14 DAY TRIAL // Valve's engineers working on the Steam client have released today, April 20, 2016, a new Beta version for all supported platforms, bringing new Steam Controller abilities and improvements to SteamVR.
Looking at the changelog, we can notice that Steam Controller has gained two new abilities. The first one allows users to bind the left or right sticks as digital bindings, and the second ability allows for the automatic action set to return to the previously used action set from the last transition when the cursor is either visible or hidden.
Valve also fixes bugs for the Steam Controller in today's Steam Beta client, such as an issue with the Mode Shifts not being displayed correctly in the action set binding panels, as well as a problem reported by users about the gamepad button highlights showing offset when they attempted to bind the respective gamepad button.
SteamVR got some nice improvements this time around
Continuing with SteamVR, there's now better Steam Controller support when the VR feature is enabled, the SteamVR app is no longer blocked if the "Family View" option is active, which should fix an issue with the installation of the HTC Vive software, and Steam now better handles games with VR Beta support.
“ If VR is running but no game is active and the dashboard is not up, let the Steam Controller continue to manipulate the desktop. If Desktop Game Theater is running and the dashboard is up with the gamepad focus outside of Steam, allow the Steam Controller to manipulate the dashboard. ”
Lastly, today's Steam Beta client addresses a bug that could cause the in-game overlay to have stuck modifier keys, such as Ctrl, Shift, or Alt, for the Mac OS X platform. Those enrolled into the Steam Beta channel can now update the client by using the built-in updater.