Steam VR will use Vulkan on Linux, demo shown off on Linux, new Vive controller being made

Well, news from SteamDevDays is starting to trickle into my feed and I will do my best to keep up with it all for you. First up is Steam VR which will finally support Linux and the big news is that it will use Vulkan to do it.

I am not at SteamDevDays due to it taking place in the US, and prices for flights and accommodation are way out of my price range right now (I've also seen that they don't allow press there too, so I couldn't even if I wanted to). So I am going off what I am seeing from all the developers I follow.

Steam VR runs on Linux with Vulkan #SteamDevDays

— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) October 12, 2016

This is interesting, as it's likely something was really holding up VR when it comes to OpenGL directly (most likely performance issues). They must have been waiting for Vulkan to reach a point where it was stable enough in drivers on Linux to be able to support it.

We also have this image of it running on Linux, thanks to Kevin Lee of AltspaceVR:


There has also been a talk about a new controller heading to the HTC Vive, thanks to Eva:


Steam has 1000 new VR users every day, so the growth of VR is there and people are buying the headsets. Once prices come down, you can expect that growth to keep increasing.

Valve is also trying to make VR as open a platform as they can (thanks Marty Caplan). They will be licensing the "Lighthouse positional tracking" so that means other companies can build positional tracking boxes. They are also investing in "standard component manufacturing so entire ecosystem has what is needed to prototype".

I've seen from many sources that Valve want their Lighthouse positional tracking to be as open as wifi. That's one way to win the VR wars!

This is all sounding really great, and is vastly different to the closed approach Facebook has been doing with the Rift.

Also, for the people who still don't think Valve is still invested in SteamOS, they have a Steam Machine area for people to test them out and play games:

Source