VirtualHere For Steam Link

Great. Works with G25 steering wheel. Sometimes it can be fiddly to get it to work. But worth it after a good few hours. I wish the developers would make a steam guide on how to setup this.

Purchased the software to use my Thrustmaster T300 remotely with an ancient Steam Link. The software does work and the wheel connects and runs just fine, but any steering input immediately renders any game unplayable through intense lag, despite them running well using a steam or xbox controller.

From what I've gathered through the steam discussion board and the publishers own forum, this issue is known and has basically no fix other than to use a raspberry pi or similar device instead.

Why the store page still advertises steering wheels as a valid use case I do not know.

Not only is this program pure gold dust its a must for people like me who cloud pc. It says for steam deck but i can tell you this also works on other devices.

currently running on a nvidia shield tv pro and shadow pc and its flawless when cabled. this is important if you have weird feedback in racing games with a wheel, the answer is use an Ethernet cable comparison from wifi to cable is night and day.

The customer support this dev provides is second to none when i first bought the program there was an issue with the licence this was corrected rapidly by a simple email. the time to reply was lightning quick and helpful.

program 9/10 would be 10 but as of yet cant get graphics tablet to work with wacom intous s, other than that amazing, and could be down to wacom them selves or something i might of done wrong will edit if it is fixed soon.

customer support 10/10 fantastic highly recommend this!

Pretty expensive for what most would consider core functionality

No longer works. My Xbox One controller and Logitech G920 wheel sometimes work on the main Steam Link menu, but once I connect to my PC the controllers both stop working. It used to work fine with the Xbox controller.

I have a raspberry pi 4 stock buster installation, and a unbuntu 20.04 desktop, the app worked for a couple days, but it was unstable and caused crashing of the games or steamlink. Then even after reboot it would not start up anymore, so I uninstalled and reinstalled it and it started working, then it stopped working again and I can't get it working anymore, even with uninstall and reinstall. I switch to the linux implementation of usbip and have been happy with out this piece of software every since.

not sure what the reviews saying this product is obsolete are on about. My Thrustmaster 150 racing wheel wasn't recognized in Dirt 3 / Rally over Steam Link. This fixed the issue. It's a bit fiddly and I wouldn't give it 5/5, but I definitely recommend it if you're having a similar issue

Works great with my Thrustmaster T150 racing wheel. Just remember to do a few things:
1. Plug the USB controller into the host computer that will be running the games first to install the drivers, then disconnect and connect it to the Steam Link.
2. On the Steam Link, before connecting to a host computer, go to Settings->VirtualHere and configure the controller.
3. It may be unnecessary, but I launched VirtualHere on my host computer right after installation, thinking that maybe it needed to do some initial setup.

I have not had any issues like other folks, so maybe those 3 tips will help others. I'm using official Steam Link hardware with the latest updates as of March 15, 2019.

It just plain doesn't do what I purchased it to do.

I wanted to be able to use my headset, connected to a Steam Link downstairs, to be able to voice-chat on Discord with friends. I absolutely cannot get that functionality to work, despite hours of trying. On top of that, anytime I have VirtualHere set to connect the headset (via Steam Link's configuration menus), my Steam Link will lock up when Big Picture loses focus, and I have to manually power cycle the Steam Link.

Once I figured out the pattern, I was able to 100% reproduce the issue. When my headset was connected to the Steam Link, and the device was sharing via VirtualHere, minimizing Big Picture caused the Steam Link to lock up. After power cycling the Link, disconnecting the headset, and re-connecting to my PC via Steam Link Streaming, I was able to reliably minimize Big Picture, and my Steam Link would no longer lock up.

I attempted to refund the software, but I was denied due to spending more than 2 hours trying to troubleshoot the issues I was having. Buyer beware. This software stays running in the background, which will run up the "playtime" if you're not careful.

I bought this program because I wanted to Stream my GameCube and Wii games from the Dolphin emulator on my PC to the TV in my game room.

TL;DR; - I’m refunding VirtualHere because it lagged out my Steam Link running a GameCube controller.

