Most of SteamVR's Settings page took no clicks from the 3D mouse: they
went through to a desktop screen behind it, and the page covered the dot.
Steam's pages (Library and the rest) are drawn in
valve.steam.gamepadui.main, which ComputeOverlayIntersection hits exactly.
For SteamVR Settings that overlay is hidden and the page is drawn by the
dashboard's scene-graph panel, whose shape OpenVR doesn't give out. The
helper guessed a plane and a 0.5 m circle from the panel's transform, but
its origin is at the page's left edge and the page's surface is nearer
than that plane, so the laser, starting a few cm in front of the guess,
started behind the page.
On that page only (dashboard open, the main overlay hidden, the line of
sight crossing the page's measured area), the laser now starts 25 cm from
the eye so SteamVR's own hit test finds the page. The dot is drawn 0.6 m
out, in front of the page, and the laser-catching dot sits 8 m out,
invisible, with SteamVR's hit dot hidden on it. The beam and SteamVR's hit
dot show there, like a controller's; everywhere else nothing changes.
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>
It works but is only lightly tested, and what's left is mostly tuning its
settings. Frametop Input Settings now says so under the Head follow switch,
and the README, design notes, and button action name say it too.
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>
An ungrabbed keyboard reached both sides at once: gamescope, which in VR
reads every input device itself (the SteamOS build's InputStealer), typed
into its focused app, and ft-screens typed into the desktop. Space in the
desktop paused Spotify on the dashboard, including every space frame-voice
dictated. And while the SteamVR dashboard was open, the desktop got no
keys at all.
Typing now follows the last click. ft-screens sees clicks on its own
screens; the pointer helper reports the panel under the dot on each mouse
press, so a click on any other panel sends typing to Steam. While typing
goes to the desktop and the screens are showing, ft-screens tells the
relay every second, and the relay grabs pass-through keyboards. A grab
waits until no key is down, and the relay lets go if ft-screens stops
reporting. Controller clicks on other panels aren't visible to overlay
apps, so they don't move typing (noted in the README).
A program that reads every keyboard for a hotkey loses a grabbed one.
Repeating the keys on another input device doesn't work, since gamescope
reads that too, so with SHARE_KEYS=1 the relay sends them to
@frametop_keys as datagrams with the device name. It's off by default:
any local process that binds that name first would get every key typed
into the desktop.
The docs now say gamescope reads keyboards and the headset's buttons
itself; they said SteamVR passed keys on to it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Re-running the installer replaced the ft_pointer driver's files under a
running SteamVR. SteamVR then kept giving the virtual controller its hand
role but ignored its laser claim, so the mouse moved its dot without
SteamVR's laser until SteamVR restarted. The driver is now staged and only
replaced when it changed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
With the pointer released, the helper still listed overlays by running
vrcmd every second, a new SteamVR client each time, which kept SteamVR
from going to standby. The list now pauses while the pointer is off.
Starting the dev container from one of our services made that service own
it, so stopping the service stopped the container and the desktop's
compositor with it. scripts/container-up.sh starts the container in a
systemd scope of its own before every distrobox enter.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
An awake 3D mouse pointer (a connected SteamVR controller with the laser
mode forced on) kept the displays lit after the headset came off, until 30 s
without mouse input, and any bump of the mouse woke it again. Now the helper
releases the pointer as soon as SteamVR reports the headset idle and ignores
the mouse until it's worn again. The helper service also stops in 5 s
instead of waiting 90 s for its container session.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The service and menu-entry templates still pointed at the old frametop/
subfolder, so the pointer helper, input relay, and settings apps couldn't
start after a clean install. The pointer helper's install step also failed
when the service was still starting after 3 s; it now waits up to 20 s and
doesn't abort the installer.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Several KDE Plasma screens floating in SteamVR, each a real monitor of any
resolution and shape, shown by our own compositor (ft-screens), with a
layout, wrist pinning, and visibility modes; a Bluetooth mouse that drives
all of SteamVR as a room-anchored 3D pointer (input relay, ft-pointer
helper, ft_pointer SteamVR driver); two settings apps; and Bluetooth LE
fixes. Installs on the headset with ./install.sh.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
