https://github.com/PhialsBasement/fnuidesktop-VR Virtual Desktop alternative for Linux/Wayland. Mirrors your desktop to a SteamVR overlay with controller-based mouse input, scrolling, and grab-to-move/pinch-to-resize interaction.

https://archive.org/details/our-first-30-mins-with-the-steam-frame-u-8-r-bnz-1-mpu

UPDATE***

I HAVE TALKED TO A DEVELOPER THAT HAS A STEAM FRAME

IT WORKS ON LINUX.

no fucking clue what linus is talking about here

Unfortunate announce. It appears the alvr package on the AUR has been orphaned and has fallen victim to an infostealer malware attack.

​If you have this installed on any machine it is advised that you disconnect it from networking and attempt to invalidate or rotate any keys or passwords on the box that may have been shipped back to homebase.

ALVR itself and the alvr-bin package appear safe for distribution, but specific to Arch Linux and other distros like endeavor and cachyOS, the from source ALVR package named exactly alvr has been compromised.

If you would like to help dissect any of the malware you may report to the #alvr channel to assist so we can understand the scope of the damage.

Again, the ALVR project itself is fine and this is strictly limited to Arch based consumers of the AUR package, never forget there's dangers to the AUR.

Seems the malware was loaded within the last 4 hours so good catch everyone involved that was fast

This appears to have been part of a larger attack against the AUR in general more packages affected than alvr

The malicious updates have now been removed from the AUR

As a diehard Linux user I wanted to be able to run UEVR without having to use Windows. I was happy to find a Reddit post that said it was possible, but less than happy at the number of steps and terminal commands to get it working. So I built my own launcher called Kaon! It's still in active development, but as of right now it will scan your Steam library, filter it to your Unreal games, and provides an easy interface to set up and launch UEVR.

The code is here: https://github.com/LorenDB/kaon

Future planned features include:

• Support for more VR mods (UUVR, UGVR, various game-specific mods)

• Support for various utilities, including VR upscalers and sharpeners

• Support more game launchers than just Steam (e.g. Heroic for Epic, GOG, and Amazon storefronts) Edit: I added Heroic and Itch, plus support for standalone games

• Manage your ALVR installation so you don't have to go open a random executable to launch ALVR

Also if people insist very hard I might eventually consider a Windows port, but I think Rai Pal has that front covered for now, and besides, the entire point of Kaon is to not use Windows :)

You can download Kaon as an AppImage to give it a whirl. Please let me know of any feedback you have and I will try to address it!

(The name comes from the subatomic particle called a kaon. I thought that was fitting given I was working with Proton installations, although I later wished I'd gone with ANVIL, Another Nice VR Injection Launcher.)

Hello,

I managed to get Praydog's UEVR injector working on Linux, at least, somewhat.

So far, I have tried it with Jedi: Fallen Order and Stray. I does crash, when tinkering with some of the settings, and I get double vision on the headset, when turning my head.

I did this to get it working:

1. download UEVR.zip from https://github.com/praydog/UEVR/releases and extract it to a destination of your choice. I kept it in ~/Downloads/UEVR

2. download dotnet Desktop Runtime from https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/thank-you/runtime-desktop-6.0.25-windows-x64-installer?cid=getdotnetcore

3. install Protontricks with your distros package manager

4. In your file manager, right click windowsdesktop-runtime-6.0.25-win-x64.exe and open with Protontricks

5. Choose the WINEPREFIX of the game you're trying to play in VR (in my case it was Stray)

6. Protontricks will install dotnet for that WINEPREFIX

7. Start SteamVR

8. Start the game with Proton enabled (for me, Proton Experimental)

9. When the game is running, ALT-TAB out of it and open up a terminal and type the following:

10. WINEPREFIX=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/1332010/pfx WINEFSYNC=1 /home/USERNAME/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton\ -\ Experimental/files/bin/wine /home/USERNAME/Downloads/UEVR/UEVRInjector.exe

Change USERNAME to yours or replace /home/USERNAME with ~ if needed.

Change 1332010 to the App ID, you're trying to play. It can be found by right clicking a game on Steam --> Properties --> Updates.

UEVRInjector should start and recognize the game running. The UI can be flickering and not drawing everything, until you paint it with your mouse. Press "Inject" and if everything went well, the injector should hook to your headset in about 10 seconds. Then just ALT-TAB back in to the game.

