HackPerception

Join live tomorrow April 7th at 10AM PST, for a hands-on coding webinar session as part of HTC's GDC Live Webinar series. Register now: Vive Hand Tracking SDK You can view last weeks GDC Webinar here: – A Step Ahead of the Curve: Using Data Trends to Build a Successful VR Experience. Below is a schedule for the remainder of the sessions For more information on each session, check out the Vive Blog. Tuesday, April 14 @ 10am PT – Working Remotely in VR using Vive Sync 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?

@Raysangar - Can you please share the following info: Please list your laptop/PC/motherboard make and model USB 3.0 ports are usually blue - are you plugging into a blue port Which SKU of Cosmos are you using (regular Cosmos or Cosmos Elite) Are you using the USB cable that came boxed with your Vive kit? Please open the Vive Console and select "report issue" to send our team logs which are the most direct way for us to see what the issue could possibly be. After reporting the issue, try hitting the "reset headset" button to see if the behavior changes.

@Maijin19, I'd recommend doing the following for your specific case: Screenshot and post the Nvidia Control Panel -> Configure Surround,PhysX This page shows the "port mapping" of which ports are hooked up to which chipsets inside the laptop. In my example below, the USB-C port on my laptop only connects to the much less power Intel dedicated graphics and thus that port is useless for VR. As previously requested - please post screenshots of SteamVR -> DisplayVRView, specifically ones that show the chaperone. We need this info to better understand the situation. I looked up that model number and the top results all say that it that specific SKU is the GTX1050Ti SKU. If that's the case, that's not a VR compatible GPU. It sometimes works on first generation headsets (Vive 1, Rift CV1) but it's a notorious edge case and works on some systems but doesn't work on others others. It would be 100% is unsupported on current generation headsets (Cosmos, Pro, Index, Rift S, ect...) and is below the modern minimum requirements for even the first gen headsets let alone the newer ones. That chipset is a very entry level GPU for casual gaming and less graphically intensive 2D games like Fortnite. If this is the case, you're seeing the displays flipped upside down because your GPU can't "enumerate" the HMD as a valid VR display because it's out of the min requirements. @AlexTheFabDragon Please post the requested info if you can as well.

@Maijin19 But are you specifically using the report issue feature? It sends logs which can be invaluable in trying to understand what's happening.We've only seen a very small handful of reports of this so the sample size is really small and every bit of info can prove helpful. It is a new product after all. Setting a ticket with an agent definitely gets you in our system but doesn't provide any rich information that's useful in diagnostics and they'll most likely ask you to use this feature in the end anyways.

The Cosmos headband is a "halo" style headband - it's supposed to sit on the upper part of your parietal bone. With HMDs I would universally recommend taking the HMD with both hands, sliding it around your facial structure until you find the sweet spot that also results in even pressure around the interface. Next, reach back with one hand while still holding the HMD with the other and adjust the primary strap/band's position and tightness and then lastly adjust the overhead strap being extra careful to not yank it too hard to ruin the seal with the facial interface. It just takes time to figure out what works for each HMD. Having tried on over 100+ types of HMD, I find the method I posted above is the most universal way I've found to quickly get into a sweet spot with an HMD. If it's pulling away from your cheeks at the bottom, the handband is either too low on your parietal or the overhead strap is too tight but facial morphology definitely plays into it considerably as well.

@OliverJackson Per content, some of my personal favorites are HL: Alxy, Google EarthVR, Wave beta, Beat Saber, Walking Dead Saints and Sinners, Boneworks, Museum of Other Realities, SuperhotVR, Welcome to LightFields, and Audio Trip. Oh and Ayahuasca Kosmic Trip - that one is special. That's a good few hundred hours of content - some of that will be available via Viveport Infinity and Google Earth VR is somehow free.

Deluxe audio strap and knuckles are the accessories that will impact your UX the most. DAS is really clutch for ergonomics. We heavily use the SmallRig clamps internally for basestations and I use these as well as a larger one for the stations in my rental property. For the face cushions, we use VRCover PLU replacements on every single one of our shared headsets demo stations (although moving forward, shared headsets is probably a thing of the past internally considering the current circumstance)

@AlexTheFabDragon - I asked around internally and we haven't seen that issue before - that's a new one to us. When you post screenshots, can you please try to post a screenshot that shows the chaperone/boundary in a blank SteamVR environment, I'm really curious where it thinks the floor is. Please also use the Vive console's report issue button to send an issue report to us. Does it happen in a blank SteamVR compositor or does it happen in games as well? After you post screenshots, I'd recommend redoing SteamVR roomsetup to see if that alters the behavior and if it doesn't trying the "reset headset" option in the Vive console.

