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: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @12:40AM (2 children)
Instead of wasting it on half-baked VR equipment, spend the money on hookers. Wife will be just as pissed off but you'll be helping a small businessperson instead of a tech billionaire.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @12:28PM (1 child)
thank you for the suggestion, but the relationship is fine on that front.
hopefully spending 3000 euros on a toy wouldn't change the status quo.
(Score: 1) by MikeVDS on Wednesday July 22 2020, @01:08PM
Where is the "Woosh" mod?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @12:58AM (1 child)
I just copied down the web address of the company from "Ready Player One" , and ordered my full haptic suit and visor, with the haptic ending. But then, they tried to kill me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @05:59AM
Ac gives +1 virtual funny
(Score: 5, Informative) by stormreaver on Friday July 17 2020, @01:33AM (1 child)
When I was looking to get into VR, I went through a similar investigation. It's been a while since I did my investigation, so some things may have changed, but here is what I went through:
1) I considered the Oculus Rift, but it was tied so tightly to Windows that it was a non-starter.
2) A coworker brought a headset to work (I don't remember the type, but it required a Samsung phone). It was awesome, and convinced me that I wanted VR, but the cost was prohibitive and was tightly tied to a small selection of expensive phones. I already had a phone, and I didn't want to buy another one just for VR.
3) My particular situation demanded that I not be tied to a specific spot in my house, and that I not have to spend a ton of money for VR entertainment. That eliminated most VR headsets right off the bat.
4) I looked at the Oculus Go, and was intrigued. However, it doesn't have the full 6 degrees of freedom, so I passed. It's a good thing I did, as the Go has been discontinued so Facebook can focus on the Quest.
5) I looked at the Oculus Quest, and decided that it was both in my price range, had a decent assortment of games (the selection is expanding beyond my ability to keep up), was self-contained, and didn't tether me to a specific spot in the house.
After all the considerations, I settled on the Oculus Quest. I instantly loved it, and I still do. My kids spent so much time with it that I had to buy them each their own. The little we have to sacrifice in visuals is more than made up for by the freedom to move (which, in our situation, is absolutely required). There are plenty of entertaining games, and more appear on a regular basis. I don't regret the purchases at all.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday July 17 2020, @03:13AM
I absolutely agree and said something similar (but with a lot more words) in another comment. It also has the benefit of being able to work for PC VR via Oculus Link (USB cable) or VR Desktop (wireless), so I ended up using mine for PC VR as well because I have a Windows VM with GPU passthrough. Playing games like Skyrim VR (heavily modded because the defaults are trash) in an open space with no concern for cables or accidentally punching my PC is amazing.
(Score: 2) by tekk on Friday July 17 2020, @02:09AM (10 children)
As I understand it you basically have no options. I did a bit of searching and it seems like Valve basically put Linux on the backburner back in 2016. You'll notice that even Half Life: Alyx, Valve's own VR game, doesn't run on SteamOS. My guess is that there are basically no VR games on linux and driver support is questionable at best.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tekk on Friday July 17 2020, @02:11AM (6 children)
Did some more searching. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux [github.com] Valve never even ported SteamVR to Linux, it runs through Proton and can only run games through Proton. https://steamcommunity.com/games/546560/announcements/detail/3758762298552654078 [steamcommunity.com] Alyx does apparently have a working Linux port now, so I may be wrong on the native front? I'm not totally sure if it's Proton-backed or not.
Either way I'd expect Valve hardware (Vive or Index) is your best bet.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 17 2020, @03:13AM
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Half-Life-Alyx-Now-Linux-Vulkan [phoronix.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Friday July 17 2020, @03:15AM
The Vive was discontinued sometime last year and the Vive Pro is HTC-only (no Valve collaboration) so that really just leaves the Index. That's why I ended up with a Quest instead of dealing with all the crap.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Snospar on Friday July 17 2020, @07:25AM (3 children)
That doesn't sound right to me, I have a Valve Index and it runs a number of VR games natively in Linux. There are specific SteamVR beta options for Linux and not everything needs Proton to run. That said, Proton does enable access to even more VR games without having to dual boot back to Windows.
