Free VR overlay · portable · no installer

Place your VR panels with the mouse, while you're wearing the headset.

VisorVR puts web dashboards, timing screens, PDFs, checklists — and any window on your desktop — inside your headset as floating panels. Then it lets you grab one with the mouse and put it exactly where you want it, in VR, without taking the headset off. Where you put it is where it stays.

⬇ Download free See how it works ☕ Buy me a coffee

📦 Portable — unzip it anywhere and run VisorVR.exe. No installer, no administrator rights, nothing written outside your own user account.

Windows 10/11 · any 64-bit OpenXR game · built for sim racing, equally at home in flight sims.

Setup notes.pdf Timing P41:32.4 P51:32.9 P61:33.1 P71:33.6 P81:34.2 Web dashboard 4 148 km/h LAST1:33.142 BEST1:32.508 FUEL21.4 L click to grab scroll to resize shift to tilt

Illustration of the idea — three panels around the cockpit, the middle one grabbed with the mouse.

The problem it solves

In VR you're blind to your desktop

Your timing screen, your setup notes, your delta dashboard — all of it is on a monitor you can't see with a headset on. So it gets read between sessions, or not at all.

VisorVR brings it inside

Anything you'd have on a second screen becomes a panel floating in the cockpit, at the distance and angle you choose. Look down at it like a real kneeboard, or park it out on the A-pillar.

The part that's different: you position panels in VR

Most overlays make you guess. You take the headset off, type coordinates into a settings window, put the headset back on, and find out it's 10 cm too low. VisorVR skips all of that — turn on Edit in VR and move the panel with the mouse while you're looking at it.

🖱️

Grab and move

Click to grab the panel, move the mouse to carry it, click again to drop it. No dragging and holding — you can let go of the mouse mid-adjustment.

🔍

Scroll to resize and push away

The scroll wheel changes the panel's size and its distance from you, so you can dial in something readable that isn't in the way.

↩️

Hold Shift to tilt

Rotate the panel to face you properly — the difference between a legible dashboard and one you're reading at an angle.

💾

It stays put

Placement is saved per panel and survives restarts, so you set your cockpit up once. There's also a Recenter button for when your seating position moves.

💡

On-screen hints while you edit

While Edit in VR is on, the controls are drawn right on the panel you're moving, sized to fit it — so you don't have to remember any of the above.

What you can put in a panel

Each panel is independent — its own content, size, distance, angle, icon and sharpness.

🌐

Web dashboards

Any URL, rendered by the bundled Chromium — SimHub dashboards, timing sites, a Twitch chat, your own HTML.

📄

PDFs, images and notes

Setup sheets, track maps, checklists, reference cards. Point a panel at a single file or a whole folder and page through it.

🪟

Any desktop window

Window capture puts a running application in the headset — a spotter tool, a timing app, anything with a window.

🎨

Per-panel sharpness

Web panels render at up to 2× resolution, so pulling one closer gives you more pixels rather than bigger blurry ones.

🎮

Jump straight to a panel

Bind a controller button or key to a specific panel, or to show and hide the whole overlay while you drive.

✈️

Flight sim extras

Inherited from OpenKneeboard: DCS mission briefings, kneeboard pages, radio log and terrain data, all read from the game.

What people actually put in them

VisorVR is the window — the content is whatever you already use. Here's what works well, to save you the hunt. These are other people's projects: independent, not affiliated with VisorVR, and listed only because they work.

📐

SimHub dashboards size themselves

VisorVR detects a SimHub dashboard in a web panel and resizes the panel to the dashboard's own template dimensions — so it arrives at the right shape and aspect ratio instead of letterboxed. It's on by default; there's a switch in the panel's settings if you'd rather size it yourself.

🏁

Sim racing

  • benofficial2's Official Overlays — a free, well-made set of SimHub overlays for iRacing: multi-class standings, relative, delta bar, inputs, fuel calculator, track map, spotter. Install them in SimHub as normal, then point a VisorVR panel at the one you want.
  • Any SimHub dashboard — your own, or anything from the community library. In SimHub, open the dashboard in Dash Studio and copy its browser/OBS link, then paste that into a web panel.
  • Setup sheets and track notes as PDFs, paged through in the headset.
  • A desktop timing or spotter app, captured as a window panel.
✈️

Flight sims

  • ChartFox — free approach, SID/STAR and airfield charts (needs a VATSIM account).
  • Navigraph Charts — the paid option, in a browser panel.
  • SkyVector — free VFR/IFR charts and flight planning.
  • SimBrief — your OFP and route, open beside you for the whole flight.
  • VATSIM Radar — live network traffic and who's controlling.
  • Aircraft PDF guides and checklists, or a moving-map app captured as a window.
  • For DCS, the built-in briefing, kneeboard, radio log and terrain panels read the mission directly.

Got one that deserves to be on this list? Tell me about it.

Setup — about two minutes

There's no installer and nothing to configure up front. Download, unzip, run.

1

Download and unzip

Grab the portable zip and unpack it wherever you like — a folder on any drive, or a USB stick. Keep the folder together: bin\VisorVRApp.exe looks beside its own folder for Chromium and its data, so bin on its own won't work.

⬇ Download the portable zip

2

Run VisorVR.exe

The launcher sits at the top of the unzipped folder. On first launch VisorVR registers its OpenXR layer for your Windows user — that's what lets it draw inside the game — so no administrator rights and no install step. Move the folder later and it re-registers itself next time it starts.

