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Monado, the free and open source OpenXR runtime for Linux has reached a massive milestone as it's now officially conformant. This announcement from Collabora came along with the release of Monado 21.0.0.

As a quick refresher: Monado aims to jump-start development of an open source XR ecosystem and provide the fundamental building blocks for device vendors to target Linux as a platform.

Now that it's officially recognised by The Khronos Group as a conformant driver, it means they can use the official OpenXR word and trademarks to advertise its feature set and gives it public recognition. Currently though, this is only for a "simulated" device and anyone building hardware with Monado will need to go through certification too.

On top of that though, there's now even a SteamVR driver! This means that you can use any of Monado's supported HMD and controllers to work with SteamVR. You can see the current status of that here, keeping in mind it's still early days for it and Collabora will be talking much more about the SteamVR driver in a future post.

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7 comments

kokoko3k Feb 16, 2021
I'm really a noob on everything regarding vr.
Does that means i can use a cardboard viewer and a smartphone as a cheap interface to virtual reality with steam games?
https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/monado-update-passing-conformance-android-support-and-more.html


Last edited by kokoko3k on 16 February 2021 at 1:36 pm UTC
Ardje Feb 16, 2021
I hope this means I am finally going to be able to use my Oculus DK2.
scaine Feb 16, 2021
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Quoting: ArdjeI hope this means I am finally going to be able to use my Oculus DK2.

I think that's the hope, assuming that Monado will support the DK2, then it will then become available as a device through SteamVR?

I need to read up more on Monado, honestly.
PublicNuisance Feb 16, 2021
I remember being so pumped for VR back in the day and then when it came out all I saw were reasons not to dump money on it. I won't pretend to understand all of the ins and outs of Monado but if it means VR on Linux is seeing progress then i'm happy.
haagch Feb 17, 2021
Quoting: kokoko3kI'm really a noob on everything regarding vr.
Does that means i can use a cardboard viewer and a smartphone as a cheap interface to virtual reality with steam games?
https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/monado-update-passing-conformance-android-support-and-more.html

No, at least not yet. Monado can run OpenXR apps that run directly on android. Currently the only "real" example that I know of is this xrgears branch: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/monado/demos/xrgears/-/tree/android

In the future (unrelated) projects like ALVR may create a native android OpenXR client. They face many challenging to make that work, for example with SteamVR on Linux.

Alternative streaming tech stacks for OpenVR games are a possibility, for example OpenVR games -> OpenComposite with OpenXR backend (not ready yet) -> Monado on PC -> streaming (does not exist yet) -> Monado on Android.

Once such a thing becomes possible we will probably make some noise about it.


Quoting: scaine
Quoting: ArdjeI hope this means I am finally going to be able to use my Oculus DK2.

I think that's the hope, assuming that Monado will support the DK2, then it will then become available as a device through SteamVR?
Oculus Rift DK2 and CV1 tracking is currently being implemented by thaytan (Jan Schmidt). His current WIP implementation lives in OpenHMD. More info and demo videos on his blog: https://noraisin.net/diary/

This implementation can be used in SteamVR with SteamVR-OpenHMD.

Monado by itself does not have its own Oculus driver today, but it can make use of OpenHMD for HMD support, so if Monado is compiled with OpenHMD support enabled, the DK2 and CV1 HMDs should work. Further, Monado also comes with another SteamVR plugin that can be used as an alternative to SteamVR-OpenHMD. https://monado.freedesktop.org/steamvr.html
kokoko3k Feb 17, 2021
Spoiler, click me


Quoting: haagch
Quoting: kokoko3kI'm really a noob on everything regarding vr.
Does that means i can use a cardboard viewer and a smartphone as a cheap interface to virtual reality with steam games?
https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/monado-update-passing-conformance-android-support-and-more.html

No, at least not yet. Monado can run OpenXR apps that run directly on android. Currently the only "real" example that I know of is this xrgears branch: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/monado/demos/xrgears/-/tree/android

In the future (unrelated) projects like ALVR may create a native android OpenXR client. They face many challenging to make that work, for example with SteamVR on Linux.

Alternative streaming tech stacks for OpenVR games are a possibility, for example OpenVR games -> OpenComposite with OpenXR backend (not ready yet) -> Monado on PC -> streaming (does not exist yet) -> Monado on Android.

Once such a thing becomes possible we will probably make some noise about it.


Quoting: scaine
Quoting: ArdjeI hope this means I am finally going to be able to use my Oculus DK2.

I think that's the hope, assuming that Monado will support the DK2, then it will then become available as a device through SteamVR?
Oculus Rift DK2 and CV1 tracking is currently being implemented by thaytan (Jan Schmidt). His current WIP implementation lives in OpenHMD. More info and demo videos on his blog: https://noraisin.net/diary/

This implementation can be used in SteamVR with SteamVR-OpenHMD.

Monado by itself does not have its own Oculus driver today, but it can make use of OpenHMD for HMD support, so if Monado is compiled with OpenHMD support enabled, the DK2 and CV1 HMDs should work. Further, Monado also comes with another SteamVR plugin that can be used as an alternative to SteamVR-OpenHMD. https://monado.freedesktop.org/steamvr.html
Thank you for the detailed answer, i plain to understand it asap :)
Ardje Feb 17, 2021
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: ArdjeI hope this means I am finally going to be able to use my Oculus DK2.

I think that's the hope, assuming that Monado will support the DK2, then it will then become available as a device through SteamVR?

I need to read up more on Monado, honestly.
I just found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AdmS3vy7ZE
full positional support in openhmd for the DK2.
And now use openhmd in monado, and then use the steamvr plugin... And then see if HL2 looks better...
Last time I saw HL2 in 3D it was rendered in 720x1280 and then upscaled. Pretty crap and very slow.
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