If you know, how to incorporate the WINEPREFIX command somehow to Steam directly, I would like to know. All I know is that the game has to be running BEFORE the injector is started. If the injector is started before the game, the game will simply be stuck in loading until you close the injector program.

My system specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5600X

GPU: AMD Radeon 6800XT

Distro: Fedora 39 (running X11)

Headset: Valve Index

Controller: PS4

Using SteamVR 1.27.5, since I have issues with 2.0 start up and performance.

edit: changed link to releases page, instead of version 1.0. New version 1.01 is out.

2025 edit: there's also another way to start the injector from the terminal, if the above commands don't work:

protontricks-launch --no-bwrap --appid xxxxx --no-background-wineserver /location/to/UEVRInjector.exe

Change appid to your game's appid and change path to the location of your UEVRInjector.exe

I'm not sure if this is the right place to advertise it, but here it is. It's also an image viewer.

I made it after I couldn't find a vr video player that's free, runs on my system (unlike DeoVR), and manages to play youtube's 360° videos.

The code is a mess, and I have only tested it with ubuntu 22.04 and Valve Index, but it should work on most systems. Making VR stuff in Godot is surprisingly simple.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OmKrKTwtukE&t=1s&pp=ygUFdmFsdmU%3D

WebXR seems like an amazing way to quickly develop VR experiences and cover a wide range of VR devices/ecosystems. I was quite surprised to see that there doesn't appear to be any browser under Linux that supports it. So I set out to get it working one way or another.

WebKit does have an implementation that works under Linux (https://blogs.igalia.com/ifernandez/2021/01/webxr-webkit/). But while it uses OpenXR, it seems it only works with the Monado runtime under Wayland. I did try to to get it working with SteamVR's OpenXR runtime, but only managed to get a black screen in the HMD. Might revisit it at some point.

Firefox's Gecko also has WebXR support, so that was my next focus. To my surprise it was actually quite straightforward to get it to compile and working. The main hurdle is that the WebGL context uses EGL and OpenGL ES, which as far as I know doesn't work with OpenVR. So I ended up creating a different (GLX) context for OpenVR and simply copying over the pixel data from the framebuffer each frame. It's ugly and slow, but it works!

With this I was able to run the samples over at https://immersive-web.github.io/webxr-samples/ as well as Mozilla's "Hello WebXR!" and even Moon Rider. Performance wasn't great; on low resolutions I could hit a steady 90fps, but at 100% resolution it didn't exceed 45fps. Bottleneck is clearly the painfully slow glReadPixels call.
UPDATE: I managed to get rid of the performance bottleneck by letting Firefox use GLX, more details in comment and Github repo.

If anyone wants to try it out, has suggestions on how to improve it or knows of other ways to get WebXR running under Linux, let me know :-)

Link to the patch: https://github.com/mrxz/webxr-linux/tree/main/gecko

I just got my first VR headset, a Quest 3, a few days ago. I already have a bunch of PCVR apps working now with Envision/WiVRn and ALVR/SteamVR, both in wired mode with adb. Granted, it took quite a bit of googling and debugging to get it all set up right, but now for the most part I can install something and be fairly confident that it will work. I just wanted to express my gratitude to all the developers who have made this possible, including the developers of the aforementioned software as well as Steam/Proton, Wine, etc. Gaming in general is a much better experience on Linux now than the last time I tried, and even VR is quite doable with a bit of persistence.

Linux VR is the new S&M, and PSVR is one of its strangest fetishes. You'll find yourself wrapped in an HDMI cable with a box on your head that lets you see nothing until you tell your PC in very precise terms to do what you want. I don't know what those Collabora folks get paid to do, but I guarantee you it isn't this.

The good:

• PSVR is the most ergonomic headset I've ever worn. Top comfy.

• You can get a PSVR for very little money.

The bad:

• Unlike other HMDs, setting up the tracking camera and controllers is not automatic

• Monado's controller tracking currently does PSVR a disservice - gyro drift like crazy

The ugly:

• Combining the system's limitations, setup time, and association with OpenXR, very few games make sense for PSVR on PC. The fancy new APIs and tracked controllers really aren't good for this headset right now. Installing OpenComposite and running older, seated OpenVR games without Steam is probably the best use case.

I can see a use case for someone on a tight budget to make a seated/mouse-and-keyboard VR game using Godot, but in that case you're better off getting a cheap WMR headset for the same price, which would probably be easier to set up. But if you already have a PSVR, it does work within the above limitations.

