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I‘ve read a lot about passthrough options for Quest, Pico but is passthrough possible with a Valve Index? The headset has cameras, so it should be possible.
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Passthrough for Valve Index?
- Thread starter AlterSchwede
- Start date
I know this thread is a bit old but I've been doing some digging on this topic myself as a fellow index user and as you pointed out there isn't really much support outside of the meta quest ecosystem. I did manage to find a sort of half solution but the effect is passable rather than perfect. If you enable "3D Room View" and set the room view style to "Translucent Pass-Through" it will render both VAM and your passthrough at the same time. To toggle this feature double tap the menu button on the index controller. I tested this on the default scene and I couldn't see the black background, only the model however since its translucent passthrough the models in vam are slightly translucent as well depending on the irl lighting conditions.
The knuckle controllers are also rendered regardless of what's in VAM due to the steam overlay, however there is a separate 'solution' for that. To disable the rendering of the controllers we are simply going to delete the model of the controllers from the SteamVR files so no controller is rendered outside of games at all. To do so, go to whatever drive or folder steam is installed on; \steamapps\common\SteamVR\drivers\indexcontroller\resources\rendermodels
Create a backup folder on your desktop or somewhere safe so you can restore these files later. Cut everything out of the rendermodels folder and paste it into your backup folder. Your done! with those files removed there is no controller rendered when you launch SteamVR. I noticed that the angle the virtual pointer beams emits from the controller is adjusted to be the real life angle as opposed to the virtual controller one in steam dashboard, but this is just a minor annoyance and does not effect performance. If you ever want the virtual controllers back for standard VR use simply move those files out of the backup folder and back into rendermodels.
Tips for Success: Scenes with multiple different colors/not a solid background generally just render as normal with no passthrough effect. It seems the passthrough will render on anything black or fairly dark so a black scene like the default one is best. Characters in scenes become more or less transparent based on how bright the irl environment is, so a dimly lit or darkly painted room seems to achieve the affect the best. As an example of things to avoid, a strip of light coming through a curtain will turn the part of the character that passes through it semi-transparent. I didn't test this with a brunette model, but if I had to guess black clothing and dark hair may also turn into irl space like the background with this function enabled. Disabling or reducing shadows and using more brightly colored hairs/clothing can circumvent this issue.
The "Opaque" room view option entirely overlays the passthrough on any app open so that doesn't work unfortunately. I cant do anything about the weird camera distortion/paralax as well as valve had the brilliant idea of installing the index cameras way off bore from your eyes. Someone was able to pull off an addon in Unreal that keys out whatever color you want so you could use passthrough on the index as people do on the quest with Virtual Desktop for VAM but I couldn't find a Unity equivalent of this addon. I suspect we'll see an index 2 before someone pulls it off in Unity/VAM for the Index but here's to hoping.
TLDR
pics serve as guides
Enable "3D Room View" and set the room view style to "Translucent Pass-Through". To toggle this feature double tap the menu button on the index controller. Use scenes with black backgrounds and use an ideally dark room irl. Avoid black hair/clothes on models if possible and reduce shadows if things look off. Don't forget to enable camera/restart SteamVR if it is disabled or changing the room view wont do anything.
The knuckle controllers are also rendered regardless of what's in VAM due to the steam overlay, however there is a separate 'solution' for that. To disable the rendering of the controllers we are simply going to delete the model of the controllers from the SteamVR files so no controller is rendered outside of games at all. To do so, go to whatever drive or folder steam is installed on; \steamapps\common\SteamVR\drivers\indexcontroller\resources\rendermodels
Create a backup folder on your desktop or somewhere safe so you can restore these files later. Cut everything out of the rendermodels folder and paste it into your backup folder. Your done! with those files removed there is no controller rendered when you launch SteamVR. I noticed that the angle the virtual pointer beams emits from the controller is adjusted to be the real life angle as opposed to the virtual controller one in steam dashboard, but this is just a minor annoyance and does not effect performance. If you ever want the virtual controllers back for standard VR use simply move those files out of the backup folder and back into rendermodels.
Tips for Success: Scenes with multiple different colors/not a solid background generally just render as normal with no passthrough effect. It seems the passthrough will render on anything black or fairly dark so a black scene like the default one is best. Characters in scenes become more or less transparent based on how bright the irl environment is, so a dimly lit or darkly painted room seems to achieve the affect the best. As an example of things to avoid, a strip of light coming through a curtain will turn the part of the character that passes through it semi-transparent. I didn't test this with a brunette model, but if I had to guess black clothing and dark hair may also turn into irl space like the background with this function enabled. Disabling or reducing shadows and using more brightly colored hairs/clothing can circumvent this issue.
The "Opaque" room view option entirely overlays the passthrough on any app open so that doesn't work unfortunately. I cant do anything about the weird camera distortion/paralax as well as valve had the brilliant idea of installing the index cameras way off bore from your eyes. Someone was able to pull off an addon in Unreal that keys out whatever color you want so you could use passthrough on the index as people do on the quest with Virtual Desktop for VAM but I couldn't find a Unity equivalent of this addon. I suspect we'll see an index 2 before someone pulls it off in Unity/VAM for the Index but here's to hoping.
TLDR
pics serve as guides
Enable "3D Room View" and set the room view style to "Translucent Pass-Through". To toggle this feature double tap the menu button on the index controller. Use scenes with black backgrounds and use an ideally dark room irl. Avoid black hair/clothes on models if possible and reduce shadows if things look off. Don't forget to enable camera/restart SteamVR if it is disabled or changing the room view wont do anything.
