OrbitOverlayGuide
Controls, every watch widget, fixes and questions.
Controls
| Point at a panel | Laser. On a screen it moves the mouse. |
| Trigger | Click |
| B or Y | Right click |
| Stick up / down | Scroll |
| Grip on a panel | Grab and move it. Stick changes the distance, the other hand's grip resizes. |
| Both Grips, twice quickly | Hide or show all screens and the keyboard |
| Look at your wrist | The watch appears. Tap a widget to open it; tap beside it or its × to close. |
| Trigger held, swipe sideways on the watch | The next or previous watch page. Tapping the dots at the bottom does the same. |
| Point at the lower part of the middle monitor | A bar appears under it: Theater mode, Dim, Size, Curved and a keyboard button. |
Watch widgets
The custom face is a grid of 6 × 4 cells, and it can have several pages: a new install starts with a VRChat page and a Performance page, and an update from before 1.12 keeps your own face as page 1 with those two after it. A page can also use a 4 × 3 grid with bigger cards. Sizes below are width × height on the 6 × 4 grid. Add and arrange widgets in Settings › Wrist › Edit layout: drag to move, drag the corner to resize, add or remove pages over the watch. Select a widget to give it its own style (Tint, Solid, Two-tone, Header, Outline or Glass) and colour, or a clock its design. Tap a widget on your wrist to open it big.
| Widget | Shows | Sizes |
|---|---|---|
| Time | ||
| Time | The time in six designs: standard, flip, outline, stacked, segment, and a word clock from 2 × 2. | 1×1 2×1 3×1 4×1 2×2 3×2 4×2 6×2 6×3 6×4 |
| Analog clock | Squircle, classic, minimal, roman or Swiss station dial. 1 × 1 is the squircle clock. | 1×1 2×2 3×3 4×4 |
| Date | Weekday and date. | 1×1 2×1 3×1 4×1 6×1 |
| Calendar | The day (1 × 1), this week as a strip (2 × 1) or the month (2 × 2), today marked. Opens the full month. | 1×1 2×1 2×2 |
| Timer | Countdown with − / + and presets when opened. | 1×1 2×1 2×2 |
| Stopwatch | Start, stop and laps. | 1×1 2×1 |
| Time in VR | How long this SteamVR session has been running. | 1×1 2×1 |
| Status | ||
| Batteries | Headset, both controllers and trackers. Opens every battery. | 1×1 2×1 2×2 3×2 |
| Now playing | Song from Spotify, a browser or any Windows media player, with play / pause (previous / next on the bigger sizes). Unless you give it a look of its own, the card takes the album art's colours and shows how far the song is. Opens the cover and volume. | 2×1 3×1 4×1 6×1 4×2 6×2 |
| Volume | The volume of the device you hear, with − / + (and mute on 3 × 1). Opens a slider. With Virtual Desktop it sets every app playing there, since that device ignores the Windows volume. | 1×1 2×1 3×1 |
| Microphone | Your microphone, live or muted, and its level. Tap to mute or unmute. | 1×1 2×1 |
| Notifications | The latest notifications, for example from VRCX. | 2×1 3×1 2×2 |
| Performance | ||
| Performance | Frame rate, reprojection, GPU time and VRAM in one row. | 4×1 6×1 |
| Frame graph | The last 30 seconds of frame times as a line, the frame budget dashed. Two rows tall: frame rate, 1% low and reprojection under it. | 3×1 4×1 6×1 4×2 6×2 |
| Frame rate, Reprojection, GPU time, VRAM | One number each. | 1×1 2×1 |
| CPU, Memory | Total CPU load and used RAM. CPU opens its history. | 1×1 2×1 |
| Buttons | ||
| Single buttons | Keyboard, Monitors, Recenter, Layout, Night mode, Settings, Status line, Theater. | 1×1 2×1 |
| Button group | Up to six of those buttons in one card. Pick them in the editor. | 2×1 3×1 2×2 6×1 |
| VRChat and extras | ||
| Room | How many people are in your VRChat instance and your friends among them; 3 × 1 shows the world and their initials. Tap it and it grows into the list of who is there. | 1×1 2×1 3×1 |
| Hexpad | The keys of your Ajazz AKP03 stream dock, live. Tap it and the whole dock opens on the watch: press keys, drag the knobs. Offered only while Hexpad runs. | 1×1 2×1 2×2 |
| Minesweeper | Mines left, the time and a picture of the board. Tap it and it grows into the game, 9 × 9 or 16 × 16: tap to open a square, hold it to flag. In the Windows 95 style it is the real 1995 Minesweeper, in Windows 7 the Windows 7 one. | 1×1 2×2 3×2 |
Look
Settings › Look. Switching the style keeps your watch: the same widgets and pages, drawn the new way.
