ALVR v19.0.0

Changes

• Fix UDP stutter and image corruption in most circumstances (by @zarik5)
  • This is fixed by increasing the receive/send buffer size of the socket. Advanced options available in the Connection tab.
  • Huge thanks to @xytovl for the idea!
• Reduce image jitter (by @zarik5)
  • Increase maxBufferingFrames (Settings -> Video -> Enable advanced options) to reduce jitter caused by network and transcoding, at the expense of more latency. It cannot mitigate frame drops on the server side.
• New more accurate latency and FPS statistics (by @zarik5 #1061)
• New AppImage packages on Linux (by @m00nwtchr #1181)
• Better audio support on Linux (by @makomk #1065 #1066, @zarik5, @m00nwtchr #1068)
  • Audio on Linux is still hard to make it work. There is ongoing work to change this
• Add Oculus foveation options (by @zarik5 #1079)
• New advanced controller tracking options (by @zarik5 #1103)
• Improve controller support (by @Solexid #1076 #1078)
• Add 10 bit encoding support on AMD (by @deiteris #1223)
• New advanced encoder settings for Nvenc and AMF (by @zarik5, @deiteris #1220)
• Add “Force Software Encoding” option (by @Vixea /formerly @ColdIce1605 #1073)
• Reorder encoder initialization tests (NVENC->VAAPI->SW) (by @m00nwtchr #1032)
• Improvements to adaptive bitrate (by @sctanf, @GryPr #1141)
• Do not disconnect client when an audio device is unplugged (by @algologarithm #1124)
• Force dark mode on the client (by @zarik5)
• Fix some sources of crash in the client (by @thisleo #1064, @Solexid #1110 #1163)
• Extensive refactoring of the client (by @zarik5)
• Set TCP_NODELAY (by @korejan)

Thanks also to @daggintosh, @ImUrX, @toomuchcodehelp, @HookedBehemoth, for some other smaller changes.

Caveats

• Some users report issues with controller tracking. If you feel tracking does not feel right you can tweak a few parameters to get the exact feel you need. Go to Settings -> Enable Advanced Options -> Headset, the parameters to tweak are clientControllerPredictionMutlitplier, trackingLatencyOffsetMs, steamvrHmdPredictionMultiplier, steamvrCtrlPredictionMultiplier. Changing these values requires a headset sleep/wake cycle (press the power button two times) but not a restart of the server.

Headsets support

• The Meta Quest Pro is supported without any particular changes on our side. Eye/Face/Body tracking is currently unsupported; support is planned.
• The Oculus Go support is dropped. Due to internal changes, ALVR now only supports Android >= 8.
• New GearVR and Google Cardboard ALVR clients are almost ready. We need your help with bug fixing and testing. Nightly builds are provided.
• The nightly builds include a alvr_client_core SDK to create new ALVR clients! If you are a developer and you are interested in helping support new headsets tell us in the ALVR Discord Server.