frametop.conf.example said HANDS_SWAP_SIDES=0, and desktops.sh copies it on a
fresh install, so every new install forced ft-camd's side camera names and
turned the hand tracker's own side check off. Some SteamVR restarts swap those
names, and then hands land beside their cutouts and recordings are mislabelled.
The example now says auto. scripts/conf-migrate.sh, run by install.sh and
hands/rec/install.sh, replaces the old line only where it's still exactly as
the example wrote it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Conflicts with experimental's pause_toggle, steam_menu and command: actions and its
AnnounceOverlay: both kept. The spin bindings join the Meta tap in the defaults, spinning
doesn't need pointer mode, and like other actions it does nothing while Frametop is paused.
AnnounceOverlay now sends through the PR's SendPointer.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
SteamVR's own floating windows take the laser while a controller points
at them in a game and give it back when it points away. Frametop's
panels didn't: with the controllers left to the game (outside_games, the
default, or dashboard), they couldn't be clicked without the dashboard.
ft-screens now sets MakeOverlaysInteractiveIfVisible on a screen or
floating window while a hand controller's laser pose meets it, its
controls, or its popups (UpdateAim; curved screens hit on their
cylinder), and clears it 0.3 s after the aim leaves a wider margin. A
drag or a held button keeps it on. The keyboard, one overlay, uses
ComputeOverlayIntersection and now follows the mode when a game starts
or ends while it's open. This replaces the reset button's own aim zone.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Each desktop screen gets a reset button left of its bar (a reticle). It
puts every screen back in its layout around where you are now, like
Meta+Shift+R (ft-layout apply).
In a VR game the screens leave the controllers to the game (the
outside_games and dashboard modes), so a controller couldn't click any
of their controls. Aiming a hand controller at the reset button now sets
MakeOverlaysInteractiveIfVisible on that button's overlay alone, so the
trigger clicks it; the flag clears half a second after the aim leaves a
zone twice as wide, and the game gets the controllers back. The aim
comes from the laser poses ft-screens already reads to show the controls.
The ft-layout spawn is now RunLayout(cmd), shared with the arrange.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- ft-screens "spin next|prev|<degrees>": every unpinned screen and
floating window turns together about a vertical axis through your
head (0.3 s, eased), so the next panel on the right or left comes to
straight ahead; the arrangement stays as it is. Taps during a spin
add to it, from where the panels are headed; grabbing a panel or
placing it (ft-layout, ft-floatd) takes it out of the spin
- when a spin settles, the panel in front gets the pointer (recenter),
typing (as after a click), and KWin's active window: its floating
window, or the top window on a screen (ft-floatd "front N", the KWin
script's activate-output). KWin's outputs follow the screens'
new places (ft-layout scale), as after a move
- the input relay: spin_next and spin_prev actions, Meta+Alt+Tab and
Meta+Alt+Shift+Tab by default; Frametop Input Settings lists them.
Not Meta+Tab: that's Cmd+Tab on a Mac reached through a remote
desktop like RustDesk, and the relay would take the Mac's app
switcher. Meta+Alt+Tab (Cmd+Option+Tab) is unused on macOS,
Windows, and KDE
Used on the Frame (SteamOS 0.3.0 build 20260922) with one screen and
three or four floating windows, through RustDesk to a Mac.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The nested Plasma session runs the system's XDG autostart entries. Discover's update
notifier (/etc/xdg/autostart/org.kde.discover.notifier.desktop) started
plasma-discover --mode update inside it, 520-620 MB resident and about 9% of a core,
with flatpak-system-helper and AppStream downloads behind it. IBus started a nested
ibus-daemon with kimpanel and ibus-extension-gtk3, which no app in the desktop can use:
KWin's input method is ft-textinput (zwp_input_method_v1, focus reports only; the VR
keyboard types through ft-screens' seat), and the session already drops QT_IM_MODULE,
GTK_IM_MODULE and XMODIFIERS. Nothing in Frametop talks to IBus.
Before Plasma starts, the session script copies both entries into
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/autostart with Hidden=true, which plasma-session honours for that
desktop only. It does this once ([Defaults] autostart=1 in frametoprc) and skips a name
the user already has a file for, so deleting the copy brings the program back. The
geoclue demo agent stays (it answers apps' location requests outside GNOME and idles at
0%), and orca's entry is OnlyShowIn GNOME-family desktops, so it never ran. Tested
against a temporary XDG_CONFIG_HOME, including an existing user ibus.desktop left alone.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The nested kwinrc had no [Plugins] group, so KWin ran its default blur and background
contrast effects, and kdeglobals had no AnimationDurationFactor, so animations ran at
full length. KWin renders through zink on Turnip, on the GPU vrcompositor needs, and
blur re-renders what's behind every translucent panel and menu; each animation frame is
another frame for KWin and ft-screens.
