HTC Vive VR owners can now play Oculus Rift games thanks to new software patch

A developer known as LibreVR has created a software patch which allows owners of the HTC Vive VR headset to play games exclusively made for the rival Oculus Rift.

The patch currently works with the two games bundled with the Rift – Lucky’s Tale and Oculus Dreamdeck.

“It may work with plenty of other games, but that hasn’t been tested by myself,” wrote Reddit user CrossVR, who posted a link to the code. “In the future more games will be supported, but I’m glad to see such swift progress already.”

LibreVR’s patch, known as Revive, was put up on Github – the code-sharing site for anyone to download and use.

“It works by reimplementing functions from the Oculus Runtime and translating them to OpenVR calls,” LibreVR, Revive’s coder, writes. “Unfortunately Oculus has implemented a Code Signing check on the Runtime DLLs, therefore the Revive DLLs cannot be used unless the application is patched.”

However, the ported games can only be played using an Xbox controller on the Vive – not with the headset’s motion controllers.

Revive’s Github page says that “two games have been tested and are supported, it’s important to note that they both require you to use an Xbox controller for now.

Currently only Windows 8/10 is supported, with support for Windows 7 expected to be added in the next version.

Ben Kuchera, at Polygon, tested the system and said that it “works just fine on the HTC Vive.”

Sam Machkovech, a writer for the news site Ars Technica, said that the patch was significant as Oculus Rift owners could play games accessible via SteamVR, while Vive owners could not get at many Oculus games.

Machkovech said: “HTC Vive owners now have a free, simple way to access some of Oculus’s most impressive launch offerings,”