A few days ago Neil Schneider, founder of MTBS3D, announced the long delayed launch of Vireio Perception 2.0, an open source 3D / VR Injection driver for VR HMDs.
The Community 3D Driver
Vireio Perception, a 3D Injection driver designed to help you play your favourite games in VR with a compatible HMD (currently the Oculus Rift with Cast AR coming) launched recently and celebrated some important advancements for users.
Vireio was originally conceived and written by Andres Hernandez (aka Cybereality), and prominent member of the MTBS3D community forums. When Andres landed his dream job working for OculusVR, Andres decided to release the source for the then fledgling driver to the community to let them continue it’s development. Since then, Neil has recruited development talent from the VR community to drive the project on. Programmers Denis Reischl and Joshua Brown have worked hard on improving things for this latest version.
Enter VR Boost
Vireio is launched under a LGPL open source license and to avoid clashes on the fine print, some extra functionality has been bundled as a separate package. This Add-On is called ‘VR Boost’ and is presented as a anathema to a roster of issues and is not open source. Neil claims:
..to reduce latency to bare minimum, to make it possible to separate head tracking from mouse control, to allow game controllers to properly function, and to get a more accurate VR experience requires low level access to the game architecture. We’ve accomplished this, but the coding to do this can also be used for less reputable purposes. So, we are keeping that coding private.
Confused? The bottom line is, to experience Vireio 2.0 as it should be, download the package provided on MTBS3D’s website which includes both components. You’ll need to register with MTBS3D first to download the file, which you can do here.
We haven’t had time to put Vireio Perception 2.0 through it’s paces yet, but from early impressions, the driver’s flagship game Skyrim is indeed very playable – albeit with some required config tweaks. Portal 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Bioshock plus others are also reportedly running well too. Check the videos on this page for a look at them running.
Congratulations to the Vireio Perception team on their launch and we’ll be back soon with some hands-onimpressions soon.
