I totally get why Valve is doing this. They haven't been able to get as much traction as they would like on SteamOS (arguably because they haven't put the effort that it requires). So they're doing this to continue to apply pressure on MS not to close down their platform with Windows Store. This is a medium term fix, it doesn't promote cross platform development, it promotes laziness. If developers do not have to think about cross platform compatibility, then simply, they will not.

It's a good move for Valve. They get to keep up pressure on MS with minimal effort on their part. It will be good for some gamers who get to play games that they might not have gotten to play otherwise. I question if it will be a good long term benefit for Linux. I worry that Feral (and Aspyr) will be harmed by this, which can't be good for our community.

Still, I'm happy for people who feel that they couldn't play some of these games before and can now. I will hold out hope that we continue to make gains in cross platform tools and that this is only a band-aide rather than a crutch.

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I just got a laptop with Optimus and was bummed to find out (the hard way) that bumblebee doesn't support Vulkan. Hopefully this solution will.

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I’ve played through the first section of the game (havent had more than about an hour to test so far). It runs really well, and it just worked the first time I booted it up. There seems to be a bug where I cannot adjust the settings right now (game crashes if I do), but the defaults are fine. Croteam has done an excellent job, and I’m really looking forward to having more time to play. I couldn’t have been happier to pay for it, and would have done so even without the discount.

Valve should be making noise about this one, it’s a room-scale 60+ hour game running natively in Linux on launch day! This is the dream here, hopefully more development teams follow their example.

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Quoting: BeamboomOh I need no sales pitches on VR in itself, I'm sold on the idea since I first saw the Star Trek holodeck when I was a kid.

It's VR on Linux I am trying to stay updated on. The Vive only gets cheaper while I wait, and without games to play or proper performance it's worth waiting.

Regarding movement: Do I HAVE to use the room tracking, can't we use just the head gear and the two controls while sitting?

There are games that are designed for sitting with a controller, and those games work quite well. It's not on Linux, but I have played a bunch of Subnautica, which is a seated/controller experience and it knocks my socks off. My most incredible experiences in VR are roomscale, but I've also played a obscene amount of Elite Dangerous which is a seated experience as well. But of course you're looking purely at Linux, so that might not be terribly helpful information.

I'll reiterate my previous advice: I don't think VR is ready for a pure Linux user. There are too few good games and too many technical bugs. Now if you'll be happy with only a couple of games, Croteam is working hard to give them to you (and they should be commended for their effort).

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@Beamboom
Yep, I've been a Vive owner for about a year, and a Linux user for about two decades.

The Vive: Is amazing. VR is not overhyped, but it's absolutely true that you have to see it to believe it. The best analogy I've come up with, which isn't great, is that it's the difference between seeing a picture of the Eiffel Tower, and actually going to the Eiffel Tower. Really night and day. I'd call the current state of game offering for VR ok. There are couple of amazing experiences that are mostly tech demo's and lack replayability. There are a couple of excellent games, which tend to be "short" when compared to traditional desktop titles. I've played a TON of Elite Dangerous (which people but thousands of hours into). If anyone compares roomscale VR to daydream or 360 video stuff that samsung is pushing, don't listen to them, they don't know what they're talking about. They are not remotely the same experience.

Vive on Linux: Needs more work. Valve has been waiting for Vulkan to get full swing before they spend too much time polishing the experience. I've got Arch running on an Intel with a 1080, so I'm about as close to a fully compatible with the latest Vulkan drivers as I can be. It works, but it's not pretty. Performance is acceptable, by which I mean that most of the time, with the right settings I get enough framerate to have a smooth experience (framerate is super important for VR), but I still get stutter. There have been a lot of improvements since its initial release, so I've got high hopes that we'll see parity with Windows performance. There seem to be a lot of games that claim to support VR on Linux, a lot more than the last time I looked. I've only got a couple, the best of which is Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter.

To sum up: VR is, in my opinion, entirely amazing. If someone is giving you an opinion on VR make sure they've actually used it, because it really is one of those things that requires experience to appreciate or understand. I hear a lot of people talk down on it, and frequently they've never touched a Vive, but they're really sold on the idea of AR or Mixed Reality, both of which are cool, but do not negate the excellent of a roomscale VR experience. I would not, at this time, purchase a Vive to use exclusively on Linux. At the current rate I wouldn't expect a polished experience for another year. However, if you don't mind using Windows as well as Linux, I highly recommend getting into VR as soon as you can afford to.

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Serious Sam is one of the few Steam VR experiences that has worked well for me in Linux. I am as excited about Talos Principle VR as any VR experience I've had so far.

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: bubexelI will talk about my experience with vive on linux, its really fustrating.

Thanks alot for that report, Bubexel. I really hope others with the gear can keep me posted too - I'm very very eager to hear the progress on this work.

Personally I'm aiming for a purchase when the SteamVR package runs well on Linux (as it will eventually, that I am sure of) and when there are at least a handful interesting games to play.
But in my estimation that may already be this summer. Let's hope for a rainy cold summer season this year :)

But yeah, hope to hear from more Vive owners about their experience! Eventually in a DM if you don't want to spam the comments here.

Another anecdote here:

It's buggy but functional. Right now Destinations and Serious Sam VR: First Encounter are the two game I'm aware of that are confirmed working (dota2 VR works, but is for spectating only). Destinations has some performance challenges from what little I've tried so far (compared to windows). Serious Sam was working great. Full functionality and good performance. Croteam seems to have their shit together.

Given the current state of things I suspect that we've got at least 6 months of buggy (yet playable) beta before we're in a stable state.

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Shogun 2 is a fantastic game and I've been hoping for a long time to get a port. Excellent news.

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I don't know what the root problem is, but I'm starting to suspect it's GoG. There have been several games now (that I know of) where the patches have come to GoG much later than, for example, Steam. It's starting to feel like a trend to me and I have to wonder if the back end management of GoG is making things very difficult for developers/publishers.

That being said, in this case it's very hard to tell whats going on because the developers appear to be babbling incoherently.

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I hope GabeN reads these articles and decides to take put more resources to improving SteamOS.

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