Linux VR is a long way from perfect but it continues to get better and Valve is the only group with full hardware support and a growing library of games that will run in Linux. One thing that does annoy me is that I can't achieve more than 90FPS in Linux even though the same hardware on Windows will drive 120FPS. It's not a major problem as most games look just fine at 90FPS and I don't suffer from any motion sickness in them - except for Adrift but that's really a vomit simulator first and foremost.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @01:07PM (2 children)
Thanks for this, it's encouraging. We have a Playstation VR set, and it's been good but I have never used other sets so I have no basis for comparison. I would prefer not to support Oculus because they're owned by Facebook, which is in a dedicated fight with Google for the title of "most evil data harvesting tech company in the US". (Granted, since HTC is a Chinese company there's a moderate risk they do all of the same data harvesting as Facebook, and it's just more hidden.)
If my budget looks good next year, maybe a Valve Index and the video card upgrade I would need to use it go onto my shopping list.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Friday July 17 2020, @03:18PM (1 child)
You could pickup an HTC Vive or Vive Pro off e-bay, they're not terribly expensive right now. So far my Vive, has been working pretty well, sure it's not the best, but I had a blast playing Fallout VR through to completion. Minus a couple of stupid hunt for the bobblehead type achievements (one of them being hunt for the bobbleheads).
I picked up an HTC Vive a couple years ago off e-bay for about $450, which was pretty good then. Now, you might be able to snag a used set for about $300.
The Portal 2 VR Mod (Free), is worth the price of admission, if you're a big fan of the Portal series. It's definitely worth playing, even if you have to purchase Portal 2 and play it through, first. Also, I recently got Summer Funland VR and that's a pretty fun little theme park sim. You can't build anything, it's all arcade like experiences, or whatever, but it's awesome. They have a rollercoaster, that's not bad, they have 'ye olde shooting range, with billboards that go by, that you need to shoot, and various other interesting things.
Assuming, you get motion sick easy, you might not like VR at all. I get motion sick, pretty easily, especially on long car trips, but I've enjoyed my Vive headset immensely. Especially, for the whole Fallout VR experience. I mean, what's not to love with being in a Powersuit while cruising through the country side, smashing/shooting/torching the various critters and bandits. Also, you Must play the Brotherhood of Steel playthrough arc. There are some experiences there that are just too good to pass up. Fallout 4 VR has some downsides, but those are all negated, by the sheer awesomeness of VR in the Fallout world. Makes me sad about Fallout 76 or whatever that nasty abomination of a Fallout game is called. No NPCs for interaction/story and Microtransactions, yeah, screw them.
Also, "The Lab", the free set of mini games / experiences from Valve is really fun. I've recently picked up Elite Dangerous and it seems like it's really cool in VR, but it's going to require a good bit of time sink by me. Which I might not be able to give right now. I was able to re-key all the controls to something that felt much better, but it's a lot to take in at one go. Also, got Project Cars 2, which looks really awesome, but using keyboard controls for turning left / right, and what not. Yeah, that sucker wasn't playable. I'm sure I could get it to work right, but it's also not going to be a pick up and go kind of thing. So, it's also on the back burner. Whereas games like Fallout VR, Skyrim VR (I just couldn't ever get into the Skyrim series, even with the VR aspect. Maybe I just missed my Fallout Minimap too much.), The Lab, Summer Funland, Epic Rollercoasters, and a host of others, are pretty easy to pick up/put down and just have a good time.
