VRisingVR Passthrough

Play V Rising in VR like a 3D board game, and see your real keyboard and mouse whenever you need them. This is the passthrough edition of VRisingVR for the Steam Frame: the same mod, plus a window onto your desk. Hold your mouse's rear side button and a window opens in the game where your keyboard and mouse are, showing them and your hands through the headset's passthrough. It needs a community tool on the headset (see "Seeing your desk"). Without a Steam Frame, or if you play with a gamepad, install VRisingVR instead.

The game's own top-down camera is shown in stereo 3D in your headset, so the world sits in front of you like a living tabletop. You can lean in and look around it with your head, and the game's camera rotation and zoom still work. You keep playing with mouse and keyboard as usual.

• Hold your mouse's rear side button to see your desk through a window in the game (Steam Frame). Hold G to move and turn the window with the mouse.
• The game's HUD, menus and map float in front of you as a transparent layer.
• Health bars, names and levels hang over the characters in 3D.
• The aim cursor lies on the ground in 3D, exactly where your attacks go.
• An in-game settings panel (F4) adjusts the view while you play.

The mod is client-side only. It doesn't change anything on the server, so there's nothing to install there. Stunlock Studios doesn't allow mods on its official servers, so play with it in single player, on your own server, or on a community server that allows client mods.

Requirements

• V Rising 1.1.13 on Windows (Steam), running on Direct3D 11, the game's default
• BepInExPack_V_Rising 1.733.2 (mod managers install it for you)
• SteamVR and a headset that works with it. Tested with a Steam Frame streaming wirelessly through Steam Link.
• For the desk window: a Steam Frame, streaming from your PC through SteamVR, with the community chroma-key tool installed on it (see "Seeing your desk"). On other headsets the rest of the mod works, but the window is just a green rectangle.
• A strong graphics card: the game renders the world once per eye, by default at SteamVR's full recommended resolution. On an RTX 2070 that runs at roughly 25-45 fps depending on the scene, and View.RenderScale 0.7 gets roughly 40-60.

Installing

You don't need the source code or any developer tools, only the mod itself. VRisingVR runs on BepInEx, the mod loader most V Rising mods use, and a mod manager installs that for you.

It replaces VRisingVR. If you have VRisingVR installed, uninstall it first, or turn it off in My mods. Both are the same plugin, so if both are installed BepInEx runs only the one with the higher version number. They share the settings file, so your view settings carry over.

With a mod manager (recommended)

A mod manager installs mods into a separate profile, brings in BepInEx, keeps your mods up to date, and leaves the game's own files alone. Use either of these:

• Thunderstore Mod Manager is Thunderstore's own app. Get it with the Get Manager button on thunderstore.io. It runs on Overwolf and shows ads.
• r2modman is free, open source and has no ads. Download r2modman-Setup-<version>.exe from its latest release.

Both are built on the same code, but a few buttons have different names. This guide uses Thunderstore Mod Manager's:

Thunderstore Mod Manager	r2modman	What it does
Get mods	Online	Find and download mods
My mods	Installed	Your installed mods
Modded	Start modded	Start the game with mods
Edit config	Config editor	Change mod settings

1. Open the mod manager. Search for V Rising and click Select game. Then click the Default profile and Select profile (r2modman: Select).
2. Click Get mods and search for VRisingVR Passthrough. Click the mod, click Download, then Download with dependencies. This installs BepInExPack_V_Rising as well.
3. Click Modded to start the game. The first start needs an internet connection and takes a few minutes while BepInEx prepares the game, and a BepInEx console window opens beside it. Later starts are quick.

Always start the game with Modded. Starting it from Steam runs the game without mods.

You can also install from the mod's page on Thunderstore: with the mod manager open on V Rising and your profile, click Install with App.

