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Developer Wayne Heaney has been working to make XR glasses on Linux / Steam Deck a much better experience, and their latest release of the XR Gaming Plugin sounds awesome.

Heaney has been working on the XR Linux Driver for Linux devices (including the Steam Deck) to automatically recognize supported XR glasses, Breezy Desktop a collection of tools to enable virtual desktop environments for gaming and productivity (desktop Linux) and the Decky Loader XR Gaming Plugin to bring easy controls directly in Steam Deck's Gaming Mode.

This includes support for popular XR glasses from VITURE, TCL/RayNeo, Rokid and XREAL.

As they said on Reddit the new 1.0 XR Gaming Plugin brings:

  • Virtual Display mode - "pin" your game so it doesn't follow your head movements. Enable Side-by-side so the display can be pulled in closer (like a real monitor) or moved further away to reduce eye strain or play games that support 3D side-by-side.

  • VR-Lite mode - head tracking in first and third-person games creates a VR-like experience for non-VR games (doesn't require SteamVR, etc...).

  • Follow mode - Resize and reposition the display, put it in the corner of your display or just make it smaller so it's easier to see the edges. Enable Smooth follow so the screen glides to follow you and smoothes out bumps and jerks.

  • Virtual display and smooth follow modes give you the ability to zoom-in for a more IMAX-like experience (this crops the display, but you can use head movements to look to the edges) or enable a curved display that wraps around you for easier viewing.

  • If you've used the plugin before, the biggest improvement is that the Virtual Display and Follow effects apply across everything in Game Mode: Steam OS views like Home and Library, all games, streaming apps like Chiaki and Moonlight, even apps like Firefox

Currently it requires the latest SteamOS 3.6 Beta.

See their video talking about the update below:

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Some of their future plans include native KDE support for Breezy Desktop, Multi-monitor support for Breezy Desktop for productivity on GNOME, Monado integration and more.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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4 comments

juxuanu Oct 3
A future where you don't own a screen and you just put some connected glasses on and you see the screen on the table, and allows to have as many as you want. It does seem interesting, although I haven't thought much of any disadvantages.
Quoting: juxuanuA future where you don't own a screen and you just put some connected glasses on and you see the screen on the table, and allows to have as many as you want. It does seem interesting, although I haven't thought much of any disadvantages.
Based on earlier attempts:
distrust from your surroundings for all the camera's you carry, distractions while driving and cost.

Edit:
these glasses seem poor on camera's.
Being seen as an advert for camera holding versions, distractions while driving and tendency to get out of sync with the surroundings.


Last edited by LoudTechie on 3 October 2024 at 2:00 pm UTC
Quoting: juxuanuA future where you don't own a screen and you just put some connected glasses on and you see the screen on the table, and allows to have as many as you want. It does seem interesting, although I haven't thought much of any disadvantages.

The dream is to be able to have a portable screenless PC (battery-powered mini PC, or a laptop/tablet with the screen off) and be able to plug in anywhere with a multi-monitor setup with the added privacy of it all being visible only to you.

The biggest downsides for trying to work with this generation of XR glasses are that the resolution is lower than the typical monitor (1080p), all supported glasses right now suffer from a little bit of drift (meaning the screen slowly moves away from its original location over time), and the field-of-view means you can only see one screen at a time. Even if you have another screen "next" to the one you're looking at you don't see it in your peripheral like you do in real life, you have to turn your head to see any of it.
I played Helldivers 2 for a few hours on my Steam Deck with the Viture Pro XR. They are awesome. I'll have to update the plugin and play around some more. For me, even with the adjustments, there are a few blurry points in the corners, but some of that might just be because my eyes suck (got lasik 8 years ago).
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