Valve Rolls Out A SteamVR Performance Benchmark

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve Rolls Out A SteamVR Performance Benchmark

Valve today announced the release of a free program for measuring the performance potential of your system for SteamVR to see if your system can handle the number of emerging VR products. Unfortunately, for now at least, the test is Windows-only...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SteamVR-Performance-Test

[haagch]

When you click on requirements: http://www.htcvive.com/us/product-optimized/#

RECOMMENDED PC SPECS

GPU: - NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 970 / AMD Radeon™ R9 290 equivalent or greater
CPU: - Intel® i5-4590 / AMD FX 8350 equivalent or greater
RAM: - 4GB+
Video Output: - HDMI 1.4 or DisplayPort 1.2 or newer
USB Port: - 1x USB 2.0 or greater port
Operating System: - Windows 7 SP1 or newer

No mention of Linux.

But about a week ago they added a binary for the SteamVR compositor to SteamVR on linux: SteamApps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/vrcompositor. It doesn't actually work, I think, but at least they appear to be working on it.

[Maxjen]

But about a week ago they added a binary for the SteamVR compositor to SteamVR on linux: SteamApps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/vrcompositor. It doesn't actually work, I think, but at least they appear to be working on it.

That is good to hear. I am not very hopeful that the Linux support will be there for the release, but knowing that it is coming eventually is enough for me to buy the thing and reluctantly use it on Windows until then.

[schmidtbag]

SteamVR in general is a mess on Linux. For me personally, it fails to run without any error message.

[hagda]

Is SteamVR on Linux gonna effectively require Vulkan or are they gonna support SteamVR-over-OpenGL as well?

[mike4]

Well maybe with Vulkan I wouldn't need to buy a GTX970. Anyway there seems no Linux VR game for launch, hence no problem to wait a little.

[M1kkko]

Is SteamVR on Linux gonna effectively require Vulkan or are they gonna support SteamVR-over-OpenGL as well?

I don't immediately see why the rendering API should matter at all. Why would a VR headset care if the pixels it's showing on its display are rendered with Vulkan or OpenGL?

[rabcor]

This attitude makes you wonder if they lost interest in Linux and SteamOS...

I don't immediately see why the rendering API should matter at all. Why would a VR headset care if the pixels it's showing on its display are rendered with Vulkan or OpenGL?

It doesn't, but your computer does... You can squeeze more performance out of Vulkan than OpenGL, and that changes everything when you're trying to run high quality games at 90fps which is what is optimal for the VR headset.

[Pecisk]

This attitude makes you wonder if they lost interest in Linux and SteamOS...


It doesn't, but your computer does... You can squeeze more performance out of Vulkan than OpenGL, and that changes everything when you're trying to run high quality games at 90fps which is what is optimal for the VR headset.

We know Linux support for OR is delayed and it is HTC is still mum about details how they will provide support for Vive. So this is no brainer that it makes sense to prioritize such tool for Windows first. I really don't see priority as an issue, Valve is clearly in SteamOS/Steam Machine business for long haul.

[pracedru]

I have bought the Occulus rift and have no issues with the SteamVR on Linux.