HTC Vive PRO HMD pre-orders open, standard Vive has price drop

Yeah, VR on Linux is sadly held back mainly by a lack of compatible games. But I put some hope into this project:

https://github.com/roothorick/WineOpenVR

The latest plan seems to be to interface with DXVK and Linux SteamVR directly, thus cutting much of the WINE overhead and latency for hopefully a near native VR experience on Linux through DX11 games with WINE.

These days the graphics card prices are inflated by the ridiculous crypto mining craze. Once that's over I'll upgrade my rig and get me a regular Vive. The second hand price on those have dived down to a quite reasonable level now.

Then I'll game the sh*t out of everything we got for VR so far :)

I'm still thinking about getting the Vive Pro. It really is a heavy price, especially compared to getting just the HMD with the connector box and not a complete bundle. So it's targeted for owners of the original Vive as an upgrade. Getting a complete bundle would put another 300€ for 2 base stations and another 290€ for two Vive controllers on top of the price of the Vive Pro. Man, that accessories is as much money as the old Vive bundle.

Yeah, early adopter problems... I also think that if you do roomscale VR the higher resolution of the Vive Pro doesn't really matter. When moving around the current (low) resolution is not realized anymore after some seconds ingame. For seated titles it's different. Here you might look at one spot for a longer time, so it's more easily to see the grid of the display.

Nevertheless, there are some pretty cool games working on Linux already, e.g. Croteam's Serious Sam and Talos Principle VR titles. Some little titles like Munch VR and Locomancer work. Even EVERSPACE was working before the last update.
Of course that's not much compared to what's already available for VR in general. But it's a start, and VR is a niche in PC gaming while VR on Linux is a niche within the VR niche... nicheception!

Let's see how the three VR titles Valve hinted to be working on turn out. I hope the release of these will mark VR on Linux as stable. On the other hand Valve's "The Lab" is (still?) not out for Linux VR...


Last edited by Corben on 27 March 2018 at 11:36 am UTC

I'm still thinking about getting the Vive Pro. It really is a heavy price, especially compared to getting just the HMD with the connector box and not a complete bundle. So it's targeted for owners of the original Vive as an upgrade. Getting a complete bundle would put another 300€ for 2 base stations and another 290€ for two Vive controllers on top of the price of the Vive Pro. Man, that accessories is as much money as the old Vive bundle.

I was already discussing that with someone that already has the vive...
But buying his vive would still mean I need to buy the accessories, which has the same price as just a vive (599.96 euro for the accessories vs 599.00 for a complete set).
It does have an advantage that vive owners probably can buy a second vive for cheap, and have 2 VR setups working at the same time... You just need a pair of extra controllers and another PC, as the base stations just need to be there.


Last edited by Ardje on 27 March 2018 at 11:48 am UTC

My use of £799 would be to get a decent FPV headset for drone racing, and a racing drone. Much more fun than VR on a PC.

Also, the Vive Pro is going to need really high end graphics card(s) driving it to avoid motion sickness.

I'm waiting until the full Vive Pro kit comes out (with the new base stations/controllers) then I'll upgrade from my Vive. If only I could get room setup to launch on Mesa though as I haven't even been able to experience VR on Linux aside from the basic headset functionality (doesn't work well when it doesn't know the bounds of the room).

The Samsung Odyssey has the same resolution but about half the price.

The Samsung Odyssey has the same resolution but about half the price.

But has absolutely no Linux support and very little chance of ever getting it (being a Windows Mixed Reality headset).

The Samsung Odyssey has the same resolution but about half the price.

But has absolutely no Linux support and very little chance of ever getting it (being a Windows Mixed Reality headset).

I think you can use it with Steam VR, but I'm not sure how that translates into Steam VR on Linux.

But the Odyssey does the inside out tracking, which isn't as awesome as the Vive.

I'd get the Vive Pro if it were like 600, but 800 is just too much for just the headset...

I mean if there were a market out there for selling just the headset to recoup some of that money... but there isn't.