Let me start by saying that for anyone else hoping to use a Mayflash Adapter in Wii U mode, or the Wii U GameCube Controller Adapter itself, while both will work, they will suffer serious ghost inputs that will cause you to stutter and jerk all over the place no matter what game you play. This can be fixed with a Mayflash Adapter by setting it to PC mode and running it using the standard controller configuration. If you only have the official Wii U Adapter, either sell it or learn to live with the wonky input. There's no fix or planned fix for it right now from what I can tell over on the Discussions page.

Also, you have to turn off Generic Gamepad Support any time you want to run a Dolphin emulation over Steam, or Steam will cause Dolphin to interpret the adapter as a generic xinput controller instead of a GameCube adapter. This means if you have other controllers Steam deems generic that have custom bindings in your games, you'll have to remember to turn generic controller support back on when you want to play those. Again, I don't see any support for or even addressing of this issue online at the time I'm writing this.

Anyway, I finally got Dolphin running across the Steam Link, and Virtual Here made it work with my controllers. Then I hit the one barrier that finally made me throw my hands up in frustration and request a refund: the lag. While VirtualHere is running, my Steam games, GameCube games and even the Steam overlay itself suffer from crackling, choppy audio, and stuttering/full on blacking out video. Let me be clear, I have a very powerful gaming PC, a high bandwidth router, fast internet (if that even applies here), and cat5 Ethernet cable running between said PC, said router and my Steam Link. I keep the Steam Link itself up to date, and have prioritized and meticulously tweaked its network connection both on the device itself and my PC to get the best performance I possibly can, and I can run just about anything on the "Best" quality settings with no controller lag, and perfect 60fps and audio.

I decided to turn down the stream quality from "Best" to "Balanced" to see if that fixed things, and turn on the performance overlay. It fixed nothing, and the overlay showed a HUGE amount of data being sent back to my PC from the Steam Link, even when I wasn't actively doing anything with the controller connected through VirtualHere. When I killed VirtualHere in my process bar, things went back to perfect quality. No lag. No stuttering. Again, I tried to make it work, and tried to find a way to use my Mayflash Adapter without the program, but I could not, which is a real shame. With a little finagling, VirtualHere did exactly what I bought it for, but at such a terrible price in performance it becomes difficult to play anything thanks to the incredible lag.

I don’t know if this problem affects other accessories working with VirtualHere, but for a single GameCube controller to cause so much data use on the Steam Link has made me warry of the viability of this product for use with anything else. I wish it worked. I still want to play my GameCube games from my PC in my gaming room, but for now I can’t without VirtualHere, and VirtualHere can’t without some sort of fix for a problem no one else cares about.

P.S. I forgot to mention that every time I connected my Steam Link to my PC with a USB running VirtualHere connected, the VirtualHere box would pop up over Big Picture, and wouldn't go away until I closed it out myself using the mouse via my Steam Controller.

Works astoundingly well once you sort out your internet AND ENABLE AUTO CONNECT IN THE USB HUBS MENU. I use this for the racing wheel in our living room and it works flawlessly with an unnoticeable couple milliseconds of latency. I previously uninstalled and asked for a refund, however it turns out an even remotely spotty signal will completely stop virtualhere from working, and the latency will become so large you'll think controllers just don't work anymore. Since then I attached an ethernet cable to the router through the floorboards and virtualhere works flawlessly with few issues. Don't expect virtualhere to function through the air on either ends of the system.

Apologies that this review is more of a ‘story time’ than a review, but given the nature of the product and its usage, context is somewhat important. The long and short of it is: It works in my case with a Logitech G920 and EDTracker Pro head tracking without issue once configured.

Props to the developers for putting this on steam and getting support for it so tightly integrated into the SteamOS and in-home streaming. I purchased a Steam Link like so many other people in the great summer deals, only to then have it dawn on me that my wheel and pedal setup wouldn't work with it!

Enter VirtualHere.

I initially found that the VirtualHere client was available as a freeware product on the developer's website, so thought I would give it a go for free to make sure it works for me before financially supporting the project. After around 2 hours of faffing and watching some YouTube videos on the subject, I quickly found that there were no up-to-date how-to’s on the subject. Almost everything pointed to using a Beta client of SteamOS and going round the houses with various settings to get this to work. Since then, and in a more modern-day scenario, VirtualHere’s server functionality has now been built-in to SteamOS, so my Steam Link already had this capability right off the bat, and all that was needed was the client version on my Windows PC! I couldn’t get the freeware version to work properly with Steam as it wouldn’t discover my shared USB devices on the Steam Link, although it would successfully discover other devices I tried hosting from on the network, so I was confident that the concept of the software did at least work.