Before KWin starts, the session script now writes [Plugins] blurEnabled=false and
contrastEnabled=false to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kwinrc and [KDE] AnimationDurationFactor=0 to
its kdeglobals, each only if the desktop's own file has no value for it. It does this
once and records that in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/frametoprc ([Defaults] effects=1), because
System Settings deletes a key put back to its default: without the marker, turning blur
back on wouldn't survive a restart. The ids blur and contrast are the built-in effects
of KWin 6.2.5 on SteamOS (both enabled by default in its plugin metadata). Tested
against a temporary XDG_CONFIG_HOME: fresh config, an existing blurEnabled=true kept,
and a deleted key not rewritten.
README and docs/reference.md say how to turn them back on.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-screens gave KWin a frame callback for every committed screen on each tick, and the tick
was an 11 ms timer set again after each run, so it slid through the display's frame and came
about 85 times a second at 90 Hz: the desktop repeated a frame several times a second (judder
in scrolling and video), and KWin drew every screen in one burst at a random point of
vrcompositor's frame. Hidden screens got the same 90 Hz unless Frametop was paused for a game.
- Ticks run on a timerfd at absolute times, once per display frame, 1 ms after the vsync
(IVRSystem::GetTimeSinceLastVsync and the HMD's display frequency, read once a second), so
KWin gets its callbacks early in the frame. Measured with --no-vr: 91 wakeups a second
instead of about 85. On the Frame the vsync times SteamVR reports lie on a 90 Hz grid.
- Each screen's callbacks come at a rate for how much of it you see (vr.cpp,
UpdateAttention): every frame while focused (within 12 degrees of where your head points,
a laser or the mouse on it in the last 1.5 s, carried, or typed on), 15 a second for the
rest of what you see (within 60 degrees), and 1 a second when hidden, behind you, or
paused. Levels rise at once and fall after 1.5 s (focused) or 0.5 s (in view). KWin draws
a screen only after its callback and its apps wait for theirs, so this throttles the apps
too. A screen where nothing changes costs nothing at any rate, as before.
- A video in view keeps every frame: 8 commits in a row that each redraw 6% or more of the
screen, at 10 a second or more, count as one (from the surface's buffer damage).
- "rates F V H" / --rates set the three rates (default 0 15 1, 0 = every frame), "rates?"
shows them and each screen's level, "watch S" gives everything full rate for S seconds for
a remote viewer (vnc-bridge.sh renews it), and "phase MS" moves the ticks for tuning.
- ft-screens' main thread runs at nice -5 after the session starts: SteamOS allows down to
-8 once the soft RLIMIT_NICE is raised, and KWin waits on these ticks. It had spent nearly
3 times as long waiting to run as running.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
While FreeRDP ran, vnc-bridge.sh called ft-layout remote-view every 5 s, which scans
all of /proc for plasmashell and runs kscreen-doctor -j: about 4.4% of a core for a
layout that rarely changes.
It now stats the two files the answer depends on, the nested KWin's
~/.config/frametop/kwinoutputconfig.json (positions, scales, primary) and
~/.config/frametop-layout.json (screen sizes), once a second while FreeRDP runs. After
either changes it reads the layout every 2 s for 10 s, since KWin's outputs follow the
file a few seconds later; otherwise once a minute, in case a change touched neither.
With no VNC viewer connected nothing runs (previous commit).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
vnc-bridge.sh kept FreeRDP connected to krdpserver from the moment remote desktop
started, so krdp captured and H.264-encoded every KWin redraw in software (openh264)
with nobody watching: krdpserver 55-78% of a core, xfreerdp 16-27%, Xvnc 6-11%, with 0
clients on :5900. krdp 6.7 creates its screencast session per RDP connection and drops
it when the connection closes, so krdpserver itself idles without one and stays up.
The bridge now counts established connections to Xvnc's port with ss, starts FreeRDP
when a viewer appears (the desktop shows about 3 s later; the VNC screen is black until
then) and stops it 45 s after the last one leaves (VNC_IDLE_SEC). Xvnc has no client
hook, so its log output, which it writes for every connection, wakes the bridge early;
otherwise it looks every 5 s while idle (0.1% of a core measured, against 0.9% for ss
once a second) and every second while FreeRDP runs. The layout check runs only while
FreeRDP runs.
