HackPerception

@SanityGaming - There may be some movement on this front - we'll keep trying to get stock to them but it's an extremely complex situation and they're the decision makers in this situation. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-13/amazon-move-to-stock-more-non-essentials-isn-t-business-as-usual?srnd=technology-vp

@CCONX We do not offer or stock any sort of USB-C to Displayport adapter as it's very hard to ensure one works across all hardware In the past, we've recommended this adapter as it's proven to be fairly dependable. The key in selecting an adapter is that is has to support 4K @ 60hz which is the bandwidth threshold you need to meet or exceed. There is a minimum of 8 variations of the Predator-300 all with different specs. I clicked around and none of these spec sheets specifically list discrete Displayport support on any of the USB-C ports. I'd highly recommend going into the PhyX panel within your Nvidia control panel and posting a screenshot of it back here before trying to source an adapter. This will show you the port mapping of your PC to the internal hardware. I've posted an example below of a laptop where the Minidisplayport is hooked up to the Nvidia card but the USB-C is only hooked up to the Intel card. If the port mapping shows that your USB-C port is not hooked up to your discrete GPU and only your Intel integrated graphics, your PC is unfortunately incompatible with any Displayport 1.2+ driven headset including Cosmos, Pro, Rift S, and Index. You'd be limited to first-gen HDMI driven headsets.

@jhintze - Yes, the USB-C port on the Cosmos can be used for headphones. The Google USB-C -> 3.5mm adapter is arguably the safest bet and is our offical recommendation for Vive Pro - it's very high quality and considered an industry standard solution but I've had luck with one or two other adapters I've tested. Here are the instructions to detach the stock headphones.

Bumping this post to remind everybody that this live Webinar will happen tomorrow morning 😁

@laggy vive user In these cases I always recommend downloading the latest Nvidia driver and then preforming a "clean installation" by choosing the advanced setup and checking the clean installation box. I also recommend going into SteamVR -> Video and experiment with turning off the global motion smoothing setting and also using the legacy re projection option (on a per application basis).

@Fink - I shared my personal thoughts - what they're doing is really really hard and I'm super happy that they're trying to bring this to market. SteamVR is open enough ecosystem that I see it complimenting Vive devices. I'm a huge proponent of hand tracking and I personally have a very strong preference for hand tracking solutions that are not camera based but are electromagnetic based. I personally am not comfortable using the camera based solutions from certain other manufacturers due to the privacy loss. I was a really strong holdout on the virtual track-pads - I'm one of those people that had 3 or 4 Steam controllers. That said, I'm coming around to thumbsticks something hard, especially after playing Saints and Sinners, and so that would be my primary UX concern around the Etee's. Thumb-sticks are much more important to me now that we have content that specifically optimized for thumbsticks but I'm open to other implementations of the virtual trackpad and these are really slick.

@folkers_5150, I've posted this a few times on various forum posts but I'm just one VR-nerd and it's a pretty common misconception. I'm not even on a hardware team at Vive - I just am just a VR fanboi. One verification thing you can use is taking a photo of the stations with your phone. In a working station you'll see two dots that represent the laser aperture as in the example below. With a broken station, you'll commonly see only one of the dots. Never buy base-stations used/secondhand. It's like buying a car with 200,000KM already on the odometer. There isn't a huge UX upgrade with 2.0 stations if you're an in-home user and only using 2 stations. I actually personally find 1.0 tracking to be more reliable in reflective environments. It's not like the tracking quality is vastly superior because it's newer tech. If switching to 2.0 your options are effectively a Vive Cosmos HMD only upgrade (just announced last week), a Vive Pro, or a Valve Index. I know it's extra tough down in your region though due to all of the import weirdness.

@Fink - Bringing controllers to market is rather difficult - as a manufacturer takes a huge amount of effort and coordination to get SteamVR to then you have to get that added into the and then to boot, every single developer has to integrate your controllers into their project either natively or by updating their SteamVR/OpenVR plugin - otherwise you have to fallback to SteamVR's controller remapping which isn't a very elegant solution at scale. Designing a VR controller for mass market is no-joke and I applaud the Etee team for their efforts - what they're doing it not easy at all. That said, from an end-user prospective, it may not be something you plug in and it simply works - especially at launch. Since no other knuckles-like controllers have launched, it remains to be seen how software support will play out across the ecosystem. To have true native and optimized support for a controller requires you to see developer kits to hundreds and hundreds of dev teams and there is a financial component as well as it costs them dev hours to integrate and optimize. Piggybacking off SteamVR input in theory will help reduce the owance on developers but there aren't a huge number of real-world data points to actually judge how that works in the real-world yet.