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @06:18PM
Thanks. I might dig into it. It would probably be a purchase next year anyway. The Playstation VR has Beat Saber, which made it worth the price of admission. I found it to be astonishingly fun. On the other hand, the kit came with 'Iron Man VR', which was terrible. One of my kids and I each tried it for about an hour and then we uninstalled it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @05:11AM (1 child)
Same as it ever was. We will out wait them. We will crush their proprietary systems, and grind them into dust. If you tie yourself to Microsoft, you will die, and your death will be most painful and excruciating, and drawn out. Death to Micro$oft, and all who support her! You will never stop the signal! Browncoats rule!
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @05:14AM
And, you know, the excessive shit posting filter is only defending the pathetic bastards still addicted to the microsoft penis agenda. Please give me a better error message, one that doesn't make me puke. Fuching Redmond orcs, and such. Just taste the Glamdring!
(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.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday July 17 2020, @02:10AM
If past major flu pandemics of any guide, the second wave will come end of August/September.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @02:48AM (6 children)
What's that, precious?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Friday July 17 2020, @03:12AM
Something that's easier than ever to do.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Proton-5.10-RC [phoronix.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @09:05AM
It's the version of Linux for people with massive amounts of memory and disk space, unlike my Busybox/Linux.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @10:20AM (3 children)
Gaming on Linux is more feasible than gaming on Mac these days.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Friday July 17 2020, @03:23PM (2 children)
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)
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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday July 19 2020, @01:09PM
https://wccftech.com/apple-gaming-mac-launch-2020-rumor/ [wccftech.com]
https://wccftech.com/apple-arm-based-console-development/ [wccftech.com]
https://wccftech.com/apple-game-controller-charged-wirelessly-lightning-port/ [wccftech.com]
The rumor mill has been talking about an Apple ARM-based game console (or beefed up Apple TV + controller) and "gaming focused Macs".
I don't know how they would make it all work outside of select titles [venturebeat.com] and casual gaming, but Nintendo has been successful at getting big games ported to its vastly underpowered ARM hardware.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Marand on Friday July 17 2020, @03:09AM (3 children)
I went through this at the end of last year because I decided to finally get a VR headset and also wanted Linux-compatible, and what I learned about VR and Linux-compatible headsets:
I concluded that it just wasn't worth the trouble. So, instead, I got the Oculus Quest, which is a standalone headset with no need for Windows or a VR-capable PC. The refresh rate isn't as high as the Index but it's still two screens, with 72hz per eye, so I've had no issues with that, and being able to use the headset without dealing with beacons and cables is amazing.
They also added a feature to allow you to hook it up to a PC via USB3 (or 2 now via software update, though with reduced quality due to bandwidth) and play PC VR games, making it something like the Nintendo Switch of VR, though my suggestion is to skip that entirely and install VR Desktop [vrdesktop.net], which lets you do the same thing over a wireless connection, retaining the freedom of not being tethered to a PC and getting tangled in invisible (to you) cables. These options aren't quite as smooth as a traditional tethered headset but the difference is minimal and I find the convenience worth the trade-off. Anyway, this worked out for me because I built my system with GPU passthrough in mind, so while I run Linux as my host OS I also have a Windows VM with its own GPU and enough resources dedicated to it that I can run VR games there as well. So I just fire up the VM, put on the headset, and play VR games that way. Dual boot would be easier, but I find Windows more tolerable when I don't have to actually use it for anything. :)
Even if you never do PC VR with it, the Quest has a lot going for it. You get the convenience of wireless use and not having to deal with OS bullshit plus the ability to use the Quest anywhere in the house instead of being tethered to a small area near your PC, and for less up-front cost. It uses two screens and has a physical IPD slider so you can adjust the displays to match your head better than the Rift S, and it (like the Rift S) uses inside-out tracking so you don't need to deal with beacons for controller and headset tracking. It's not perfect but it feels like where the future of VR is going, and Oculus' addition of PC tethering (plus third party wireless solutions) seems to indicate they think the same thing.