While a viewer is connected the bridge sends "watch 15" to ft-screens (@ft_screens) at
once and every 5 s, so screens at a reduced frame rate (out of view, headset on a
stand) stream at full rate; it lapses by itself if the bridge dies, and an ft-screens
without the command just answers an error. The window search after starting FreeRDP
now ends when FreeRDP exits instead of polling for 30 s.
krdp on 127.0.0.1 with a fresh password, VNC on the tailnet address with VncAuth, and
remote-ctl.sh start/stop (pause and resume) are unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The gaze service ran ft-gaze and our own eye tracker all the time: with gaze mode off, ft-eyes
still took about 60% of a core, and ft-eyegrab, ft-gaze and ft-gazed 3 to 4% each. Now ft-gaze
and our tracker run only while gaze mode is on and someone wears the headset, while a check or
the calibration is open or asked for, or under a "wake" lease, which the Gaze page of Frametop
Input Settings renews while it's open. 30 s after the last use they stop, and the frame grabber
idles with our tracker.
- The pointer helper answers "gaze ? headset" with worn|away (SteamVR's activity level for the
headset); an older helper answers it as before, and the service then goes by gaze mode alone.
- A quick check, calibration, or fit check asked for while idle wakes the tracker and opens once
it sends; the automatic calibration waits quietly while it starts.
- Status has "awake" and "idle" (why), and the Gaze page shows it.
- gaze/test/idle-test.py runs the service with a fake helper and ft-gaze, offline.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Frametop kept using the headset during games: with gaze mode off, our eye tracker still took
about 60% of a core, remote desktop about 2 cores while on, and KWin kept drawing hidden
screens because ft-screens sent their frame callbacks at 90 Hz. Pausing gives that back, and
resuming brings back only what pausing stopped. It's also a way to keep the gaze service and
our eye tracker off during games, which PR #13 asked for.
Paused (input/game_pause.py, run by the input relay):
- frametop-gaze stops (ft-eyegrab then idles by itself), and hand tracking and remote desktop
stop if they run
- the desktop hides and slows down: ft-screens "pause on" hides every panel and sends KWin a
frame callback once a second; or, with pause_desktop "close", the desktop closes and starts
again on resume
- the relay lets go of the 3D mouse, typing goes to Steam, and mapped buttons and key
combinations do only pause_toggle, steam_menu and commands
Toggled by both thumbsticks clicked together twice (configurable), read passively from
vrserver's web socket (input/vrws.py) so it works in games and takes nothing from them; by the
new pause_toggle action; by input/ft-pause; and, with pause_auto (default on), by a VR game
starting and ending, which the pointer helper now reports ("vrgame 1|0"). Frametop Input
Settings has a Games page for it. update-check.py checks the web socket, and doesn't count a
paused gaze service as failed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A user on a fresh install got "Calibration failed: only 0 of 21 dots" with
no reason. The installer never installed our tracker, so gaze used
SteamVR's, and the only way SteamVR's tracker rejects a dot is losing an
eye for most of the look. The panel just showed a red ring.
- install.sh: step 9/10 installs our tracker (gaze/tracker/install.sh)
after gaze mode, yes by default; it needs sudo, so --yes runs it only
when sudo won't prompt. If it fails, gaze keeps SteamVR's tracker.
Configs that still say GAZE_TRACKER=steam (the old template) are asked
whether to switch.
- GAZE_TRACKER=auto, the new default: ours when it's installed (the
frame grabber, its unit, and ft-eyes' Python), else SteamVR's.
ft-gazed rechecks every second, so installing it switches over. Input
Settings lists Own tracker first as recommended, and says how to
install it when it's missing (checking the host's /etc through
/run/host from the dev container).
- The calibration panel has a note line, orange over the instructions:
why a dot wasn't taken (an eye lost, a blink, the eyes disagreeing for
SteamVR's tracker, from steady_samples' new drop counts; ft-eyes' reply
for ours), what a click is still waiting for after 1.5 s, and a failed
calibration's most common reason, which the Gaze page shows too.
steady_samples keeps the same samples as before (checked on 2037
windows of recordings); a lost eye is named before a blink, since its
openness reads 0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Turning gaze mode on without a calibration opened Calibrate only on the
off-to-on change, and only if it could open right then. With the headset
off, the eye tracker silent, or the panel not built, or with gaze mode
already on when the gaze service started, nothing opened and nothing said
why: the pointer just stayed a mouse.
