Linux Gets An Open-Source VR Desktop, Built Off OpenHMD

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Gets An Open-Source VR Desktop, Built Off OpenHMD

Remember Arcan, the open-source game engine powered display server? This project that has been going strong for several years now and began venturing into VR has now announced what we believe to be the first open-source VR Linux desktop environment...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Safespaces-VR-Desktop

[makam]

Definitely yay. Word of this needs to spread.

[guildem]

Why not, but with a headset on, hard to keep track of our fingers on the keyboard. Event if I almose never look my hands when I use my keyboard, sometimes, a single quick look to reset my hands, or find a special key (volume, calc, print, ...) is necessary.

I think this kind of interfaces will have better use on future AR headsets. VR is more usable with special peripherals (why not a virtual keyboard synced with the real one ? ).

[Misel]

If I'm ever going to replace my 5 screen desktop than with this

[ssokolow]

Why not, but with a headset on, hard to keep track of our fingers on the keyboard. Event if I almose never look my hands when I use my keyboard, sometimes, a single quick look to reset my hands, or find a special key (volume, calc, print, ...) is necessary.

That's what the moulded bumps on F and J are for. While I admit I don't currently use them that way, I could see myself building that habit.

[devius]

Hell yeah, Super Castlevania IV!

[haagch]

The Vive has a camera at the front (and the Vive Pro has 2) which can show an overlay of the camera image with SteamVR. It's a pretty cool overlay that uses edge detection and is definitely useful for looking at the keyboard and the fingers but a bit cumbersome to use. I'm envisioning a UI where you "draw" a rectangle around your keyboard with a controller so the VR runtime knows and remembers where your keyboard is and whenever the application wants text input, it could show this "window" into the real world with the camera overlay.

[makam]

The Vive has a camera at the front (and the Vive Pro has 2) which can show an overlay of the camera image with SteamVR. It's a pretty cool overlay that uses edge detection and is definitely useful for looking at the keyboard and the fingers but a bit cumbersome to use. I'm envisioning a UI where you "draw" a rectangle around your keyboard with a controller so the VR runtime knows and remembers where your keyboard is and whenever the application wants text input, it could show this "window" into the real world with the camera overlay.

The problem with that is that you are using a camera and a display to show what the user could just see with his eyes without said camera and display. The end result adds latency and thus it will further complicate brain-hand coordination. This is why for AR it is better to have transparent displays lige Googles glass and similar are better. While we are at it I am much more excited about AR than VR.

[M@yeulC]

This is definitely something I've been waiting for. Ideally, I would like not to have a screen, but just a HMD or something like this, to display a big number of virtual ones.

I did not know about this project, though. The one I've been keeping an eye on is SimulaVR: https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula

But I don't have any VR headset for now, anyway (I probably won't before a few more generations of AR/VR headsets).

[guildem]

If I'm ever going to replace my 5 screen desktop than with this

Try a seven screen desktop, much much better (but a nightmare to configure !!)