Took a cheap punt and purchased the Steam version, and after installing it, plugging-in my Logitech G920 wheel/pedal set, and EDTracker head tracking unit into the Steam Link, I was good to go. Went into the settings screen on the Steam Link and just designated which devices I wanted to share from the handy VirtualHere tab, and that was it!
Started a racing game up and my peripherals happily just worked, they (perhaps luckily) were even identified as the same devices in my games, so I didn’t even need to re-set my control schemes, which in some cases would have resulted in having to edit config files manually, so that was a nice extra.

In summary, my usage of VirtualHere wasn't without its teething problems and points of note, although all of this in my case at least was resolved by just buying the paid steam version. It should be noted that the steam link has a puny CPU and is limited to 100mbps maximum network connectivity, which I believe is the erroneous reason for a lot of the negative reviews this product has unfortunately garnered on steam. Some of my peripherals, the head tracker in particular send an awful lot of USB data, and so this resulted in choppy frame rates and dodgy quality. It took me a good hour or so of running up and down stairs, changing settings/config files on both the streaming PC and the steam link to get a quality/performance balance that was acceptable. Be aware that it is going to be a case of having to tune your setup for your individual needs and expectations.

I can see how there is confusion over this software as it does appear on first blush to be such an essential feature that this should just inherently be a feature of the steam link / SteamOS itself. Sadly, it is not, however VirtualHere should be a product that is celebrated for giving us this much needed functionality for a trivial price.
This product in my opinion deserves a much better rating on steam and is a must for anyone wanting to use esoteric devices on their steam link or streaming box of choice. Big thanks to the developers for saving me from having to race exclusively in front of my PC!

For those experiencing problems with the product, I would suggest that you initially look to troubleshoot your individual scenario before simply starting to fire shots off the bow of the reviews section. As a fellow developer, albeit in a different domain, that kind of feedback while useful doesn't necessarily lend to constructively improving the product for your situational usage, especially when its the case that good operation of the software is reliant upon your usage scenario and environment; I suppose I was fortunate in already having a lot of pre-requisites for trouble-free operation already in place, and I'm afraid its going to be one of those things in some cases where you can't expect this to work 100% without perhaps upgrading your network infrastructure, streaming host/client or some combination thereof in conjunction with spending the time configuring bandwidth and in-home streaming settings within Steam.

Works pretty well and is a must if you want to play games wirelessly on your Steam link with an Xbox One controller and the Windows 10 adapter(This software is not needed if you have the Xbox One S controller as it can just connect via bluetooth to steam link)

My adventure to make the Steam Link run like it was designed for any purpose other than frustration and disappointment ended with shelling out for yet another overpriced addition that should have come stock with the Link by the name of Virtualhere - essentially a $12 update to make controllers work properly on the link. That's right, Steam Link has expensive DLC for key features any competent hardware would have by default.

After a convulted setup process I finally was able to get my wireless controller to function properly on the Link through Virtualhere, despite it working fine when going into my PC instantaneously. I played for a few minutes and then decided to restart and see if it still worked. It did not. So I went through the setup process again, and it crashes Steam. Now, it crashes Steam every time I open Big Picture with Virtualhere running. Avoid this software, and just cut your losses with the Link. No investment will make it work well. If there's an update to make it work properly, you can bet it will scam you for another $12.

For an application that you have to pay for, in order to use a wireless xbox controller with a STEAM LINK its not worth the money spent. I keep getting broken error messages after my controller loses sync to my LINK, which could happen anywhere between 2 min to 30min apart at times. VirtualHere for Steam Link needs to get is shit sorted or become free to make it worth the time and stress...

VirtualHere is a solution to a problem that shouldn't be a problem. When it comes to the SteamLink, I think plenty of people have got some (deservedly so) harsh criticisms about the whole thing. It seems like Valve pushed them out the door, and then left all the broken aspects broken. If Steam ends up putting up one of these applications for wifi for the Steamlink, I wouldn't be surprised, because the Steamlink's wifi support is abysmal. Anyway, on to this nugget...

