Linux's Odd World Of Virtual Reality Window Managers

25 Comments

1. VR headsets are just getting good enough for this. An index looks good with games but like ass with text. With the bigscreen headset maybe this will pick up. I use immersed on my quest 2 but since it is a wireless headset text looks like ass. Also immersed just puts a screen in a VR space.

2. Decided to look at 2nd hand htc vive's (og) last week and pulled the trigger over the weekend. Only cost £110 for a full kit, including base stations and controllers. I've got a decent spec machine to run it on, so it should be fairly easy to run. The thought of running a desktop on the crappy 1200×1080 screens would probably make my eyes bleed but if I had something like a 2400×2400 I'd probably consisder it. Having said that I'm not sure how my neck would be after a full day of work with a headset on!

   I'm certainly looking to completely replace my monitors at the earliest opportunity but honestly think we're going to need GPU's that can cope with much higher resolution displays – anything over 3000×3000 per eye at 120hz would probably be a level where it becomes an enjoyable experience. I think that's probably the direction apple is moving towards.

   I think the future for VR desktops is very very bright. It's just a matter of time before we've ironed out what works best and someone creates a system which is widely accepted by the VR community. Imagine how fluid everything we do currently could be with a much more naturally organised interface that we can work with directly using VR controlllers, voice recognition and intergrated (hopefully opensource) AI assistants

3. 2:43 It looks like their scripting language is Haskell.

4. I've been messing with VR on Linux for a bit now it's jank but works. Would love to help out on 1 of these projects @ somepoint

5. I don't get the point of this. Right now just looks like a cheesy SF movie. I think we need to get deeper into it before folks start doing new, great things with the idea of a VR desktop.

6. Mos people… Use windows

7. Would love to see a video about 'newWM'. I think it's great and also fits the topic of "unusual ways of using Linux".

8. This is Wanna Be Zero Cool hacker teenage ninja Turtle..VR Sucks…im not a Lanmower Man from 90s…

9. There are two main reason I wouldn't consider using a VR window manager yet: 1) VR headsets don't have the resolution to do really good text yet, 2) Current VR headsets are simply too heavy
   (some AR devices like Tilt Five are sorta lightweight enough, but still have problem #1 and that sort of AR has limited contrast by it's nature)

10. VR is a complete separate paradigm like transition from cli to gui… Running traditional windows in 3d environment is like using terminal emulator in gui desktop, u can do things but not taking advantage gui….. There should be exploration for interfaces in the new paradigm… Let's hope the community takes lead in this before some proprietary software takes over 🙂

11. glad to see the "blazingly fast" ethos spread through the youtube space 😀

12. I see a lot of epople tossing the word "Infinite" around to describe the space and the windows. People tend to forget that everything you do requires memory and without that, if you expect a 16GiB RAM kit to give you all of this glorious VR stuff then you're living a dream I want to be in. Unfortunately that's not happening fam.

    You still need an obnoxious amount of RAM in order to do this — 64GiB at least! And RAM isn't cheap. So VR / AR is still better off for niche applications and the odd gaming session, but seriously do not expect XR desktops to be a thing in the near-future unless DRAM production facilitates cheaper RAM pricing

13. Omg thank you for making this vid, VR Linux usage is so much fun!!

    If you haven't tried VR on Linux yet, please do get yourself a valve index and it's so much fun and works…. Well not as well as in windows obviously, but it works surprisingly well.

14. I'm less interested in VR headsets for productivity and more interested in the idea of non-vision-blocking AR glasses for conveniences like text translation looking things up about stuff that you can see, displaying media as you move without having to look at a screen etc. I use a TV most of the time for my non-work computing and it would be super cool to be able to replace a second screen by having windows float around my TV instead of doing window management or using other screens like the laptop screen. Like imagine you sit at your couch with a TV and a bluetooth keyboard but you have software on the PC driving the stuff on the display so that you can send windows to your glasses so they float around the TV giving you more space. Like you could have a whole fullscreen video on your TV while you write code over to left, then launch a browser on the right to look something up. And you launch it from something like a rofi or dmenu that shows up either in your upper or lower peripheral, etc. Then you could get up and take a screen with you that works like a touch screen floating in the air in front of you. Idk I'm kinda just making up ideas at this point. I guess my point was just the idea of integrating stuff with reality rather isolating yourself from reality by blocking your vision and generating a "virtual reality". Like I guess what I'm saying is that would rather have glasses that can spoof the idea of running software as holograms before a fully immersive VR experience. I would love to stop pulling out a phone or being stuck at a PC for certain computing tasks and for the things that require sitting in front of a keyboard, extend the experience and replace hardware in the room with virtual screens, HUDs, etc. You could also like share stuff directly to other people's AR vision instead of like awkwardly trying to show a group of people your phone screen when talking about a meme or funny cat video or whatever. I think that's the direction in which I would like this kind of tech to go.

15. I think if it was done well, it could be extremely useful. Watch YouTube like it's a movie theatre, have an infinite number of windows open at once, organize however you want, 3D navigation, etc, etc. Could be really awesome as long as there are good ways to manage everything and the freedom to make use of the full potential of it.

16. I don't understand. I have a VR headset, but the idea of having a VR workspace complete with a window manager? Text is far too small for a VR headset to accommodate reading most text as it is currently laid out, let alone the issue of "where the fuck is my keyboard?" and a controller pointer is a sad substitute for a mouse. What's the use?

17. I don't even know what VR is.

18. Google glass concept would work well for VR like this

19. Since the SimulaVR Github page is slightly outdated and information regarding VR on Linux is generally not super easy to find, it's worth noting that OpenHMD is pretty much dead, and the Rift S driver has since been ported over to Monado. Like all headsets with built-in cameras on Monado, it supports full inside-out tracking and hand tracking, but no controller tracking yet. Monado can actually do inside-out and hand tracking on Index as well, no Lighthouse required, though Lighthouse tracking is more precise and stable.

20. VR desktops: Bring your eye strain to the next level!

21. Shit, announcement, ALL SLAVS now in war with the USA and Joe Biden. Wants via Zelensky to destroy all of Eastern Europe.

22. You just gotta flex your arch install like it’s a Bugatti and say water funny and you got it.

23. The modular nature of Linux-based systems will surely allow these things. I also had an idea about making something like this, but I didn't know they already exist.
    Hats off to the developers, looks wonderful ❤️

24. 2:41
    GODOT??.
    Man this is really epic
    Godot is being used for a lot of stuff these days
    It's my favourite game engine

25. This would pair EXTREMELY well with the upcoming Somnuim One. FOSS Headset, FOSS Desktop, FOSS OS, FOSS everything. 😎

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