215 error on my business laptop

[davide445]

For customer validation sessions using 360 images I was trying to setup my standard business laptop in this way

Laptop: Lenovo X380 Yoga with i5-8350U CPU, UHD 620 iGPU, 8GB RAM, M2 SSD. Does have a Thunderbolt / DP compliant port.

Club3D USB-C to DisplayPort adapter (as suggested in this forum giving the best compatibility for mobile usage)

Vive Cosmos with link box connecting the DP on the adapter and USB3 on the laptop port.

Latest Steam and SteamVR, latest Cosmos sw update, latest sw update for the laptop, receiving from Vive Console a 215 Error headset display cannot detected.

SteamVR give me a 208 error, headset display disconnected, also notify your display appears to be set to duplicate content

Thunderbolt monitor show a Tunderbolt controller attached to Port 1.

- Tried to reboot

- Tried to set display to don't duplicate content: switch back himself to this settings

- Tried setting Direct Display mode, no changes

I didn't expect this setup to demo real 3D interactive applications, but just to display 360 images/videos trough DeoVR Video Player or similar.

Edited June 3, 2020 by davide445

[HackPerception]

@davide445  - This is a really clear case of incompatibility. I'm 100% sure the UHD 620 iGPU is well below the minimum requirements for PCVR. None of the integrate Intel chips will drive PCVR effectively. The UHD 620 is ~5-10x less powerful than a GTX1060 which is the absolute bare minimum req. Even the Intel NUC's that are compatible with first-gen VR have AMD Vega dGPUs rather than use Intel's iGPU solutions.

You can troubleshoot USB-C ports via the PhsX page to ensure the USB-C port is connected to the dGPU. In your case though - there is no dGPU.

[davide445]

@VibrantNebula I will check later. Of course I know it's not a VR ready GPU, but I if a smartphone is able to show 360 videos I was supposing my laptop was more than enough. SteamVR it's so an overhead for this things? Any other way to just look a 360 video using my Cosmos?

[C.T.]

2 hours ago, davide445 said:

@VibrantNebula I will check later. Of course I know it's not a VR ready GPU, but I if a smartphone is able to show 360 videos I was supposing my laptop was more than enough. SteamVR it's so an overhead for this things? Any other way to just look a 360 video using my Cosmos?

I will submit as a feature request internally to evaluate how to achieve this. Ty~

[davide445]

@C.T.

This will be a perfect way

https://www.roadtovr.com/ces-2019-htc-vive-cosmos-smartphone/

I know HTC also sells smartphones, but supporting any good smartphone with USB-C DisplayPort alternate mode will be up to the job for 360 videos.

Of course even better having some way to make Cosmos work with a standard laptop for just 360 videos.

Edited June 4, 2020 by davide445

[davide445]

@VibrantNebula just tried again. My latptop didn't have a Nvidia GPU so I can't use it to check the USB-C.

I will be keen in finding a solution since I have a demo coming with 360 video and need to understand if I just need to purchase another portable device (even if much cheaper) or not.

So far Vive Console give me an error 201 (headset not detected), SteamVR always an error 208.

Thunderbolt monitor didn't show me any attached device, but using HwMonitor show me a secondary display attached

I'm not able to interpret the data for the Alpine Ridge controller trough HwInfo, so not sure if show something connected

Finally Windows show this dubious configuration of the monitor, so two mirrored

[HackPerception]

@davide445 Is this still on the Lenovo X380? That laptop only has ~20-25% of the necessary GPU power to drive an HMD - it's super duper incompatible. No Intel integrated graphics chip-set can drive a Vive HMD (first gen or newer) - not even close.

When using a Cosmos/Pro on a laptop - you need a minimum of a GTX1070/RTX2060 since laptop cards do not have the same perf as their desktop equivalents. You also need to make sure the laptop supports Displayport 1.2+ output via the dedicated GPU.

[davide445]

@VibrantNebula I know from the beginning an iGPU it's not enough for interactive VR, but my goal it's just to play 360 videos with this laptop, something even a smartphone can do.

USB-C supports DP 1.2 from the documentation. 

Edited June 18, 2020 by davide445

[HackPerception]

@davide445 The hardware requirements are pretty firm and usage of the SteamVR runtime is one of those hardware requirements. You're not going to be able to drive any images to a Vive desktop HMD unless you meet the hardware requirements and can host a SteamVR compositor session. Even if you're only playing back a 360 video - the headset is compositing within a 6DoF environment at a fixed frame rate (90hz).

On a completely desperate note, smartphones and snapdragon based platforms can actually be better at decoding 360 video than desktop hardware due to how H264/H265 decodes at the processor level. Alot of $$$ and R&D has gone into making H264/265 optimized for mobile devices.