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Secondlife Viewer for Linux (kinda beta)

doppelganger
Honored Guest
Hey everyone. If you use linux 99% of the time like me then I'm sure you're annoyed that there's not very many things to look at in VR. I went ahead and took some time (way too much time!) and compiled a version of the Ctrl-Alt-Studio Viewer for Linux. It took me a while, and much help from the original viewer's dev David, but I got something halfway working here. This is still very beta, and I'll polish up what little needs to be polished soon I'm hoping. This is just something to get your hands on now if you want.

Some instructions-

1) Set both your monitor and the oculus to 1280x800 before launching the game. Otherwise it'll shut off the Oculus itself and you'll have issues. Gonna try to work on that with the dev, but it's something for now

2) Before logging in, go to Viewer-Preferences-Graphics, set it to fullscreen. After that, there's a "display output" tab, and in there you need to check Oculus Rift. (and adjust any further settings you wish) Apply those changes and restart the viewer.

3) Log in, and once you're in-world, hit ctrl-alt-3 (or the 3D button at the bottom right of the screen) to enter Oculus mode. Hit esc or ctrl-alt-3 to exit rift mode.

That's it 🙂 Just wanted to help give back a little to the Linux folk that don't have all that much to mess around with thus far. The original viewer's website is http://ctrlaltstudio.com/ also if you need to know slightly more about how to configure it. They are Windows instructions but they apply all the same. Enjoy 8-)

Edit- newer,slightly fixed version- https://mega.co.nz/#!WNY1yR6J!a5R-r0SaAmDciTTvH60dU6bHkF7hxk7S-7H5lYAO7sk
5 REPLIES 5

jaywalker
Honored Guest
Sounds very cool, I don't have a Rift yet but I'll give it a try when my DK2 arrives 🙂

If it makes you feel better, Linux is going to be my primary target when I get around to writing some Rifty code! Would definitely be nice if more people were sympathetic to us, but times are a' changin' and I think we'll see lots more Linux targeting games and software in the near future.
read about my various makings and doings: http://www.brandonfoltz.com

doppelganger
Honored Guest
"jaywalker" wrote:
Sounds very cool, I don't have a Rift yet but I'll give it a try when my DK2 arrives 🙂

If it makes you feel better, Linux is going to be my primary target when I get around to writing some Rifty code! Would definitely be nice if more people were sympathetic to us, but times are a' changin' and I think we'll see lots more Linux targeting games and software in the near future.


Yeah, becomes a bummer having to swap between OS's to try anything out. At least SL gives you plenty to look at/do so it's more than a 5 minute demo of something. Glad you're dev'ing for Linux though, can't wait to see what you create. 8-) Maybe SteamOS will give devs the kick in the pants they need to start creating for us soon :mrgreen:

doppelganger
Honored Guest
Added a new link to the original post. I fixed streaming music and a few other slight things. Also, if anyone tries this let me know. I'd like to know how it works/performs on someone's system other than mine. Just curious if it works just as well

FictionX
Honored Guest
Thank you very much for doing this!!

I have no idea how Second Life works. I've never taken the time to figure it out, which is probably why it's such an incredibly surreal place for me to go! 🙂 I've taken an interest in it again after I got my Rift, since it seems to offer an incredible amount of places to go and things to see, but I haven't been using it for a long while since it wasn't available for Linux. It's very cool to be able to get in there and take in a few random scenarios.

I'm currently using Kubuntu 14.04 64 bit, and had to install the 32 bit dependencies (and symlink the 32 bit libudev), but once that was sorted and the resolution was set to 1280x800 on both screens, everything seemed to be working.

I couldn't get any music to play, though - but that's probably just me doing something wrong. I went to a couple of clubs where people were dancing - but all I heard was ambient sounds. Is the music supposed to be there by default when you get to a site, or do I have to do something to activate it? I did download the newest version..

Again: Thanks a lot for bringing the viewer to Linux (and thanks to David for helping)!! I hope You'll be able to fix it so we don't have to switch resolutions manually - and a 64 bit build would be nice (not sure if it's possible), but for a first and second version this is already almost perfect!

doppelganger
Honored Guest
"FictionX" wrote:
Thank you very much for doing this!!

I have no idea how Second Life works. I've never taken the time to figure it out, which is probably why it's such an incredibly surreal place for me to go! 🙂 I've taken an interest in it again after I got my Rift, since it seems to offer an incredible amount of places to go and things to see, but I haven't been using it for a long while since it wasn't available for Linux. It's very cool to be able to get in there and take in a few random scenarios.

I'm currently using Kubuntu 14.04 64 bit, and had to install the 32 bit dependencies (and symlink the 32 bit libudev), but once that was sorted and the resolution was set to 1280x800 on both screens, everything seemed to be working.

I couldn't get any music to play, though - but that's probably just me doing something wrong. I went to a couple of clubs where people were dancing - but all I heard was ambient sounds. Is the music supposed to be there by default when you get to a site, or do I have to do something to activate it? I did download the newest version..

Again: Thanks a lot for bringing the viewer to Linux (and thanks to David for helping)!! I hope You'll be able to fix it so we don't have to switch resolutions manually - and a 64 bit build would be nice (not sure if it's possible), but for a first and second version this is already almost perfect!


Thanks for the feedback! I was really curious how it would work out for others. Yeah, there's always going to be some mess involved in getting SL viewers to work in Linux it seems. That's odd about the streaming music... there IS a button on there to turn on streaming music, and the location of that button varies upon which theme you're using. When you start the viewer, at the bottom right choose "Phoenix" and restart. It should give you something I'm more accustomed to troubleshooting 😛 After that, when you're in a club, there should be some play buttons down at the bottom right, one of those is for streaming music, so turn that on and see if it does anything possibly. If it's not that, then it's some library you're missing locally (don't ask me which) but possibly running the viewer from the terminal will help explain where that issue is coming from. Just start taking note of what's scrolling through the terminal as you turn on streaming media i guess. (sorry, that's all the advice i can think of for that off-hand)

As for 64bit- i had JUST decided to try to work on one tonight, so that should hopefully be coming very soon. I use a 64bit OS as well, but it's just generally less painful to try and compile for 32bit when it comes to SL. I'll give a crack at it though and see what i can come up with, it'd be really nice to have. But yeah, i thought SL would be a great app to work on for linux just because of the amount of things there are to do. You should check out either "Insilico" or "Inspire Space Park" in search... that later looks really cool if you have your daytime setting to night. (under the "World" menu someplace) I'm sure theres better places, but that's just a cool little place I found a long time ago. Anyways, I'll get to work on this 64bit one tonight, and I just wanted to mention again that David definitely gets ALL of the credit for all of this. He has done a great job making this all work on the Oculus, 3D tv's, and even with the Kinect. (in the windows version at least, maybe i can add that later if possible) I am just a lowly man learning how to compile in Linux, and I thank him IMMENSELY for giving me something to work off of. 8-)