| Style | Modern, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7, Classic Mac, Terminal or Cyber. The style draws the watch, the settings, the keyboard, notifications, the screen bar and the Room and Hexpad views the way that system looked. See all seven. |
| Motion | Full: every animation of the style. Reduced: short transitions only, no loops. Off: nothing moves, everything changes at once. |
| Accent, panel colour, themes, opacity, font | For the Modern style. Cyber and the retro styles bring their own colours and type. |
| Laser | The beam's colour and thickness, and whether it always shows or only while you point at a panel. |
| Night mode | Dims every panel in VR to the brightness you set. The watch has a button for it too. |
Troubleshooting
Nothing shows up in the headset
- OrbitOverlay must be running. Look for its icon in the Windows tray, or start it from the Start menu.
- The game has to run through SteamVR. Overlays can't show in games that use another runtime.
- With Virtual Desktop, choose SteamVR as the runtime, not VDXR / OpenXR.
The watch doesn't appear
Turn the inside of your wrist towards your face. Check Settings › Wrist: the watch must be switched on, and the hand (left or right) must be the one you are looking at. "Always visible" keeps it on all the time.
The laser can't click into some windows
Windows that run as administrator, like Task Manager, ignore a mouse from a normal app. Turn on Settings › General › Run as administrator and restart OrbitOverlay.
The game reacts when I click a panel
Turn on Settings › VRChat › Keep clicks from the game. While a laser points at an OrbitOverlay panel, the game won't get that hand's trigger, grip, stick or B / Y.
The chatbox or status line does nothing
Both talk to VRChat over OSC. In VRChat, open the Action Menu › Options › OSC and enable it.
Friends are missing from the Room widget
Your friends list comes from VRCX. Without VRCX, the room still lists everyone in the instance, and people you star in the Room panel come first.
The volume widget does nothing with Virtual Desktop
Update to 1.12.1 or newer. Virtual Desktop's speakers ignore the Windows volume, so the watch now sets the volume of every app playing there instead.
No notifications from VRCX
OrbitOverlay listens for XSOverlay notifications on 127.0.0.1:42069. Turn on XSOverlay notifications in VRCX.
The Hexpad panel or widget is missing
They only appear while the Hexpad app is running with an Ajazz AKP03 connected.
Windows says the installer is unsafe
The installer isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen warns about it. Click More info, then Run anyway. The source of every release is on GitHub.
Something else is wrong
Open an issue on GitHub. Say which headset, which version, and what you did. Attaching the log from the folder below helps a lot.
Questions
- Does it work with Quest, Pico or Virtual Desktop?
- Yes, as long as the game runs through SteamVR. In Virtual Desktop, pick SteamVR instead of VDXR / OpenXR. The volume and microphone widgets work with Virtual Desktop's audio.
- How do I update?
- Settings › General › Check for updates. The app updates itself and shows what changed in a "What's new" window. The installer is about 49 MB.
- Does it work with my XSOverlay add-ons?
- Notifications use XSOverlay's format, and the VRChat avatar parameters work with DXOverlay and similar add-ons.
- Why does it ask for administrator rights?
- Only so the laser can click into admin windows. You can say no; everything else works.
- Does it collect data?
- No account, no telemetry. The only internet request is the update check, when you press it.
- How was it made?
- Largely written with an AI assistant, from my own ideas and a lot of testing in the headset. The source is on GitHub, MIT license.
Where your files are
Settings and logs
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Orbit. Uninstalling keeps this folder. Delete it for a completely fresh start.
The app
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\OrbitOverlay, with OrbitOverlay Quick Start.txt next to it.