Installing a zip file. If you have the mod's zip, for example from the Download button on its Thunderstore page, you can import it:

1. Install BepInExPack_V_Rising from Get mods first. Imported mods don't bring their dependencies with them.
2. Go to Settings > Profile > Import local mod, click Import local mod, then Select file.
3. Pick the zip exactly as you downloaded it, named like Circuitrinos-VRisingVR_Passthrough-1.1.0.zip. Don't rename or unzip it: the mod manager reads the author from the file name, a folder can't be imported, and a zip you make yourself won't work.
4. Check that the dialog shows VRisingVR_Passthrough, Circuitrinos and the mod's version number. If it says 0.0.0, it's the wrong file. Click Import local mod.

To update, import the new version's zip the same way; it replaces the old one.

By hand

1. Find your game folder: in Steam, right-click V Rising and choose Manage > Browse local files. It's the folder with VRising.exe in it.
2. Install BepInEx. Download BepInExPack_V_Rising with the Download button and extract it into a temporary folder, not the game folder. Then move everything inside its BepInExPack_V_Rising folder into the game folder.
3. Start the game once and quit. A BepInEx console window should open, and this first start takes a few minutes.
4. In the game folder, open BepInEx\plugins, create a folder named VRisingVR, and extract the mod's zip into it. VRisingVR.dll and openvr_api.dll must end up together in BepInEx\plugins\VRisingVR, replacing VRisingVR's if you had it. (If you have VRisingVR_Passthrough-<version>-manual.zip, extract that straight into the game folder instead.)

The game now loads the mod whenever it starts, including from Steam.

Updating and uninstalling

• With a mod manager: My mods marks mods that have an update. Click the mod, then Update. To remove it, click it and choose Uninstall.
• By hand: replace the files in BepInEx\plugins\VRisingVR with the new version's, or delete that folder to uninstall.

Don't mix the two ways. If you installed BepInEx by hand and later switch to a mod manager, delete the BepInEx folder from the game folder, or starting the game from Steam keeps loading the old copy.

Playing

Start the game with your headset connected (with Modded if you use a mod manager). VR starts by itself, and SteamVR starts too if it isn't running yet.

• Main menu: a virtual screen mirroring the game window floats in front of you, with a dot where your mouse is.
• In the world: you see the tabletop view. Press F9 to re-center whenever you change how you sit. The HUD stays centered on your character's feet, and moves closer when you zoom in so it never sinks into the ground.
• Cursor: in gameplay the crosshair lies on the ground in 3D, at the point the game aims at. Your character and anything else in front of it hide it, but the hidden parts still show faintly, so it never vanishes behind an enemy. In menus (inventory, map, pause) the cursor moves to the HUD layer.
• Health bars and names: each character's overhead bars, name, level and icons float above them in 3D, looking exactly like the game's own. The interact prompt and the combat numbers stay on the HUD layer.
• Desktop window: while you're in VR, the window on your monitor shows your left eye, which saves a whole render each frame. Turn View.DesktopMirror off to see the normal game view there instead.

Hotkeys only work while the game window has focus. Most of them confirm with a short message in the headset.

Key	Action
Rear mouse side button	Hold to see your desk (see "Seeing your desk").
G	Hold to see your desk: moving the mouse slides the window, the scroll wheel turns it.
F4	Open/close the VR settings panel: HUD distance, width, tilt and ground margin, cursor and health bar size, world scale, near clip, stereo strength, view height, menu screen distance, and the desk window's key, position and size
F7	Show/hide the virtual screen while in the world
F8	Stop/start VR
F9	Re-center your view
F10 / F11	Make the world look bigger / smaller (WorldScale)
F5	Save a 3D capture (both eyes, the HUD and the desktop) to BepInEx\VRisingVR_captures, for bug reports
F6	Diagnostics: cycle how much of the game's rendering the eyes use (0 is normal). Only useful when tracking down a rendering problem.

