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Website: vrx3d.uk

VRX

Play flat PC games on a stereo screen in VR using your keyboard and mouse. VRX captures the selected game window, estimates depth, and creates a stereo view. All settings live in a desktop app; no in-headset UI or motion controllers are needed.

Easy mode: start your game and bring it to the front; VRX counts down and attaches by itself. Switch to Expert for every setting.

It is not only for games: attach to a browser window and 2D video you play in it — YouTube, other video sites, your own files — becomes 3D on the same screen. Films and series from protected streaming services, such as Netflix and Disney+, show as a black picture: Windows blanks copy-protected video in every screen capture (the same reason a screenshot of them is black), and VRX respects that.

VRX is free and open source.

Quick hints

From using VRX day to day:

• Run the game at 1080p. It is much more stable, and in the headset you will not notice the difference.
• Single GPU: the fast ZipDepth model with Game frame timing → Delayed to depth and Steady depth — motion vectors gives the best experience.
• Second GPU: set it as the Depth GPU, turn on Fuse with Depth Anything V2, and keep Delayed to depth with Steady depth — motion vectors.
• Steam games: turn off Desktop Game Theatre. If you start a normal Steam game while SteamVR is running, SteamVR also shows it on its own flat screen in front of VRX's. In Steam, right-click the game → Properties → General and untick Use Desktop Game Theatre while SteamVR is active.

Get started

Download VRX v1.7.9: the installer or the portable ZIP (release notes and checksums; older versions on GitHub Releases). For the portable version, extract the entire ZIP and run VRX.Desktop.exe. Keep the bundled folders alongside the application.

1. Start SteamVR and set it as the active OpenXR runtime.
2. Start your game.
3. Open VRX, select the game process and window, and click Attach / Play.
4. Adjust screen placement, size, and stereo strength on the desktop.
5. Use Stop VR to finish.

The screen stays fixed in the room by default. Equals (=) recenters it; F8 requests dismissal of the SteamVR dashboard. Both keys are configurable and also reach the game. An optional head-follow mode is available.

Settings save per game executable under %LOCALAPPDATA%\VRX\profiles. Session logs are under %LOCALAPPDATA%\VRX\sessions.

