Your PC, now in Motion

PortalVR Motion is a SteamVR addon that brings natural, Wii-style motion controls to thousands of VR games and apps on SteamVR — no headset, no base stations. The easiest way to play is with the phone already in your pocket: it tracks itself in full 6 DoF and becomes the controller, on Android or iOS. You can also use Joy-Cons (tracked by an iPhone's camera) or a VR headset's controllers. Play at your desk on the screen you already have — or in true stereoscopic 3D on AR glasses or a 3D monitor.

Plug your phone into your PC over USB, hold it in a grip, and press and hold Volume‑Down to calibrate. From there your phone tracks itself in full 6 DoF and appears in SteamVR as a tracked motion controller, with an on-screen trigger, grip, and face buttons. It works on both Android and iOS, and needs no Joy-Cons, no stand, and no headset — just the phone you already carry. Re-calibrate any time by holding Volume‑Down so the controller's forward direction lines up with your screen.

At minimum, a Windows PC capable of running SteamVR and a phone. The simplest setup is just your phone — it tracks itself in full 6DoF and becomes the controller, on Android or iOS. Have Joy-Cons? Use an iPhone on a stand facing you plus a pair of Joy-Con controllers. Either way: no headset, no base stations, no extra trackers. For true stereoscopic 3D, wear XREAL or VITURE AR glasses, or use a glasses-free 3D monitor like the Samsung Odyssey 3D.

A few accessories we recommend:

• iPhone stand — Nulaxy foldable stand (sits at the front edge of your desk and angles the camera nicely toward your hands).
• Joy-Con 2 charger — Hounyoln charging dock.
• Joy-Con 1 charger — two-slot charging stand.

Don't have any Joy-Cons yet? Grab a pair of Joy-Con 2 controllers on Amazon.

Motion also supports using Quest, PICO, Index, or Vive controllers as a tracking source — extremely high precision via the headset's onboard optical tracking (Quest / PICO) or Lighthouse base stations (Index / Vive). Quest or PICO need developer mode and a USB connection to your PC; Index controllers and Vive wands work as-is.

The single biggest tip: place your iPhone directly in front of you, not off to one side. The depth camera tracks best when it's facing you head-on. Next, make sure your hands are well lit — Motion locates your hands first and uses their pose to estimate where the controllers are, so dim or backlit hands hurt overall tracking. Drop the phone on a stand near the front edge of your desk so nothing on the desk blocks the camera, and angle it so the lens looks toward your body and hands rather than tilted up at your face.

From there, distance is the dial — for titles that need fine finger control, keep your hands closer to the camera so Motion can track each finger; for wider arm-motion titles like Beat Saber, scoot back so the camera can see your full upper body. If you have an iPhone Pro, switch to the rear LiDAR camera for those wider, full-body titles — it gives noticeably better depth at longer distances than the front FaceID camera.

Use Joy-Con 2 if you can — the built-in magnetometer keeps rotational tracking steadier.

If you want the highest tracking fidelity available, plug in a Quest or PICO headset and use its controllers as the tracking source — the headset's onboard cameras provide excellent optical precision. Put it in developer mode and connect it to your PC over USB. Index controllers and Vive wands also work as a tracking source via Lighthouse base stations.

Joy-Con 2 is recommended. It has a built-in magnetometer that measures direction relative to Earth's magnetic field, which gives noticeably steadier rotational tracking. Joy-Con 1 still works great — it can just see drift in its forward heading bit more during rapid motions.

Some PC Bluetooth radios queue packets in a way that introduces noticeable lag with Joy-Con 1. Joy-Con 2 doesn't trigger this behavior. To fix it, either swap to Joy-Con 2, or grab a small USB Bluetooth dongle off Amazon — that bypasses the built-in radio and resolves the queueing issue.

Yes. Your Android phone works as a fully 6 DoF-tracked controller, exactly like an iPhone — plug it in over USB and play. (The camera method, where a phone's depth camera tracks Joy-Cons, requires an iPhone with a FaceID depth camera.)

For true stereoscopic 3D, Motion supports XREAL and VITURE AR glasses — a big virtual screen with full depth on glasses you wear, connected over USB-C; we read the glasses' built-in IMU for head tracking. Glasses-free 3D monitors like the Samsung Odyssey 3D are fully supported too. And any display that supports side-by-side (SBS) 3D can be used — just activate SBS mode.

Motion registers as a SteamVR runtime, so any title that runs in SteamVR sees standard tracked controllers and launches normally. The catch is that some titles ask for extremely precise fast motion or sharp full-body movement (like spinning around to face an enemy behind you) — those can be awkward to translate onto a 2D screen. That said: we've managed to beat a few Hard levels in Beat Saber through Motion, so it's not too bad.

When you play with Joy-Cons (tracked by the iPhone camera) or Index controllers, your fingers are tracked in addition to the controller — full finger articulation comes through, as you can see in the VRChat and Half-Life: Alyx clips above, which is great for expression, gestures, and natural object interaction. Additional hand-tracking support for other setups is coming soon.

Yes — your webcam tracks your head in real time, which adds 3D parallax to the view when you lean side-to-side or forward, plus the ability to dodge obstacles and duck under enemy fire during gameplay.

Hold the shoulder button — or one of the SL/SR side buttons — and the in-game camera locks onto your controller's motion. Your hand is now spinning a virtual 3D trackball, dragging the view in 6 DoF; reach forward and the camera reaches forward with you, which makes picking up far-away objects feel natural. Release to anchor the view.

If your PC can already run a given SteamVR title, it can run it through Motion. Tracking happens on your phone (or the iPhone camera) — your PC just sees tracked controllers.

Yes — you can download PortalVR Motion and try it out in short play sessions for free. The Subscription and Commercial-Use plans both include a 7-day trial; Lifetime is a one-time purchase for personal use — see Pricing.

Yes. PortalVR Motion brings motion controls to SteamVR content on a flat screen, which makes it a great fit for streaming, live demos, marketing shoots, trade-show kiosks, and anywhere a head-mounted display is awkward. Camera Drag also makes framing shots far easier than steering by stick.

Latency feels great because we've pulled out all the stops. Tracking data streams over USB from your phone to the PC (no Wi-Fi hop), the phone is configured for maximum tracking speed and precision, and IMU readings are fused with the tracking data in real time — so even between camera frames you get near-instant responsiveness from your wrists.

Motion is a SteamVR add-on that lets you run any SteamVR content in 2D with motion controls. Cast takes a different angle — it streams VR content directly into the browser from a Quest, PICO, or Galaxy XR headset and lets you play in a similar way, but is limited to sideloaded or pushed APKs.