3

Add your panels

In the main window, add a panel and point it at a dashboard URL, a PDF, a folder or a window. Give it a name and an icon so it's easy to find on the toolbar.

4

Start the game, then place your panels

Launch your sim as usual — VisorVR draws inside any 64-bit OpenXR game. With the headset on, turn on Edit in VR for a panel and put it where you want it. Repeat per panel; it's saved as you go.

  • Restart the game if you've just installed VisorVR while it was already running.
  • Nothing showing? Check Settings → Virtual Reality → OpenXR support for 64-bit games is on.
⚠️

"Windows protected your PC" — expected, and safe to click through

You'll see this the first time you run it. Click More info → Run anyway. SmartScreen shows that warning for any program that isn't signed with a code-signing certificate it already trusts. Certificates cost money every year and VisorVR is free and unfunded, so it isn't signed — that's the whole reason for the warning, and there's nothing else behind it. Antivirus software occasionally objects too, because drawing an overlay means loading a layer into the running game, which is a technique malware also uses. It's a false positive; report it to your vendor if you hit one.

What it works with

Any game that runs on 64-bit OpenXR, which today is most of them:

iRacingAssetto Corsa CompetizioneLe Mans Ultimate Automobilista 2rFactor 2DCS World Microsoft Flight Simulator…and other OpenXR titles

Tested on the author's own rig in iRacing. The rest run the same OpenXR layer, but if you find one that misbehaves, please open an issue.

Requirements

  • Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
  • A VR headset with an OpenXR runtime (SteamVR, Oculus, WMR, Varjo…)
  • A 64-bit game that renders through OpenXR
  • A mouse — that's what you position panels with

Doesn't need

  • Administrator rights
  • An installer, or anything in Program Files
  • VR controllers — panels are placed with the mouse
  • Any runtime download: Chromium and the UI framework ship in the zip

Questions

How is this different from OpenKneeboard?

VisorVR is a fork of OpenKneeboard by Fred Emmott — an excellent piece of software that does the hard part of getting panels into an OpenXR game. The addition is in-VR positioning with the mouse, plus a rework of the interface around per-panel settings: name, icon, size, distance, sharpness and placement all in one place. It's an independent project, not an official OpenKneeboard release, and it doesn't read or change your OpenKneeboard settings.

Can I run it alongside motion compensation?

Yes. VisorVR is an OpenXR API layer, the same as OpenXR-MotionCompensation, and layers stack — a motion rig cancelling head motion doesn't stop the overlay drawing. If you're running a motion rig without VR compensation, see OXRMC Bridge.

Will it cost me frames?

The overlay is composited into a frame the game is already rendering, and panels only redraw when their content changes — a static PDF costs essentially nothing. A busy web dashboard costs more than a still image, and a higher sharpness setting costs more than a lower one. If you're chasing every frame, keep panel count and sharpness modest.

Is it really free? What's the catch?

No catch. It's free, and there's no paid version planned. The licence it inherits requires the source to stay available under the same terms, so it can't quietly become paid software later. If it earns its place on your rig, a coffee is welcome and entirely optional.

Where does it store my settings?

In %LOCALAPPDATA%\VisorVR, under your own user account. To uninstall, turn off Settings → Virtual Reality → OpenXR support for 64-bit games (that removes the registry entry it added) and delete the folder. Delete the settings folder too for a clean sweep.

Does it work with WMV / SteamVR / Oculus / Varjo?

It works with whatever OpenXR runtime your headset uses — the overlay is drawn by the game's OpenXR layer chain, not by a specific headset's software. The one requirement is that the game itself uses OpenXR, 64-bit.

Also by me: OXRMC Bridge Free & open source

Panels in your headset solve one problem. If you drive on a motion rig, there's another: every time the platform pitches, your VR view goes with it. Motion compensation fixes that — but it needs to know how the rig is moving. OXRMC Bridge is a free SimHub plugin that tells it, without strapping a VR controller to your platform.

🎮 Nothing to mount, nothing that sleeps

The documented way to do motion compensation is to strap a spare VR controller to the rig. It goes to sleep when idle, drops tracking mid-stint, and there's no setting to stop it. The Bridge generates the rig's pose itself and writes it into the shared memory OpenXR-MotionCompensation reads. Set it once and forget it.

📐 A small sensor is the recommended setup

A WitMotion sensor on the moving part of the rig measures real tilt right where your head sits — exactly what motion compensation needs to cancel. After a lot of testing it was the smoothest option in every scenario, especially on rough tracks. The site walks through wiring, mounting and calibration.

🔌 Or no hardware at all

Two fallbacks need nothing extra: Sigma mode reads a Sigma Integrale rig's commanded motion, and Telemetry mode estimates from the game. Neither matches a real sensor, and the site says so plainly rather than pretending otherwise — treat them as backups.

🤝 It stacks with VisorVR

Both are OpenXR layers, and layers stack — a rig cancelling head motion doesn't stop panels drawing. You need SimHub (the free 9.x is fine, no motion-addon licence) and OpenXR-MotionCompensation; the Bridge installs like any other SimHub plugin, and you're already running SimHub if you use its dashboards in here.

Take a look at OXRMC Bridge →

Free and open source, same as this — a public GitHub release you can read the source of before installing.