Mesa's Zink Driver Now Supports OpenGL VR Extensions

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mesa's Zink Driver Now Supports OpenGL VR Extensions

For anyone still relying upon virtual reality (VR) applications written for the OpenGL API rather than the Vulkan API that has been dominant among VR apps (and other modern games / software) for years, the Mesa code and in particular the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver now supports the OpenGL VR (OVR) extensions...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-Zink-OVR-VR-Extensions

[shmerl]

John Carmack?

[blackiwid]

VR is in a pretty bad state in Linux not so much on driver level, but there, too. much Controller are not supported but on the Apps site. But either Proton fixes is or nobody ports anything in steam directly to Linux.

But well the hardware market is also a bit weak currently, so whatever.

[bachchain]

I just assumed everyone had already moved on from VR. There isn't much point once the general public sees through the marketing hype and realizes that strapping a brick to your face and getting a healthy dose of seasickness just to play a few arcade games isn't actually a particularly good experience.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

I just assumed everyone had already moved on from VR. There isn't much point once the general public sees through the marketing hype and realizes that strapping a brick to your face and getting a healthy dose of seasickness just to play a few arcade games isn't actually a particularly good experience.

I think everyone has. On the NVIDIA side the 20XX added a USB-C output which promptly disappeared in the next generation. I have several Radeon Pro W5700 cards with a USB-C output but similarly it disappeared on the W6800.

[davibu]

I think everyone has. On the NVIDIA side the 20XX added a USB-C output which promptly disappeared in the next generation. I have several Radeon Pro W5700 cards with a USB-C output but similarly it disappeared on the W6800.

No VR is still on its way.
It just hasn't penetrated the market as quickly as thought.
VR has its issues, but these issues are solved by newer VR headsets and better software.
The VR-software market is still in its infancy for mass consumer market.
VR is used in enterprise applications for specific use cases, but you don't see that as a consumer.
There is also the problem that a lot of people have experienced VR with Google cardboard or similar cheap headsets, that had only 3DoF tracking only 60hz high latency displays and low resolution, especially the 60hz and 3DoF causes motion sickness. And later Windows Mixed Reality headsets continued that trend of cheap quality VR-headsets.
Only the Oculus Quest began having decent hardware and tracking in a cheap headsets. But even then it's a Facebook product and a lot of people simply don't trust Facebook anymore, for good reason.
But because of Microsoft and Google alot of people have a bad image about VR.

The other big problem is that a lot of early VR software used continuous movement like normal 3D software, that leads to the camera moving by controller which causes motion sickness. Where as now teleportation movement or third person movement plus teleporting at the end of the movement is more common, that doesn't cause motion sickness.

Like I said VR is still evolving, it just doesn't happen as fast as some people hoped.

[Sethox]

John Carmack?

The many titles the man goes through:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEi-Z5vjvY0

[DMJC]

The main problem with VR is the core market isn't being catered to. Simulation fans. Car Racing/Flight/Spaceflight/Submarine sim. That's the killer application/target market for VR. Everything else is just noise. The people that want to spend $5k+ building a custom simulator cockpit are willing to shell out the cash for VR. The average user doesn't care, has never cared and might not ever care. I am yet to see any decent simulation engines for native Linux users. X-Plane would be an exception but it's hardly got a thrilling story/combat hook to it. I bought a PSVR1, looked at the high end headsets, even tried a $3000 headset with a HOTAS setup (total setup was like $10k) at PAX and was definitely tempted. But the fact I'd have to move back to Windows to use it effectively killed it for me. I'm yet to see any sort of Helicopter simulator in VR, I've seen DCS World so at least fighter jockeys have something. The space sim genre is pretty stuffed. Star Citizen is vaporware, Star Wars Squadrons was the disappointment of the decade and name another franchise getting anything? The idea of walking around in VR is silly, yes you can do it but it's mostly an awful experience. Space Hulk could work (enclosed spaces) but it's likely only viable in a Zero Latency dedicated facility, as you still need some room to move to make the game not too repetitive. Multi-Axis treadmills haven't taken off.

[haagch]

For those actually interested, godot 4's Vulkan renderer works fine on Mesa, but the OpenGL renderer requires the gl ovr multiview extension.
This affects for example these two entries from the last godot xr game jam because they default to the OpenGL renderer:

https://devizzent.itch.io/petanque-chillmulator

https://proyd.itch.io/summer-pottery

This one on the other hand defaults to the vulkan render and works
https://copper-tunic.itch.io/whos-a-good-boy

The developer who reported https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/10712 is the one behind osgXR https://github.com/amalon/osgXR and Flighthgear's VR support https://wiki.flightgear.org/Virtual_Reality

[haagch]

I am yet to see any decent simulation engines for native Linux users. X-Plane would be an exception but it's hardly got a thrilling story/combat hook to it.

X-Plane 12 works with OpenVR on Linux. Personally I bought X-Plane 12 over a year ago when they announced OpenXR support but they only implemented it on Windows for reasons I do not understand. https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php...omment-2758750

OpenComposite can translate X-Plane's OpenVR calls to OpenXR, but X-Plane assumes that the eyes look forward and for example the Monado OpenXR runtime passes the actual Valve Index display rotation to the application and needs to apply a workaround that can be activated with the environment variable

OXR_PARALLEL_VIEWS=1

Aerofly FS 4 Flight Simulator also has native VR support on Linux but is also OpenVR only.

(Neither require GL_OVR_multiview btw)