Yeah, VR on Linux is sadly held back mainly by a lack of compatible games.

You can't have anyone taking it seriously, until this will be ready: https://www.khronos.org/openxr

Otherwise developers will be wasting their time chasing tons of incompatible APIs. And then, there is a question of FOSS implementation of actual runtime.


Last edited by Shmerl on 27 March 2018 at 3:07 pm UTC

I think that performance issues are way more of an issue for linux SteamVR than lack of games right now. Even just in SteamVR home I get abysmal frames right now. Doesn't matter what games are supported until the performance issues are sorted out.

I still think VR will be a short-lived novelty for most gamers, like 3D television. I predict that it will always be an overpriced niche product.

Although I must admit that VR and X-Plane 11 looks like a killer combination. But we're still talking a niche application.

All VR HMD should be shipped with googly-eyes stuck to the front. It should be international law even...

I recently picked up a budget knockoff of the Google Cardboard VR, and wow... Honestly, until you try it, it's hard to get excited about it - and the Cardboard VR is a bloody brilliant way to get on board. So I've gone and ordered a Samsung Gear VR to tide me over until I'm allowed to purchase a Vive.

Y'all should get a Google Cardboard and have a play.

> For Linux gamers, I'm not sure if makes much sense picking one up right now. Not only is Linux VR support still quite raw, there's not a great deal of titles available.

It may be hard to raise us above 1% in sales in general, but if many Linux-exclusive gamers buy VR headsets, it would be easy to make us say 20% of VR market. That would be good for us.

We are at a point in history when we are not affected (much) by the chicken&egg problem w.r.t to VR. Not buying headsets because there are few games will only make sure this problem will become a reality for VR as well.

I would encourage people to buy headsets if I were you, Liam.

> For Linux gamers, I'm not sure if makes much sense picking one up right now. Not only is Linux VR support still quite raw, there's not a great deal of titles available.

It may be hard to raise us above 1% in sales in general, but if many Linux-exclusive gamers buy VR headsets, it would be easy to make us say 20% of VR market. That would be good for us.

We are at a point in history when we are not affected (much) by the chicken&egg problem w.r.t to VR. Not buying headsets because there are few games will only make sure this problem will become a reality for VR as well.

I would encourage people to buy headsets if I were you, Liam.

I did not think of it that way. But that's a good idea.
The problem with the current vive though is that it has no hardware adjustable IPD (2 screens).
But if the price drop is ok..

Yeah, VR on Linux is sadly held back mainly by a lack of compatible games.

You can't have anyone taking it seriously, until this will be ready: https://www.khronos.org/openxr

Otherwise developers will be wasting their time chasing tons of incompatible APIs. And then, there is a question of FOSS implementation of actual runtime.

GREAT, now we have 3 competing standards...

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr
http://www.osvr.org/what-is-osvr.html
https://www.khronos.org/openxr

the question is wich one should be followed?

GREAT, now we have 3 competing standards...

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr
http://www.osvr.org/what-is-osvr.html
https://www.khronos.org/openxr

the question is wich one should be followed?

Seeing as both Valve and the big players behind OSVR are involved in OpenXR, I'd say it's a safe bet. But it's early days and the standard isn't there yet.

Besides, this kind of fragmentation always happens with new tech.

I would encourage people to buy headsets if I were you, Liam.

I am suddenly thinking that it's easily fixed by:
for i in $(seq 1000 9999); do useradd steam$i;done
and start steam for each user, and use their e-mail addresses for new steam accounts... :-)

I am suddenly thinking that it's easily fixed by:
for i in $(seq 1000 9999); do useradd steam$i;done
and start steam for each user, and use their e-mail addresses for new steam accounts... :-)

To make active users, they need to actually spend some money AFAIK.
(And you need to raise the number to make a difference.)

GREAT, now we have 3 competing standards...

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr
http://www.osvr.org/what-is-osvr.html
https://www.khronos.org/openxr

the question is wich one should be followed?

I think only OpenXR is a collaborative effort, so the answer is obvious.