SteamVR On Linux Is Still In Frustratingly Rough Shape

[phoronix]

Phoronix: SteamVR On Linux Is Still In Frustratingly Rough Shape

If you are exclusively using Linux for gaming, hopefully you aren't hoping for an HTC Vive this Christmas as the SteamVR support on Linux still leaves a lot to be desired. At the start of the year Valve finally put out their first SteamVR developer build for Linux and now nearly one year later, it still feels like a very rough beta.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=25685

[shmerl]

And there is still no fully working FOSS runtime for Vive that's not tied to Steam either. So it's worse than just rough shape.

[ernstp]

I actually didn't have that much trouble getting it up and running (borrowed it from a friend) on Ubuntu 17.10 with Radeon Fury. Kernel with DC, git Mesa, Steam beta, SteamVR beta. Steam installer from steam homepage. Openbox wm to avoid compositor.
Tried the headset on Windows so it's firmware is updated.

However, the experience wasn't very good, a lot of stuttering that I didn't get in Windows.

[haagch]

And there is still no fully working FOSS runtime for Vive that's not tied to Steam either. So it's worse than just rough shape.

I started something at https://github.com/ChristophHaag/openvr_api-libre but haven't done a lot. The hellovr_opengl example application runs, gets rotation/position from OpenHMD and displays the submitted frames as they are, without distortion correction. There is a lot to implement for a full drop in replacement but it's not *really* hard for skilled developers.
Anyone who is interested is welcome to contribute, but I have a feeling that OpenXR is going to be ready much sooner, OpenVR will become a legacy API, SteamVR will become an OpenXR runtime, and games will switch to supporting only OpenXR, thus making this OpenVR implementation useless.

However, the experience wasn't very good, a lot of stuttering that I didn't get in Windows.

Try putting the power management of the GPU in performance mode.
So far I think this problem has only been really confirmed on RX 480, but maybe others are affected too: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100742
That said, several applications have worse performance than they should have. Let's hope that the release of the AMD Vulkan driver can give some insight for radv to close the gap.

And to run a small ad for a VR window manager using OpenVR/SteamVR: https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula is a libweston based rewrite of the Motorcar wayland Compositor, unfortunately in Haskell. Currently it's somewhat working on Nvidia, but corrupted on radv. Just something to watch - or participate, if there's some interest: https://gitter.im/SimulaVR/Simula

[humbug]

The fact that there aren't many games is a byproduct of the fact that steamVR on Linux is still in beta. Once it works smoothly expect more devs to release content.

It's a bit frustrating but at least we see continual progress from Valve both on the steamVR end as well as the driver/kernel contributions so we know that we will get there eventually.

[Zoll]

That's an excellent summary and write-up! Just recently XPlane developers announced that VR is coming. While they didn't rule out Linux VR support, they said it all depends on how "broken" VR support is under Linux. Linux users only make about %1.4 of XPlane11 users, and so VR users would be a niche within a niche and thus low priority. However, if SteamVR becomes half-decent in 2018, we might expect to see more games that support Linux VR.

Looks like I'll be waiting for the "next-gen" VR headset along with better support for Steam VR. A couple of weeks ago, I was quite tempted to get an HTC Vive, but now I'll put this to rest until the situation improves.

[haagch]

The fact that there aren't many games is a byproduct of the fact that steamVR on Linux is still in beta. Once it works smoothly expect more devs to release content.

It's because someone from the community made Unreal Engine 4's SteamVR support work on Linux just few months ago (support him on patreon https://www.patreon.com/ue4linux/) and Unity just enabled SteamVR von Linux few weeks ago.

It's also because nobody gives a shit. Just look at WebVR. Neither Mozilla nor Google think it's any important that you can use webstandards outside of proprietary platforms.

Actual list of working games: https://steamcommunity.com/app/25082...7959064016658/

[zoomblab]

I'd be surprised now if the rest of Keith's work lands and xorg-server 1.20 releases now before February. As this next X.Org update drags on, it becomes riskier whether it will land in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS due in April. With Ubuntu 18.04 being a long-term support release and X.Org Server major releases not being trivial to pull in / mandating other X package rebuilds and risking regressions, it's uncertain at this point if we will still see it incorporated into Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Hopefully those patches will be merged for the Mesa 18.0 release coming in March and hopefully that Mesa 18.0 will make the cut for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS inclusion.

This is what happens when you deal with non modular monolithic architectures and have to depend on upstream schedules for your stuff to work. I don't pity Valve or AMD who chose to mess with this open source model. I am no fan of nvidia, but hey their driver package always works! and they are able to provide updates independently of other people' schedules.

[mlau]

That's an excellent summary and write-up! Just recently XPlane developers announced that VR is coming. While they didn't rule out Linux VR support, they said it all depends on how "broken" VR support is under Linux. Linux users only make about %1.4 of XPlane11 users, and so VR users would be a niche within a niche and thus low priority. However, if SteamVR becomes half-decent in 2018, we might expect to see more games that support Linux VR.

i've followed the main developer's blog for quite a while now, and i believe that xplane vr on linux will never happen. the linux port is more or less the result of a side project of one of their developers, they take care as to not break it intentionally and as long as clang produces a binary that launches, they'll ship it, but they don't have enough developers to devote more time to linux than is necessary for casual bug fixes. From a financtial pov it makes perfect sense, linux is a tiny niche, and vr is even tinier.

[FirstPersonBSOD]

It hurts to say this but Linux will continue to fall behind Windows on the desktop under the current distro/kernel development model. Critical features often get merged into mainline too late and trickling down into major distros take even longer.


Linux will always be 2-3 years behind Windows in consumer technologies unless Torvalds and friends are willing to drop "Stable API nonsense.txt" (unlikely to happen) or decouple drivers from new kernel releases by back porting them to LTS branches (probable but will take loads of work).