With the Valve Index now out, Valve continue to make quick improvements to SteamVR with the latest Beta now available.
For SteamVR, they've changed how games are launched from SteamVR Home to avoid a possible hang, changes to hopefully avoid "error 308" on startup, automatic firmware recovery for the Valve Index and Vive Pro and a fix for a rare spontaneous shutdown of vrserver caused by very briefly connected pipes.
SteamVR Input had quite a few changes on this round, including new options for global rotation values and global deadzone value for thumbsticks. A new screen to test the input from any controller supported by SteamVR and more.
Lighthouse got a change to device discovery to reduce the impact of misbehaving USB drivers and devices and the Index Controllers got updated default input bindings for legacy applications that don't have specific configs set along with improvements for applications built for trackpads.
For those using VR kit on Linux, there's these fixes just for you:
- Fixed Index HMD always notifying a firmware update is available.
- Fixed being unable to re-start SteamVR after vrserver is killed/crashes ( aka LfMutexUnlockRobust crashes).
- Fixed vrwebhelper crashing the Steam client.
- Fixed 'psychedelic' colours in the Steam client caused by exiting SteamVR.
- Fixed 'Restart SteamVR' prompts exiting SteamVR but not restarting it.
- Various vrcompositor crash fixes.
- Fixed 'ioctl(GFEATURE): Broken Pipe' spam in stdout
If you're using the Vive or Index on Linux, do let us know how you're getting on in the comments. Would certainly love to hear about it. Is it worth it?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Noice! Thanks Valve for continuing to make the Linux experience better here :)
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Still awaiting my turn! *impatient*
I should probably clean and organise my computer room. I don't think I have enough space for room scale stuff right now.
I should probably clean and organise my computer room. I don't think I have enough space for room scale stuff right now.
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I wish there could be an option to use a Google Cardboard as a testing device for SteamVR on Linux (the quality is generally awful, but it's good for testing). It is possible to emulate HTC Vive on Windows for SteamVR via RiftCat's VRidge, but it's Windows only and not open source. Last time I checked there were some other similar projects, but I couldn't get any of them working under Linux. Not sure about Wine/Proton.
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Haven't tested since I moved, gonna unpack it and check out the updates! :-)
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I'm really glad to see such a large amount of fixes in a single release, but I still can't really recommend people buy VR if they don't want to use it in Windows. Here's a list I made a week or so ago of ongoing issues I've had for years with the Vive and now persisting with the Index:
1. Asynchronous reprojection doesn't work for any Nvidia users (major comfort issue unless you _never_ drop frames)
2. Audio input/output switching doesn't work so you have to screw with pulse every time you boot or quit SteamVR (Windows auto-sets this and back)
3. Bluetooth power management doesn't work so you have to manually unplug and plug in the lighthouses every time (there's no switch because Windows boots them on demand)
4. Parts of it are completely disabled right now because it was crashing left and right a month ago (basically most of the menus are disabled unless you boot with an env variable, you can't even quit VR from within VR)
5. The front facing cameras don't work so no mixed reality
6. For my system at least, the recomposition pipeline is totally broken so every frame drop causes tearing. This has been going on since at least Nvidia 396 and still on the very latest 418.52.16 dev drivers and 430 drivers.
1. Asynchronous reprojection doesn't work for any Nvidia users (major comfort issue unless you _never_ drop frames)
2. Audio input/output switching doesn't work so you have to screw with pulse every time you boot or quit SteamVR (Windows auto-sets this and back)
3. Bluetooth power management doesn't work so you have to manually unplug and plug in the lighthouses every time (there's no switch because Windows boots them on demand)
4. Parts of it are completely disabled right now because it was crashing left and right a month ago (basically most of the menus are disabled unless you boot with an env variable, you can't even quit VR from within VR)
5. The front facing cameras don't work so no mixed reality
6. For my system at least, the recomposition pipeline is totally broken so every frame drop causes tearing. This has been going on since at least Nvidia 396 and still on the very latest 418.52.16 dev drivers and 430 drivers.
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Quoting: Vash63I'm really glad to see such a large amount of fixes in a single release, but I still can't really recommend people buy VR if they don't want to use it in Windows. Here's a list I made a week or so ago of ongoing issues I've had for years with the Vive and now persisting with the Index:
Thanks for pointing out!
I wouldn't want more computer stuff to fight with.
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Quoting: Vash63I'm really glad to see such a large amount of fixes in a single release, but I still can't really recommend people buy VR if they don't want to use it in Windows. Here's a list I made a week or so ago of ongoing issues I've had for years with the Vive and now persisting with the Index:Ouch if it's that rough, it's not really surprising Valve haven't replied about getting us an Index for review.
1. Asynchronous reprojection doesn't work for any Nvidia users (major comfort issue unless you _never_ drop frames)
2. Audio input/output switching doesn't work so you have to screw with pulse every time you boot or quit SteamVR (Windows auto-sets this and back)
3. Bluetooth power management doesn't work so you have to manually unplug and plug in the lighthouses every time (there's no switch because Windows boots them on demand)
4. Parts of it are completely disabled right now because it was crashing left and right a month ago (basically most of the menus are disabled unless you boot with an env variable, you can't even quit VR from within VR)
5. The front facing cameras don't work so no mixed reality
6. For my system at least, the recomposition pipeline is totally broken so every frame drop causes tearing. This has been going on since at least Nvidia 396 and still on the very latest 418.52.16 dev drivers and 430 drivers.
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Well, I'm still waiting for Valve to be ready for supporting VR on Linux.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1070910/Are_you_ready_for_Valve_Index/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1070910/Are_you_ready_for_Valve_Index/
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Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: Vash63I'm really glad to see such a large amount of fixes in a single release, but I still can't really recommend people buy VR if they don't want to use it in Windows. Here's a list I made a week or so ago of ongoing issues I've had for years with the Vive and now persisting with the Index:Ouch if it's that rough, it's not really surprising Valve haven't replied about getting us an Index for review.
1. Asynchronous reprojection doesn't work for any Nvidia users (major comfort issue unless you _never_ drop frames)
2. Audio input/output switching doesn't work so you have to screw with pulse every time you boot or quit SteamVR (Windows auto-sets this and back)
3. Bluetooth power management doesn't work so you have to manually unplug and plug in the lighthouses every time (there's no switch because Windows boots them on demand)
4. Parts of it are completely disabled right now because it was crashing left and right a month ago (basically most of the menus are disabled unless you boot with an env variable, you can't even quit VR from within VR)
5. The front facing cameras don't work so no mixed reality
6. For my system at least, the recomposition pipeline is totally broken so every frame drop causes tearing. This has been going on since at least Nvidia 396 and still on the very latest 418.52.16 dev drivers and 430 drivers.
It's that rough for Nvidia users at least (though I think #6 is some weird conflict with nvidia's modesetting driver with a gsync display plugged in).
On the plus side, #1 doesn't impact AMD users and #4 is probably going to be fixed soon (was intentionally disabled due to crashing but had been implemented).
So if they re-enable the stuff in #4 and you're testing on Mesa drivers you'll just have to deal with #2, 3 and 5
Edit: Oh, also Motion Smoothing doesn't work on Linux at all right now and the error message says you're on "an older version of Windows"
Last edited by Vash63 on 9 July 2019 at 12:33 pm UTC
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SketchStick Jul 9, 2019
Under AMD, the compositor has some issues that are causing it to stutter and async to glitch out for a frame every now and then. Generally I would like to see Valve try to close a lot more of the issues on github, there's a ton of problems that have just been sitting there unaddressed.
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