@JohnyDL - It already does this? You shouldn't be able to access the "Vive roomsetup" application from the Vive console without the correct faceplate installed. The option in the Vive console should be greyed out and inaccessible and if you were to somehow manually launch it, it wouldn't proceed without the optical face-plate. If you don't have a valid lighthouse roomsetup SteamVR would detect that and automatically launch the prompt. I use both an external tracking faceplate as well as the optical tracking faceplate on my machine and have never had conflicts. I have have both a lighthouse tracking roomsetup and an optical roomsetup and can switch back and forth between the two without having to re-run setup.

@folkers_5150: This is a notorius point of confusion in the Vive community. The general gist is: The earlier basestation 1.0 firmware versions did not have self-diagnostics or error detection. A basestation with a broken laser or rotor will emit bad tracking data because it's unable to tell that somethings wrong nor is it able to report back to SteamVR compositor that something is wrong. This is what you're experiencing when you roll back the firmware manually - you're reverting to a firmware version that is unable to detect that something is wrong so it blasts your playspace with invalid tracking data leading to tracking issues. The firmware rollback procedure you described was initially shared by a Valve employee who later publicly stated they regretted sharing the procedure to do how much confusion and frustration it's caused within the community. You're not actually fixing anything with the rollback - you're just hiding the error messages and allow the station to spit out bad data. Basestations are mechanical devices - each motor in a basestation spins at 3600 RPM (200,000+ per hour). They can wear down and break after extended usage cycles or through violent shocks. The best way to maximize the lifespan of a basestation is to use basestation power management to turn off the stations when they're not in use. If you're under warranty - you may be able to get a device repaired under warranty If you have the original Vive, the 2.0 stations are not compatible with your HMD. Furthermore, 2.0 stations are mechanical devices and are subject to the same basic mechanical constraints as 1.0 stations.

@RMFMargo, Which generation base-station and which color? Unless it's blinking blue (bluetooth standby), a blinking indicator on a base-station generally indicates a mechanical failure that requires physical servicing.

@Yakko Try downloading a free title from Steam like the budget cuts demo or Google Earth VR

Working Remotely? On April 14th at 10am PST learn how VR can benefit you and your team. Register here. You can still view last Tuesday's GDC Webinar here: Build for Tomorrow: VIVE Hand Tracking SDK For more information on the upcoming sessions, check out the Vive Blog. Tuesday, April 21 @ 10am PT – Lessons Learned from Marketing 100+VR Games Tuesday, April 28 @ 10am PT – Viveport Developer Console: What’s Coming in 2020 Tuesday, May 5 @ 10am PT – XR Continuum: Merging VR & AR Development Tuesday, May 12 @ 10am PT – What’s the Opportunity in Enterprise?

@Khronno - It's hyper-dependent on where you are - some regions are pretty locked down. To my knowledge, there are currently no major delays within our fulfillment centers but once that package is out in the world it's going to be really specific to where you're shipping to. In the past few weeks the overall volume of packages has decreased alot and things are generally starting to recover a bit but if you're shipping to really hard hit regions like NYC, Italy, or France - you could incur additional delays.

@csabal Instructions for what part of the tech stack? If you're talking about the Optitrack hybridization - that support comes from Optitrack. We do not work with Optitrack to develop their hybridized tracking solutions - that's solely their effort and it technically is a competitive tracking solution to the tracking solutions we're integrating into our products.

@egolikeness Cosmos wired requires a Displayport 1.2+ compatible port because of the resolution of the panels. This is the standard Cosmos variant. The wireless Cosmos is a desktop-only add on that takes an existing Cosmos and makes it wireless via an accessory. That requires a desktop motherboard with an available PCI-E slot. There is no way to get it to work with laptops. As far as I can tell, if using Vive hardware - you'd be limited to the original Vive as that's the only HDMI headset we ever made.

@egolikeness So that'd fortunately run first gen HMDs (Vive, Oculus CV1, first gen WMR) but I'm not seeing any documentation that says that this laptop line has Displayport 1.2+ support or that the USB-ports have Displayport capacity that's driven by the dGPU. You can try running the question by Asus but I unfortunately think you're limited to first gen HDMI-driven headsets with this laptop.