VirtualHere acts as a passthrough link to your PC, Steam Link tries to interpret USB controllers (though only supports the big vendor ones and of course the Steam controller). But what if Steamlink doesn't have a driver for said USB controller? Well it just kind of does nothing. And that's been my frustration with the Steamlink for a while. I'd seen the VirtualHere option in settings before, but didn't realize VirtualHere was a separate purchase software. I was "thrilled" to find out that support for my generic USB devices was relegated to a $12 DLC (which has another $10 DLC to allow it to work with an unlimited number of devices).

VirtualHere doesn't try to interpret the USB controllers, and instead creates a virtual USB hub on your computer. Every device that's been set to be shared across the network will be broadcasted to the linked up Steam client. After purchasing this DLC you need to restart the Steam Link so it can install the VirtualHere package. Also you'll need to go to the Desktop for this, because of UAC. Then in the settings just set whatever USB controller you want to use to be shared, and then play. One of the nice things is that it remembers what devices you tell it to share, so you don't need to stop streaming every time, just hot plug the device in (provided you've shared it before), wait a few seconds and you can use it.

Do I recommend this software? Hell yes, I recommend this software, but begrudgingly because this should have been part of Steam from the get go. Billions of dollars and Valve can't be bothered to properly support controllers, so they instead tell you to buy some external software to do their jobs for them? Apparently games as a service ain't good enough reason to help the customer anymore.

It's a really awful joke that I needed to pay $12 to use my SNES controller over Steam Link. The adapter for that controller is a DirectInput USB device, since when are DInput devices not supported?

VirtualHere is exists at the fault of Steams shitty business model for the Steam Link. I bought this software because, like anyone with any desire to play video games on PC, I would like to be able to use any controller I should choose WIRELESSLY. For me, this is the XB1 controller with the wireless adapter which works beautifully with any normal PC.

BUT, since Steam wants to force everyone to purchase their shitty controllers, they refuse to support this hardware - and thus you have to buy this unsurprisingly shitty software to even attempt to make it work.

Long story short, the software serves an extremely specific purpose and is IMPOSSIBLE TO USE FOR PLUG AND PLAY WITH THE STEAM LINK AND A WIRELESS XB1 CONTROLLER/ADAPTER SET UP.

The program may or may not work well for it's intended use (which you should read up on in the description), but it will not work at all for 90% of users. To even get the XB1 controller to work wirelessly you have to go through a cumbersome set up process EVERY FUCKING TIME you want to use it. Not at all worth a single cent if that's what you want to use it for. I blame Valve, not this developer, but Christ alive if these guys could at least make this program work for what everyone will want to use it for. Listen to me and the other reviews - don't buy this and don't buy a Steam Link. I'm literally going to buy a 100ft HDMI cable and it'll work 50x better.

There are a lot of negative reviews for this product virtually all of which are tied to the reviewer not understanding what this software is doing.

This is a rather specialized piece of software. Yes, it technically adds compatability for a lot of gaming devices. That is somewhat useful. But, it is not adding that functionality to your Steam Link. It is really just sending the USB traffic directly to the host machine instead of having the Steam Link send connections via other formats. This software acts as virtual USB Hub on your host machine emulating that the controllers attached to the Steam Link are actually directly attatched to the host machine itself.

As that is concerned it is incredibly useful for particular setups, and only moderately useful for the rest. I will say I noticed significant input lag for graphically intense games when running my Steam Link in the "Beautiful" setting. I assume that is because the bandwidth is saturated with the graphics data and there is not enough bandwidth to handle the USB data as well.

Where this comes in very handy for me is for emulation. I have added a number of emulated games to my host machine's Steam library and many of the emulators detect if a controller is connected and return to default keyboard commands if it is not. Because this software acts as if controllers attached to the steam link are directly attached to the host, the emulators see there is a controller and it just works.

I also use joy2key to allow me to exit the emulators gracefully with controller combinations. This is another ascpect that can only be done with a directly connected game pad because of how Steam Link chooses to send the commands to the host.

TL;DR: This is specialized software that happens to add flexability to your steam link. The price for this software is $20 cheaper than the software otherwise would cost (VirtualHere's website) though you can get a free client from them that allows bridging a single device (so a gamepad, but not a gamepad+keyboard+mouse). This software is a necessessity if you need directly connected controllers for any software you wish to run through your steam link.