- The gaze service now checks every second: gaze mode on, no calibration
for the tracker in use, eyes seen -> the full calibration opens. One
that closes unfinished opens again only after the headset comes off and
on, gaze mode off and on, or Calibrate, so it doesn't loop. A start that
fails retries every 10 s.
- Its status says why gaze mode can't work yet (checks.problem): not
calibrated and opening, open, closed unfinished, or can't open and why.
- Input Settings shows that under the Gaze pointer switch, along with the
gaze service not installed or not running and our tracker missing its
frame grabber.
- ft-gazectl on notes a missing calibration.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Key combinations (and mouse and controller buttons) get two new actions:
- steam_menu: Open Steam menu / close dashboard (steam/ft-steam menu).
- command:CMD: run CMD with sh -c, as the relay's service, with layout/,
float/ and steam/ on its PATH. Input Settings offers it for key
combinations as Run a command...
Both work without pointer mode.
A modifier on its own is now a key combination too: a tap, pressed and
released with no other key, mouse button, or scroll in between. A bound
tap sends the desktop F24 before the release, so Plasma's launcher stays
shut. The defaults gain a Meta tap for the Steam menu; this replaces
META_DASHBOARD, which only worked in pointer mode.
input/test/keys-test.py runs the relay against fake devices with every
outgoing socket renamed, so it's safe next to the live relay.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- install.sh no longer offers hand tracking (it's heavy on the CPU and
needs more work); hands/ still builds and installs by hand
- the build container drops python3-opencv and python3-numpy, which
only hand tracking's tools used: Fedora's OpenCV pulls in over a GB
- README: a new opening and feature list, the Use section by topic
(screens, mouse, floating windows, profiles, gaze), and new known
limitations
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- get.sh: curl ... | bash asks for stable (main) or experimental,
clones or updates ~/frametop, and runs install.sh; run it again to
update or switch
- install.sh offers gaze mode (step 8, yes by default) and notes what
to do if an SSH connection drops
- Input Settings' Gaze page says when the gaze service isn't installed
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- floating-windows.md and profiles.md describe what's built, with what
isn't listed as such; the plans, phases, and branch notes are gone
- hands-migration.md is gone: the move is done; its open items are in
hands/README.md's Known issues
- reference.md: Layout & profiles, every action, key combinations,
floating windows, the gaze pointer, and hand tracking as they are
- design.md gets the KWin findings from floating-windows.md
- README, gaze/README, AGENTS, hazards, gaze-controllers, and the
example config catch up with gaze, hands, and the stuck-key fix
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The gaze checks and calibration in a headset panel (quick, five, full, headset
fit; shared-buffer drawing, click-to-capture), keyboard and mouse gaze clicks
(Meta+J/K, the mouse's buttons alike, mouse moves only while a button is held,
double right/Meta+K tilts a drag), one 55 degree learning limit with a quick
check past it, eye presence for "the headset went on", the gaze probe as a
development tool, and the relay releasing keys the desktop has down that no
keyboard holds.
Conflicts with the profiles: the relay keeps known_action/needs_pointer and
the gaze defaults (Meta+J/K and the float key); Input Settings keeps the
profile actions everywhere and the gaze actions in key combinations only.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Check headset fit now runs in the headset panel too ("fitcheck"): a card per
eye (tracked or lost, the tracker's signal, how much of the last 10 s it was
seen) and the hints, from the probe's fitcheck.py, updated at most twice a
second; left click or Meta+J runs its guided check, right click or Meta+K closes
it. So Quick check, Calibrate, and Check headset fit all happen in one place.
The gaze probe moves to the Gaze page's overflow menu as "Gaze probe
(development)", and its app menu entry says it's a development tool. Texts that
sent users to it ("use Calibrate… with Own tracker") point at Calibrate.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
POINTER_GAZE_MOUSE_MOVE=held, the default (the Gaze page's Mouse movement
switch, with why it's on): while the gaze has the pointer, moving the mouse
does nothing; it moves the pointer only while a button is held, as a
correction. A bumped or drifting mouse can't pull the pointer off what you're
looking at, and every mouse move is a correction, so lessons aren't polluted by
mouse moves to somewhere else. With the gaze stale for a second, in a game, or
with the headset off, the mouse moves the pointer as usual. "free" is the old
behaviour.
