Random broken things and weird tinkering to get some things working. And even when they work, not quite as good as windows.
Most overlays don’t work because they are tied to windows specific windows capture things. On KDE wayland, the default “view desktop” from SteamVR doesnt even work.
But if youre looking for some very chill things, it’s generally passable. I’ve been playing beat saber, which is fast paced (at least for the hand tracking) and proton handles it perfectly. From what I can tell, proton can handle VR games just fine, there’s just some work to clean up the SteamVR interface in general.
I’m still delusionally hoping that the Valve Deckard is shipping soon and that when that drops, there will be a big SteamVR 3 linux update (kinda like how SteamOS 3 came out with the steam deck), and the headset will run linux itself so naturally they will have to ship all their linux VR improvements, and we’ll see linux VR suddenly become mega viable.
tl;dr - working, depending on your level of tolerance for slight jank, and what games you want to play.
The other posters seem to have bad experiences, so I’ll chip in with my more positive report @Kraiden@kbin.earth. TBH I was expecting VR not to work all that well, but I was keen to try so I bought a second-hand HTC Vive, the very first model. Picked one up for €280 on ebay, which is a typical price or was two years ago.
I was pleasantly surprised by how well most VR titles work. TBH I pretty much only play VR now. I always check ProtonDB before buying any game, which is a good idea in general but especially so for VR. The VR games I play most are Elite: Dangerous, Skyrim, Dirt Rally 2, Half Life 2 (a free VR mod is available on Steam), IL2 Sturmovik (a WWII flight sim) and Pistol Whip. VRChat works great as well. I’ve got a little way into HalfLife Alyx, but put it down because reloading guns in the dark is too much to handle whilst simultaneously being attacked by zombies with headcrabs. That’s not a Linux issue, just me struggling to remember the reload process under pressure. I have played a fair bit of No Man’s Sky, but performance is pretty awful. I’ll be trying it again after reading this news about improved support for it, but I’m not expecting much TBH as VR apparently has poor performance under Windows too. I’ve got about 5 or 6 other VR games which all work fine but just don’t grab me.
I can’t think of any games that have issues - only thing I can think of is the free VR Labs “game” made by Valve, which has an “Item Shop” zone which has never worked. Every other part of it works perfectly though.
Of course, the OG Vive is definitely showing its age, with a very noticeable screen-door effect - it’s like playing games in really low resolution. So I will probably upgrade soon - there have been rumours about a new headset from Valve - the Deckard - if that does make an appearance it might be my cue to reach for the wallet, because the other well-supported headset is the Valve Index, which is getting kinda old now (it’d still be a lot better than my Vive of course). Well, actually there is also the gen 1 Vive Pro.
No other headsets have native support in Linux - you have to mess around with Monado or ALVR - this may well be why the other posters have had poor experiences. To reiterate, your best bets for VR on Linux are the OG HTC Vive, the gen 1 Vive Pro or the Valve Index.
Cool! What’s VR on Linux like generally? I’d like to get a headset again, but not if it means going back to Windows
Random broken things and weird tinkering to get some things working. And even when they work, not quite as good as windows.
Most overlays don’t work because they are tied to windows specific windows capture things. On KDE wayland, the default “view desktop” from SteamVR doesnt even work.
But if youre looking for some very chill things, it’s generally passable. I’ve been playing beat saber, which is fast paced (at least for the hand tracking) and proton handles it perfectly. From what I can tell, proton can handle VR games just fine, there’s just some work to clean up the SteamVR interface in general.
I’m still delusionally hoping that the Valve Deckard is shipping soon and that when that drops, there will be a big SteamVR 3 linux update (kinda like how SteamOS 3 came out with the steam deck), and the headset will run linux itself so naturally they will have to ship all their linux VR improvements, and we’ll see linux VR suddenly become mega viable.
tl;dr - working, depending on your level of tolerance for slight jank, and what games you want to play.
I too would like to know!
The other posters seem to have bad experiences, so I’ll chip in with my more positive report @Kraiden@kbin.earth. TBH I was expecting VR not to work all that well, but I was keen to try so I bought a second-hand HTC Vive, the very first model. Picked one up for €280 on ebay, which is a typical price or was two years ago.
I was pleasantly surprised by how well most VR titles work. TBH I pretty much only play VR now. I always check ProtonDB before buying any game, which is a good idea in general but especially so for VR. The VR games I play most are Elite: Dangerous, Skyrim, Dirt Rally 2, Half Life 2 (a free VR mod is available on Steam), IL2 Sturmovik (a WWII flight sim) and Pistol Whip. VRChat works great as well. I’ve got a little way into HalfLife Alyx, but put it down because reloading guns in the dark is too much to handle whilst simultaneously being attacked by zombies with headcrabs. That’s not a Linux issue, just me struggling to remember the reload process under pressure. I have played a fair bit of No Man’s Sky, but performance is pretty awful. I’ll be trying it again after reading this news about improved support for it, but I’m not expecting much TBH as VR apparently has poor performance under Windows too. I’ve got about 5 or 6 other VR games which all work fine but just don’t grab me.
I can’t think of any games that have issues - only thing I can think of is the free VR Labs “game” made by Valve, which has an “Item Shop” zone which has never worked. Every other part of it works perfectly though.
Of course, the OG Vive is definitely showing its age, with a very noticeable screen-door effect - it’s like playing games in really low resolution. So I will probably upgrade soon - there have been rumours about a new headset from Valve - the Deckard - if that does make an appearance it might be my cue to reach for the wallet, because the other well-supported headset is the Valve Index, which is getting kinda old now (it’d still be a lot better than my Vive of course). Well, actually there is also the gen 1 Vive Pro.
No other headsets have native support in Linux - you have to mess around with Monado or ALVR - this may well be why the other posters have had poor experiences. To reiterate, your best bets for VR on Linux are the OG HTC Vive, the gen 1 Vive Pro or the Valve Index.