Steam VR/OS and running windows games in a VM?

[bonds7]

I was thinking that valve has a real chance to do something amazing here and a way to move users away from windows. First, valve should work on a native linux OS specifically designed for VR. What I mean is that you while you could use it as regular linux instal on a monitor, but instead what it is specifically is designed to do is work for the vive/vr at startup. When you start it up, everything is done specifically in VR space, with your own VR world as your desktop.

Now, the problem that steam OS has had in adoption is that people want to play their windows games. While a large number of games has transferred to linux as an alternative, not all, and not all games coming out works on linux. This is where virtual machines come in. Steam OSVR could have a native virtual machine where a windows installation could run (heh, can even have it running in a virtual screen in your virtual VR world) our windows games/apps. At least the newer motherboards and CPU's that can do GPU passthroughs which will allow access directly to the GPU and run virtual machines games almost natively.

Most people who will be getting VR will have beefy systems so should be able to run it and as time passes more and more will be getting it as the prices drop.


This is just spit balling ideas, right now a large percentage of PC gamers would love to leave windows, but the number one reason I have seen to keep it (like me) is their games. Not just new games, but old games as well. Jumping to linux is not compelling enough reason to jump, there needs to be something offered that makes it worthwhile. This is why I was think of a steam OSVR, something completely new and different that could draw in people. On top of that with a windows WM with GPU passthrough, it would have backwards compatibility with all their games so people could finally take the plunge without fear.

Just something to think about.

[Black Blade]

Over all i do think its a nice idea, and i do think sooner or later if VR grabs the market to stay, will have a VROS
But if that is to happen i really don't know if a VM is the best way to go, in the end it means you have 2 OS taking resources from the PC, so on what ever case it means you will be losing profomance on it for no much benefit, i mean you are not leaving windows, if you are using a VM to run windows

But i guess in the end Valve are working on it, and not only on VR it self, there working to improve the OpenGL for Linux, that may if it works out well get more games to support linux, and not just windows
And if that happens i guess will get a bigger Linux market, that in turn will make setting games for Linux worth it more
If you go with a VM, you kind of say, don't make the game for Linux, il just use a VM and be fine

[TheNeffness]

I have never thought of trying the VR via VM. I have played games through VM in the past and always found them to be subpar in framerate. When dealing with VR, you really want to always have high framerate, otherwise motion sickness and stutter become a problem. Without getting my hands dirty I can't provide specific details, but my assumption is that your experience would not be good. I would not, in good confidence, suggest a VR setup to someone gaming with VM.

[bonds7]

I just meant for older games that only run on windows. I am hoping new games will be using vulcan so it will be on multiple OS systems. Like I said, the main reason most people stay with windows is because of their vast library of games that only work with windows. Having a VM would solve some of it by giving legacy support to those old games. Now, only modern motherboards, CPU and GPU's that allow passthrough will work. That will allow the virtual machines direct access to the GPU. There will be only be a slight drop (depending on GPU), but not too bad. This is something that steam regular OS might want to experiment and incorporate too. Something that might help convince people to try and move away from microsfts OS.

VROS will come, its just a when and not an if.

[gavi]

I totally agree with bonds7. If SteamOs had easy GPU pass-through support for a Windows VM, Linux would quickly become the main OS for many people. New games would be for Vulkan and the huge library of current and old games/win 32 apps would still be available, in native speed. Valve could buy the easy of use from UNRAID ( https://lime-technology.com/unraid-featured-on-linustechtips/ )

[Black Blade]

Originally posted by bonds7:

I just meant for older games that only run on windows. I am hoping new games will be using vulcan so it will be on multiple OS systems. Like I said, the main reason most people stay with windows is because of their vast library of games that only work with windows. Having a VM would solve some of it by giving legacy support to those old games. Now, only modern motherboards, CPU and GPU's that allow passthrough will work. That will allow the virtual machines direct access to the GPU. There will be only be a slight drop (depending on GPU), but not too bad. This is something that steam regular OS might want to experiment and incorporate too. Something that might help convince people to try and move away from microsfts OS.

VROS will come, its just a when and not an if.

Well if there going to use Windows in the VM that means there going to have to sell you or buy for you a Windows copy
And if you all ready have to buy that, and use it for playing, at least for most users, what will be the point of moving to Linux? its not going to be free to play, you are likely to have more issues, you will have less profomance, and add to all that you will also have some software with no Linux support

I cant see VM really giving you a good way to do these over all, expect if they kind of make a "hack" to get windows drivers and stuff to run on Linux (DirectX as well) and that is going to be a legal mess

So i do some what get what you mean, i just cant see it working out very well sadly

[bonds7]

Most people will have a copy of windows lying around. In fact you can download a legal copy of a microsoft official ISO to restore your windows as long as you have a legit CD/DVD. What I was getting at, is the only reason a lot of people use windows is their games, however a lot of people want to move to linux. However, a lot of games will not work with linux, so people stick with windows. Now, what I was suggesting was that steam OS (and later steamVROS) would offer a solution to get people started on linux, while having a way to play their old games. It is virtualized windows, BUT with a GPU passthrough, the windows system can run the games near native speeds since it games use GPU's for most processing instead of CPU. You do take a few hits, but not that many. Look at the video that gavi showed. It did take a slight hit, but remember they were playing on 4k monitors running two seperate games on one computer. I also want to point out that vulcan is there, so now games can be created windows and linux simultanously. So hopefully future games will have linux support versions. What windows VM would allow is backwards compatibility and help convince people to go to linux without worrying about not being able to play their windows games.