@egocentryczny 505D brings up older models. Which GPU model do you have?

@egocentryczny And when I say "modern HMDs" I mean Pimax, Index, Rift S, ect... None of these can be driven by that laptop line if the spec sheet is accurate. That's a very entry level gaming laptop made for casual games and games like Fortnite.

@egolikeness - Are you in the 1050/1050Ti variant of those laptops. The 1050/1050Ti generally isn't VR compatible at all, let alone with current gen HMDs. The 1050Ti is a notorious edge case with first-gen HDMI driven headsets like the original Vive - it really would depend on the system it was installed upon. That said, it's below the modern minimum requirements of a 1060 for the first generation Vive and would certainly be below the system requirements of the Vive Cosmos which are at minimum a GTX1060 (but ideally higher as that is just the hardware minimum and doesn't factor into account modern VR apps which are getting pretty demanding. There are a number of 505D variants - can't isolate it down further without the full model number. That said I suspect all of these, including the 2060 variant would be incompatible with current gen HMDs as non of them seem to have native Displayport 1.2+ support. If you have the 1050Ti I probably wouldn't even recommend trying a first gen HMD, it's simply about half to about two thirds of the transistor count you need to run VR.

@Yakko - Woah - that's wacky. I've never personally seen a frame timing graph quite that off. SteamVR and the underlying runtime and driver stack tend to not like to sit for too long without being updated. This is true of all VR hardware/software, it likes to update progressively rather than large updates all at once. My first recommendation would be to uninstall everything (SteamVR, wireless adapter software, ect...), download the latest Nvidia graphics driver, during the installation chose advanced and then opt for a "clean installation", and then reinstall SteamVR then test on wired before moving to wireless. Is this happening on all software and not just Beat Saber?

Are you using the same base-stations or are you using 2.0 stations? Tracking performance should be virtually identical on 1.0 stations but 2,0 sensor enabled devices are a tad more sensitive to reflections. There are enough sensors on an HMD that unless your stations are not installed at good angles, there should be more than enough sensors to still derive a pose estimate. I'd recommend trying to capture the event in real time via SteamVR -> Developer -> Webconsole - you should be able to reproduce the event and see the readout in real-time. I'd also recommend checking your webconsole or the logs contained in a SteamVR system report for reflections. You can use the search team "back-facing" to find the lines that relate to reflections. Here's what a reflection looks like in the SteamVR logs or the webconsole. Sun Jun 26 2016 23:02:09.676 - lighthouse: LHR-4E8EF209 H: Dropped 32312 back-facing hits, 2069 non-clustered hits during the previous tracking session

@Helyoos There appears to be a language barrier here - I'm unfortunately not understanding what you're saying here. It sounds like you're talking about basestation channel management - you can manage 2.0 station's channels over bluetooth by going to SteamVR -> Devices -> Bluetooth Settings and first installing and enabling the bluetooth driver. Next you'd go to SteamVR -> Devices -> Basestation Settings -> Manage 2.0 channels, scan for basestations, and then select "automatic configuration" to automatically resolve channel conflicts. If you cannot use bluetooth to manage the settings for whatever reason - there is still a manual button on the basestation. Above the power supply there is a small hole - that is a pinhole button that you can trigger with a paperclip to manually change the channel. When doing this the basestation must be powered on - but you also must be very careful to not move the station around too much while it's spinning otherwise you'll damage and break the station. Just press it once or twice and you'll eliminate the conflict. If you're trying to update the basestation's firmware - I would recommend taking the basestation, plugging in the MicroUSB cable into the station and PC with the station powered off, plugging in the station side power adapter first, then plugging the AC/DC adapter into the wall, and then preforming the update. When done, unplug the AC/DC adapter from the wall first that way you're not touching the station while it's powered on. This will ensure you never touch the stations while they're spinning.

Reminder: This webinar will begin in ~40 minutes from this post.

Adding in here that HDMI->DP/MiniDP converters won't work for any current gen HMD that requires DP1.2+ connectivity i.e. Vive Cosmos, Vive Pro, Valve Index, Rift S, Pimax, Ect... If the HMD requires native Displayport 1.2+ signaling, there is no way around it.