flashing grey screen

[Vildan]

By the way, where is HTC's COMMUNITY MANAGER? Why he is keeping silent?

[HackPerception]

 Our community staff has recently grown and our community manager has been working on other initiatives but continues to monitor these threads. You'll be seeing an increasingly diverse group of Vive staff posting on here.

 

I've been working on solving this issue with a number of users here and offsite through PMs. I'm pretty sure that in most cases this isn't a hardware issue and is instead related to the SteamVR backend which is difficult to troubleshoot. These issues appear to be clustered around an update that was pushed ~5 weeks ago. It seems as each successive update to SteamVR resolves this issue for a greater number of affected users. As  suggested, the most recent beta branch seems to be much more stable for users experiencing this cluster of issues. 

[echeva]

Yes, thank you for your support VibrantNebula. He is indeed helping me among others. 

 

Just one note, my problem appeared more than 5 weeks ago.

[MartinMarty]

That is in the ballpark of what I was talking about. Please let me know if there is a remedy to try. Thanks.

[DevilDuck]

I too have the flashing grey screen issue. For me when I start up Vr at forst everything works flawlessly for about 20 minutes. After that a a dead Grey area/direction appears. Its always the same area/direction so it could be enviroment related. But I find it strange that at the beginning it works whitout any problems.
I will test it in a different today or tomorrow. I am a bit worried that it is maybe caused by heat?. I also have the impression that it becomes slowly worse. That the area in which tracking is not working is getting bigger. I also started to experience wobble that was not present the first 2 days.

Edit: I did one thing before the problenms started. I updated the firmware on the base stations, I did not do that at first because i dodn't want to unmount them from their spots. AFter I discoverd tha I can update via bluetooth I updated them. problems started after that.

[Aidarpro]

If the trouble isn't headset then change headset doesn't help. I haven't opportunity change headset. If anybody here who has opportunity to change headset (without change PC and location) try to change and test.

[Aidarpro]

When you notice in first time gray screen? And when did you buy vive?

[DevilDuck]

I have bought myvive 3 days ago, the first day everything worked fine i played superhot vr the whole evening. I did not doany firmware updates the first day. Thesecond dayid did do all updates and it still worked. The first time I noticed something was on the second evening when I tried to paly a seated game for the first time (Thats the reason why I still hope it isonly some positioning problem) The grey screens appear only when sitting in front of the pc, I thought themonitor is the reason so I disabled it and covered it in cloth, did not make any difference. Then I tried disabling the WIFI , didnot make any difference, There are no highly reflective surfaces, and the windows are covered by blinds.

The strangest thing is that for the first 20 or 30 minutes everything works even when sitting in the problematic position. After that time the grey outs start when looking in a certain direction (Towards the window, but blinds are closed and there are curtains in front of the blinds) Then the greyout area seems to increase slowly. But it only happens when sitting ina certain spot in the room (in front of the computer where the hotas , mouse and keyboard are)

On the third day I seem to get a very slight wobble in the picture/play area from time to time. It still works while standing in the middle of the room. And starts to freak out in the sitting position but only after a certain time. The wobbling is annoying because itslightly triggers motion sickness for me.

I tried mutliple usb ports (it completely freaks if connected to  a usb3 port) I rebooted the vive , removed and reinstalled all the drivers,tuned theposition of the bases, downclocked mycpu to factory standards. I looked at the base station trough my phone camera and both look identical 9 bright red leds in a square one extra red light to the right and bottom plus the status led and the channel display. EDIT: I also tried dsiabling bluetooth , and the front facing camera is disabled

In the logs I gett some errors:

Trying to add a secondary base from base 6D7AD91D: Samples didn't yield successful bootstrap pose

 

Resetting tracking: no optical samples from base 4FCB0C13 for 2000ms

Dropped 66 back-facing hits during the previous tracking session

I have ordered some stands and mounting parts so I can try the setup inadifferent room. They will arrive tomorrow or the day after. I am still hoping that it is not a hardware problem.

 

[DevilDuck]

I bought it 3 days ago, the first day everything was fine, but it could be because i was onlyplaying standing stuff(had not yet made room for roomscale) I only did the firmware updates on the second day. The problemsstarted shortlyafterwards, but this could be acoincidence.

I first noticed something wrong when I tried to play elite dangerous while sitting in front of the computer. At first I thought my monitor is the sourceof some interference. I tried  a lot of things but I still cannot rule out placement problems or some source of interference. To test this I ordered some equipment for mounting the bases somewhere else and plan on testing in a different location.

The only reallystrange thing is, that if I leave the headset of for a while , it will work flawlessly for about 20 minutes. AFter that time one spot and one direction from that spot start to "grey out". This spot/arc seems to get larger as time goes by. Also if I cover the right part of the headset after this starts the greyouts go away as long as I leave my hand on the right sideof the headset.

Additionally I had some wobbling issues today that triggered motion sickness for me. The first day everything was rocksolid, tracking worked flawlessly and I had no grey spots or directions.

 

[Aidarpro]

Thanks for detailed response. Keep us informed of your tests.