Valve Drops Vulkan Requirement for Steam Link VR

Valve, the company behind SteamVR and Steam Link, has dropped the Vulkan requirement that had been preventing users from streaming VR content on Nvidia's 580 driver branch.

The issue was first reported on September 7, with owners experiencing a 'VK_ERROR_EXTENSION_NOT_PRESENT' error when trying to stream VR content using their GTX 10-series cards. The problem was diagnosed by an outside user who found that the missing Vulkan extension, VK_KHR_maintenance9, was not present in driver builds 580.159.03 and above.

Valve has promised to remove this requirement in the next SteamVR beta update, but no beta has been released yet, and users on a 580 driver are still left with limited options - either upgrade to a newer driver or wait for the beta that does not exist yet.