Did any one tested the Librem 5 with AR Glasses like: Nreal Air AR Glasses from https://www.nreal.ai/ Some people seam to use them with Samsung smartphones but to use Linux on them on the go would be awesome.
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I have tested the Nreal Air now. Audio seems to work (microphone and speakers) via usb. The HID device gets listed in the usb devices when running lsusb. So getting orientation data should also be possible when using the proper Linux driver in development for Monado.
Unfortunately the glasses won’t get recognized as external display as other Linux devices I have do. So there isn’t any video output to forward to your view through the glasses which is kind of the main feature required for AR usage. ^^’
I’m not sure why it does not work yet. Maybe it requires a specific driver in the kernel or just a newer one. But given that DP alt-mode works with external displays over HDMI via usb-c adapter, I’m kind of confused tbh. The glasses won’t even be listed in the settings, xrandr or wlr-randr.
Either way it would be awesome if Purism could fix that compatibility problem.
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Ah, another thought because I read about some power requirements for DP port via usb-c. Maybe the Librem 5 does not support external displays without their own power source because of power draw optimizations.
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The Librem 5 doesn’t seem to have issues supplying power to my Vufine wearable display, even after I dissected it and removed the Vufine’s internal battery. The Librem 5 supplies charge for the display via the display’s power cable from the dock even when said dock is not connected to wall power.
Sidenote: I can’t really recommend the Vufine for any serious work. I picked it up exclusively to tinker with because it was cheaper than other similar display options.
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I tried again today. For once I now get a signal to display. Unfortunately it’s not possible yet to get the proper EDID from the display and it’s not supporting the proper modes.
For example you most likely want to either use 1920x1080 (which should be the default) or 1280x720 with the glasses. However you don’t get these options but mostly lower 4:3 resolutions. Switching to any of them results in flickering colors or glitching artifacts. In GNOME settings the glasses will not get recognized as “Nreal Air” either as it’s on my GNOME desktop (Arch Linux) but as some unknown value.
I would assume there are still kernel updates required to fully support the glasses. But power shouldn’t be an issue which is good. Once it’s working I will probably try to build and test how performance is going with the Monado driver (which has pretty accurate orientation tracking since latest changes). It would definitely be an interesting option have a 360° desktop around, potentially using the touchscreen of the Librem 5 as touch pad for a virtual cursor (because I think you wouldn’t need the internal display if connected - saving power as well).
Another update to the state of the nreal/xreal Air compatibility. My Librem 5 still lists it as “Unknown” display with the wrong resolution. However my Pinephone Pro running Archlinux with phosh recognices it as “Nreal Air”, sets the correct resolution and gives an image as expected for an external monitor.
So I could figure out to set a custom keybinding to move a window from one monitor to another without connecting a mouse which makes it somewhat usable. Maybe I need an application translating touchscreen input to a virtual mouse cursor (like a virtual touchpad) for this setup to make sense. But it’s pretty neat even though it drains the battery like crazy. ^^’
My assumption is that the Librem 5 will be able to utilize the glasses in a similar way once it receives the required updates (might be kernel, GNOME control center, phosh or phoc… maybe something else - I assume the Librem 5 uses latest phosh and phoc anyway). I might still test whether the monado driver I’ve implemented works and whether the device is capable of running OpenXR applications.
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