Settings

The F4 panel covers the settings you'll want to adjust while playing. All of them, including the keys, are in BepInEx\config\vrisingvr.tabletop.cfg, which appears after the first start with the mod. In a mod manager, open it with Edit config (r2modman: Config editor); changes there apply the next time the game starts. The most useful:

• View.WorldScale: how small the world looks. Higher is more like a tabletop.
• View.HeightOffset: raises your viewpoint above the game camera.
• View.RenderScale: per-eye resolution as a multiple of SteamVR's recommendation (default 1). It's applied when VR starts.
• View.PerformanceMode: skips the most expensive effects in the eyes (volumetric fog and clouds, screen-space reflections and GI, contact shadows). On by default.
• HUD.Distance and HUD.Width: where the HUD layer floats and how big it is.
• Bars.Enabled and Bars.WidthMeters: the 3D health bars and their size.
• Cursor.GroundCursorSize and Cursor.GroundCursorHiddenAlpha: the ground cursor's size, and how strongly it shows through things in front of it.
• DeskWindow.Mode and DeskWindow.KeyColor: when the desk window shows, and its colour (see "Seeing your desk").

Performance tips

• Lower View.RenderScale first, for example to 0.7. That's the biggest lever.
• Lower V Rising's own shadow and ambient occlusion quality. Each eye renders with the game's quality settings.
• Keep the game's resolution at your monitor's. The VR HUD is drawn at the window's resolution, so lowering it only blurs the HUD.
• Close other programs that use the graphics card.

Seeing your desk (Steam Frame)

SteamVR doesn't let PC games use the Steam Frame's cameras. Instead, the mod draws a pure green rectangle into the picture, lying where your keyboard and mouse are. A community tool on the headset, steam-frame-chroma-key, then shows the headset's own passthrough wherever the picture is that green. So the rectangle becomes a window onto your desk, with your real keyboard, mouse and hands in it. The camera image never leaves the headset.

Setting up the headset (once). The tool is unofficial and not part of this mod; its README has the details.

1. On the headset, turn on Developer Mode (Steam Settings > System > Enable Developer Mode), set a password under Developer > Set User Password, and note the headset's IP address from its Wi-Fi settings.
2. On your PC, open PowerShell and log in to the headset with ssh steamos@<headset-ip>.
3. Build and install the tool. The git checkout line picks the version this edition was tested with (October 2026, SteamOS 0.4.5 build 20261007); leave it out to use the newest.

   git clone https://github.com/spyjacob/steam-frame-chroma-key.git ~/mr-chroma
   cd ~/mr-chroma
   git checkout 535c5f224768f85d7f011fce9e1cf03e0ea802f8
   ./build.sh && ./install.sh
   touch ~/.config/mrchroma/enable-compositor
   ~/.local/share/mrchroma/mrctl set-bool camera forceSceneAlphaBlending 1
   systemctl --user restart steamvr
   

4. Put the headset on so SteamVR wakes up, start streaming from your PC, and log in again. First check that the tool works:

   cd ~/mr-chroma
   ./mrkey.sh rect
   

   In the headset you should now see your room through a rectangle in the middle of each eye. If you don't, the tool isn't loaded: check that every command in step 3 ran without errors, run systemctl --user restart steamvr, and try again.
5. Then set the key and install the tool's panel for the SteamVR dashboard:

   ./mrkey.sh chroma 0 1 0 0.12 0.06 0.5
   toggle/install_toggle.sh
   

   The 0.12 and 0.06 are a tighter key than the tool suggests: only colours very close to pure green become passthrough. With its looser default, bright greens in the game, such as sunlit grass or green spell effects, would show your room too. You can change both later with the Chroma Key panel's Similarity and Edge softness sliders in the SteamVR dashboard.

You don't need the tool's PC programs. After a SteamOS update on the headset, turn keying off in the panel and run the mrkey.sh line again; if it reports "unexpected shader layout", leave keying off until the tool is updated. To remove the tool, run ./uninstall.sh in ~/mr-chroma while SteamVR is running.

