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Previously Yaakuro worked to make Unreal Engine 4 work with SteamVR using OpenGL on Linux, but now he's moved onto making it work with Vulkan!

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Amazing to see such progress and I really hope his patches get accepted into the Unreal Engine 4 base.

Unreal Engine 4 does have a lot of Linux issues, since multiple games are blaming engine issues for not coming to Linux yet. Maybe Yaakuro can look into these issues once he's done with his VR work. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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14 comments

Eike Mar 22, 2017
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The heading alone includes more good news than I can cope with. :D
cRaZy-bisCuiT Mar 22, 2017
Actually I'm not interested in VR at all, but if it makes more people using Linux I'd appreciate it. We don't need the biggest market share, but having 5-10 % one day would definitely make many publishers caring about us.


If only he would find some time to fix the remaining Linux issues within the engine that would be awesome.
lucifertdark Mar 22, 2017
VR is superfluous fluff until such time as the bugs that stop most of us from even playing the standard games are fixed.
Eike Mar 22, 2017
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VR is superfluous fluff until such time as the bugs that stop most of us from even playing the standard games are fixed.

Making VR run on Unreal on Linux should stumble upon bugs. Fixing them might help all of us.
lejimster Mar 22, 2017
It actually might be a good thing that OpenVR uses Vulkan to give a swift kick in the behind at Epic to get Vulkan working properly on desktop. AFAIK it runs but a few features are broken, most of the focus has gone towards mobile Vulkan support instead.

Good thing we have people like Yaakuro working on Linux support, but I expect more from Epic.
Jahimself Mar 22, 2017
We really need that Vulkan on unreal engine to have full linux support. It's also good to have VR from the beginning on linux. I don't know whether it will be massively adopted, but if it is the case it will a good point for Linux in the future.
bubexel Mar 22, 2017
VR is the future, when headset will be sold by 250 euros everybody will play with them, linux should be from begin.
lucifertdark Mar 22, 2017
VR is the future, when headset will be sold by 250 euros everybody will play with them, linux should be from begin.
They'll have to be a lot cheaper than that to convince the masses.
Eike Mar 22, 2017
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VR is the future, when headset will be sold by 250 euros everybody will play with them, linux should be from begin.
They'll have to be a lot cheaper than that to convince the masses.

A VR headset is, among other stuff, a very fast very low latency high definition monitor.
Two of them, actually.

And an incredible experience.
Quenestil Mar 22, 2017
Is he working for Epic or is just a fan?
slaapliedje Mar 22, 2017
I'm guessing this is what would be required for Alice VR to work within the headset. It currently loads up so you can play it on the monitor... but that isn't exactly VR.

And for what it's worth, I finally managed to get Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter working under Debian with the beta nVidia driver! Still got my ass kicked, but it played smoothly.
ison111 Mar 22, 2017
I heard that you can use Vulkan in UE4 only by using the "mobile rendering pipeline" or something like that.

Is that what he's doing? Or is this full blown Vulkan support we're talking about?
lejimster Mar 22, 2017
Is he working for Epic or is just a fan?

He's not employed by Epic, he contributes patches and bug fixes on his own time. He's been mentioned on here and other Linux sites before, anyone can help support him on patreon if they really want.

https://www.patreon.com/ue4linux


Last edited by lejimster on 22 March 2017 at 5:52 pm UTC
roothorick Mar 23, 2017
I heard that you can use Vulkan in UE4 only by using the "mobile rendering pipeline" or something like that.

Is that what he's doing? Or is this full blown Vulkan support we're talking about?

People keep missing this -- SteamVR can be used from OpenGL. It's just very slow for the time being, probably due to a fairly dirty and unoptimized first pass at transferring framebuffer data out of an OGL context into the compositor's Vulkan context; they'll be bringing it up to speed over time. This could be in OGL and he's just dealing with the performance hit for now.

I probably should watch the video before I post, eh?


Last edited by roothorick on 23 March 2017 at 3:50 pm UTC
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