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Moving the Linux desktop to another reality
- georgewsinger 7y agoOne of the authors of Simula[1] here (mentioned in this article). xrdesktop looks very impressive. We've been working on our compositor (in particular: XWayland support) for quite a while. Getting a prototype up and running was relatively easy. But it has been incredibly difficult to get everything actually stable/usable. Congrats to your team. [1] https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula
- echelon 7y agoThanks so much for working on this! I really like multi-monitor setups, and in the limit this can far surpass physical hardware and space limitations. You can scroll more than 360 degrees for a near-infinite workspace. (Just spin around a hyper-sphere repeatedly.) I really want to see this tech succeed. I'd look like an idiot using this at work, but I'm already sold. I'm forced to use a Mac at work -- do you know of similar tech for MacOS? I'm gladly going to investigate this at home.
- georgewsinger 7y agoThanks. This gives us motivation to keep going. If you have any feature suggestions or want to check on our progress, drop by our chatroom in discord (https://discordapp.com/channels/603723949586644997/603723949586645005 https://discordapp.com/channels/603723949586644997/603723949.... I don't know of any similar tech for MacOS at this time.
- skrowl 7y agoI really wish the "Yay, linux on the desktop" crowd would rally around ChromeOS. ChromeOS is literally what the "linux on the desktop" crowd has been wanted for decades now.
- Zak 7y agoHeavily integrated with proprietary services is definitely not what the "linux on the desktop" crowd wants.
- axaxs 7y agoWhat...why? I'm perfectly happy using linux on the desktop as my full time OS, as I have for more than a decade. I tried ChromeOS on chromebooks, and see nothing they offer me that I don't already have. Not to mention the privacy implications of using such an OS...
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoThe vast majority of Chromebooks are completely useless without Google services. That's not exactly the "freedom" that the Linux community envisioned when they spoke about "The Year of Linux on the Desktop".
- dflock 7y agoWell, you can install regular linux and run whatever you want: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoThen why bother with ChromeOS? I can just... install regular GNU/Linux and run whatever I want.
- benbristow 7y agoAnd then you've just got an underpowered Linux laptop. Chromebooks are great for what they are. Fantastic for people that just need access to the web. They're pretty much immune to the technically-challenged.
- FigBug 7y ago
- Zak 7y agoI've been wanting the option of a VR desktop for a while now. Last I looked, it wasn't ready for prime time, and that's still my impression now. I find a small 16:9 screen pretty unacceptable for coding, and the market currently offers very limited options for anything taller in a laptop. I'm eager to see where this goes, and may need to start shopping for a head-mounted display.
- gmueckl 7y agoThe current generation of headsets is unsuited for showing large amounts of reasonably sized text. The display resolution is not there yet. If you map your desktop into a plane in VR space at the proper distance, your UI text shows up heavily aliased and barely readable due to the texture resampling that happens in that process. You need to increase resolution by another factor of two or three to make that actually convenient. And then there is the issue with holding 3d pointing devices for prolonged amounts of time. This is taxing upper body strength if you do. The weight of thenheadset itself is also straining the neck muscles. All of this taken together usually means that I want out of VR after about 2 hours. I barely have sessions that are longer.
- Zak 7y agoWhat's the resolution of the headset you've been using? I don't think I'd like my desktop to have a lot of 3D features or require a 3D pointing device. What I'm imagining is essentially a giant 2D workspace where I can still use a Trackpoint.
- gmueckl 7y agoI've used or tried most of the major headsets available in the market. None of them is remotely close to a resolution where reading reasonably sized text isn't straining. The large screen concept is a bit problematic. A large planar screen distorts the portions you're not in front of because you're only seeing them at pretty extreme angles. A cylindrical screen distorts projected content, e.g. photos or 3d graphics displayed on it. A better solution would be to treat each window as a flat rectangle that can be freely positioned in 3d. So you can arrange the most important window around you in ways that you can conveniently look at them by turning your head and you'd still look at them dead on. For implementing that, a 3D pointer is by far the best option.
- choeger 7y agoThat page crashes my Firefox mobile... Is that some kind of inside joke I don't get?
- davesmith1983 7y agoThis is going to be another compiz cube. It looks cool, but I doubt it will be very useful outside of showing off some cool tech. Also Valve tbh have dropped a lot of their more interesting tech. I had one of their steam links which isn't even sold anymore. The steam link was actually pretty useful for steaming anything on your desktop, I am sure you can do the same with a Raspberry Pi and some scripts but it worked pretty well if you hooked up a mouse and keyboard.
- e1ven 7y agoNot to go too far off-topic, but if you haven't tried them - I've found that the steam link apps for other platforms (ios/android) work very well. I'm not sure Valve needs dedicated hardware for this anymore. I have a steamlink in the closet, but being able to do it in software is nice.
- davesmith1983 7y agoIf you have steam installed on anything you can just stream to that device as long as they are on the same network.
- larrik 7y agoI love the Link, I use it all the time. I even bought a spare.
- logosmonkey 7y agoYeah, I bought an extra one when they discounted them to near nothing after they announced they were discontinuing them. It's nice to be able to play games on my bedroom TV when I'm going to bed :)
- vijayr02 7y agoMy issue with the steam link has been the steam controller (I know it's not the only option, but I got the bundle). I just can't get the hang of it. What have other people experienced on this? Does it get better with practice?
- snek 7y agoGoodness this website is slow
- amfsn 7y agohttps://www.collabora.com/assets/images/blog/xrdesktop/xrdesktop_gnome.png https://www.collabora.com/assets/images/blog/xrdesktop/xrdes... Oh god... where's your anisotropic filtering? That looks like a screenshot from Doom.
