MoltenVR v1.0.0

MoltenVR hits 1.0. The headline: a full VR environment, right inside your headset.

VR Shell

• Double-tap the menu button in VR to open a SteamVR-style dashboard, over the running game or in the idle environment
• World-anchored panels with a laser pointer: dock, game library, quick settings, and a live status readout
• Launch games straight from the headset, no need to touch the Mac
• Desktop view is now a movable panel you can place anywhere in your space, not just a head-locked mirror
• Virtual monitors: add extra Mac displays that exist only in VR, great for side-by-side windows while you play
• Pin individual Mac app windows into VR as floating quads (Discord on your left, a browser on your right)
• Grab any panel to move and resize it; your layout for monitors, desktop view, and environment is remembered
• Pick your idle environment color and mood from Quick Settings

Input

• Real throw physics: controller velocity now reaches the game, so thrown objects fly where you throw them instead of dropping at your feet

Reliability

• USB streaming watchdog: if the wired connection wedges after a cable blip or headset reboot, MoltenVR now notices and restarts the stream automatically within about 45 seconds
• The app and the streaming bridge now share one adb, ending the tug-of-war that could drop USB mid-stream
• Game library scanning moved off the main thread: no more frozen UI when a games folder lives on iCloud or a sleeping external disk

Setup

• The VR shell needs macOS Screen Recording permission to render its panels. MoltenVR now checks at launch, walks you through granting it in System Settings, and starts the shell the moment it is on. If MoltenVR is already in the list but the shell will not start, remove it with the minus button and add it back
• New "vr shell" health check on the Home screen so you can see the permission state at a glance

Everything from the betas is included: per-game control remapping with live editing, trigger and grip deadzones, macOS Game Mode, the card-based library, and the rest.

Thanks for riding along through the betas. This one is a big step: your Mac is now a real PCVR machine with a real VR home. Have fun playing!

Thank you all for testing & supporting me!

MoltenVR Preview v0.3.5

MoltenVR Preview 0.3.5

7-day free preview. Play PCVR games on an Apple Silicon Mac, streamed to any ALVR headset.

Download MoltenVR-Preview-v0.3.5.zip, unzip, drag MoltenVR.app to /Applications, open it.

New in 0.3.5: Half-Life: Alyx and OpenComposite

• One-click OpenComposite. The Patch button now downloads OpenComposite automatically
  (one time) and installs it as the translation layer for classic OpenVR titles. It speaks
  every historical OpenVR interface version, so 2017-era games that crashed on the built-in
  shim now run. The shim remains the fallback if the download is unavailable.
• Half-Life: Alyx patching that survives Steam. SteamVR-native Source 2 games import an
  undocumented export (VRControlPanel) that OpenComposite does not provide, which aborted
  the game at load. Patching now installs a small proxy dll that supplies the export and
  forwards everything else to OpenComposite. If a Steam update or reinstall wipes the game
  folder, hitting Patch again restores a working setup in seconds.
• Upside-down menus fixed. OpenComposite games get invertUsingShaders enabled per game,
  so flipped eye buffers and overlay quads (menus, loading screens) render upright.
• Per-game display orientation. New Auto / Force flip / Never flip control for games
  that render inverted, with matching fov handling in the runtime.
• Tracking robustness. Both fov axes are sanitized per eye, preventing warped
  projection when a game hands back degenerate view data.
• First-run fix on Whisky-less Macs. The app no longer defaults its Wine path to a
  nonexistent Whisky binary; it now prefers whichever Wine build actually exists.

MoltenVR Preview v0.3.3

MoltenVR Preview 0.3.3

7-day free preview. Play PCVR games on an Apple Silicon Mac, streamed to any ALVR headset.

Download MoltenVR-Preview-v0.3.3.zip, unzip, drag MoltenVR.app to /Applications, open it.

New in 0.3.3: Stability & Tracking Fixes

• Runtime updates now actually reach your games. Bottles kept a private copy of the
  OpenXR runtime from the day they were set up, silently missing every fix shipped since —
  including 0.3.2's Vulkan and FOV improvements. The app now refreshes it at every launch,
  so this release's fixes (and all future ones) apply without re-registering anything.
• Reprojection wobble fixed. Frames are now paired with the exact head pose they were
  rendered with (atomically, in shared memory) instead of a racy timestamp file — no more
  image swimming or judder that pumps with head motion. Applies to all games: OpenXR,
  Vulkan zero-copy, and Vivecraft.
• Logs no longer eat your disk. ALVR's event log could grow tens of GB over long
  sessions (28GB observed). The bridge now caps its logs at 512MB, checked every 5 minutes.
• Vivecraft: height/FBT calibration no longer crashes Minecraft. Body-tracker input
  paths were misreported as controllers, making Vivecraft think full-body trackers existed
  and crash during calibration.
• Cleaner game shutdown. The runtime now implements the OpenXR exit handshake, so games
  (and translation layers like OpenComposite) quit promptly instead of hanging on close.

