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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.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Friday July 17 2020, @11:22AM (2 children)
How well/poorly do these headsets work for people who wear glasses?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Marand on Friday July 17 2020, @12:17PM (1 child)
I don't know about other headsets, but they work fine with the Quest and the Vive in my experience. One of the reasons I took so long to get into the VR game was concern over how they would interact with glasses, but last year I got the opportunity to try a Vive headset (with Beat Saber, naturally; it's a great "show off VR to people" game) and it worked fine, which is what encouraged me to give it a shot. I got the Quest and it similarly has had no problems despite my terrible eyesight and a need to get my prescription updated.
The main concern is prescription lenses pressing up against the headset lenses and causing damage, but the Quest (and maybe others? no idea) came with an extra spacer you can place between the foam padding at the headset itself to give some extra space for glasses. The default fit had enough room that I probably would have been fine without it, but I still use the spacer just to be safe; the only negative to it is the added distance from the lenses restricts your field of view slightly. I even added this silicone cover [vrcover.com] to the foam pad because it's an itchy sweat magnet and my glasses still fit fine, though they pull a little when I take the headset off because the silicone is more "grabby" than the foam.
The only issues I've had so far are occasional fogging up of my glasses when putting the headset on and I tend to smudge up the edges of my glasses somehow during play. It never affects visibility while using the headset but I always have to clean them after I take it off, so I'm probably doing it while removing the headset.
If you don't want to use a spacer, it's also possible to get attachable prescription lenses [vroptician.com] that you can snap on top of the headset lenses. I'd like to try this out but it'd be a waste right now because I really need to update my prescription first, so I stick with the spacer for now.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Friday July 17 2020, @01:49PM
This is great information. Thank you very much.