New to the party, how you develop for PC windows 'native' (i.e. custom code ) DX/OpenGL ?

[GilesGoat]

Hi,

I recently got a VIVE with the intention to support it on our proprietary engine that is DirectX based ( Windows 10 ).

 

After much search I am a bit confused as the only "SDK" for that/code sample I've seen seems to be OpenVR that has some code samples ( which I manage to compile and work ) but I am not sure if this is the "official HTC way" but I haven't seen so far any SDK/download specific for Windows.

 

I mean there's Android Native but I can't see an "equivalent" for Windows for those that want to embed/use VIVE inside their own code.

 

What do I have to look at ? Is OpenVR the official way of doing or is there any specific SDK download for windows ?

 

We ( Llamasoft ) have our own in-house made engine ( Neon ) to which we plan to add VIVE functionality so it would be possibly DirectX or OpenGL based.

 

Thanks in advance for any reply.

 

Cheers.

 

 

[HackPerception]

Hi Giles -  or  will probably be the best people to get you a detailed response - I'm not  deeply familiar with engine integration. 

 

At a high level, the Vive is a SteamVR headset and OpenVR serves as the API framework for driving HMDs via SteamVR compositor. The OpenVR SDK is a set of C++ interface classes that you would integrate into your engine in order to target the SteamVR runtime.

 

Integrating OpenVR into your engine is indeed the "official way" of targeting any HMD to run via the SteamVR compositor, including Vive. 

 

We do have a few Vive HW specific SDKs like the Vive Input Utility, and SRWorks, but for generalized HMD support you need to integrate OpenVR as a requirement. Most devs either interact with OpenVR via Unity via the SteamVR plugin or via Unreal Engine's native adaptation of OpenVR. 

 

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr/wiki/API-Documentation Contains all of the relevant OpenVR documentation - and the Issues tab has quite a bit of useful info too. 

 

Valve's partner site is https://partner.steamgames.com/ - depending on what you're doing that could be a valuable resource. 

[GilesGoat]

Hi David,

thanks for the reply, so yeah I got the impression 'that was the way to go'.

 

I am anyway in the stage of re-creating our let's call it 'graphics driver' via OpenGL for various reasons ( more plattforms )  so I think "right OpenVR and let's go".

 

It's going to be an interesting ride.

 

Cheers.