Vulkan Display Extensions To Be Used By SteamVR Merged Into Mesa RADV/ANV

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Vulkan Display Extensions To Be Used By SteamVR Merged Into Mesa RADV/ANV

Keith Packard's long in development work for improving the Linux display stack infrastructure for better dealing with VR head-mounted displays is about rounded out with the new Vulkan extension support being merged into Mesa...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Vulkan-Display-VR-Exts-Merged

[mcp13]

Just FYI, there's a typo in the second-last paragraph: XT_acquire_xlib_display instead of VK_EXT_acquire_xlib_display.

[haagch]

I'm not entirely sure what the SteamVR compositor requires for direct mode but it contains the strings
VK_EXT_display_control
VK_EXT_display_surface_counter
which are now in a separate branch: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/~keithp...display-timing
and also on the mailing list: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archiv...ne/197784.html

I believe SteamVR will not use direct mode if those extensions are not present, at least it didn't work for me the past few days and I believe that was because I missed that keithp put them in a separate branch. So hopefully those will get upstreamed soon too.

With those upstreamed that will leave only drm-lease support in xf86-video-amdgpu. The modesetting ddx already supports it but is still buggy at the moment I believe.

Updated summary: https://haagch.frickel.club/#!drmlease.md

[Inopia]

Great to see all the VR pieces falling into place. I bet they didn't have this in mind when drafting the original X11 protocol.

I recently got a Vive and it's been fun! I opted for it over other HMDs since it seems to have the best chance of being supported under Linux at some point. I wish they'd release the knuckle controllers and eye tracking though. Some games would benefit greatly from more precise hand gestures and eye interaction not to mention the benefits from foveated rendering.