loaded by path.

Diagnostics

• Debug reports open with what happened in the last run, its likely cause and what to try, and list the settings the game ran with (its own overrides, the global settings and where each value came from).
• Out-of-memory failures log the memory type, budget and live allocations, so these reports show what ran out.
• When a game stops, the launcher names the real reason: a VR session the runtime refused, a game that stopped responding and was closed, or the signal and missing function a crash came from.
• Frame logs show the worst frame gap and how many frames came late, so stutter reports are easier to read.
• Crash reports no longer hang when the crash happens while Windows' loader is busy.

If a game crashes or freezes on this version, please send a new debug report: after a crash, use Report issue on the game's page; after a freeze, use Settings > Upload debug report.

Everything from 0.1.4.3 is included.

Install

Windows 10/11: download Venture-windows64-setup.exe and run it.

Linux: pick the file for your distribution.

Then: start your headset's runtime (SteamVR or Quest Link on Windows, Monado on Linux), open Venture, sign in with Meta, choose Install on a game and press Play.