Well. I installed those other packages, but... either direct mode is working and SteamVR isn't aware, or I actually am stuck in extended mode. It felt and looked the same, anyway.
https://gist.github.com/yaomtc/3853be59d1e504cfa317d635c1b0c737
You're right - SteamVR isn't aware if direct mode is working or not. If direct mode isn't working you'll see a VRCompositor window popping up on the desktop. If X11 is not explicitly configured to allow HMDs as screens the Vive screens won't show anything, either.
If direct mode on Linux is working you will see the SteamVR environment only on the Vive screens.
I think you can verify if it's working by searching for Instance extensions available inside the compositor logs: .local/share/Steam/logs/vrcompositor.txt. If the Vulkan extension VK_EXT_direct_mode_display is mentioned in the list below, the compositor should use direct mode even if it says Headset display is on desktop later in the logfile.
I'm only guessing, though. It would be great if someone with more in-depth knowledge could confirm that.
Whoops, that's what I get for not reading everything. Direct mode is probably working, then - must be just added latency of the not-well-optimized beta that was bothering me.
I changed the title to a question. Performance seemed identical between this new beta driver and the older officially-supported driver. (Though the SteamVR tutorial doesn't exactly push my hardware very hard.)
381.09 Working flawlessly for me with SSVR:TFE in Ubuntu-GNOME 16.04.2 on a GTX 1070. I'm having problems with Destinations crashing but I always did.
@roothorick Destinations crashing has been a problem the entire time. But this driver seems fine from my testing with SSVR:TFE. It's still a bit slow on tracking, but that's probably SteamVR.
pardon my ignorance; what is SSVR:TFE?
Serious Sam VR - The First Encounter
Thanks!
This was fixed on the readme at some point fairly recently ("NVIDIA cards require version 381.22 of the NVIDIA Driver or above") so this can be closed now.
Nothing extracted yet.
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Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
I recently installed the latest Nvidia beta driver, 381.09, which added updated Vulkan support that I thought might just work with SteamVR. Gave it a try, and it was a bit laggier than I expected, so I wasn't sure direct mode was working.
Sure enough, the report says it's not direct mode. So I guess the SteamVR beta doesn't yet support these new drivers for direct mode. I'll have switch to the "vulkan-beta" AUR packages in the meantime.EDIT: It might have been in direct mode, missed the Known Issue. So does this driver work as well as the 375.27.xx line?