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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, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @01:26PM
Just to be clear, Valve has been dumping resources into Proton (their Wine bundle) at a spectacular rate, and making major contributions to the upstream Wine project, so that Windows games can run on Linux. The results are stellar, on my Linux machine in Steam with Proton I have the Windows-only games Grey Goo, Driftlands: The Magic Revival, King's Bounty: Crossworlds, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Bloons TD 6, Unstoppable Gorg, Dragon Age: Origins, and Warparty running without issues. That said, there are still Windows games that don't work on Proton yet, so I'm not suggesting that any Windows gamer can switch to Linux without losing anything. It just happens that all of the games I care about work fine.
I think Valve didn't promote Linux VR and dumped their "Steam Machine" project because it was too early. At the rate they're going, in five years 99.5% of Windows game from 2000 to present will work on Steam + Proton. Then Linux VR and Steam Machines become practical products for mainstream gamers. The 0.5% of games that won't work are those with unusual DRM. I have Street Fighter X Tekken in my Steam library, and that probably won't ever run on Proton because its DRM relies on features in the Windows Vista kernel. But Street Fighter X Tekken doesn't run on Windows 7 or Windows 10 either.