According to a renowned German PC games magazine, Gamestar, the SteamVR device HTC Vive is going to be released only for Windows in the beginning.
Gamestar journalists attended a demonstration of the Vive HTC and spoke to HTC representatives. They found the VR impression very convincing. But I guess there are enough descriptions of that out there on the net. The news for Linux users is hidden in their conclusion: According to HTC "Executive Director Global Marketing" Jeff Gattis, Vive HTC will only work with Windows on release.
Here's the original German text:
QuoteErstaunlich: Auch wenn Steam große Anstrengungen unternimmt, mit SteamOS ein eigenes Linux-Derivat als Gaming-Betriebssystem in den Markt zu drücken, wird die Vive vorerst ausschließlich mit Windows funktionieren. Steam-Boxen wären eh zu langsam für die Vive-VR, schmunzelte Gattis schelmisch, man konzentriere sich lieber auf Windows als Betriebssystem.
My translation:
QuoteSurprisingly, although Steam [Valve] is making great efforts to push its own Linux derivative SteamOS to the market as a gaming operating system, Vive VR will initially work exclusively with Windows. Steam machines are too slow for the Vive VR anyway, Gattis smiled mischievously, so they prefer to concentrate on the Windows operating system.
I tried to find other mentions about this fact on the net, but to no avail. The Gamestar people cannot possibly have been the only journalists going to that event...?
Although they said it will not work, there might be a way to get it running on Linux as well. But to me, SteamVR was one of the major possible attractions of Steam Machines on release, and if this news turns out to be true, it's another rather disappointing one for me.
Full article (German) Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I spent a very small amount of time trying to get Unreal Engine 4 to work with the Oculus DK2 in Ubuntu. Currently, the Oculus plugin does not work in UE4 in Linux because it is disabled via preprocessor directives. I made some hacks to enable it but it didn't work correctly, at least not when launched from the editor. The position and orientation data updated the display just fine, but the window did not render properly. Admittedly, I didn't try to cook & build the project and launch it on its own. That may have worked, but for my use case I needed to view in the HMD directly from the editor (i.e., "Preview in VR" mode).
I have some ideas as to how to go about fixing this, but it'll require more time than I have at the moment. If you want to know more, then feel free to contact me, or you can start by reading some links.
Here's the question I asked on the UE4 answerhub (in my second comment I link to a question I asked on the SDL2 message board).
Here's some discussion as to why you'd want to put the HMD on a secondary X screen.
It's like a spoiled brat kid that gets every candy in the candy store except 1 kind and then throws a huge fit and throws all their candy in the trash. There are many technical and logical reasons why Valve targets Windows users for Alpha/Beta releases:
1. Larger user base (a healther cross-section of their DOTA audience & player base 1% VS 90%, eg: Mr. Average.)
2. Development Tools - Photoshop, 3DStudioMax, Microsoft Visual Studios, Illustrator, and other "tools for developers" are only available for Windows or Mac. a wise company knows not to take their Photoshop expert and throw them on GIMP on Linux and expect equal or superior performance - if they did their devs would have a mutiny and Valve & SteamOS would turn into a clusterfuck - you don't change what works mid-race, and right now what works with employees workflow is Windows. Honestly, the change to Arch Linux full-time has been a excruciatingly difficult one for me, I can't even imagine a average user not throwing their machine out the window or quitting when they barely know the difference between a PDF, a DOCX and TXT.
3. Steam Machines haven't even been released yet - so it's a pre Steam Machine era, development tools for Linux are being pioneered by Valve and not perfected and integrated into dev workflows flawlessly yet.
To everyone not acting like a bratty 14 year old, thanks.
I never quite understood why people start talking when they don't know what they are talking about. Game devs would have to use gimp? Do you even computer bro?
Well they're up for pre-order now from at least one manufacturer, so they're as good as available (especially when they've been in public beta for so long)...
It's not like say, the PlayStation 5, that's kept under wraps with no access to it - people have been playing with Steam Machines for a while now, developers even longer, "select developers/partners" longer still.
Last edited by Cyba.Cowboy on 5 March 2016 at 1:03 am UTC