Anyway, my suggestion is instead of dumping a huge pile of cash into VR all at once, split up the costs by going the Quest route. Basically, buy a Quest now, get a few games for it and play it standalone for a bit. Later on, after the headset cost is out of recent memory, you can look into doing a PC upgrade and choose your system and parts with GPU passthrough in mind, even if you only get one GPU at first. Then you buy a second GPU, set up passthrough, and you now have a VR-capable VM and a wireless headset.
Doing it this way, you get your feet wet with VR now, while being able to spread out the additional purchases over time and hopefully avoid the wife approval process for a single large sum of money. It works with company expenses, so maybe it'll work on the wife. ;)
(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.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @04:48AM
Yeah I'm also a quest user. I would have far preference a much more open non Facebook owned product, but it's a trade off with the current options. I'm still waiting for somone to port some of the virtual machine and link options to linux proton, or completely root the quest and give us some native link options.. something... there are some opensource projects that support windows wrt the virtual machine and link, but they're fairly heavily use of directX. Not sure what it would take to do an opengl port of those, a bit out side my field of expertise.
Hardware wise the quest seems pretty good, I got it mainly as a fitness tool, playing beatsabre and pistol whiped regularly gives me a lazy/fun option as a cardio workout. Being able to take it anywhere/travel also is a massive plus for it. Cant wait to see what the next gen brings us.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RamiK on Friday July 17 2020, @07:19AM (10 children)
There's no need to compromise your Linux workstation's security and stability with closed source proprietary crap when Windows hardware support is a perfectly adequate for gaming peripherals while Linux support for gaming software is lacking. Just use a KVM switch [wikipedia.org] between your gaming PC running Windows and your Linux workstation and isolate the windows box from the rest of the network.
Don't mix business with pleasure. Treat Windows like the toy operating system it is and you won't have any problems.
p.s. This is my generic reply to all Linux gaming topics.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Marand on Friday July 17 2020, @08:40AM (9 children)
That's why I use a VM with GPU passthrough. It's a toy OS whose only purpose is launching games and doesn't deserve to be trusted for anything else than that, including access to hardware. So instead it gets virtual resources, networking that goes through the host, and the single GPU that it can interact with directly.
Having a second dedicated Windows PC means you're spending money on hardware just for it, which is a waste. Better to have an extra-beefy Linux PC that can use all the resources when the VM isn't in use and then dedicate some of those resources to Windows occasionally; the only Windows-specific cost in that case is the GPU.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @01:51PM
Thank you for the idea! I should do that with my own Linux workstation. Right now I'm using Steam + Proton on the Linux host OS, but if I could use it on the guest then bugs/risks/proprietary junk would be confined to that VM.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday July 17 2020, @01:53PM (7 children)
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)
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)
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.
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)
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.
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)
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)
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
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
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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Friday July 17 2020, @09:08AM (12 children)
On a related topic: Is there any simple solution to having a primitive shutter glass (or even just a passive) setup for Linux? Preferably with the Raspi and RK3399 class of SBCs, explicitly excluded is anything involving NVidia,
E.g. I have a scissor mechanism on my tripod to move my camera 65mm sideways to make one photo for the left eye, and one for the right. I put on my shutter glasses and type "view3d left.jpg right.jpg" (or similar) and get a 3D-view of my photos? It is acceptable if I have to write that "view3d" program, but I would need the information how it can be achieved. I could also build a fitting transmitter for one of the weird glass signalings off a GPIO, if that was needed (mind you, HDMI has no easily tappable vsync).
There used to be the LG D2342P-PN for a passive solution, but this has become a lucky ebay find now. (There is also minimal information how these would be made to work, but from two words at some "pymol" wiki, i deduce it is polarization by row).
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @11:27AM (4 children)
Well, I only have stupid or weird solutions to offer you :
(I was interested in that topic some time ago)
- Use vintage hardware on Windows 98 or XP. The H3D glasses came out in 1998 and were still sold a decade later sometimes under another name. Supports nvidia and 3DFX. Needs a CRT monitor that does 120Hz at 800x600 or 1024x768 (no res limitation other than practical?). The glasses run on two coin batteries, aren't great and feel like using blueish sunglasses too. I tried it!