Coming next

Legacy OpenVR titles via OpenComposite — already proven in-house with OpenVR Benchmark
running end-to-end on the MoltenVR runtime.

MoltenVR Preview v0.3.2

MoltenVR Preview 0.3.2

7-day free preview. Play PCVR games on an Apple Silicon Mac, streamed to any ALVR headset.

Download MoltenVR-Preview-v0.3.2.zip, unzip, drag MoltenVR.app to /Applications, open it.

New in 0.3.2: VR Performance Improvements

• Zero-copy frame capture - Vulkan games write frames straight to shared memory on the GPU,
  and Minecraft VR (Vivecraft) goes all the way: game GPU to encoder with no CPU pixel copies
  at all. Lower CPU load, less heat, a bit less latency.

• Resolution without restarts - the per-eye resolution picker now applies live; no rebuild,
  no reinstall. A running game picks it up on its next launch.

• Stream stability - the connection now survives the headset sleeping or leaving the
  immersive space, and bad field-of-view data from the client no longer breaks rendering.

• Vivecraft FBT calibration no longer crashes the game - the shim reported body-tracker
  input paths (feet/elbows/knees) as the controllers, so Vivecraft thought full-body trackers
  existed and crashed during calibration. Height/FBT calibration now works (no trackers found,
  as expected without FBT hardware).

MoltenVR Preview v0.3.1

MoltenVR Preview 0.3.1

7-day free preview. Play PCVR games on an Apple Silicon Mac, streamed to any ALVR headset.

Download MoltenVR-Preview-v0.3.1.zip, unzip, drag MoltenVR.app to /Applications, open it.

New in 0.3.1

• Vulkan added - the OpenXR runtime now supports Vulkan games (XR_KHR_vulkan_enable/enable2),
  so Vulkan-only titles can run through OpenComposite. D3D11 titles are unaffected.
• Minor UI Changes - Fixed spellings & icons.

MoltenVR Preview v0.3.0

MoltenVR Preview 0.3.0

7-day free preview. Play PCVR games on an Apple Silicon Mac, streamed to any ALVR headset.

Download MoltenVR-Preview-v0.3.0.zip, unzip, drag MoltenVR.app to /Applications, open it.

New in 0.3.0

• One-click Minecraft VR (Vivecraft) — the Games tab detects instances from Prism
  Launcher, MultiMC, PolyMC, ManyMC, UltimMC and Fjord Launcher, plus Vivecraft profiles
  in the official Minecraft Launcher. Enable VR installs the native OpenVR shim and
  wires the JVM args (LWJGL native path + the required -XX:+UseZGC), and Launch starts
  it straight into the headset. Fully native — no Wine involved. Instances without the
  Vivecraft jar stay tucked away in a collapsed list.
• About window — version, credits, and third-party licenses.
• First-run bottle creation built into the setup wizard.

Setup for Minecraft VR

1. Use your launcher of choice — Prism Launcher is the tested
   path (1.21.1 + Fabric/Quilt); MultiMC-family forks and the official launcher work too.
2. Drop the Vivecraft jar into the instance's mods/
   folder (official launcher: run the Vivecraft installer instead).
3. MoltenVR → Games → your instance appears under Minecraft VR → Enable VR → Launch.

Known limitations

• D3DMetal (GPTK4) crashes most games — use DXMT.
• Desktop view is head-locked; no mic return yet.
• Preview build: fully functional for 7 days from first launch.

---

Questions or issues? Join the Discord

MoltenVR Preview v0.2.0

MoltenVR Preview 0.2.0

7-day free preview. Play PCVR games on an Apple Silicon Mac, streamed to any ALVR headset.

Download MoltenVR-Preview-v0.2.0.zip, unzip, drag MoltenVR Preview.app to /Applications, open it.

New in 0.2.0

• Steam no longer black-screens / hangs on D3DMetal bottles — Steam launches with
  -cef-disable-gpu-compositing and on a CEF-safe Wine, so the client UI paints correctly.
• D3DMetal (GPTK4) self-heals its framework link and games launch directly so they get the
  D3DMetal env. Still experimental — Apple's GPTK4 beta crashes many games (Beat Saber
  included) inside its own translation. DXMT is the recommended, tested path.

Known limitations

• D3DMetal (GPTK4) crashes most games — use DXMT.
• Desktop view is head-locked; no mic return yet.
• Preview build: fully functional for 7 days from first launch.

MoltenVR Preview v0.0.1

First public preview. Fully functional for 7 days from first launch. See the README for install steps and requirements. Feedback and game reports welcome in Issues.