Pressing the right button while the left one's press is held back right-clicks
where the pointer is instead (correct with the left, then right-click); both
releases are then nothing. Meta+J then Meta+K stays a drag.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A profile is a named layout plus the screens it hides and its apps' windows
(docs/profiles.md). ft-layout save captures them (ft-floatd's "windows",
after the KWin script reports every window as it is now); use opens them:
the screens move, open windows of each app go to their places (on a screen,
maximized or not, or floating), and missing apps start, once and then again
for each window still missing 3 s after the first. Nothing closes.
The desktop starts in FT_PROFILE or default_profile (ft-layout start, from
the session script). Each profile gets a launcher entry (Frametop: NAME, in
SteamVR's Launch a program list) that switches to it or starts the desktop
in it. The relay's profile:NAME action and Input Settings' "Open profile"
entries put one on a key, mouse button, or controller button. Display
Settings' Layout page becomes Layout & profiles: Save as profile, Open
profile, the profile's apps, and Start in profile. Plasma's own session
restore is off in the Frametop session.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-screens: "conceal <screen|all>" hides a screen on its own, whatever the
visibility mode or the hotkey says, until "reveal"; "concealed" lists them.
(Not "hide N": older builds read anything starting with "hide" as the hotkey.)
ft-layout keeps it per screen ("hidden" in the layout), applies it when it
arranges the screens, and has hide/show N|all and hidden. Display Settings
gets a Shown switch per screen on the Visibility tab. ft-floatd floats a new
window that opens on a hidden screen, and puts a stray window on a screen
that shows. Profiles (next) use it to show only some screens.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-gazepanel (gaze/panel) is a SteamVR overlay that stays put in your view and
shows dots at known head-relative directions; the gaze service runs it and
drives it (gaze/gazecheck.py):
- a one-dot quick check 3 s after the headset goes on, when our tracker asks
for a click (reseat), at most every 2 minutes, and from Quick check on the
Gaze page; five dots follow if the next 3 lessons are still over 2 degrees off
- the full calibration (the probe's three rounds, dark to bright) when gaze mode
comes on without one, or from Calibrate; quitting it with still no calibration
turns gaze mode off
Each dot takes the gaze once it has held still for 0.6 s; a left click or Meta+J
takes it at once, a right click or Meta+K closes the panel (the pointer helper
hides its dot and passes those presses on while "calpanel" lasts). Our tracker
gets clicks and its own calibration; SteamVR's gets lessons per eye, or a new
calibration.json.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Steam reads the Frame controllers itself, outside SteamVR's bindings, and every
press and release it sees takes SteamVR out of laser mode, so controller clicks
at the gaze can't be done cleanly (docs/gaze-controllers.md, from the gaze-first
branch's tests).
- Gaze precision and Gaze drag take a mouse button or a key combination only;
the controller source, its aim steering, and POINTER_PRECISION_GAIN,
POINTER_PRECISION_DEADZONE and POINTER_GAZE_DRAG_GAIN are gone.
- The gaze actions (including Gaze pointer on/off) can't be mapped to controller
buttons: the relay ignores them there and doesn't ask the helper for those
buttons, and Input Settings no longer offers them.
- Last used wins in gaze mode too: picking up a controller hands it the laser,
as docs/design.md already said.
- The gaze dot shows all the time (POINTER_GAZE_DOT=always, the default;
moving brings back the old behaviour), with a switch on the Gaze page.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
krdp streams every screen, so the VNC screen is now the primary's size and the
FreeRDP window is shifted so the primary fills it (ft-layout remote-view gives
the offset). It resizes and reconnects when the layout changes. With remote
access on, KWin's D-Bus screenshot interface is open too, for scripts that look
at the screens without the headset.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
(cherry picked from commit 6f5a23c80f2ecd26e6a96c86b102be36d518ee25)
Hand tracking (ft-camd, ft-hands, and their tools) joins the desktop. The
hands file and ring move to /run/user/UID/frametop-hands/, which ft-screens'
hand cutouts now read.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- The runtime files move to /run/user/UID/frametop-hands/: the desktop
session deletes /run/user/UID/frametop at every start.
- The cutout copy shader runs at highp: mediump (16-bit on Adreno)
stepped 1.7 texels across a 3440-pixel screen.
- One hand no longer pinches both sides after its left/right call flips
mid-pinch, and --pinch-palm-down (0.6) holds back pinches with the palm
facing down (typing on a lap keyboard).
