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Ask Soylent: Hardware for VR Gaming on GNU/Linux?

posted by martyb on Friday July 17 2020, @12:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the wishful-thinking dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

I had an experience with an HTC Vive a couple of years ago, and I'm now considering getting the hardware required to do proper VR.
Obviously, I'd like to play games, but I'm also interested in visualising data (in particular I see that VTK supports OpenVR).

So I was wondering whether anyone in the community here has succeeded in getting this to work under linux, and if they can comment on the hardware required.
I'd be grateful for any insights.

As I understand it, it's best to get 120FPS, otherwise the brain doesn't like it.
I see that system76 has a "thelio major" desktop that can handle a range of NVIDIA cards, but I honestly don't know which would be the minimum that still gets me reasonable performance.
Is it important to have a lot of memory, a lot of cores?
Will I be able to change the level of detail in games to gain in FPS?
Right now it looks to me like I'd need more than 3000 euros for the whole thing (computer+htc vive).
My wife may not approve.

In any case, with the possibility of a second wave of coronavirus in the winter, I'm under the impression a working VR system would be a reasonable addition to the "don't go crazy" activities around the house.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @10:20AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @10:20AM (#1022820)

    Gaming on Linux is more feasible than gaming on Mac these days.

    Starting Score:    0  points
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Friday July 17 2020, @03:23PM (2 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Friday July 17 2020, @03:23PM (#1022918) Journal

    Sad, but true. Apple used to be a somewhat decent 2nd best system to play PC games on. Nowadays, I wouldn't even think about purchasing an Apple computer to play games on. I'd sooner build a custom Linux machine that I would use to play games on. My decision to do that wouldn't solely be due to the cost aspect, but since Linux gaming would be a better choice than even thinking about using Apple for gaming. Apple is great, if you want to play in their walled garden. Games have to be super mega hit games to even bother with Apple, which meant, no one wanted an Apple computer to play games. So, no one makes games for Apple.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by ilsa on Friday July 17 2020, @08:40PM (1 child)

      by ilsa (6082) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 17 2020, @08:40PM (#1023062)

      In addition, Apple's constant platform changes make them a non-starter if you care about games that are even slightly old. Very few games are actively developed after they are released, and I've been bitten by several games that no longer run properly for one reason or another on Mac. Hell, I've had games break from one release to the next. And if the game is really old? Absolutely forget about it unless you want to tinker with an emulator.

      When it comes to everything else, you can pry my mac from my cold dead hands, but for games? I bought a windows laptop just for that.