Tmmrn

Oculus stopped Linux support with this blog post: https://www3.oculus.com/en-us/blog/powering-the-rift/

Their Linux support sucked anyway. They only got their unity plugin working on Linux actually one day before they published this blog post. They never supported unreal engine on linux even though they said they were working on it before the DK2 even came out.

A Valve rep has said in an interview before the Vive release that they intended to have Linux support on launch. The preorders showed SteamOS support, but they changed it right before the actual launch: https://i.imgur.com/MA2377D.png

Valve has given a demonstration with SteamVR on Linux, but they have yet to release anything to the public.

The OSVR SDK and the OSVR HDK2 work on Linux. But only with their core SDK. Their unity plugin and their unreal engine plugin still do not work on Linux. So far I haven't found an application with OSVR SDK support that works on linux.

Yes, but this server application was only introduced with the DK2 and the 0.4.x SDK which was delivered after the facebook acquisition. Whether they would have hold back the source code without facebook - who the hell knows?

The user will have to have steam running and steamvr installed.

The developers only link to the libopenvr_api library found on github and can distribute their game including this library on whatever store they like.

It's certainly not a good situation that the user still needs steam, but the games themselves can really be sold and distributed anywhere.

Unfortunately it doesn't matter much - The Vive will likely soon get Linux support, but all the Oculus games will remain exclusive to Windows, because that's the only operating system Oculus supports - even though most of the popular game engines used for VR do have a Linux version.

Before the facebook acquisition you could download the source code for the SDK and it had cross platform support.

After Facebook: Closed Source, Windows-only.

You don't really want your sister scrolling through the news with you when you're on the train. But you might be totally happy to have her sitting next to you in a flowery meadow in VR while you both catch up on your news feed.

You mean when she's not on the train too? That's not going to happen anytime soon, because mobile networks are far too crappy. On public transport in a major city in germany I regularly get latencies of 60+ seconds (yes, seconds) and a bandwidth of a few kilobytes/s max. There are also spots where you don't get any connection at all or you get a connection but it's so congested that you can't even make a DNS request that doesn't time out. Yes, I'm still talking about the middle of a big city. That's on the Eplus/O2 network.

You could... return it? I thought they were very clear it wasn't refundable and there were some discussions in the forums about it with some negative quotes from the customer support...

I won't send them more money unless they're going to support Linux.

Careful, they already said they support linux with the dk2 and we know how that went. Don't rely on what they say they "are going to do". Only buy it when they demonstrate complete and fully working linux support, not earlier.

The problem is that most AAA games that are benchmarked on Linux vs Windows are 3rd party ports for a tiny minority among the customers. They put as little resources as possible into the ports, that's just enough to deliver something that is well playable.

Once you can compare an engine/game that has been optimized for OpenGL with equal effort than for D3D, then you can make a fair comparison.

But it's true, OpenGL drivers are often worse. Not just on Linux. Look at what happened when RAGE came out. Presumably that's also only because drivers for D3D are optimized and hacked on much, much more because there are so many AAA games that use it.

That there are already cases where AAA games run at times better on Linux than on Windows, even through a wrapper, is a very, very good sign for the performance to come if only a little more effort is put into the drivers and ports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZYIa-6UooM

That said, Unity and Unreal are the engines that matter most for VR right now. Both have linux versions. Unity 5.3 was recently released and they have updated their OpenGL backend significantly. I've not seen benchmarks yet...

I have no enthusiasm left for Oculus.

But if you're browsing HN because you're a hacker / developer / dreamer you are crazy to discount how substantial this release is (especially if you haven't TRIED it yet!).

I bought a Rift DK2, because they said that they support linux. Their linux support was never complete and always pretty bad, especially mesa support was always buggy. So I haven't seen much in the DK2 until I sold it after oculus dropped linux support.

Enthusiasm for VR is still there, but for oculus? They didn't deliver what they promised for their DK2. The only good thing is that - unlike with the DK2 - linux users know for sure not to buy it now.

Maybe Valve will get it right with Steam OS.

What's wrong with 3d rendered avatars? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zP0E2atshw

Our mission isn’t to connect a billion people, it’s to connect everyone in the world.

I wonder whether he is aware that Oculus has been moving away from that goal for a while now. They are now a company that works with Microsoft, AMD and nvidia on Windows-exclusive APIs and have dropped support for all other operating systems.

That's why all "social" VR applications for the Oculus Rift are a joke. Sure, you can get together in VR. But only when you use windows and only with other windows users. Zuckerberg says he wants to connect everyone. Right now Oculus is working on connecting Windows users exclusively. I wonder what Zuckerberg thinks about his newly acquired company acting this way.

It fits then that Oculus partnered with Microsoft, cut out support for all operating systems except windows, cut back their source code releases and are working with Microsoft, AMD and nvidia on windows-exclusive proprietary (and as of now secret NDA'ed) APIs.

I think a world in which technology is a black box that is controlled by corporations by means of proprietary software WAS Bill Gates' vision for Microsoft.

Alternatively "Oculus Rift SDK gets tied to proprietary windows-only APIs".

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

- Edsger W. Dijkstra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmeDzx4SUME

It will be quite a turn if they switch tunes to "D3D has better tech, but GL still wins because of politics! Yay!"

What are you actually comparing? Yet to be released DirectX12 v.s. OpenGL 4.4? Or v.s. what will actually "compete" against it, once it is actually released and used, OpenGL 4.5 or 5.0? Are you just assuming future versions will be worse than Direct3D? "used to cry"? That sounds all very fair and objective.

