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How to get VaM working on SteamVR in Linux (Pop_Os or Ubuntu)

Guides How to get VaM working on SteamVR in Linux (Pop_Os or Ubuntu)

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WaifuResearchDepartment submitted a new resource:

How to get VaM working on SteamVR in Linux (Pop_Os or Ubuntu) - I struggled, so you don't have to.

I thought I would write a guide for this as I struggled to get this working for a couple of days having to scrounge together scraps of information from various threads. It's actually not too difficult to do, and it works very well, but there are a couple of gotchas along the way.

First off, a note on my setup:
I'm running Pop_OS 22.04 with the latest NVidia Driver 545 on an RTX 4090.
Ubuntu should work fine for this also as Pop_OS is a fork of Ubuntu.
I did try Nobara as well, but the...

Read more about this resource...
 
Back when that empty first guide was created, I tried something similar to this. SteamVR on Linux wouldn't recognize VaM at all as a VR application, even with the same Steam configuration you suggested, and it wouldn't display in VR. The new SteamVR updates Valve has been pushing, or some other Linux change, appears to have fixed that. I can confirm I can get into VR with the new SteamVR runtime. Audio on Linux in VR is a separate issue. I've used multiple headsets with Linux and AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. My experience was that AMD consistently worked for video and audio, and I consistently cannot get audio to work through an NVIDIA GPU.

There are multiple discussions on other forums about workarounds to getting audio to work with an NVIDIA GPU, but I never had luck with them. I use a separate wireless headset for audio, instead. If I don't care about the latency of bluetooth, I use wireless earbuds. The audio quality is higher, anyway, than what you get with most VR headsets. I'll probably switch back to an AMD GPU next upgrade for Linux HDR and VR. You can get HDR on Linux now if you use Valve's Gamescope (I tested succesfully on a secondary computer with an older gen AMD GPU), and VR was a better experience on Linux before I switched to my 4090.
 
I was able to get VR working by first installing the latest version of reshade through steam. (add a non-steam game and select ReShade_Setup_XXX.exe). This fixed the unity error where it was trying to download an old unsupported version.
Then run the updater through steam the same way.
 

Back when that empty first guide was created, I tried something similar to this. SteamVR on Linux wouldn't recognize VaM at all as a VR application, even with the same Steam configuration you suggested, and it wouldn't display in VR. The new SteamVR updates Valve has been pushing, or some other Linux change, appears to have fixed that. I can confirm I can get into VR with the new SteamVR runtime. Audio on Linux in VR is a separate issue. I've used multiple headsets with Linux and AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. My experience was that AMD consistently worked for video and audio, and I consistently cannot get audio to work through an NVIDIA GPU.

There are multiple discussions on other forums about workarounds to getting audio to work with an NVIDIA GPU, but I never had luck with them. I use a separate wireless headset for audio, instead. If I don't care about the latency of bluetooth, I use wireless earbuds. The audio quality is higher, anyway, than what you get with most VR headsets. I'll probably switch back to an AMD GPU next upgrade for Linux HDR and VR. You can get HDR on Linux now if you use Valve's Gamescope (I tested succesfully on a secondary computer with an older gen AMD GPU), and VR was a better experience on Linux before I switched to my 4090.
Sorry for necroing but are you still able to run VaM/VaMx through SteamVR? The same behaviour you described it's happening the same to me, the game just opens in desktop mode when SteamVR is running.

I tried changing the parameters, Proton version, enabling the "add to VR library check" and changing between stable/beta versions of SteamVR, I'm out of ideas at this point.

I also tried using Envision/Monado and it opens in VR mode but the game crashes with an OpenComposite error on the scene viewer with a small windows showing "An error has occurred" (OpenComposite is OpenVR so it should be compatible).

I'm running this on openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE Plasma, a RX 5700 XT and Valve Index. (I believe I'm using Mesa 25.04 drivers)
 
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