Valve Updates SteamVR AMD Requirements, Recommends Using PPAs On Ubuntu

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve Updates SteamVR AMD Requirements, Recommends Using PPAs On Ubuntu

Valve updated their Linux graphics driver requirements today for using SteamVR. On the NVIDIA side you just need the proprietary 387 driver or newer and you are all set for SteamVR -- assuming your GPU is fast enough to keep pace. But on the AMD side is where there are still relatively tight requirements which leads them to recommending third-party PPAs for the best experience...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SteamVR-AMD-Linux-Req-Update

[Xicronic]

Ubuntu 18.04
Ryzen 1200
Rx 480 (reference) mesa-git (Padoka PPA)
Linux 4.18 with VR patches (Valve PPA)
X.org 1.20 (Valve PPA)
Used valve's PPAs from the Steam Play graphics quickstart post.
SteamVR beta

Performance is lower than Windows, but still OK. I much prefer my 1080 machine's experience. plays beat saber + tilt brush + space pirate trainer OOTB. Superhot VR made it like 75% through the game before a level fails to load and stops working.

[beniwtv]

As a side note, I have all those requirements for AMD, and their latest SteamVR beta is just magic for me... Everything runs smoothly now.

[Dukenukemx]

I use Oibaf as Padoka can break my Mint setup sometimes when updating.

[M@yeulC]

Superhot VR made it like 75% through the game before a level fails to load and stops working.

A few years back, I had a similar issue with superhot (non VR), which turned out to be a LC_COLLATE issue (it sounds like it enumerates the levels and plays them in order, which might break with a non-English sorting order).

Setting the launch option in steam to:

LC_COLLATE=C %COMMAND%

Might fix it (also try with LC_ALL=C).

They should fix that in the game, or set it as a part of a launcher script, IMO. Alternatively, Steam could set this up as part of its runtime, but that's hacky at best and won't help on other stores.

On-topic, It's nice to see how Valve embraced the open source drivers

[Azrael5]

how to install 64bit owner nvidia drivers form nvidia official link without bricking any linux operating system?

[yossarianuk]

Does anyone have a link to the requirements ?

[cybertraveler]

These requirements make for a pretty poor user experience for non-technical users. I suppose VR is still in the early-adopter phase, especially on GNU/Linux, but when it comes time for prime-time (mass adoption), their games and hardware should just work out of the box on the latest Ubuntu LTS and on the recent releases of other popular distros.

AMD could help out here by aiming to ship decent graphics hardware support earlier. Their Vega driver work came in very late so it took quite some time before popular distros were shipping their kernel and mesa code to users in the stock operating system.

[nanonyme]

A few years back, I had a similar issue with superhot (non VR), which turned out to be a LC_COLLATE issue (it sounds like it enumerates the levels and plays them in order, which might break with a non-English sorting order).

Setting the launch option in steam to:

LC_COLLATE=C %COMMAND%

Might fix it (also try with LC_ALL=C).

They should fix that in the game, or set it as a part of a launcher script, IMO. Alternatively, Steam could set this up as part of its runtime, but that's hacky at best and won't help on other stores.

On-topic, It's nice to see how Valve embraced the open source drivers

Thanks, just integrated this as application default for Flatpakked Steam. Already had set LC_NUMERIC (crash fix) , didn't realize LC_COLLATE was also problematic

[haagch]

For direct mode you also need libdrm >= 2.4.89, libxcb >= 1.3 and xorproto >= 2018.3.
When using xf86-video-amdgpu, you need the recently released 18.1.0, when using modesetting, it's in xorg 1.20.

Wayland is still WIP.

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


The latest SteamVR also enables asynchronous reprojection, if available (basically giving the vrcompositor high priority on the GPU and better interpolation between frames when the application renders too slowly).
Though I believe you still need this kernel patch https://gist.github.com/SketchStick/...e688e13a234f4d because radv can not request a high priority context yet.