Using it. Hold your mouse's rear side button and look at your desk. The HUD steps aside while you hold it. The window lies flat on the desk, at first 45 cm in front of and below where your eyes were when you last re-centered (F9, and whenever you put the headset on). To line it up with your keyboard and mouse:

• Hold G and move the mouse. The window slides across the desk, right and left, forward and back. Scroll the wheel to turn it. It stays where you let go of G, and from then on it stays put when you re-center or take the headset off, until VR restarts. The game still gets the mouse meanwhile: your aim follows it (so don't click), and the wheel also zooms the camera, so zoom back afterwards.
• Or open the F4 panel, where the window stays visible, and adjust Desk window ahead and right, Desk below your eyes (your desk's height under your eyes), and the window's width, depth and turn. The panel covers the middle of the window in the world; in the main menu it's out of the way.

The window also works in menus and loading screens. On your monitor it shows as a green rectangle.

Why hold a key? In the tabletop view your character is in about the same direction as your keyboard, so a window that opened by itself whenever you looked down would cover the board while you play. DeskWindow.Mode changes this:

• Hold (default): while you hold the side button.
• Toggle: the side button turns it on and off.
• LookDown: while your head points further down than DeskWindow.LookDownAngle (50° below the horizon by default). The side button turns this off and on. It only works if you tilt your head further down for your keyboard than for your character; the log's Perf: line shows where your head points with the window hidden and shown.
• Always: all the time. The side button turns it off and on.

G shows the window while you hold it in every mode except Off.

• Off.

The window is green by default. If you pick another colour in the headset's Chroma Key panel, set DeskWindow.KeyColor to the same one (Green, Blue, Magenta, Red or Cyan).

The keys. By default your mouse's rear side button (MouseBack) shows the window, and G shows it and moves it. The side button is the easiest to hold while you move, since your left hand stays on WASD. V Rising also uses that button, as the second binding of Interrupt Ability Cast (the game calls it Mouse 3), so clear it once: in the game's settings, open the key bindings, click that action's second binding and press Backspace. Its main key stays. Don't use the front side button, which the game uses for Auto Run. G is a keyboard key V Rising doesn't use, next to F; without side buttons, hold G (and keep the mouse still) to see your desk.

To pick other keys, open the F4 panel, click one of the two key rows at the top and press the key or mouse button (Esc cancels). They're saved as DeskWindow.Key and DeskWindow.MoveKey, which can also list several keys separated by commas. DeskWindow.MoveSpeed sets how far the window moves with the mouse, and DeskWindow.RotateStep how far one wheel notch turns it (negative turns it the other way).

Known limitations

• The game only makes health bars for characters its normal desktop view would show, so characters at the far edges of the wider VR view have none.
• Where two characters' bars overlap on screen, they're drawn in plain colours instead of the game's own graphics.
• No motion controller support. The headset is your view; you play with mouse and keyboard.
• Built for V Rising 1.1.13. A game update can break it until the mod is updated.
• The desk window depends on the unofficial chroma-key tool, which reaches into SteamVR's internals on the headset. A SteamOS update can stop it working until the tool is updated.
• Anything in the game close enough to the key colour also shows your room. With the tighter key above this is rare.

Troubleshooting

Everything the mod writes goes into the BepInEx folder: the log LogOutput.log, the settings in config, and F5 captures in VRisingVR_captures. If you installed by hand, that's the BepInEx folder in the game folder. A mod manager keeps it in its profile folder instead. Paste the path into File Explorer's address bar, and replace Default if your profile has another name:

• Thunderstore Mod Manager: %APPDATA%\Thunderstore Mod Manager\DataFolder\VRising\profiles\Default\BepInEx
• r2modman: %APPDATA%\r2modmanPlus-local\VRising\profiles\Default\BepInEx

Common problems:

