Man, this whole tech thing sometimes leaves my head spinning. So, Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom—or maybe not—decided to pull the plug on WMR support with Windows 11. I guess they figured we’d all just move on? But hey, this dude Matthieu Bucchianeri, yeah, he’s got this wild idea called ‘Oasis’. And I don’t mean the band.
So, get this, he’s planning to drop an unofficial SteamVR driver at the end of the month, specifically on August 29th. But that’s if Valve gives the green light. Bureaucracy, am I right? Anyway, the whole point of Oasis is to make those Windows Mixed Reality headsets play nice with SteamVR, because otherwise, you’d need Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Portal—which, let’s be real, isn’t the most thrilling thing out there.
Here’s the catch, though—just a heads-up—it’s only gonna work with Nvidia GPUs. Sorry, AMD folks, it seems like they’ve hit a brick wall there. Matthieu was trying to get AMD’s approval, but from what it sounds like, it’s gone completely belly up. He was asking AMD to either let third parties use something or give an override option. But nope, doesn’t look like it’s happening.
And a little backstory – last October, Microsoft pretty much said “sayonara” to the whole WMR scene with the 24H2 update in Windows 11. So, if you had a cool VR setup from Acer or Samsung or whatever, too bad, you’re outta luck. It’s kinda wild.
Oh, and Matthieu, this guy has some serious chops—he used to be a software wizard at Microsoft’s mixed reality division. Now he’s doing some Xbox stuff, but this Oasis thing? Total side hustle. He swears up and down it’s all kosher, not stepping on any confidentiality toes or snagging Microsoft’s special sauce.
Honestly, just thinking about all this makes my head feel like a scrambled egg. But hey, props to him for trying to keep the VR dream alive.
