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SteamVR beta updated to fix a radv crash and 'fixes' Vive Pro on Linux

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A small SteamVR beta is out that fixes an OpenGL crash with the AMD radv drivers and it also fixes support for the Vive Pro on Linux.

Here's what's changed:

SteamVR Home

  • Fixed large PNG backgrounds failing to load

Linux

  • Fixed a crash with OpenGL clients on recent radv drivers
  • Fixed Vive Pro support 

As pointed out in our comments, it's a little odd mentioning OpenGL and radv, since radv is the Vulkan driver. Essentially, even OpenGL games will end up hooking into Vulkan with SteamVR.

It's interesting that they say they "Fixed Vive Pro support", going over past changelogs it seems this is the first time the Vive Pro has even been mentioned in relation to Linux. This is good to know for those who can afford it that you will be able to use it on Linux. See more about the Vive Pro here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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AzP Mar 8, 2018
Quoting: haagchThe SteamVR compositor runs exclusively with Vulkan (on the radv driver). If you start an OpenGL SteamVR application, it submits frames (as OpenGL ids) to the SteamVR compositor which then uses the EXT_external_objects OpenGL extension to import the frame into its own Vulkan context.

Apparently something in radv broke recently so that didn't work anymore and it segfaulted instead. Bug report over there: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/issues/97
The segfault happened in
#1  0x00007fffe827a2fe in CSharedBufferLinux::CreateVulkanBufferForExport(void*, void*, unsigned long, unsigned int, bool) ()
   from /home/chris/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/vrclient.so

which is closed source so there's not much more info to be found what actually went wrong.

Vulkan SteamVR applications were not affected, it looks like it was specifically a problem with the OpenGL interop.

Thanks, very informative walk-through!
Creak Mar 8, 2018
Quoting: TheRiddickYeah screendoor is a issue. In all honestly I would probably wait for the 4k helmets anyway, one coming out later this year already (they advertise it as 8k but yeah, that's marketing BS). PIMAX is the brand. I'll wait for reviews. Not sure if a 1080ti is enough for it however...
Linus Tech Tips made a video about the PIMAX VR headset:
View video on youtube.com
Creak Mar 8, 2018
Quoting: muellThere is no radv OpenGL driver and apparently you're blindly copying release announcements.
Gosh! people can be so disrespectful on Internet...
beniwtv Mar 8, 2018
@liamdawe

Fixed a crash with OpenGL clients on recent radv drivers

This is not odd at all - OpenGL VR games will submit their rendered frames to SteamVR, which will then display them on the HMD. Both OpenGL and Vulkan have interoperability extensions to make this possible.

This broke, so if you tried to play an OpenGL VR game, it would crash. This now has been fixed.
Liam Dawe Mar 8, 2018
Quoting: beniwtv@liamdawe

Fixed a crash with OpenGL clients on recent radv drivers

This is not odd at all - OpenGL VR games will submit their rendered frames to SteamVR, which will then display them on the HMD. Both OpenGL and Vulkan have interoperability extensions to make this possible.

This broke, so if you tried to play an OpenGL VR game, it would crash. This now has been fixed.
Yep, I was thrown off by the comments complaining when it's been pointed out by others that it's actually a thing (like you said too). It's easy to get confused on the technical stuff when a) You're not an AMD user and b) You don't have VR hardware and then you have people saying you're wrong in comments...

Today I learnt something though, that even OpenGL games in VR will end up using Vulkan due to this :)

Edit: Hopefully my minor adjustment to the article text makes it clearer.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 8 March 2018 at 3:38 pm UTC
Disharmonic Mar 8, 2018
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They still haven't announced a price for it? I expect it will launch around 800-900€ like the original Vive. If it's more i don't see how they could compete with the cheaper Rift and PSVR despite the extra features.

Quoting: CreakLinus Tech Tips made a video about the PIMAX VR headset:
Ppl still take youtubers seriously?
slaapliedje Mar 8, 2018
Quoting: Creak
Quoting: muellThere is no radv OpenGL driver and apparently you're blindly copying release announcements.
Gosh! people can be so disrespectful on Internet...

Hi, welcome to the Internet. On the one hand you do have a lot of 'journalists' that just copy and paste each other. On the other hand you have assholes who point that out. Now normally when there is serious news going on and a journalist or groups of them post the wrong information because they all copied from someone who didn't check their sources, then you have tech blogs who pretty much just copy from each other, that's just the way it works.
Creak Mar 8, 2018
Quoting: DisharmonicPpl still take youtubers seriously?
Not all the youtubers are bad, I'm following a couple of dozens of them.
Liam Dawe Mar 8, 2018
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Creak
Quoting: muellThere is no radv OpenGL driver and apparently you're blindly copying release announcements.
Gosh! people can be so disrespectful on Internet...

Hi, welcome to the Internet. On the one hand you do have a lot of 'journalists' that just copy and paste each other. On the other hand you have assholes who point that out. Now normally when there is serious news going on and a journalist or groups of them post the wrong information because they all copied from someone who didn't check their sources, then you have tech blogs who pretty much just copy from each other, that's just the way it works.
While that does happen, this is a case of me quoting the source and the source (Valve) was correct. It was just people moaning in our comments when they themselves clearly didn't know either. As I said before, I could have been clearer, but hopefully it's clear now :)
roothorick Mar 9, 2018
Quoting: coesetaI will definitely get the Vive pro.

Btw I understand Liams mistake with the AMD stuff. I sitll don't get it. With nvidia you have proprietary and open source. With AMD it feels like you have to install 3 different things out of 20 or something. At some point I should really take my time and look into that stuff :)

From a layman's perspective it really isn't that bad. All an end user with a Vega or Polaris card should care about in the current state of the ecosystem is amdgpu (modesetting/X/DRM), radeonsi (OpenGL), and radv (Vulkan). Usually, your distro already has everything sorted and working in harmony, making the whole thing basically just implementation details.
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