Nvidia supported every such old 3D things (and anaglyph) until geforce 6 or 7, then pulled support when they released "Nvidia 3D vision" when 120Hz LCD came out. They were open until then and said a big fuck you to 3D Stereo users!
- hacky solution? these fairly common H3D glasses came with a VGA dongle (power from PS/2 keyboard interface). It trivially synced from there. IR LED on a wire plugged in there. HDMI to VGA adapter would possibly work with this but I don't know if they do low res at 120 and 144Hz etc. Still need some iiyama or other CRT.
- Cut some cardboard and attach it to a monitor such that each eye can only see half the screen ; display side by side.
- Use a Nintendo 3DS. Was made for children, no other hardware needed! Low res. Might want it run "homebrew" software.
- Use two projectors. Raspi 4 makes this really easy I guess! (two outputs). The minimum setup would be two pico projectors I guess, as long as they accept hdmi and not just composite. Polarize them, now you can use those $1 plastic glasses from TVs and theaters!
I don't know how easy it is to line them up using calibration pictures.
what do ya think?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Friday July 17 2020, @12:22PM (3 children)
This is basically the premise of "Google Cardboard" and works surprisingly well. You could probably rig something similar with a Pi, a cardboard box, and a small LCD display at the end. Stick your face in the box and see 3d pictures by displaying left/right eye images on the corresponding halves of the display.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday July 17 2020, @03:42PM (2 children)
You'd want to use the most powerful Pi available, at this moment, the Raspberry Pi 4. Still, that would be a lot of work, for what I would call very little reward. Since, you'd likely get a better experience doing the google cardboard thing, but just using a cheap phone you grabbed off e-bay for it.
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, @02:06AM (1 child)
The original question seemed to be about viewing photos with depth (via left/right eye stills) so I don't think you'd need particularly powerful hardware for that; anything that can drive a small display should work. You're right that repurposing an old phone or small tablet to do the same thing with a small android app would do it as well or better though. And help avoid electronic waste as well.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday July 18 2020, @06:59AM
Indeed. Thanks to everyone who replied here. In the meantime, I had another look for one of the old passive LG monitors (in FHD), found a good offer and ordered it, together with some glasses. We'll see how it works. As I understand, they use circular polarization and are Real3D compatible, i.e. you can even use the good glasses in cinemas.
It's a pity they are not made anymore. If I wanted to reproduce my experiment, I'd still have to look for active glasses. Fortunately there is a paper on the confusion with all the possible signaling methods, the hardest part is probably to get the images past the Linux compositors and a precise frame sync whenever this happens. I'd also look away from the Raspi and towards the RK3399 if I had to try.
One might start to believe in conspiracy theories about this sector, after getting an overview of the huge mess it is.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Friday July 17 2020, @11:46AM (3 children)
Writing your own software should be pretty straightforward. All the tools you'd need are in OpenCV and there seems to be a lot of tutorials on how to do them (search "anaglyph opencv stereo" for instance). You probably know this already, but your results will improve, depending upon what kind of lens you're using, if you remove lens distortion. I used to code this kind of stuff up many years ago before most of the OpenCV tools were available, but poking around online it looks like a lot of the hard work is now packaged into very nice libraries. I'm feeling more than a little inspired now to mess around with this again. There is a lot of interesting things you can do by playing with the camera focal length as well as the baseline separation.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday July 17 2020, @12:42PM (2 children)
I wasn't aware of any of this, and just spent some time searching for most possible combinations of "opencv" with "stereo", "display", and whatever and didn't find anything. Note that "anaglyph" isn't what I want here, this is about providing one colour picture for each eye from a single monitor. There's boatloads of stuff related to stereo cameras, and computing depth fields from those, but I found nothing about displays. You don't happen to have a better lead?
