New GUI framework and the future of ALVR development

[zmerp]

Context: I'm (very very slowly) building an alternative to ALVR from the ground up designed to be cross-platform (OS/hardware/headset agnostic) and to support the latest tech (sliced encoding). I've chosen the language Rust for its features (namely expressiveness, type system and zero cost abstraction memory management) and library ecosystem.

Since ALVR would benefit from a new GUI for the server (expecially since WinForms is awful for collaborative coding) I thought I could avoid "spreading" my time resources and develop one GUI base for both ALVR and my project.

So I found a few options for the new user interface:

• Use Rust + Iced: Pros:

  • I'm comfortable with Rust
  • Iced is lightweight (very thin runtime and no external dependencies)

  Cons:

  • Other ALVR contributors may not be familiar with Rust
  • Iced is still young and lack some UI controls but it is the most promising GUI library in Rust
  • Hard to integrate with existing C# code

• Use Dart + Flutter Pros:

  • There are more potential contributors familiar with Flutter (statistically)
  • Flutter provides an end to end environment for building and publishing apps

  Cons:

  • Flutter for desktop is still in technical preview (not even alpha), but there is a lot of work behind
  • Need to restructure the whole project around Flutter
  • Hard to integrate with existing C# code

• Use Javascript + ReactNative: Pros:

  • Even more potential contributors

  Cons:

  • The final product needs to embed an entire browser rendering and Javascript engine, so it can be slow.
  • Hard to integrate with existing C# code

Other alternatives:

• C# + WPF: Pro:

  • Can keep C# code
  • We're already familiar with the language

  Cons:

  • I cannot reuse code for my project

• Continue with C# + WinForms

The GUIs for Rust, Dart, Javascript are written in their native language, WPF uses XAML, WinForms does not have user editable code.

For my project I thought I could begin with a Rust GUI and switch to Flutter or React if requested by contributors.

@JackD83 Even ignoring my personal preference, what do you think is the best approach for ALVR?

Note that I don't have an ETA both for my project or the new GUI. I'm just asking for feedback on where to invest my time.

As an aside, for the rest of ALVR the codebase, It would be easy to integrate Rust with C++ because they are both native.

[m00nwtchr]

So, what's the current progress on this and what do i do if i want to help? I really wish for a cross-platform streaming solution to exist. I like the idea of making the server and client separate "libraries" unconcerned with specific platform stuff, on top of which a plugin for any headset/game library thing can be made but right now i'm mostly concerned with my Linux PC connecting to my Quest :P

[zmerp]

@lmarianski Linux compatibility is still far off (for now every piece of code in ALVR is tied to Windows) but you can join the new official ALVR discord: https://discord.com/invite/KbKk3UM so we can coordinate.

[zmerp]

The branch web-ui has been merged into master and will be the base for ALVR version 12.