The State Of VR HMDs On Linux With DRM Leasing, Etc

Keith Packard who has been doing contract work for Valve the past year on improving the support for virtual reality head-mounted displays (VR HMDs) shares a status update on his work at this week's Linux.Conf.Au in Sydney.

A large portion of Keith's Linux VR work this past year has been on DRM leasing and as such that was a bulk of his conversation. With Linux 4.15, the DRM leasing code is in place along with other improvements around treating "non-desktop" displays, etc. But there still remains X.Org Server and Mesa patches for working along with tidying up other bits for this code to better the integration of VM HMDs with the Linux desktop while ensuring consistent and optimal performance.

Below is Keith's presentation from LCA 2018 recapping the various VR Linux achievements for 2017, albeit much of it has already been covered independently in the Phoronix articles over the past year.

In terms of the overall Linux VR support right now, see our recent December 2017 Steam VR Linux overview.