• The game starts without mods (no BepInEx console window): start it with Modded in the mod manager, not from Steam, and check that BepInExPack_V_Rising is in My mods. If you imported a zip, the import dialog should have shown the mod's version number, not 0.0.0.
• The BepInEx console shows System.AccessViolationException: your antivirus is probably blocking BepInEx. Allow it in your security software.
• Nothing in the headset: make sure SteamVR is installed and sees your headset, then press F8 in the game. The log says why VR didn't start (look for lines with VRisingVR).
• Low frame rate: see the performance tips above. The log prints a Perf: line every 5 seconds with the frame rate and GPU time.
• The desk window is a green rectangle: the headset isn't keying it. Check that the Chroma Key panel in the SteamVR dashboard says ON and that its colour matches DeskWindow.KeyColor. If the panel is missing, set the tool up again (see "Seeing your desk").
• Patches of the game show your room: lower Similarity in the headset's Chroma Key panel.
• The window is in the wrong place: press F9 while sitting normally, then hold G and move the mouse (and scroll to turn) until the window is over your keyboard.
• Something looks wrong: press F5 for a 3D capture and include it, along with the log, when you report the problem (see below).

Feedback and bug reports

Report bugs and suggest improvements on GitHub Issues. You need a free GitHub account. For a bug, attach your LogOutput.log, plus an F5 capture if it's something you can see; Troubleshooting above says where to find them.

Building from source

The source code is on GitHub. This edition is on the passthrough branch; VRisingVR is main. You need the .NET SDK (6 or newer) and the game with BepInExPack_V_Rising installed and started once, so that BepInEx\interop exists.

cd VRisingVR
dotnet build -c Release

The build copies VRisingVR.dll and openvr_api.dll into <GameDir>\BepInEx\plugins\VRisingVR\ and writes the release zips to dist\:

• Circuitrinos-VRisingVR_Passthrough-<version>.zip is the Thunderstore package. It also works with r2modman's Import local mod.
• VRisingVR_Passthrough-<version>-manual.zip is for installing by hand.

Options:

• GameDir defaults to E:\Steam\steamapps\common\VRising. To use another path, run dotnet build -c Release -p:GameDir="X:\...\VRising".
• -p:Deploy=false skips the copy into the game.
• If BepInEx came from a mod manager, the game folder has none. Point the build at the profile's with -p:BepInExDir="<profile folder>\BepInEx" (the paths are under Troubleshooting) and add -p:Deploy=false, so the build doesn't put a second copy of the mod into the profile.
• -p:Package=false skips the zips.
• ThunderstoreTeam in VRisingVR/VRisingVR.csproj (Circuitrinos) is the Thunderstore team that uploads the package. It starts the Thunderstore zip's name, which is where r2modman's Import local mod gets the author from.

Releasing a new version:

1. Raise <Version> in VRisingVR/VRisingVR.csproj (Major.Minor.Patch). The plugin, the manifest and the zip names all use it.
2. Add a section to CHANGELOG.md.
3. Build.
4. Upload dist\Circuitrinos-VRisingVR_Passthrough-<version>.zip at https://thunderstore.io/package/create/. Choose the team named in ThunderstoreTeam and the V Rising community, then pick the Client and Oakveil Update categories, plus AI Generated if the community has one. Set Contains NSFW content to No.

Keep the AI disclosure section below and the AssemblyMetadata entries in the csproj. Thunderstore requires both for mods made with AI.

Thunderstore uploads can't be edited afterwards, so every change needs a new version.

AI disclosure

VRisingVR and this passthrough edition were made with generative AI. Their code, documentation and icons were created by Claude, Anthropic's AI model, working in Claude Code. Circuitrinos directed the work and play-tested the mod in VR on real hardware. The plugin also records this in its assembly metadata (AI_Assisted_Creation and AI_Model_Vendor).

License

MIT, see LICENSE. VRisingVR includes the OpenVR SDK, under Valve's BSD-3-Clause license; see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt. VRisingVR is not affiliated with Stunlock Studios or Valve.