The key takeaway is that you will rebuild the drivers less often:

1) The stack is mature now, we know what features can exist.

2) For me it's about having the same stack as on a 3588 SBC, so I don't need to download many GB of Android software just to build/run the game.

The distance to getting a open-source driver stack will probably be shorter because of these 2 things, meaning OpenVR/SteamVR being closed is less of a long term issue.

I'm confused. Why would you develop a game on a SBC (that's not powerful enough to do VR)? Why are you not just cross compiling?

It's possible that you can have a full open source stack some day on these goggles.. but I don't think that's something that's obviously going to happen. SteamVR sounds like their version of GooglePlay Services

3588 can do VR, just not Unity/Unreal VR. That is a problem with bloated engines not the 3588.

All mainstream headsets get open-source drivers eventually: https://github.com/collabora/libsurvive

yeah but is foveated streaming and whatnot going to be opensource, or are we going to have to wait a decade for some grad student to reimplement a half broken version?

Probably, but eye traction is never going to be the focus of indie engines specially if they run on the 3588.

Also about cross compiling that is meaningless as you need hardware to test on and then you should be able to compile on the device you are using to test. Alteast that is what I want, make devices that cannot compile illegal.

*tracking