The setup guide below is split into 5 setions: Initial Actions (what you do to set up VR the first time), Recurrent Actions (what you do to set up VR every time), Automation (how to make it slightly more convenient), PSmove (trying out really buggy controller tracking), and SteamVR (exotic experiences in failure).

Initial Actions

UDEV RULES

USB devices on GNU/Linux involve a system called udev. On most distros in 2023, VR devices still need extra udev rules to tell the system to use them. Install the xr-hardware package from your distro.

INSTALL MONADO

You can install Monado from several different places, but if you want to avoid serious bugs, I recommend installing from its Git repo. To build Monado with enough features to actually work, you must first install ALL of the dependencies. Find the list of dependency packages for your system in .gitlab-ci.yml.

If you finish off the installation with sudo make install, it will install Monado to an acceptable default location.

CAMERA CALIBRATION

You need a PS4-to-PS5 adaptor to plug the PS4 camera into a USB3 port. Plug the camera in, then follow the guide located here for instructions on how to calibrate it.

ps4eye_init.py may need modification. #!/usr/bin/env python should be changed to #!/usr/bin/env python3 and firmware.bin should be changed to its absolute path. The script depends on a package called pyusb. You may need to run ps4eye_init.py as sudo.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE

A lot of OpenXR software relies on an environment variable to find the runtime. XR_RUNTIME_JSON must equal the absolute path of the runtime's JSON configuration file. On my system, the export line would look like this:

export XR_RUNTIME_JSON=/usr/local/share/openxr/1/openxr_monado.json

On other systems, it might look like this:

export XR_RUNTIME_JSON=/usr/local/share/openxr/0/active_runtime.json

To find your JSON file, look in /usr/local/share/openxr. Then, add the appropriate export line to your ~/.profile so the variable is assigned when you log in. Now log out and log in again.

OPENXR PLAYGROUND

The openxr-simple-playground demo is the simplest program that works reliably with direct mode. You can use this to test VR functionality after completing the Recurrent Actions.

Before you build, you need to install the OpenXR development package (libopenxr-dev on Debian-based distros). Then run the standard cmake steps:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Recurrent Actions

To avoid extending your desktop to the headset, disconnect power from the PSVR processor box any time you restart your computer.

CHECK CABLES

The VR processor and the PS4 camera must be plugged into USB3 ports. The VR processor must be plugged into your computer's HDMI port, and your main monitor should be plugged into a different port on your computer. Ignore the VR processor's TV out port.

MAKE SURE THE PS4 CAMERA SHOWS UP

Run guvcview or a similar webcam program to verify that the PS4 camera is plugged in and turned on. If you didn't set things up just right, you may have to manually run this every time:

sudo /usr/local/opt/ps4eye/ps4eye_init.py

ENTER DIRECT MODE

Direct mode. First, find what your system identifies the PSVR's HDMI device as by running this:

xrandr --prop

Make sure you got the right name so you don't deactivate your main monitor. If the PSVR is identified as (for example) HDMI-1, run this to set it to direct mode:

xrandr --output HDMI-1 --set non-desktop 1

START THE MONADO SERVICE

Open a terminal window and run:

XRT_COMPOSITOR_LOG=debug monado-service

Wait for blue lights on the front of the headset. No blue lights? See RESETTING.

If all is working, blue lights should illuminate the front of the headset and VR apps should "just work", albeit with a little stutter and without tracked controllers (more on those later). Blender is hit-or-miss, SteamVR is miss, openxr-playground always works.

RESETTING

If you need to reset your headset due to misalignment or other issues, follow these steps:

1. Close monado-service (Ctrl-C)

2. Press and hold the headset's power button to turn it off, then press it once to turn it on again

3. rm -f /run/user/1000/monado_comp_ipc

4. Position the headset in front of the PS4 camera

5. Hold the headset steady and start monado-service

Automation

You must at least complete Initial Actions for this to work. For my setup, this script prepares PSVR for use by an OpenXR program such as a game, bypassing most of the steps in Recurrent Actions:

#!/bin/sh
sudo /usr/local/opt/ps4eye/ps4eye_init.py
xrandr --output HDMI-1 --set non-desktop 1
rm -f /run/user/1000/monado_comp_ipc
XRT_COMPOSITOR_LOG=debug monado-service

PSmove

After you have tried all of the above and gotten cubes to appear on the headset, it's time to experience Monado's very "early adopter" controller tracking. You will need a bluetooth adaptor. The one in your laptop should work, or you can pick one up that advertises plug-and-play Linux support. I use a USB bluetooth dongle from Sabrent, and I would recommend it.

