NVIDIA Releases "The World's Most Advanced VR Game", Will Be Open-Sourced

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Releases "The World's Most Advanced VR Game", Will Be Open-Sourced

NVIDIA this morning announced VR Funhouse, what they claim as the world's most advanced VR game. But unfortunately for Linux gamers, this title is only supported by Windows at launch...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-VR-Funhouse

[haagch]

With the VR scene on Linux continuing to trail Windows when it comes to VR device

Oculus did some bait and switch where they sold their dev kits to people with linux, then provided extremely bad software support for it, before killing linux support altogether. Before the Vive release, Valve said their goal was Linux support from the beginning, but so far this has not happened.

There are a few lone developers who care about linux like phr00t with the jmonkey (java based) Engine. Then I know of Josh ... Cheeseness? who was looking at Vive support on linux a couple of weeks ago http://www.vronlinux.com/articles/ad...ive-on-linux.8 and who did the the day of the tentacle remastered linux port. And lastly, Lubosz at Collabora, who has recently released something about 360° HMD video support with gstreamer: https://lubosz.wordpress.com/2016/07...ins-and-sphvr/.

Other than that I know of no such "VR scene on Linux". The two big HMD makers simply have prevented it so far.

Yes, there is OSVR and most of it works on Linux. But the actual content for OSVR on Linux is practically nonexistent too. This is literally most of what exists for OSVR on Linux: https://itch.io/games/osvr/platform-linux

and game support

With being UE4-powered, once open-sourced hopefully we'll see it ported to Linux.

You wish, but Unreal Engine 4 does have zero VR support on Linux. Their plugins for Oculus and SteamVR are only functional on windows.
I said most of OSVR works on Linux. The OSVR unreal plugin is one of the things that does not. If you have access to the Unreal repository, see for yourself: https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealE...VR.uplugin#L20

"WhitelistPlatforms": [ "Win64" ]

My prediction is: This whole VR generation will see no significant Linux support on the side of the big HMD makers and their proprietary SDKs. For example Palmer Luckey has still to answer this question: https://twitter.com/nesqinesqi/statu...42853745610753. Valve won't say anything but "still working on it": http://www.vronlinux.com/articles/co...rt-for-vive.11.

And even for the open source SDKs it doesn't look too well. If you go to the OSVR communities, 90% of what the people are talking about is running SteamVR applications or Oculus SDK applications via ReVive on their HMDs, of which almost nothing is available on Linux.

Unless we see the big proprietary VR SDKs with proper Linux support nothing will change on that front and the VR scene on Linux will remain practically nonexistent. Even developers who are willing to make Linux releases just can't right now: https://steamcommunity.com/app/38669...59808493285219

[Mystro256]

Funny a company without any understanding of what does it mean to be free and open source is hard trying to act like a nice guy to the OSS/FLOSS community.

Maybe it is just the much to cheap Cocaine+LSD in the Nvidia headquarters?

I don't think this is a gesture, it's more of an example/tutorial that just makes sense to open source for business reasons. I wouldn't say this is them trying to be a nice guy, but an attempt to encourage development on their platform.

[tmpdir]

Understanding open source / gpl and running a business are two completly different things, they seem to understand just fine. Freedom of choice and such...

[kaprikawn]

What rendering API does it use?

[starshipeleven]

Crapworks bait detected. WARNING, please avoid. It's good to avoid even for NVIDIA games.

[artivision]

Let me guess, it doesn't support Asynchronous Time Warp

[SaucyJack]

LOL of course they would.
'Hey devs! All you have to do is use our template and everything is easy! Since our hardware is atrocious at asynchronous anything our code will never show you how to properly make a VR game, but one that works best on Nvidia hardware!' -Nvidia

[haagch]

opensource projects like these have no real inner life and no ambitions like supporting Asynchronous time warp,,,

It's made with unreal engine 4, so it doesn't need to do it on its own.

Asynchronous Timewarp is a highly proprietary functionality exclusively found in the windows drivers from AMD and NVidia. Unless you are a HMD manufacturer/vendor and sign an NDA, you can't even get documentation about its interfaces.

See the readme of OSVR Rendermanager: https://github.com/sensics/OSVR-RenderManager

This right here is an open source project that cared enough about support asynchronous timewarp that they made proprietary NDA'ed windows-only extensions to their software project that is literally called "Open Source Virtual Reality".

[artivision]

It's made with unreal engine 4, so it doesn't need to do it on its own.

Asynchronous Timewarp is a highly proprietary functionality exclusively found in the windows drivers from AMD and NVidia. Unless you are a HMD manufacturer/vendor and sign an NDA, you can't even get documentation about its interfaces.

See the readme of OSVR Rendermanager: https://github.com/sensics/OSVR-RenderManager

This right here is an open source project that cared enough about support asynchronous timewarp that they made proprietary NDA'ed windows-only extensions to their software project that is literally called "Open Source Virtual Reality".

You didn't get the joke. Nvidia cannot accelerate "asynchronous compute". So if a game is made with ATW in mind, you can tell.