First off lets get this straight. The latest Firmware updates on the Steam Link box have made this application useless. So before I even start getting into the thick of this review.... IT NO LONGER WORKS!

Secondly, this is soooooooooo overpriced and does not work straight out of the box even when it did work. It is not the answer to people trying to get 3rd party controllers to work over the Steam Link. Its a very overcomplicated, overpriced, no longer working, badly coded program that the dev is trying to milk every last penny from these overpriced sales before its pulled for no longer being compatible.

DO NOT BUY!

NOTE TO STEAM: I would hope that Steam re-enable the Bluetooth pairing option again on steam link OS, so that compatible controllers can be added once more without hassle. God know why you had taken this away too in the latest update of your Firmware. The steam controller is good, but terrible for FPS!

Terrible, overpriced but halfway decent when it does decide to work.

Claimed a refund out of the time I put in trying to get it to work I spent less time finally using it afterwards. Controller would fade out from the connection at random times and simply not worth an extra $20 bucks...

This should BE FREE!

It works well and I would recommend it even though the price is too high, but the developer decided its okay to charge extra 10€ for DLC that only removes the limit to share up to 3 devices over Steam Link. At this point VirtualHere, a software used only to complement Steam Link, is now priced almost as the Steam Link itself. For shame!

Hello fellow steam link users! Why would you need this software for your steam link?
Several reason here below.

1. ***TEAMSPEAK & other VOIP Support with connected headsets***
***Make Sure you choose your headsets as playback device In Windows***

2. Third Party Controller Support (Saiteks, Logitech 3D Pro, Ect)

3. Third Party Headset/Mic Support.

4. Valve taking too long to support these options, Virtualhere stepped up.

Teamspeak was good enough reason to justify the $20 pricetag for me, not to mention my controller hotkeys for voice activation works. I was stunned and excited that I can truly use my steam link to its full potention now!

Waited for this for a long time... since the Steam Link came out actually. I really only play one game, Elite: Dangerous. I use a Saitek X-52 flight stick... and now, after months of waiting, I can actually play with the X-52 on my TV without having to unplug and move my PC... Excellent, excellent, excellent! Highly recommended :)

Short Review

It does what it advertises. I needed to force my Steam Link to send XInput to my PC instead of emulating keyboard/mouse. VirtualHere for Steam Link enabled me to do so with ease.

Long Review

The Problem: For some of my games, I use FreePIE to adapt gamepad input to the keyboard/mouse controls expected by the game. FreePIE runs as a background process, while the actual game runs in the foreground and has focus. I found that this mode of operation does not work well by default with Steam Link, mainly due to how the Link decides when to emulate keyboard/mouse ("Desktop mode") versus when to send gamepad XInput signals. From what I understand, the problem is that the FreePIE window needs to have focus in order for the Link to send the gamepad XInput signal, but to give focus to FreePIE, your game loses focus and you can't play until you take away focus from FreePIE again.

The Solution: VirtualHere for Steam Link solved this problem for me. As advertised, VirtualHere made my PC think the controller was directly plugged in, but it was really plugged into the Link. As a result, FreePIE was then receiving the XInput signals from my controller even though my game was full-screen in the foreground.

Additional Notes: I originally downloaded the free VirtualHere client from the VH website, but I wasn't able to get it working. After some digging, I found that the free client apparently only works with earlier versions of the Steam Link firmware. My Link is running version beta 518, which requires the "VirtualHere for Steam Link" version of the client. It's disappointing that the free VH client does not work with the latest Steam Link firmware, but I also read that the Steam version supports up to three controllers (versus the free version supporting only one), so there is some benefit to this version. It would be helpful if the product description included some sort of note officially declaring that "VirtualHere for Steam Link" is the only VirtualHere client that will work with the latest Steam Link firmware.

RockSmith 2014 compatibility

:
Unfortunately, RockSmith seems to have some issues with the Steam Link and VirtualHere. VirtualHere recognizes the RockSmith guitar cable, but for some reason the PC seems to just get garbage signal from the cable. I couldn't tune the guitar in-game or even calibrate the cable. Also, the game audio doesn't make it to my TV for some reason. There might be solutions to these problems, but I haven't taken the time to try and find them. My advice is don't expect VirtualHere/Steam Link and RockSmith to work together out of the box.