- ft-camd judges a colour frame fresh by its luma rows only, and logs
per-buffer changes at stale colour frames with FT_CAMD_DEBUG=1.
- hands/run.sh caps skips the setcap when ft-camd already has them.
- The replay tool dumps poses (--poses), and its pinch events carry the
hand id.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Fixes#7: SteamVR's keyboard never came up for the desktop's apps, and
opening it for our panels doesn't work well on the Frame (it's Steam's own
panel, mounted in the dashboard's scene, it follows the laser between
panels, and it takes the controllers over to SteamVR's laser).
- KWin starts input/ft-textinput as the desktop's input method. It tells
the input relay when a text field gains or loses focus, and the relay
asks ft-screens to open or close the keyboard. The session drops the
QT_IM_MODULE=xim and GTK_IM_MODULE=xim that the gamescope session sets,
or Qt and GTK apps never report text fields.
- The keyboard is ft-screens' own panel (screens/keyboard.cpp): a US laptop
layout, typed with a controller's laser or the 3D mouse. It opens 0.7 m
in front of you, below your eyes and facing you. It has a grab bar to
move it, a Close key, latching Shift, Ctrl and Alt, and repeat on a held
key. It's drawn into shared DMA-BUFs, so it doesn't flicker. Its keys
reach the focused screen as key presses, so every app takes them.
- It steps aside while the Steam menu or Steam's own keyboard is up and
comes back after. A layout reset closes it, and it doesn't open without
a head pose.
- Frametop Input Settings has a Keyboard page: open it for every text
field, only while no keyboard is connected (the default), only from a
mapped button (the new Open/close keyboard action, for mice and
controllers), or never. A switch keeps it open until you close it.
- The pointer helper treats every frametop.* overlay as a real panel. The
keyboard's shared texture reports 0x0 like SteamVR's scene-graph
controls, and the helper had given it their wide catch radius.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Programs: ft-camd (the camera broker), ft-hands (the tracker), and
ft-handreplay and ft-ringplay for recordings, built by hands/build.sh
into hands/build/ with one Makefile. The first build fetches ncnn at
frame-hands' pinned tag and builds it with the same options.
- ft-camd gets its privileges from file capabilities (CAP_SYS_PTRACE,
CAP_PERFMON, CAP_DAC_READ_SEARCH) that hands/run.sh install sets with
sudo, and drops them once set up. It still works under sudo. It runs
on the host, linked statically, as frametop-camd.service. ft-hands
runs in the dev container as frametop-hands.service. Both start and
stop with SteamVR.
- Files move to /run/user/UID/frametop/ (cam-ring, hands, gestures),
not $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, which a terminal in the Frametop desktop has
its own of. SIGUSR1 recordings go to ~/.local/share/frametop/hands.
- The calibration is read through /run/host in the container.
- Settings: HANDS_SWAP_SIDES and HANDS_CPUS in frametop.conf.
- install.sh offers hand tracking as an optional last step.
- The container gets jsoncpp-devel, glibc-static, and NumPy and OpenCV
for the Python tools.
- tools/ring.py reads the ring, and models/NOTICE credits the
Apache-2.0 models.
Checked: ft-handreplay gives identical summaries and byte-identical
depth dumps to frame-hands' fh-replay on both 2026-09-29 recordings.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Frametop Input Settings' Gaze page gets two settings, saved in frametop.conf and
read again by ft-gazed when the file changes: Eye tracker (GAZE_TRACKER: SteamVR's
or our own, frame-eyes' fe-trackd) and Eye bias (GAZE_EYE: auto, left, right).
ft-gazed now combines the eyes, each calibrated on its own: SteamVR's set 2 eyes
with the probe's Left eye and Right eye calibrations, or our tracker's eyes as
they come. Without per-eye calibrations, or with --source, it keeps the older
one-source path. A pointer nudge finds its look from the raw gaze the helper
echoes back; with our tracker it goes to fe-trackd as a click.
The bias leans instead of choosing (gazecal.EyeWeights): on 306 live clicks the
eyes' errors partly cancelled, both together 0.65 deg off against 0.96 and 1.11
for either alone. Left or Right counts that eye twice; auto weights each eye by
its RMS miss at its last 20 nudges, since the calibration's fit picked the wrong
eye on SteamVR's test.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A head-locked performance overlay kept catching the 3D mouse. It has no
input method, so SteamVR's laser passes through it, but the helper hit
tests every visible overlay with ComputeOverlayIntersection, and the dot
stuck to it whenever it crossed that corner of the view.
