Oh man, you know how sometimes tech just kinda does a Houdini? Take Windows Mixed Reality, for example. Microsoft kinda quietly turned its back on this VR thing with Windows 11, which, honestly, I didn’t see coming, but hey, surprises keep life interesting, right? Anyway, there’s this dude, Matthieu Bucchianeri—sounds French, doesn’t it?—who’s essentially waving a magic wand and trying to fix things up with his brainchild called ‘Oasis’. It’s this unofficial gizmo, supposed to make old VR headsets play nice with SteamVR. Like a family reunion nobody expected.
So, mark your calendars, maybe. August 29th is the big day, assuming Valve gives a thumbs-up. Bucchianeri’s shaking things up to hook Windows Mixed Reality gear into the SteamVR universe. His project page on GitHub—ever visited that?—says it’ll cover all the flashy stuff like 6DoF tracking. Motion controllers too, which is kinda the whole point, right?
Oh, but here’s the kicker, because there’s always gotta be one: if you’re rocking anything other than an Nvidia GPU, Oasis might just give you the silent treatment. Seems like AMD’s not rolling out the welcome mat for Bucchianeri’s ideas. Something about Nvidia having the keys to the GPU kingdom, while AMD just shrugs and looks the other way. I mean, it’s about a “usage flag” or something… not that I really understand GPU lingo, but sounds complicated, huh?
Now, get this: back in the spooky-ish month of October, Microsoft just yeeted their WMR platform with this Windows 11 update. Boom, gone. Like a disappearing act at a magic show. Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Samsung—they all felt the burn, losing VR support like an old TV losing signal.
And Matthieu, being the knight in slightly tarnished armor, used to be one of Microsoft’s VR wizards. Now he’s doing his thing in Xbox’s Gaming Devices Ecosystem—sounds fancy! Oasis is just his side hustle, doesn’t mess with any company secrets, or so he claims. But hey, let’s root for the little guy. Or not. But I think I will.