Requirements and limitations

• Windows 10 2004 or later / Windows 11, a DirectX 12 GPU, and an active OpenXR runtime.
• Tested with Helldivers 2, an RTX 3090, PSVR2, and SteamVR. Other combinations need validation.
• The packaged release includes the desktop runtime, native dependencies, and both depth models.
• Depth is estimated by ZipDepth by default: about 6x less GPU time per estimate than Depth Anything V2 Small (2.0 vs 13.1 ms on an RTX 3090), which keeps depth much closer to the game's frame rate. Untick Fast depth model — ZipDepth (per game, applies live) to use Depth Anything V2 instead. Fast motion and foreground edges can still distort.
• Depth GPU (per game, applies at Attach / Play) chooses which graphics card runs the depth model: the game's own GPU (default), any other GPU automatically, or a specific card from the list. Cards are remembered by name, and identical cards by their order, because Windows' GPU numbering can change after driver updates; if the chosen card is missing, VRX uses the game's GPU and the setting shows it as not found. With another card, the capture step makes a small model-size copy of each frame and the game GPU's copy engine sends it across, so depth no longer competes with the game. Measured with the RTX 3090 saturated by other work: ZipDepth 7.7 ms per estimate on an RTX 3060 (vs 19.9 ms on the busy 3090), Depth Anything V2 25.6 ms (vs 120.5 ms). Foreground crop passes still use the game GPU.
• Steady depth — motion vectors (per game, default on, applies live) reduces depth shimmer. Each new depth estimate is blended with the previous one, which the graphics card's hardware motion estimator (its video engine, not the shader cores) moves to where things are now, but only where that motion is verified, so fast pans and occlusions fall back to the new estimate. It adds CPU work to each depth pass, which the session log reports. See XMMODEL.md.
• A still picture keeps its depth. Windows 11 (24H2 and later) reports which parts of each captured frame changed. While less than 0.5% of the picture has changed since the last depth estimate — a blinking text cursor, the mouse, a clock on a still desktop — VRX keeps that depth for the new frame instead of estimating again, so the screen no longer twitches every time a small thing changes. Scrolling, video and games still get new depth for every frame. On older Windows every new frame gets new depth.
• Fuse with Depth Anything V2 (per game, default off, applies live, needs the fast depth model) runs Depth Anything V2 alongside ZipDepth. ZipDepth keeps depth fast; Depth Anything's more detailed layering is moved to the current frame with motion vectors, checked, and fitted onto ZipDepth region by region. It works best with another GPU as the depth GPU, and runs at most 10 times per second on one GPU. In the first headset test, fused and steadied depth together removed most of the "that looks wrong" moments. Offline: 59% closer to Depth Anything's layout than ZipDepth alone and 16% less flicker, or 36% less with steadying (XMMODEL.md).
• Smooth depth steps (sub-pixel warp) (per game, default on, applies live) removes depth banding. Whole-pixel stereo shifts give the entire scene only about 25 distinct depths at 1920 px wide, so a smoothly receding surface such as a field or a road is drawn as flat stripes with a 1 px step between them, which looks like ridges on uniform texture. Measured on a test field, the shift each row receives went from 25 flat bands with 1 px cliffs to 330 steps with a largest jump of 0.075 px. Turning it off restores the earlier warp, which is very slightly sharper. See XBANDS.md.
• Screen curve (per game, applies live, 0% by default) wraps the screen around you like a curved television. A curved screen is drawn as a real cylinder for each eye from its tracked position, so its outline, perspective and the parallax when you move your head are all right; the top view in the desktop app draws the shape. 100% is a 70° wrap, further than any real screen (a curved monitor is about 40°): at the default screen (5.7 m wide at 3 m) the edges come 0.84 m nearer and reach 51° either side instead of 44°. SteamVR offers apps no cylinder layer, so VRX renders it; see XCURVE.md.
• Ambilight — glow around the screen (per game, applies live, off by default) spreads the colours at the edge of the picture softly into the darkness around the screen, like the bias lighting behind a television: each point of the glow blends the whole border, the nearest part most, so it follows the local colour close in and softens further out. It rises from a thin dark bezel, fades out over 22% of the screen's width, wraps round a curved screen, and follows the scene smoothly rather than flickering. Ambilight strength sets its brightness. See XCURVE.md.
• World colour (per game, applies live, black by default) colours the space around the screen: presets or any #RRGGBB. The ambilight glows over it.
• Room — walls lit by the screen (per game, applies live) puts you in a dark room whose walls, floor and ceiling are lit by the picture and the ambilight, like a television or a cinema screen in a dark room. The picture and the glow act as real area lights (a red edge on screen tints the nearby wall red), the glow lies on the wall behind the screen and wraps with a curved one, and the world colour becomes the room's house lights. The slider sets how pale the walls are; 30-60% looks like a cinema. The floor follows SteamVR's floor when it can, and the screen is kept level while the room is on. Needs the fixed screen. Below it, Glass walls turns the side walls, the back wall and the ceiling into glass in slim frames, looking out over a ground that runs to a horizon in the world colour; Reflections mirrors the screen, its glow and the room light in the glass and a polished floor, each eye tracing its own reflection; Room light adds a soft panel in the ceiling just above and behind you, and Light colour picks its colour from warm (2700 K) to daylight (6500 K). All four are per game, apply live, and need the room and the fixed screen. A new install starts with the room set up (Room 20%, Glass walls 14%, Reflections 15%, Room light 15%, warm white); games you had already set up keep their own settings. With glass or reflections on, the floor gets subtle 1 m tiles (continued as a 1 m grid on the ground outside), so you can count the screen's size in metres. See XROOM.md.
• Make base settings (button, next to Reset this profile) saves the settings currently shown as the starting point for games you have not set up yet, including the depth options, depth GPU and shortcut keys but not the game's own path or window. Games that already have a profile are unaffected, and Reset this profile returns to the base (or VRX's defaults when no base is saved).
• Apply to all (button, next to Make base settings) copies the settings shown to every game you have already set up, after an OK/Cancel warning. Each game keeps its own path and window; a profile that cannot be read is left untouched; games not set up yet still start from the base settings.
• Easy and Expert (the big switch at the top, remembered app-wide in app-settings.json). Easy is what a new install opens in: auto-attach is on, and the window shows just a one-line explanation, a card with the game in front or attached (its icon, name and state: waiting, attaching in N seconds, playing), Attach / Play, Stop VR, Recenter and the status line. In Easy the window shrinks to fit its content (a compact, fixed-size window); switching back to Expert restores its size and position (and maximized state). Both are remembered app-wide and brought back onto a monitor that still exists. The window uses VRX's own dark title bar (the skin, desktop/VRX.Desktop/Skins/Vrx.xaml) and still moves, snaps and resizes like any Windows window; click the logo or press Alt+Space for the window menu. Easy never changes settings: each game uses its saved profile, or the base settings for a new game. Expert shows every setting in collapsible sections — Game & window, Screen, Around the screen, Room, 3D & depth, SteamVR & shortcuts, Profile and Session details — whose open/closed state is remembered; Screen, Around the screen and Room start open. Switching to Easy turns auto-attach on; switching back to Expert leaves it as it is. Anyone who used VRX before this switch existed (app settings, a saved game, base settings or a last-used game already there) opens in Expert, so nothing disappears.
• Languages: every text in the desktop app comes from desktop/VRX.Desktop/Strings.resx (English). To translate, copy it to Strings.<culture>.resx (for example Strings.de.resx), translate the values keeping each {0}-style placeholder, and rebuild; VRX follows the Windows display language and falls back to English. Numbers are shown in your regional format; profiles, app settings and the engine's control file stay culture-independent. VRX.Desktop.exe --pseudo-locale shows every string accented, about 35% longer and in brackets, to spot untranslated or clipped text. Engine logs stay English.
• Auto-attach to the game in front (checkbox in Expert's Game & window section, always on in Easy, off by default in Expert, app-wide in app-settings.json) counts down 3-30 seconds (5 by default) and then attaches to the window in front exactly as if you had picked it and pressed Attach / Play (its own profile, or the base settings for a new game). A window counts when it covers its whole monitor (full screen or borderless, not just a maximized window), or when its game has saved VRX settings and it is not a web browser. VRX, Steam, SteamVR, the Windows shell and terminals never count, and nothing happens while VRX itself is in front. The countdown shows in VRX's status and in a small click-through banner at the top of the game's screen that never takes the focus; switching to another window cancels it. After a session ends, or if attaching fails, that window is left alone until another window has been in front and you come back to it.
• Choose… (on the game card, in Easy and Expert) opens a chooser with a tile for every window VRX can play, most recently used first, each showing a live picture of the window (Windows' own thumbnails, as in Alt+Tab; a minimized window shows its icon), and a tile for each display. Clicking a tile plays it straight away, exactly as picking it in the lists and pressing Attach / Play. A display ("Whole screen", also listed last in Expert's game list) plays everything shown on it, such as the desktop or a video player, until you press Stop VR; its tile shows a snapshot taken as the chooser opens, and one set of settings is shared by all displays. The engine captures a display with --monitor=N (Windows' display order).
• Show the desktop when you leave the game (per game, SteamVR & shortcuts, on by default, applies at Attach / Play): while the game is not the window in front — after Ctrl+Esc, the Windows key or Alt+Tab — VR shows the display the game is on, and the game card says Desktop; back in the game, VR shows the game again. The engine (--desktop-when-away) checks the window in front ten times a second on its capture thread, ignores SteamVR and the Steam overlay, waits for a change to last 0.3 s (0.1 s back to the game), and moves its capture between the window and the display with a fresh depth history each time. If the game closes, VR carries on with the desktop until Stop VR; with the setting off, closing the game ends the session as before.
• Game frame timing (per game, applies live) chooses which game frame is shown with the depth. Latest frame (default) is smooth and immediate, but depth lags slightly behind moving things. Delayed to depth holds the game image back by the measured depth delay so the two line up, while motion stays at the capture rate. Matched to depth (the earlier frame matching) shows each depth estimate with the exact frame it came from: the best alignment, but the game only updates at the depth rate. Offline on four clips with depth 67 ms behind, against the latest frame: delayed cut depth mismatch from 0.050 to 0.016 and improved edge alignment from 0.59 to 0.72, with 26 game updates per second against matched's 15. Delayed and matched both add delay, so they suit slower games. See XSYNC.md.
• Extra foreground depth passes are experimental and default on; their benefit varies.
• GPU contention can reduce depth update speed. A steady 60 depth updates per second is not guaranteed.
• SteamVR dashboard dismissal is best-effort. Releases up to v1.7.9 are unsigned, so on a new Windows 11 install Smart App Control can block the engine; signed releases are being set up (see Code signing and privacy).