(Score: 2) by hubie on Friday July 17 2020, @02:14PM (1 child)
No, I'm afraid I'm not of much use on the display side. You might want to check out the site for the stereopi [stereopi.com] project. They've implemented a stereo camera on a little pi and their website has a blog section [stereopi.com] where they go into interesting projects. Perhaps there are display options/ideas to be mined from there.
I did see this arXiv paper [arxiv.org], which might be in the direction of what you're looking for on the code side of things.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday July 17 2020, @03:27PM
Thanks for the leads, at least I learned something new
- The arXiv paper uses a display from lookingglassfactory. it's a passive no-glasses 3D display with a 50 degree FOV; the 15 inch model for three grand, the 9 incher start at 600$. Looking at the specs, these probably must be seen to be believed. The "how it works" vaguely mentions 45 separate views in a lightfield, so it might be a bit resolution challenged, or, I fear, worse for my plan, it can't directly work from stereo images (however they seem to have tools to convert stereo images to what they need). Absolutely nothing about active shutters, though.
- The raspi foundation are asshats wrt the cameras, including a dongle chip, but because they couldn't get away with that with industrial customers, their locked-up driver doesn't check the dongle on compute modules, and there's a nice stereo camera setup with a fitting CM3 carrier from a shop called "waveshare".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @12:10PM
Is the 3D Imager for the Vectrex game system primitive enough? :D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex#Peripherals [wikipedia.org]
https://old.madtronix.com/html/3d_imager.html [madtronix.com]
CYA
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @12:23PM
I was actually impressed with remote desktop viewer for phone + google glass.
I didn't bother pursuing this for other reasons, but I got to a point where my problem was setting up VTK cameras at appropriate angles to get the stereoscopy right.
for photos it should work perfectly fine.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday July 17 2020, @01:32PM
I tried some shutter glasses very briefly but they never went fully opaque so each eye could see a ghost of the other eye's image, which I found quite distracting and ugly, so I stopped using them. It's a nice concept though.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2020, @01:23AM
i got a 6/12 core sandy bridge xeon w/ max ~3.6 Ghz, 16 GB RAM (4 channel) and a nvidia 1080GTX.
the VR is a HTC VIVE.
got leap15.1 installed on a 256 GB SSD.
running the steam client (1) (not via proton) w/ native steamVR (beta, not temp linux).
what i see is that GPU is the "limit" for playable framerates not the CPU; so i am guessing with a more recent CPU, you don't need a monster.
finally got Alyx to not crash after lots of cursing and finally the simple swapping of HDMI cable from port2 to port1, reboot.
the sound (when playing Alyx) stopped coming out of the monitor loudspeaker (l0l) after swapping the HDMI a second time (back to port2) and reboot :)
it's nothing short of amazing (!) .. tho my back is killing me after all this standing and waving around my arms ...
i installed nvidia on leap15.1 the "hard way" and the "magic" happens after adding "3 nomodeset" to grub2 boot option (for runlevel 3, no GUI) and running the *.sh (2)
(1) add packman repository
(2) www.geforce.com
note:
some extra stuff needs to be installed for the nvidia installer not to throw a error for "libglvnd" but it will tell you.
for steam client the 32bit version of libraries and whatnot are important!
netflix also works in "kodi": the "libadaptive" is in the packman repositories.
conclusion: the future is not lost. the revolution has a firm footing in opensource, tho with help from the proprietary (but not m$!) front (nvidia, steam).
(Score: 2, Disagree) by chewbacon on Saturday July 18 2020, @02:16AM
I hate to admit it, but you'll never get anywhere (ok, anytime soon) on Linux for VR. I wouldn't go as far to say as there are not projects out there that are promising, but the support won't be there. It's a fool's errand. Swallow your pride and use Windows for gaming, you'll probably be happier. Keep your work on your other OS of choice.