- flyingfences 7y agoSome antialiasing wouldn't go amiss, either...
- oldgun 7y agoIn case you experience slow loading of this hackernews'ed website, here's the archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20190730153132/https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/moving-the-linux-desktop-to-another-reality.html https://web.archive.org/web/20190730153132/https://www.colla...
- canada_dry 7y agoI have a VR setup and would love a fully immersive desktop environment to develop/program in. The display quality of the new Index (for instance) is sufficient... however, the critical show-stopper is not being able to use your hands to type onto a real keyboard (i.e. augmented reality-ish). A real keyboard that you can feel and see as you type on. Both hands would need to be tracked (in addition to the keyboard location) using something like leap motion not by wearing some gloves/controllers or attaching anything - no one is going to do any amount of typing on a virtual keyboard. When there's a good solution to this I suspect quite a few developers will give it a go when they want a fully immersive in-the-zone experience.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoOnce your hands are on the keys, you don't actually need to see them. So the real question is, how do you find your keyboard in VR? I think the Index's cameras would be sufficient. Alternately, you could place tracking pucks (or just controllers) on either side.
- shultays 7y agoYour real keyboard can have a virtual representation in your VR space, just like controllers are
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoWell, it has to get tracked somehow. Or it has to be "calibrated" on every run, in case it was moved slightly when you tried to clean your desk or what have you.
- mncharity 7y ago> The display quality of the new Index (for instance) is sufficient... Is it? Are the lenses that much better? My Lenovo Explorer WMR is 1440^2 px/eye, and thus has a similar angular resolution to the wider FoV Index. Both are RGB, not Pentile. But I find each eye gets a central circular region something vaguely like 300 px diameter where subpixel rendering is worthwhile (I've a custom render stack), and less than 600 px before the lens blurs pixels together. That's 1980's VGA-like resolution. And it gets even worse as objects move in from infinity and thus out of these regions. If you disable the "oh, its an HMD, not a normal display" feature the OP speaks of, you can easily throw up a pixel-aligned test pattern image. The results are... blurry. So I use DJI's 1080p drone goggles. Readable 5 pt fonts, almost corner to corner. With shutter glasses, because DJI didn't expose the two panel feeds. :/ And reading glasses, because DJI's lenses... sigh. It's a placeholder kludge. Nreal's 1080p AR glasses could be available in a couple of months. > the critical show-stopper is not being able to use your hands to type onto a real keyboard I've been using my unremarkable laptop keyboard since Vive, by doing pass-through AR with a camera gaff-taped to the HMD. With a browser-as-compositor stack, it's two-video-dom-elements trivial. Though I've heard with a SteamVR stack, pass-through latency can be a challenge. Hand tracking is more problematic. It's a poster child for acquisitions wiping out market infrastructure. The sole hand-tracking survivor was Leap Motion, which fumbled its couple of Apple acquisition attempts. It's been Windows-only, stalled, kind of crufty, and now has finally been acquired, with uncertain consequences for future availability. And one can kludge. But it isn't pretty. > When there's a good solution to this I suspect quite a few developers will give it a go when they want a fully immersive in-the-zone experience. And shallow 3D seems to have interesting possibilities for IDEs.
- catotheyoungest 7y agoWhy do people think this worth trying to implement? Is it because it looked cool in movies like Minority Report? What is the target demographic for this? What is the use case? Why would I want to add additional and unnecessary complexity to my workflow?
- just_myles 7y ago1. It looks cool. 2. Minority report, no. Gits, yes. 3. Everybody. Probably nobody. 4. Probably to multi-task. Multiple screens that sort of thing. VR gaming had the same problem in the beginning. Wasn't until games like adrift and beat sabre showed up that it started to finally hit a stride. Or at least a compelling use case (Good VR games to play.). 5. See 1.
- rocky1138 7y agoHave you tried Microsoft HoloLens, Virtual Desktop, or BigScreen? It was obvious to me after using them for 30-60 minutes that this is the future of desktops.
- catotheyoungest 7y agoI did. Then I spent the weekend with a migraine. IMO, VR isn't worth the effort. I'd rather have my brain directly jacked into the computer, as long as there's an effective firewall available to keep advertising and other malware out of my head.
- blamestross 7y agoCheck the IPD setting on your setup. VR with IPD done right should actually be lower eye strain than a monitor.
- shadoxx 7y agoOnce VR gets to a certain point, and the resolution becomes so undeniably crisp, we'll want things exactly like this. You can already do this on Windows with Virtual Desktop Streamer and a companion application for either the Go or the Quest (paid application). If you can touch type, it's very easy to strap on the Quest and use it as your primary monitor. Having had this experience, I'm guessing that we're only one or two generations of hardware away from this being a normal way of computing. You know, provided smartphones, tablets, and otherwise proprietary operating systems don't take over first, Brother Oculus included.
- JoshTriplett 7y agoLooking at the screenshot of Wikipedia rendered on an angled window, this really needs sharper text rendering with https://blog.mozvr.com/pathfinder-a-first-look/ https://blog.mozvr.com/pathfinder-a-first-look/ or similar. With something like that integrated into rendering libraries, I'd love to have the field-of-view of a motion-sensitive environment. (I don't actually want pseudo-3D, just a high-res 2D display attached to orientation sensors.)
- aiscapehumanity 7y agoI can sort of see this as an incentivizing stepping stone through generally alternate 3d interfaces to to really get at AR desktops, which could be used in conjunction keyboads and gestures which is alot more viable to even code with/in.