Build locally

You need Visual Studio with the C++ tools and a Windows SDK (the newest one is found with vswhere), the .NET 10 SDK, Python 3.12 and Git. The OpenXR loader and the HLSL shader compiler VRX ships are pinned in release/vendor, so SteamVR is not needed to build and every build compiles the same shaders.

From the repository root in PowerShell, fetch the pinned native packages (Microsoft.ML.OnnxRuntime.DirectML 1.24.4 and Microsoft.AI.DirectML 1.15.4) into the NuGet cache, and build the two depth models from their upstream sources. Model files are not tracked in Git; release/build-models.ps1 downloads the pinned sources, exports bench/models/model_fixed_686x392.onnx (Depth Anything V2) and bench/models/zipdepth_faithful_fp16_672x384.onnx (ZipDepth, the default) and checks both against the SHA-256 of the released models. Then run each build step and confirm it succeeds:

dotnet restore release/NativePackages.csproj
./release/build-models.ps1
cmd /c "bench\native\openxr\build.bat --desktop"
$env:LIB = ''
dotnet build desktop/VRX.Desktop/VRX.Desktop.csproj -c Release

Launch desktop/VRX.Desktop/bin/Release/net10.0-windows/VRX.Desktop.exe. The native renderer is bench/native/openxr/out/xrplayer.exe. The local renderer enables a best-effort GPU-priority boost; its --normal-gpu-priority command-line option disables the experiment for comparisons.

To package an installer and portable ZIP, install Inno Setup 6 and run ./release/build-release.ps1. Outputs go into a fresh folder under release/out. Third-party notices and license texts are retained under release and bundled with the release.

Releases are built by GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/release.yml), which runs the same script in stages around code signing.

Code signing and privacy

Free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation. Signed releases are being set up; releases up to v1.7.9 are unsigned. See the code signing policy for what is signed, how it is built and the team roles.

VRX makes no network connections and collects no data: see the privacy policy.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 Paul Kelly.

VRX is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0: you may use, study, share and modify it, and anything you distribute that is built from it must also be released under the GPL with its source available. It comes with no warranty.

The released packages also contain third-party components under their own licenses (the depth models, ONNX Runtime, DirectML, the OpenXR loader and the .NET runtime): see release/THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt and release/licenses.