I'd defer to @C.T. or @stvnxu for that

@davide445 - No, as previously stated - XR plate has a device-specific NDA. I'll let that team know you're interested in the plate but generally speaking, we're primarily working with teams we've established a relationship with over the last few device launches over the years.

@Kiwaso, I reached out to the EU care team and they're advising you to contact them via www.vive.com/support -> contact us -> contact us. The 3-in-1 stock shortage on Vive.com is C19 related but they may be able to find you stock from an internal source. That said, C19 complicates everything dramatically and we'd recommend contacting them as soon as possible - there may be unavoidable delays due to C19.

@goslingdkc - It's a huge misconception - I get it though. People want their expensive devices to work. Valve added a firmware recovery option at the bottom of the basestation tools UI - that's really the only tool that can fix a station on the user side. The majority of issues you may see will be physical issues that require the station to be fixed and re-calibrated by a specialist or replaced outright. I've been working with Vive hardware for 4 years now and have never once tried to self-repair a station beyond the basics. It doesn't make sense to do so - they're calibrated devices.

If you want to know more about how base-stations work, this is an in-depth talk from it's principal inventor and is the most public info about base-stations that exists. If you watch this, you'll know more about how they work than 99% of users.

That's related to 1.0 stations and is a huge point of confusion in the Vive community. In short, when 1.0 basestations were first released, they didn't have any self diagnostics capabilities and could be malfunctioning and shooting out bad data but appear functional to SteamVR (with the user-experience varying by the problem). They released a firmware update that added self diagnostics and people freaked out and thought it was a bad update or Valve/HTC intentionally breaking their stations because the stations would start reporting when they were malfunctioning. One of the inventors of the base-station posted a way to roll back the firmware on the 1.0 stations but it got taken way out of context and he later publicly stated he regretted sharing that due to all of the confusion it caused. With 2.0 stations, I find the out of box tracking to not really be usable without the firmware update. I would recommend plugging the station into your PC via a MicroUSB data cable, plugging in the power adapter to the back of station (without power), then plugging the power adapter into the wall - preforming the update, and then unplugging the station from the wall before unplugging the microUSB. If you do it this way, you'll never move the station while it's spinning since you'll only be touching the station when it isn't supplied power.

@goslingdkc we have a wide array of fulfillment partners. In the US, we ship out of a West Coast fulfillment center in East Rancho Domingue and I think we have an East coast fulfillment center in Indianapolis/Terre Haute but I'm not sure if that's still active. In any case, these are fulfillment centers we contract.

@SimonW - Please see this post from Triad Semiconductor on how to use SteamVR tracking without an HMD. SteamVR hardware tracking is a highly proprietary system per Valve. The entire system is underpined by the "Watchman" system which is a hardware solution which drives the sensors - all heavily proprietary. For instance, they're able to achieve a ~93% compression ratio on the data that gets sent over bluetooth back to the PC. For all essential purposes, OpenVR/SteamVR SDK and the SteamVR runtime are the only way to query a pose from any SteamVR tracked device. You can't really interface with the tracking hardware directly - the closest anybody has come has been CNLohr's reverse engineering attempt but he only got so far, even with help from Valve. You may be able to work with Valve directly by becoming a SteamVR licensee but between the effort of doing so, buying an HDK kit, ect... It's not really practical (and is very $$$) and only makes sense if you actually are building a tracked device, and even then - you still hit proprietary roadblocks and I'm not sure you get direct hardware access. So overall, you really should just use a PC with the SteamVR runtime and the OpenVR SDK. It's how the system was designed to be used and if you try to use it any other way, you're probably going to get very far. It's going to be cheapest, fastest, and easiest to use SteamVR tracked hardware as it's intended and designed to be used. You could browse around the SteamVR HDK forum but as it pertains to Vive tracker, it's not really worth the effort to try and circumnavigate SteamVR/OpenVR as that's the archstone of the entire system and you likely won't succeed in finding a working solution without input from Valve.

@TomCgcmfc Vive Cosmos' stock linkbox does not have the correct SteamVR bluetooth circuitry to power manage base-stations. Vive Pro's does. The Elite does not ship with a linkbox but instead ships with an inline breakway converter. The ET/Elite have the circutiry for BT power management in the faceplate itself. If you get an ET to use with a standard Cosmos, BT power management will work for you regardless of the linkbox/converter situation. I've just tested this IRL to confirm. I personally use a Pro linkbox at my new home workstation for Cosmos/Elite/Pro/Pro Eye. Never have had an issue personally but it may not be advisable in a in-home use scenario due to the different power requirements you mentioned. @eddyfanbo I've sent out an internal request for clarification on Chinese availability @Shevron We're exploring potential options but have nothing hard to share at this time per a controller/basestation bundle. The COVID situation makes everything dramatically more challenging. @Beta_Tester Definitely doesn't hurt to ask and I'll forward that request to some folk on the hardware team because it doesn't hurt to ask ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Generally though, it's not feasible for us to "play favorites" with community members, especially given the ET/Cosmos tracking community dynamic. If you're developing content that will publish to a storefront, that potentially opens some doors. I'd post-face all of this all with to note that I am not on Vive's hardware team and am actually on the Viveport Content team so I am not a definitive source of truth for Vive hardware matters - I am merely someone who believes very strongly in community hence my forum activity.