If you care about graphical performance, then OpenGL is simply not up to the task.

I'm always confused when people say stuff like that.

1. Random forum user says "OpenGL is not up to the task". 2. AAA game developers says "That the Linux version runs faster than the Windows version (270.6) seems a little counter-intuitive, given the greater amount of time we have spent on the Windows version. However, it does speak to the underlying efficiency of the kernel and OpenGL." http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

Who do I believe?

There is functionally no chance of that software bug ever getting patched; card vendors don't care about older versions of their technology,

Isn't it interesting that not more developers are pushing for open source drivers? Try finding a GLSL compiler bug in mesa and asking in #dri-devel on freenode or bugs.freedesktop.org. There you most likely get a very quick and helpful reply.

Notice that you write 0.9... with dots instead of just writing the number... because it isn't a "normal" number. Of course I agree, it approaches 1 for any number of digits. But infinitely many digits are not a number of digits.

Please, define the exact meaning of the ... you use.

ARMv7 w/o NEON

Several of Google's own google apps depend on native libraries. Try to install google apps for android 4.2+ on a device without neon like tegra2 and see how many of them actually work and how many crash with SIGILL.

Ah, it's this "why not wine" article.

I truly do feel that emulation of some sort is a proper technical direction for gaming on Linux. It is obviously pragmatic in the range of possible support, but it shouldn’t have the technical stigma that it does.

That might be a valid point if wine's windows support was like FreeBSD's linux compatibility layer. But it isn't... It is a massive pile of API translation layers and libraries reverse engineered from a huge closed source proprietary moving target. It's a hacky workaround and I couldn't believe he is actually saying reverse engineering windows is a "proper direction" that "shouldn't have a technical stigma".

kolourpaint from KDE. It's basically a clone with more features.

https://vidd.me/kAU

I did a quick check: It also does resizing with several choosable smoothing algorithms and the "perfect shape" thingy too..

free video streaming for all*

*limited to customers of microsoft and apple. Excluding everything that is not windows or mac os. Also, android.

Video editing is one of the few things that Linux really can't do well.

That's one of these bullshit blanket statements. Linux doesn't do video editing because it is an operating system. Its job is to provide a base for applications like video editors to run on. And video editors run no worse on linux than on other operating systems. A few seconds with google brings you a lot of articles about how well video editing works on linux: http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/linux-hollywoo...

What you meant to say is that the open source, freeware and consumer level video editors are lacking a bit.

In chromium I have a feeling the reactions are a little bit late. In firefox it's better I think.

Hit areas of the pipes are a little bit too big. Or it's too fast to see what happens. edit: Pretty sure there's something either wrong or unexpected behavior in the game.

Way too loud at default volume

No volume controls

Sure, but why make the commitment to build your whole thing windows-only when you are only a tiny bit away from actually doing it platform independent. Like, for having options in the future, and stuff.

You surely meant the concept of "free software", right? RIGHT?

Wow, literally everything you say is false.

The world of Google and Apple (Samsung and FOSS aren't even a player) is a world of closed computing platforms

As a user of Omnirom and a donator to Replicant I don't understand how you come to this conclusion.

Agreed, the alternatives to google apps are not too good today, but that could relatively easily be changed. But if compared to windows phone. Really? How?

where people can't control their own devices

If installing a different operating system with the tools from the official SDK is not controlling my own devices, what is?

Again, the proprietary drivers is a bad situation, but compared to windows phone, what exactly do they more openly?

and can't and don't code for them.

All the tools required to build apks are open source. The eclipse android plugin was open source and android studio is open source. Enabling installing your own apps directly is natively built in and can literally be enabled in seconds. If you "can't and don't code for" android even if you want, then there is really nobody but yourself to blame.

More languages? I don't think so. How many languages can you use to write apps for your iPhone or Android device?

As others have said, you may want to use android's gui toolkit, but other than that native applications can rather easily be wrapped. As it is linux, you may even run command line programs in any language you can compile for arm or compile an interpreter for directly.

Objective C and Java respectively and that's about it.

Have you actually heard about xamarin'c c# for mobile devices? python + kivy? ...?

With Google not only do you not control your apps/device

Well, I can compile the operating system myself and remove any apps I don't like in the process. I could also remove them from the device because I have root rights. There is literally nothing but the proprietary drivers and firmware I don't control, but again, how exactly does that get better with windows phone?

even your data isn't under your control any more.

I use the google apps for convenience but you can use your android device without them perfectly fine. Install f-droid. Install only open source apps. Try doing this with windows phone?

Yes, Microsoft's business practices weren't so great, but I don't agree the new world is much better.

With android being open source you can see the benefits directly: Other systems like Blackberry OS (or whatever it is called) or Sailfish OS can (rather) easily implement android's runtime and run almost all android apps natively. Compare this with what wine has to do?

As a developer it actually feels worse.

It feels worse not to have proprietary microsoft specific tools that lock you into the microsoft ecosystem forever?

XBox is a fantastic product, all things considered.

Fantastic in what regard? Can I put my favorite linux distribution on it? Can I even write and release software for it under GPL? Without "applying" to microsoft and waiting for them to "approve" it?

Maybe it's just me but I don't really see why I should buy hardware that is 100% controlled by microsoft when it can't do anything that a general purpose computer couldn't do...