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

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday July 17 2020, @01:53PM (7 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Friday July 17 2020, @01:53PM (#1022890)

    I'll take waste of hardware over waste of time.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @02:32PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @02:32PM (#1022898)

    I'd probably go with a Playstation 4 or 5 to do this (VR)

    I decided I don't even want to crap up my linux PC with Steam anymore ; I do want to install some emulators and VMs after I upgrade my PC though. (e.g. : demanding games on dosbox, Playstation 2 emulator, actual PC emulator)
    Maybe even.. running games in a linux VM, on linux host.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Friday July 17 2020, @03:38PM (4 children)

      by Freeman (732) on Friday July 17 2020, @03:38PM (#1022928) Journal

      No, because no. Playstation VR is nothing compared to PC VR.

      Complaining about running proprietary software on an opensource OS seems crazy from a consumer perspective. You want nice things, you need to pay someone money for them. Expecting Steam to handover the secret sauce to everything, because Open Source, is stupid. I'm conflicted when it comes to Open Source and games / other entertainment.

      Yes, I don't want you shoving DRM down my throat, but I do expect to pay a reasonable price for the cool stuff you make. Reasonable, isn't hey, you paid us, now make sure you're connected to the internet 100% of the time for this single player game, so we can monitor you. I mean, that's some seriously draconian evil right there. Which is why I love GOG. They, dispense with as much of the DRM junk as possible and give you a fun game. There are a couple of multiplayer instances where you're dealing with third-party EULs, etc, but that's the nature of that beast. I'd be happy, if all software was required to be supported to allow them to keep it proprietary. 10 years after it's no-longer supported, which would include allowing it to be purchased for a reasonable price, the software defaults to public domain. That would allow the creators to milk it as long as they wanted, but would keep so many one hit wonders from literally disappearing. Not that we'll see any sane legislature like that, but one could dream.

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      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: 2) by RamiK on Friday July 17 2020, @09:56PM (3 children)

        by RamiK (1813) on Friday July 17 2020, @09:56PM (#1023087)

        You want nice things, you need to pay someone money for them.

        You're conflating free open source with free software. e.g. the assets don't have to be free for the software sources to be free. There's a few free open source game engines used with proprietary open source games following this model.

        Yes, I don't want you shoving DRM down my throat, but...

        There's no "but" here. DRM in eBooks, music and films was thoroughly beaten and yet they're still around making a profit so why are you excusing software?

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        • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday July 20 2020, @02:58PM (2 children)

          by Freeman (732) on Monday July 20 2020, @02:58PM (#1024127) Journal

          Software isn't like Films or Music. With software, if you make it Open Source, you're giving someone the ability to replicate your work in entirety. That is a really good thing for various reasons, but it's a bad thing when trying to sell the software. Give the keys to the kingdom to China and see how much they abide by your copyright rules. Sure, they might be able to reverse engineer the latest game, given time, but time is key in game sales. People are always looking for the next thing and after a little while, unless the game is a super massive hit, people will have moved on by the time someone could clone their game.

          DRM Free, just means, that you're not screwing the customer. It has nothing to do with Open Source vs Closed Source. DRM Free, dispenses with the notion that every customer is a potential threat, so we're going to check-up on you every time you launch the game, if not every second you play the game. DRM kinds of things may be necessary when dealing with super popular multiplayer games, other than that, there should be no DRM in the game I want to play. As a company, you're not terribly likely to exist in the next decade or two. You shouldn't be making a game that will literally be impossible to play in 10 years or so, because the DRM server doesn't exist.

          --
          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: 2) by RamiK on Monday July 20 2020, @04:00PM (1 child)

            by RamiK (1813) on Monday July 20 2020, @04:00PM (#1024145)

            Software isn't like Films or Music. With software, if you make it Open Source, you're giving someone the ability to replicate your work in entirety.

            I don't follow how ripping a cd with audio/video is any different: If someone has a copy of your music/film, they can make their own and sell it without a license. If someone has a copy of your sources, they can compile it and sell it without a license. Maybe you're confusing free open source with open source? Cause while I can make more than a few arguments for being free, the gist of this thread was dedicated for just open source on the grounds of security.

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            • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday July 20 2020, @04:29PM

              by Freeman (732) on Monday July 20 2020, @04:29PM (#1024150) Journal

              A piece of software such as a AAA game might take hundreds of thousands or millions of man hours to code.

              A song takes nowhere near that amount of time to process, etc., though a film might actually take some serious time to create, so maybe it does take about the same amount of time investment as a AAA game.

              The difference is that with a Song or Film, pretty much everyone, can tell that they ripped off X song / Y film, if someone tries to make a quick buck. There is no way for the average person to tell that X game used 90% of the code from Y game, except they changed the story + art.

              --
              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: 2) by Marand on Saturday July 18 2020, @01:59AM

    by Marand (1081) on Saturday July 18 2020, @01:59AM (#1023180) Journal

    It's not an either/or situation, maintaining a dedicated Windows machine can waste your hardware and your time, and running GPU passthrough doesn't have to be a painful multi-day ordeal to get started. I built my system with GPU passthrough in mind in much the same way that one generally shops for Linux-compatible parts, so when the time came to set up a passthrough-enabled VM it only took me about half an hour of extra time and I've barely had to touch it in the couple years since.

    For that extra half hour of work I have a more powerful main system, I don't have wasted resources sitting in a corner waiting to be booted for the occasional game, and most importantly I don't have a lump of a Windows PC wasting physical space and generating extra unnecessary heat.

    It's been a great setup and was well worth the little bit of extra effort (compared to a dedicated machine or dual-boot) for me.