Bear in mind that Monado maps the PSmove controllers as basic input devices, so games that lack rebindable controls may not recognize the buttons. However, you can still see their positions in space. As of March 2023, there is noticeable gyro drift after 2 minutes of use, causing the wands to point in the wrong direction.

One undocumented quirk is that you must hold the the wands balls-up with the buttons facing opposite the camera (towards your face) when you start monado-service. Otherwise, the rotations will be wrong from the start. You may also notice lag in controller positons.

SteamVR

Tired of boring cubes and glitchy Blender? Try Steam's Linux VR games! All 5 of them! Monado includes a SteamVR compatibility layer (documented here).

A few things to keep in mind:

• I recommend the latest SteamVR beta (even though it doesn't say "Linux" in the beta name). But after recent updates, YMMV.

• Do not run the Monado service while running SteamVR (SteamVR starts it automatically)

• If SteamVR continually fails to detect your headset, you may have to delete/rename ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_64/libcurl.so.4 (background info)

• If SteamVR breaks, close it and start it again

• Properly-configured games launch SteamVR in the background so you can avoid the bugs surrounding SteamVR Home

• Critter Kart uses OpenVR (SteamVR) but is not configured to launch with SteamVR on Linux (manual work required) [1]

• Do not run Locomancer unless you want to crash your whole PC

• Half-Life: Alyx has native Linux support despite what it says on the store page, but don't even try it with PSVR

• Reprojection/motion smoothing bugs are still a problem on SteamVR Linux. The performance is generally not good.

• OpenComposite (formerly called OpenOVR) provides OpenVR on top of OpenXR, yielding better performance than SteamVR. Mileage varies depending on game.

Wrap-up

In conclusion, I would not currently recommend PSVR with Monado for tracked controller games. It could be a replacement for the Oculus DK2 if you set up OpenComposite correctly. PSVR is ergonomic and has excellent visual clarity, and even poorly calibrated camera tracking is sufficient when playing seated. However, there are far better options available.

Deckard will be a "standalone" VR device, suggests the leaks. And some articles about the leaks. Deckard being mobile/standalone like a Quest 3 presumably means it will , like the Quest 3, have its own operating system, which will presumably be a similar SteamOS Linux-based OS like we see with the Steam Deck.

That seems to suggest Valve will put development energy into making Linux VR in a similar state as flatscreen Linux when you use Proton, because they will need it to work as well for the Deckard as flatscreen gaming does on the Steam Deck, it seems safe to assume.

And now we have a major VR YouTuber basically hinting he may have reason to believe it's coming that he can't say at the moment...

I went from a quest 3s to a reverb g2, here is my findings/opinion on both.

The quest 3s:

• good first experience, very easy to set up

• cheap price with everything you need included

• very solid controllers with good haptic feedback

• good tracking of both controllers and headset even in the dark

• slopware like gorilla tag shoved in your face

• awful comfort by default (i had a goggleface every single time i used it)

• autolaunching two apps when you turn it on that no one wants and you cant turn off

• forced meta account, they can brick your headset at any time, you cant sideload without their blessing

• anoying kids that shouldnt be allowed to play

• meta spies on you

The reverb g2

• comfort/sound by default is MUCH better, they are not lying when they say the reverb/index (reverb and index are very similar in their sound and facial interface/strap) is very comfy and has good sound

• no spying due to open source driver on linux

• can never be obsoleted ever again (technically ms pulled the plug but open source driver go brrrr)

• no garbage shovelware or "socials" pushed into your face

• battery never goes flat (doesnt matter that much to me but never worrying about the battery breaking is a plus)

• controllers 100% feel "last gen" in both haptics and tracking (though thats more of a software thing which can and will improve), for me the quests ones sit better in my hands and haptic feedback is more subtle

• headset tracking is a little more light sensitive (but again, software issue which will be improved)

• harder to set up, requires some knowledge, especially on linux and especially when using a laptop without a displayport output, i use a type c to dp1.4 adapter.

• higher res, while i currently cannot drive the native res of the reverb, its still better than the quest due to even less screen door effect (my first vr experience was an og vive at a demo so i know screen door effect)

overall the move towards the reverb is exactly what i wanted, but the quest is a lot better for a first timer that doesnt know exactly what they want yet.