As virtual reality headsets continue to hit the market, one of the challenges for manufacturers is how to entice buyers to invest in their particular platform and hardware. This is a notably acute issue for some of the earlier devices hitting the market, like the Oculus Rift, which saw considerable resources spent on research and development. One way to get buyers interested is through exclusive titles for the hardware, a path Oculus is heading down. However, some recent work by the LibreVR project may be undoing some of Oculus’ efforts after it was revealed they have already ported a couple Oculus Rift “exclusive” games to run on the HTC Vive.
On the opposite side from Oculus and its team of developers are virtual reality fans who want to see an open market for virtual reality titles. By restricting titles to specific hardware, they fear adoption of VR technologies will be slowed until an eventual market “winner” emerges. To combat that from happening, some developers have been working on a way to port “exclusive” titles to other platforms.
Through the LibreVR project, a proof of concept available on GitHub, both Lucky’s Tale and Oculus Dreamdeck demos have been successfully ported to the HTC Vive. Sources indicate this was achieved by using OpenVR to replace code used by the Oculus Runtime. Users who want to give it a try still have to get around a Code Signing check implemented by Oculus, so a patch is required.
The project’s participants indicate the methods they used should work for any Oculus-ready game if the Revive DLLs can be used since they include the “necessary hooking code.”
Users who have been testing the solution indicate that in addition to running the titles, tools like HTC’s enhanced tracking make it possible to do things like walk around in scenes, a capability not available with the Oculus Rift itself. HTC’s chaperone system for helping users know the limits of play space also appear to be functional in the Rift-intended titles.
Come comment on this article: Some Oculus Rift exclusive games getting unofficial port treatment to HTC Vive
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