[mcd1992]

This is a similar situation I'm in. I'm getting my Vive in May but as of now it doesn't seem that many developers are supporting Linux for their VR games. I was planning on getting a new Pascal/Polaris and just doing PCI passthrough with QEMU to a Windows VM. Not sure how well it will work though.

Implementing this into something like SteamOS would be a pain though. The developers would need to find a way to simplify running a VM and doing PCI passthrough. Although currently virt-manager seems to do that fairly well. It would still require a lot of work to do it in the Steam big picture mode.

All in all though the best solution is to just get game developers to start building their games for Linux. Most engines now have very simple cross platform compilation tools.

[PopinFRESH]

First, nice well thought out post. Now let me give you another perspective to provide some more food for thought.

Originally posted by bonds7:

I was thinking that valve has a real chance to do something amazing here and a way to move users away from windows. First, valve should work on a native linux OS specifically designed for VR. What I mean is that you while you could use it as regular linux instal on a monitor, but instead what it is specifically is designed to do is work for the vive/vr at startup. When you start it up, everything is done specifically in VR space, with your own VR world as your desktop.

They don't need to make a VR specific OS, all that would stand to do is fragment the userbase for no real gain. Adding a the SteamVR UX ontop of SteamOS I'd totally agree with (and fully expect this to happen eventually). There are still some challenges to making a system be "seamless" in a headless (no monitor) setup with DirectMode only for the VR HMD. This is something that is going to take a while to progress and learn what works and what doesn't in VR.

This is also somthing that is important to realize is a completely separate topic from the push for Linux PC gaming, which you seem to have tied together simply due to the launch support. We are at the birth of real legitmate VR and it is already going to be targeting a smaller segment of the overall PC gaming market. It is fiscally responsible of Valve and the developers to focus their attention on delevering a compelling VR experience on Windows. They do not need to muddy the waters trying to advance an anti-windows agenda by leveraging the launch of VR.

Originally posted by bonds7:

Now, the problem that steam OS has had in adoption is that people want to play their windows games. While a large number of games has transferred to linux as an alternative, not all, and not all games coming out works on linux. This is where virtual machines come in. Steam OSVR could have a native virtual machine where a windows installation could run (heh, can even have it running in a virtual screen in your virtual VR world) our windows games/apps. At least the newer motherboards and CPU's that can do GPU passthroughs which will allow access directly to the GPU and run virtual machines games almost natively.

SteamOS is built on Debian, and already can have native KVM virtualization. Not all systems support Intel's VTx or AMD's AMDV to handle this approach reasonably well. Even fewer support VTd for directed IO. Secondly, you don't need an entire VM running windows to run emulation for a single application. If that was the goal, they could work on wrapping their windows installer process using WINE or their own emulation without the need for a full Windows VM (that would also require end-users purchase a Windows License).

Valve does not believe in a heavy handed aproach to this, and leaves platform support for developers to decide (as it should be). What Valve has done is push for more open platform agnostic standards support and encouraged developers to use these. Valve single handedly spearheaded this effort when it went back to the Source engine and did a lot of work on supporting standards like OpenGL. This lead to their entire Source based games (and pretty much any mod or game that used Source) catalog being supported on Mac OSX and Linux.

Thanks to Valve's leadership in this we now have the likes of Tim Sweeny making an effort to build-in great native Vulkan support in the Unreal Engine. Unity will continue work on building in Vulkan support and it's already part of the Source2 engine. This is the way to attack the problem of people being locked to using Windows for gaming, not using virtual machines to give lazy developers a way to tick a box and say they have Linux support. Getting platform agnostic standards built into the major game engines is absolutly the most effective way to tackle this issue.

Will that do anything for all of my old games? no, but if I want to take the time I can do your approach on Linux already, it is just sub-optimal for most semi-demanding games. I'll stick with Valve's aproach and look forward to more and more games not being tied down to a specific OS.

Originally posted by bonds7:

Most people who will be getting VR will have beefy systems so should be able to run it and as time passes more and more will be getting it as the prices drop.


This is just spit balling ideas, right now a large percentage of PC gamers would love to leave windows, but the number one reason I have seen to keep it (like me) is their games. Not just new games, but old games as well. Jumping to linux is not compelling enough reason to jump, there needs to be something offered that makes it worthwhile. This is why I was think of a steam OSVR, something completely new and different that could draw in people. On top of that with a windows WM with GPU passthrough, it would have backwards compatibility with all their games so people could finally take the plunge without fear.

Just something to think about.

I question the "large percentage of PC gamers" wanting to leave Windows. I do agree there are plenty of people who would like to, however, most people just don't care as long as their system works. Trying to shoehorn this into being tied to SteamVR isn't going to change that and isn't going to accomplish what you are really after. Again, I really believe that Valve's aproach in getting developers of game engines on board with integrating platform agnostic standards is the best approach. I fully expect that over the next couple years we will see Valve add full SteamVR support for SteamOS, and most developers currently making VR games are using Unreal Engine or Unity and it should become easier to add support for Linux because of this.

-PopinFRESH

[Hwkiller]

If you absolutely must do that, I'm guessing a combination of KVM, usb passthrough, pci passthrough would accomplish it. You'd still take a fps hit, but maybe not much of one.

Honestly, I doubt this would be hard for users to create; the issue of course is licensing windows.

[lmg fishmaster]

I am running my vr on a KVM. I did post a thread on here because my Index has no audio or mic availability. If you know a thing or two about KVM I could do with a hand