VR Mode on the Nvidia Jetson

It’s my pleasure to announce that VR mode works on the Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier.

For those interested in the technical reasons this comes so late, I’ll explain briefly. I have been focused on getting Direct Mode, where headset rendering bypasses the desktop window manager, on the Jetson working. This document explains why this is difficult to do on the Jetson’s chip. However, a recent test on the Jetson led me to realize that Extended Mode, where the headset is treated as a regular desktop monitor and rendering is done using a fullscreen window, was an option with the Monado VR runtime engine. I don’t consider the work on Direct Mode for the Jetson time wasted, but perhaps time spent too early for a simple proof of concept.

Remaining Tasks

Not everything is perfect on the Jetson, however. There a few new user interface bugs that exclusively appear on the Jetson. These will need fixing.

The tethered hand tracking works just fine on the Jetson. I still need to make sure the augmented reality video passthrough works too. I foresee no software obstacles to getting that working, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

Finally, I’d like to put together a prototype hardware kit to really show the viability of Kros as a portable platform. This includes running everything off a single battery and perhaps purchasing a Windows mini-PC to serve as the hand tracking server.

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