Leap Motion SteamVR Setup - Oculus

Hi guys! So this will be a quick tutorial on how to get your Leap Motion Controller working with SteamVR so you can try out some of those amazing games on the Steam store! I've seen several how-to's on this, but didn't see any on Instructables that really suited my needs, and the other setup guides I've found were lacking a key detail I needed to get my system up and running. I found that last bit of info I needed in a random Youtube video, actually, but the guy didn't have an official guide, so I decided to set one up myself.

So, you wanna play SteamVR, but don't have an HTC Vive? Well, or if you're an Rift user, like me, and are stilllllll waiting for those Touch controllers, then using the Leap Motion to test out some of that Roomscale glory is still pretty cool!

Things you'll need:

VR Ready PC

Oculus Rift (works with HTC to, just not what I have)

Leap Motion

Internet (duh, if you're reading this)

Ok, so after you get everything plugged in (assuming you already have the necessary programs for Oculus and SteamVR installed) the next thing you need to do is install the Leap Motion Orion Beta software (whew, that's a mouthful, right?) The Orion beta is the newest version of Leap Motion's tracking software, and it's been built from the ground up for VR, which is just what we need.

To install it, go to Leap Motion's Orion page and click on the Orion Beta button to download. It will ask you to sign in, so if you don't have an account yet go ahead and set one up. Then hit the button again once you're signed in to download the file to your pc.

Once the download completes, unzip the file and run the installation program it extracts. Boom! Now you have Orion!

If your Leap is plugged into the PC, you should now see a tiny green leap motion in the bottom right side of your tool bar. That means it's connected and ready to sense.

Next, onto installing the Leap drivers for SteamVR!

Ok, so there are two major steps two installing these drivers. One is what you'd expect, but the other is not and it's crucial to seeing your hands as controllers in VR.

First, the easy part. To install the driver, first go to this page: GitHub Driver Releases and download the latest Leap Release driver (as of posting this it's Alpha version #8. Will probably be updated) to your PC. There are several items, so make sure you download the .zip file.

Once again, unzip the file and use the setup.exe file located inside to install the drivers!

Once you complete this step, you're almost ready! Just one little hiccup...

Ok, now for the weird part. So when (at least on machines I've heard of) the Leap Motion Drivers install, it places them in a folder in Program Files, but doesn't actually install them in SteamVR, where they need to be.

So in the first picture above, you can see a folder named leap, right? Copy that. (your C: drive name will be different, no worries. {Yes, I know, my OS is originally from an Emachine. Derp. It's not on an Emachine anymore}). Then we need to navigate to the drivers folder of SteamVR, where all the plugins for Lighthouse tracking and the Oculus Rift go. When we paste it there, we'll gain controls in SteamVR with our LeapMotion! It's pretty simple, just a strange way to go about it.

Up in the second picture above you can see an approximate file path to your SteamVR drivers folder (the steam folder is probably just named steam for you, not steamyness. I installed my Steam twice cause the first one glitched and I couldn't name it the same thing twice for some reason.) Go there and paste in the Leap folder you copied before. Now you're ready!

Simply quit out of and restart SteamVR and you should be able to see your hands as HTC Vive controllers when you put on your Rift! Have fun!