@goslingdkc SteamVR is not something that lends itself to a traditional manual - it updates and changes way too frequently unfortunately. In 2019, Valve released ~300 beta updates to SteamVR and another ~12-15 or so major public releases and in 2020 they released a ton of major UI updates. I think I'm going to start trying to document it better more informally but it's a bit of logistical nightmare. I'd personally recommend going through and clicking through every single option and menu within SteamVR and it's setting pages just to gain a baseline understanding of what's possible in SteamVR currently. Nowadays, when SteamVR updates - there will be a dialog box that pops up alerting you to the update with a link to "see what's changed". I'd recommend reading those so you're always in the loop for major changes. You can also manually access them via this page. I'd definitely recommend RMA'ing that unit if it's so new. You can do by collecting the S/N off of the back of the unit and going to vive.com/support -> contact us -> contact us. Depending on your region, COVID will likely affect your turn around time but it really varies by region. You should receive an invoice/order confirmation soon - I don't work directly with vive.com so I'm not sure of what their overall status is presently.

@goslingdkc In short, basestations have a primary tradeoff. They offer the highest quality tracking system under $30-50K but it's enabled by the fact that the stations are high-precision mechanical devices that spin at high speeds. The rotors in a station spin at ~3600RPM which adds up to over 200k revolutions over the course of an hour. The can wear down and develop other mechanical issues. There are also laser sources in there which can burn out. The device may be under warranty depending on your purchase date an region. The best way to prolong the life of a base-station is to never ever touch or move it while it's spinning and to enable base-station power management. The following setting will add a few seconds to your VR startup routine but will ensure the stations aren't just spinning 24x7 if they have power. I personally recommend all in home users use the following settings as they completely stop the motors from spinning: If you use this - you'll need to ensure you close SteamVR for the stations to spin down - if you suddenly shut down (i.e. a hard shutdown on your PC), the stations won't get the signal from SteamVR to enter standby. An added bonus is that they'll make no noise while they're in standby.

@goslingdkc - we are still shipping outbound as of this post without any major service alerts. Our repair/RMA pipeline is however affected as RMA/repair devices need to be received and physically inspected/fixed. We are starting to see some impact on EU shipping, but we don't have formal advisories yet. We're pausing shipments in Taiwan/China and some other APAC regions until April 5 due to COVID related impacts. There will be a banner on your localized webpage if there is an active alert for your region.

@ralphp - the mount's CAD file is attached. You'll need to ensure that your externalcamera.cfg files are calibrated to the controller. This workflow is almost 4 years old - we no longer provide support it anymore. Good luck! 160927-controller-bracket-v7_id.stl

Reposting our March 31st blog post here for increased visibility:

@richardparrker It's generally straightforward with the caveat that your power supply has to have both the right connector to attach to the GPU as well as enough capacity to drive the new GPU. The 2060s/2070's generally need a 500-600w power supply and 6/8 pin PEG connectors depending on the card. The other thing to think about is that modern GPUs are freaking massive - you want to ensure that your case can fit the full length and width of the card, most GPUs nowadays take up 2 PCI slots.

@richardparrker - Open up your resource monitor/task manager and try to figure out if you're GPU or CPU bound. That said, that GPU is considered min-spec for VR content nowadays (and you're below req for Alyx). The RTX2060/2070 are good upgrade cards and the 2060 is pretty affordable considering it's performance and will likely breath a few years of extra VR life out of your PC, even more so for the 2070. VR generally isn't CPU bound unless you're using wireless. I wouldn't generally recommend dumping a bunch of money into an older PC - I lean on the side of doing complete rebuilds every few years rather than trying to upgrade part by part. A good GPU can last you a while though.

We made an official post about the ET faceplate today as well as a new "HMD Only" SKU of Elite. https://blog.vive.com/us/2020/03/30/cosmoselite/ @sbrandon111 - We're exploring that scenario but don't have hard info to share on that specific scenario as of today. Everything is extra tricky right now due to the ongoing health crisis.