Gaia Sky VR on Linux

Some tips as to how to best run Gaia Sky VR on Linux.

By tsagrsita on

Running VR on Linux is notoriously “experimental,” especially when mixing NVIDIA hardware with Wayland-native compositors like Hyprland. However, using the Valve Index via the open-source Monado runtime is now fully viable for Gaia Sky.

Based on our recent testing, here is how to achieve a stable, high-performance, and color-accurate VR experience.

Here’s what you need:

  1. Monado Service: The open-source OpenXR runtime (paru -S monado on Arch).
  2. libsurvive: For lighthouse and headset tracking.
  3. xr-hardware: Ensure your udev rules are installed (paru -S xr-hardware on Arch).

On NVIDIA hardware, Monado may attempt to use an X11-based “Direct Mode” that crashes on Wayland with a vkAcquireXlibDisplayEXT error. To fix this, you must force Monado to use the Wayland DRM Lease protocol. I have prepared a justfile to handle the environment variables correctly. This setup bypasses the crashing NVIDIA backend and fixes the “washed out” color issues common on Pascal (10-series) cards.

monado-clean:
	-killall -9 monado-service vrcompositor vrmonitor survive-cli
	-rm -f /run/user/1000/monado_comp_ipc

monado: monado-clean
	env XRT_COMPOSITOR_FORCE_NVIDIA=0 \
	   XRT_COMPOSITOR_FORCE_WAYLAND_DIRECT=1 \
	   XRT_COMPOSITOR_FORCE_SRGB=1 \
	   SURVIVE_GLOBALSCENESOLVER=0 \
	   monado-service

monado-debug: monado-clean
	env XRT_COMPOSITOR_FORCE_NVIDIA=0 \
	   XRT_COMPOSITOR_FORCE_XCB=0 \
	   XRT_COMPOSITOR_FORCE_WAYLAND_DIRECT=1 \
	   XRT_COMPOSITOR_FORCE_SRGB=1 \
	   XRT_VULKAN_FORMAT=VK_FORMAT_B8G8R8A8_SRGB \
	   XRT_COMPOSITOR_GAMMA=0.45 \
	   SURVIVE_GLOBALSCENESOLVER=0 \
	   monado-service

Using the monado task should be enough to start the monado service properly. Then, you can run Gaia Sky with:

env XR_RUNTIME_JSON=/usr/share/openxr/1/openxr_monado.json gaiasky -vr

Back to news