VirtualHere For Steam Link Reviews

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!

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 :)

[h1]Short Review[/h1] 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. [h1]Long Review[/h1] [b]The Problem[/b]: 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. [b]The Solution[/b]: 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. [b]Additional Notes[/b]: 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. [h1]RockSmith 2014 compatibility[/h1]: 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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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!