hakase

From what I’ve seen, almost all advice about making the switch to Linux is along the lines of “try it out” or “dual-boot Windows” so I fail to see how anyone is going to be seriously inconvenienced here.

This seems like even more of a reason to be up front about it then, and add "not all VR headsets work" to the list of caveats for people switching along with "you might not be able to play your favorite predatory multiplayer game".

Yes, Micro$oft is a shitty company that lied to and shafted its customers, which is why it seems really odd to me to argue that Linux should be doing the same thing instead of being better. And by better, I don't mean they have an obligation to support my headset or anything - just that we should be honest about the fact that Linux doesn't instead of falsely acting like it does with misleading blanket statements like "VR works on Linux" when that's just not true.

I can absolutely generalize that to the literal thousands of other people who might suddenly be faced with the fact that Linux is not VR ready when they decide to switch based on incomplete, intentionally misleading information to try to sell Linux as something that it's not.

They have a right to an informed decision too, and I don't think "just lie to them for the greater good lol" is the correct answer here.

Not to mention, "Linux is gaming-ready, as long as you don't need 100% VR headset compatibility" still has the capability to draw in a ton of new people.

That is correct (your pejorative framing of the situation notwithstanding).

As in the software.

Then your entire comment chain has been completely (and seemingly intentionally) irrelevant to the point I was making in the first place. In hindsight I suppose that makes sense, since you've been building strawmen and tilting at windmills this entire conversation. Literally nobody has said that the games specifically don't work once the hardware has been made compatible (through software, I should note). Either way, thanks for wasting both of our time.

I tuned out when you acknowledged you’re presenting a personal opinion

And yet here you still are, intentionally misunderstanding the conversation by your own admission, and, once again, wasting everyone's time in order to white knight for Linux and act like it's flawless and that everything in the world works when a) that's objectively not true and b) Linux has no need of this sort of ridiculous white knighting in the first place.

Then I'm really confused about how I was playing Beat Saber on my Windows partition last night.

Also, I'm not sure "it doesn't work on Windows" is the standard the Linux community should be trying to live up to. My old laptop doesn't work on Windows 10 or 11, but it runs modern Linux just fine.

Then you’re going to have to acknowledge that your opinion disagrees with most others.

Says who? You? On the contrary, I think you're going to have to acknowledge that your opinion disagrees with most others.

And that a lot of people are going to consider accounting for what a piece of software “prides itself in” when defining what kind of standards need to be met for features to be considered “ready”, to be pretty weird.

And a lot of people won't feel that way, especially because "work being done until certain standards are met to be considered 'ready'" is literally how software development works, including on Linux.

Linux is more than ready for gaming, but by your standards, it isn’t ready for that either because some games use a level of anti-cheat so invasive, it will never work.

You've been really good at shoving your words down my throat throughout this conversation, but I'll humor you yet again.

This is a completely different situation because the devs are actively preventing the software from working on Linux.

WMR can work on Linux - it just doesn't yet, because the third party software tools to enable it to do so haven't been finished yet. WMR isn't being actively blocked from working on Linux the same way the antagonistic game devs are doing so for the kernel-level anticheat games.

VR works on linux. That is indisputable.

No, actually you'll find that it's quite disputable, especially since that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm disputing it. Right now. This is me disputing it. *waves*

Thus, not indisputable. QED.

And that justifies the double standard?

It absolutely does. A huge part of Linux's whole schtick is that open and community-sourced software is more compatible and just plain better than proprietary offerings. Linux is better, and it can handle being held to a higher standard.

Who decided this is where the goalpost is, except for you?

Yeah, uh, that's kinda how opinions work. There is no objective measurement of what "VR readiness" means - it's going to be an arbitrary division no matter who is deciding where the line is. I just think that arbitrary division should include the set of headsets that just a few years ago constituted at least 10% of the market as measured by Steam alone, if not significantly higher once other proprietary storefronts that these headsets were aimed at are included.

That's kind of a disingenuous citation, since WMR has been officially discontinued by Windows for over a year, and you can't install it on any new machines, so of course its official use numbers are currently incredibly low.

Five years ago, however, WMR was more than 10% of the VR market (and that's not even including all of the other proprietary storefronts that these headsets were aimed at), and I'd bet that a lot of people, like me, would still use it if it were better supported. Plus that's a lot of e-waste that could be reused and repurposed if we could get 3rd party software to work.

Literally the only reason I still dual-boot my gaming PC is because I have to boot into window$ any time I want to use my VR headset, so, while I would absolutely love it if Linux were VR ready, that's unfortunately just not the case.

Counter-counter point: some VR is working. It's not working for a significant portion of VR hardware, so it is not VR ready.

Windows isn't ready for much of anything these days, so I'm not really sure why you're trying to make that comparison with Linux, an OS that prides itself on openness and getting an insane variety of hardware working on it.

I agree that "VR ready" doesn't have to include every single headset, but that's pretty disingenuous when a significant number of VR headsets use(d) WMR. Linux will not be VR ready until WMR is working.

Android doesn't pride itself on its incredible hardware compatibility to the same extent that Linux does.

I realize that I am in no way entitled to other people's labor to get WMR working on Linux, of course, but until this significant category of VR headsets does work on Linux, it is not VR ready.

What’s your point?

"Get VR working and it will be."

"It is!"

"No, it is for your specific hardware and use case."

That microsoft didn’t enable the necessary software components to run windows mixed reality HMDs on linux?

No - that's a given. It's that nobody has working third party software for my hardware yet, hence the "VR isn't ready on Linux yet" statement.

The reverbs never natively supported any open standards like SteamVR or OpenXR.

I know.

WMR headsets are the ones that have been the hardest to get going with open VR systems like Monado, but that doesn’t mean that hardware that implemented sane standards isn’t already working great, which it is.

I know.

That said, WMR is partially working at this time.

I know.

Bottom line, if you use something that is actually supposed to work, it does. If you don’t, then yeah, the volunteer-created hacks to get things to work are still in progress.

I know.

My VR hardware is still not working, and Linux is clearly not "VR ready".

My HP Reverb G2 V2 isn't.