tobias_platen's blog

5 years ago I preorded my Talos II from Raptor Computing Systems. The Talos II is a POWERful system built from the ground up with freedom in mind. In one of its PCIe 4.0 slots, I plugged an AMD Radeon RX 5700 (Navi 10) which I mainly use for playing VR games, but also for multi monitor setups, faster video decoding and many more. Unfortunately all modern graphics cards require non-free firmware, but currently the libre-soc project is developing an OpenPOWER hybrid CPU/VPU/GPU that comes with its own Vulkan drivers.

Currently the next candidate for Respects Your Freedom certification is the Arctic Tern, a BMC development kit for OpenPOWER systems. A prototype libre GPU can be implemented using two FPGAs, each one for one screen, with a resolution of up to 1920×1200. Currently I use an OrangeCrab for my work on libre-soc, I have no need for an Arctic Tern. I also have a BeagleWire, an FPGA development cape for the BeagleBone Black, using an ICE40 FPGA which is also found on the Valve Index and Talos II.

Unlike a modern x86-64, such as the Steam Deck, the Talos II can’t run Steam, so the is no way to play VR games such as Beat Saber, Blade & Sorcery or VRChat. Currenly I can only play the godot4_openxr_demo using Monado and Libsurvice, but I have begun doing a VR port of Minetest, a libre clone of Minecraft and I am also trying to get Godot Beep Saber VR working with my Valve Index using Monado. Currently Beep Saber only works with SteamVR and the Oculus Quest, both non-free platforms incompatible with OpenPOWER systems.

Since I want a mobile VR headset that works without any non-free software, I propose building one using libre-soc and the already existing Monado OpenXR stack. For both projects there is still much work todo. Hopefully the number of libre VR games will grow in the next few years, if more and more people switch to OpenPOWER and ethical distros. Since I avoid both Android and SteamOS, so I won’t buy the Oclulus Quest nor the Steam Deck. Once a libre VR headset exists, it could get Respects Your Freedom certification. In guess that that will be another 5 years.