POINTER_IGNORE in frametop.conf now lists overlay keys the helper leaves
out of the collision, comma-separated shell patterns, so "vendor.app*"
covers a whole app, including panels it opens later. The laser starts
just before the cursor point, so an ignored panel nearer to you doesn't
catch it either.
Frametop Input Settings has a new Ignored panels page. It asks the
helper for SteamVR's overlays ("overlays", answered from the list's
thread once vrcmd has run again, even while the pointer is off), groups
them by app, and has a checkbox per panel and one for the whole app.
Frametop's own screens aren't offered, since ignoring one would leave
nothing to click the app on with the mouse. Entries for apps that
aren't open are listed so they can be removed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A display mount that covers the proximity sensor makes the headset seem
worn, so SteamVR never turned its displays off and they stayed on all
night. The new power service, ft-powerd (frametop-power.service), goes by
use instead: after DISPLAY_OFF_MIN minutes in which the headset and
controllers didn't move and no input device was used, it turns the
backlight off, and the next movement or input turns it back on.
The new Power tab in Frametop Display Settings sets that time and has a
Stay awake while plugged in switch. The switch sets Steam's own "When
Plugged In and Idle -> Sleep after" to Never through Steam's UI, so the
Frame stays reachable remotely while the power button still works.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Named layouts: Save current arrangement in Frametop Display Settings now
asks for a name, and saved layouts are listed with the presets under
Arrangement, with rename and delete next to the list. A named layout is
the custom arrangement under a name: each screen's place relative to
your head, width, curve, and pin, but not resolution or scale. Using one
copies it into the custom arrangement, so desktop start, Meta+Shift+R,
and Arrange now apply it unchanged; "active" remembers the name, and a
plain capture clears it. ft-layout gains save, use, layouts, rename, and
delete. A layout saved with fewer screens than there are now leaves the
others where they were saved last, or where the preset puts them.
Head pin: ft-screens' pin command takes "head" as well as left and
right, and pins the screen to the headset (device 0) where it is, like a
HUD. A head-pinned screen skips the wrist facing rule and shows whenever
the screens do. Carrying it re-pins it to the head on release, like a
wrist pin, so it can be adjusted in VR. The Visibility tab (now
Visibility & pins) sets each screen's pin: in the room, either wrist, or
your head, and the pin command now rejects anything but left, right, or
head (it used to take anything else as left). This removes the "no HUD"
limit from the docs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
SteamVR's combined gaze keeps going on one eye, but it holds the lost
eye's yaw, so the gaze moves half as far sideways as the eyes do.
ft-gaze now reads each eye's tracking uncertainty and raw measurement
from eye-server.mmap. When the tracker loses an eye, ft-gazed takes the
gaze from the other one, plus the offset that eye usually shows
against both, learned while both are seen. On a recording, one eye
alone came out a median 0.8 degrees from both eyes' gaze.
Glances down at the keyboard, past every screen, aren't sent. The
pointer stays put, and eyes lost there don't count as lost.
The gaze probe gets a Headset fit mode. It shows per-eye tracking,
openness and confidence, maps where each eye gets lost, gives hints,
and has a guided check. The settings app opens it from the Gaze page
and shows how often each eye is lost. The probe can also test each eye
alone, and its side panel now collapses to a title bar so the dot
isn't hidden behind it.
Snapping to UI elements is deferred; the mouse drag is the correction.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
With a screen's scale set to anything but 100%, clicks landed away from
the cursor, further off the further from the top left (#3). ft-screens
hands KWin panel positions in buffer pixels, and KWin's nested Wayland
backend (6.2.5, WaylandInputDevice) adds surface coordinates to its
output's logical position without dividing by the output's scale. At
125% a click at the middle of a 3440x1440 screen, (1720, 720), reached
KWin as logical (1720, 720), pixel (2150, 900).
ft-screens now keeps a scale per screen and divides pointer positions by
it. ft-layout sends each screen's scale, as KWin reports it after
applying, with a new "scale N s" command, whenever it applies scales:
at desktop start and from Frametop Display Settings. Screens default to
1, so an ft-layout that never sends it keeps the old behaviour.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A controller released the 3D mouse's pointer on a single pose sample
faster than 0.35 m/s or 2 rad/s, once the mouse had been still for
500 ms. The helper polls about every 8 ms, so one noisy sample was
enough: a knock on the desk, or a tracking jump when the headset's
cameras pick a resting controller up again (#1).
