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Vive on Mac OS


F2garcia

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VibrantNebula

VibrantNebula   Thanks for the note. I am a new media artist and considering to use the vive for art and not much for gaming.  As you might know Vr is growing among futurist artist, I have artist friends who work with Vr and they share same complain about having to use non macOS operating systems.  In short I am an arly adapter willing to walk the road on Vr under macOS.

i only ask for some pointers 

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 - That's more or less the level of end-user support there is currently on MacOS. It's not just that MacOS needs to support the hardware (which in some cases it will natively on Mojave based machines), but also the software ecosystem to drive the hardware needs to be in place. We consider the overall experince to be in a developer/pre-developer state on Apple Hardware and MacOS. Valve and Apple maintain a developer program independent of Vive to drive support for Vive and SteamVR overall within the Apple ecosystem. 


As an end user - there simply aren't apps compiled to run on MacOS. The main issue here is that developers can't turnkey deploy their projects to MacOS. Most projects are using the core Windows based rendering technologies like DirectX. Apple has variations on all of these core technologies (ex: DirectX -> Metal 2) and so a developer would have to go through and rework their entire project to work with Apple's rendering and shading technologies. 

 

You're more or less able to boot the HMD via the branch I posted above - from there there isn't much to do unless you're a developer. The overall support of SteamVR on Mac is a Valve/Apple conversation for the most part. 

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  • 2 years later...
On 4/18/2018 at 12:17 PM, HackPerception said:

, the Vive is now supported on Mac but it's still a developing integration. The hardware is technically supported via an external GPU on most desktops/laptops made after mid-2015 with a thunderbolt 3 port and it works with the newest Mac Pro without the need for an EGPU. There are currently only a handful of mac native VR binaries - most experiences are windows only. Launching windows apps via bootcamp is hit and miss performance wise. These are still early days as the update to support eGPUs was pretty recent (10.13.4)

Hi HackPerception,

Thank you for your statements from 2018! May I ask you what changed in the meanwhile? 

I got an Mac Pro 2019 running with an Win 10 installation based on bootcamp but I got the following problems:

  • The Vive Console says, that the grafic driver is not up to date, but I downloaded the latest AMD Bootcamp Driver for my Radeon 580X!
  • The Headset shows just a 3rd screen upside down and when I run a video it doesn't appear on the headset. 

Is it due to the driver problem or am I a fool and do have to click somewhere "this is a headset not monitor"? 😄 

You say we're very early about VR at Mac, but do you need Mac or MacOs? On a Mac Pro with Bootcamp Windows 10, should it work regulary? 

Kind regards
Valentin  @C.T.

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@vkoester The major change is that Valve officially discontinued efforts to bring SteamVR to Mac OS in April 2020: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/250820/view/2216278054495230717

There simply isn't a ton of data points about using SteamVR & bootcamp. Beyond the original Vive, I don't think there has much if any testing with getting the newer desktop headsets working on Mac hardware simply due to the lack of official support, and the lack of community interest. The PCVR community is deeply coupled with Nvidia cards.

What headset are you using? Vive Console is needed for: Cosmos & Pro 2. If you have an OG Vive or Vive Pro - that connects directly to SteamVR without the Vive Console.

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On 1/11/2022 at 10:00 PM, HackPerception said:

@vkoester The major change is that Valve officially discontinued efforts to bring SteamVR to Mac OS in April 2020: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/250820/view/2216278054495230717

There simply isn't a ton of data points about using SteamVR & bootcamp. Beyond the original Vive, I don't think there has much if any testing with getting the newer desktop headsets working on Mac hardware simply due to the lack of official support, and the lack of community interest. The PCVR community is deeply coupled with Nvidia cards.

What headset are you using? Vive Console is needed for: Cosmos & Pro 2. If you have an OG Vive or Vive Pro - that connects directly to SteamVR without the Vive Console.

I have a Vive Pro 2 running on my Mac Pro 2019 (which I actually killed while reinstalling windows again and again thru Bootcamp :-D).

You got any idea how to solve the problem? Or do you think it isn't possible to make it work with an mac pro and bootcamp Windows? 

 

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On 1/13/2022 at 9:55 PM, vkoester said:

I have a Vive Pro 2 running on my Mac Pro 2019 (which I actually killed while reinstalling windows again and again thru Bootcamp :-D).

You got any idea how to solve the problem? Or do you think it isn't possible to make it work with an mac pro and bootcamp Windows? 

 

This can work.

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