A controller now has to stay over the limit for 100 ms in a row, and
only samples with a normal tracking result (Running_OK) count. The new
POINTER_CONTROLLER_PICKUP setting (1 by default, 0.5 to 5) scales both
limits; it's a slider on the Pointer page of Frametop Input Settings
and applies live. A controller picked up for real still gets the laser
back through SteamVR's hand role, which follows its touch sensors. The
release log now records the speed and spin that triggered it, to tune
the default.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
SteamVR's "Enable global input from overlays (Experimental)" could only
be turned on from the settings app: its notice, with the button, hid once
the setting was on. It's now a switch, and the notice shows only when
buttons are mapped and the setting is off.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Frame controllers aren't input devices on the host, so the pointer
helper reads them with SteamVR input (vrbuttons.h, actions/), one action
set per button, and sends presses to the relay, which does the mapped
action like for a mouse button. Only mapped buttons are taken, at an
overlay-global priority (SteamVR's experimental "Enable global input from
overlays"), and only outside games unless In games is on. Frametop Input
Settings gets a Controllers page to map them.
Gaze mode: a left press while the gaze has the pointer isn't sent at
once. The pointer stops, you drag it onto what you meant with the button
held, and the release clicks there; a press held still for
POINTER_GAZE_HOLD (0.5 s) becomes a real press, for drags. The dot shows
only while the mouse moves it (POINTER_GAZE_SHOW), while a press is held,
and as a pulse per click. Outside games the pointer stays on while gaze
mode is on. ft-gazed takes a third of each lesson's offset instead of all
of it: in the first live test one 6 degree lesson moved everything and put
the next target 7 degrees off. Frametop Input Settings gets a Gaze page.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
MAGIC pointing (Zhai et al. 1999), off by default: with POINTER_GAZE=1,
"gaze on", or a button mapped to the new gaze_toggle action, the cursor ray
is the corrected gaze from ft-gazed while the gaze has the pointer. Moving
the mouse takes the pointer from where the gaze left it; looking more than
POINTER_GAZE_RETAKE (5 deg) away with the mouse still gives it back. The
pointer is aimed at the gaze, never steered toward it, and only fresh gaze
moves it, so a stopped service or a blink leaves it where it is. A mouse
nudge of up to POINTER_GAZE_NUDGE_MAX (8 deg) before a click is sent to
ft-gazed as a lesson in the eye tracker's error.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
KWin's output positions now follow where the Frametop screens are in the room
instead of their numbers: a screen you see to the left of another is to its
left in Plasma, so the pointer and dragged windows cross straight to it.
Screens one above the other stack, and wrist-pinned screens go last.
ft-layout scale works this out from ft-screens' head pose and screen poses,
and runs after arranging, capturing, or pinning; ft-screens runs it half a
second after a screen is let go. With no head pose (headset off) KWin's
order is kept.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Easing the reference toward the head all the time moved the cursor on
every small head movement, so a cursor parked in a corner of the view
drifted. Now nothing moves while the head stays within the leash. Once
the head has been past it for POINTER_LEASH_DELAY (0.2 s, so a glance
out and back doesn't count), the reference eases all the way to where
you face (POINTER_LEASH_RETURN) and the cursor lands back in its place
in the view, then the leash waits again. Leaning inside the leash no
longer moves the cursor either. Leash 0 stays head-locked.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The leash only moved its reference when the head reached the leash's end,
so after turning back it sat up to the leash off, and recentring meant
overshooting with the head. The reference now eases toward the head's
facing (POINTER_LEASH_RETURN, 0.2 s) and never lags more than the leash,
so the cursor settles back to its place in the view once the head stops.
The mouse can now move the cursor up to POINTER_FOLLOW_REACH (70 degrees)
from the middle of the view, up from a fixed 40. Both are sliders on the
Pointer page.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Off by default. With POINTER_FOLLOW=1 (a switch on the Pointer page of
Frametop Input Settings, or a mouse button mapped to Head follow on/off),
the cursor rides on a reference direction leashed POINTER_LEASH_DEG (10)
from where you face. Within the leash it stays put in the room; past it,
it turns with your head and keeps its offset. A leash of 0 locks it to
your view. Head roll is ignored, the cursor stays within 40 degrees of
the reference, and it holds still in the room while the left button is
down so the head can't nudge a click or a drag.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
