Vive Pro 2 and HTC wireless

[Leo_BH]

I have a Vive pro with a wireless kit, my question are when I will get this upgrade firmware ? Because just now I will have a downgrade to change to Pro2 I will lose my OLED to a LED screen without a resolution upgrade.

[sphinckoma]

When will the wireless update with the promised resolution of 1632 × 1632 appear?

I have the vive pro 2 and love it.

[C.T.]

9 hours ago, sphinckoma said:

When will the wireless update with the promised resolution of 1632 × 1632 appear?

I have the vive pro 2 and love it.

We will roll out beta soon with this ... thx

[groslala]

Couldn't you use a WiGig 2 kit, like Pimax is planning to do for the Pimax 12K? The bandwidth for wigig 2 is supposed to be 20-40 Gb/s, that would be more than enough for the Vive Pro 2.

[Gildahl]

I just bought the wireless module for my VP2, and I think HTC made the right quality decisions given the present hardware, and I appreciate that they did some work to raise the supported resolution on this headset.  While the image is obviously a bit softer at High resolution than Ultra, it is very stable and clean without any artifacts, especially compared to my old TP Cast on the OG Vive.  Consequently, I suspect this may be the best wireless experience currently available.  Clearly, however, this headset really deserves to have full 5K resolution supported in wireless, and with WiGig 2 available, it is sorely expected since this lack disrupts the practicality to use wireless full-time.  While we're waiting though, (and this simple oversight really bugs me), HTC should at least make available a simple quick disconnect to make it easier to switch between wired and wireless mode.  The way it works right now is a nuisance and a simple coupler could easily fix that. 

Edited November 2, 2021 by Gildahl

[altair0319]

On 11/2/2021 at 7:38 AM, Gildahl said:

I just bought the wireless module for my VP2, and I think HTC made the right quality decisions given the present hardware, and I appreciate that they did some work to raise the supported resolution on this headset.  While the image is obviously a bit softer at High resolution than Ultra, it is very stable and clean without any artifacts, especially compared to my old TP Cast on the OG Vive.  Consequently, I suspect this may be the best wireless experience currently available.  Clearly, however, this headset really deserves to have full 5K resolution supported in wireless, and with WiGig 2 available, it is sorely expected since this lack disrupts the practicality to use wireless full-time.  While we're waiting though, (and this simple oversight really bugs me), HTC should at least make available a simple quick disconnect to make it easier to switch between wired and wireless mode.  The way it works right now is a nuisance and a simple coupler could easily fix that. 

do you have any problems using wireless on Pro 2, mine stopped working after the recent software update

[C.T.]

Submit a log will be helpful for us to provide suggestion. Thanks 

[Gildahl]

16 hours ago, altair0319 said:

do you have any problems using wireless on Pro 2, mine stopped working after the recent software update

No. I'm on 2.0.19.0 and wireless works fine (great, in fact!).

But here's the tl;dr part.

While on the previous version I did have an incredibly weird problem (though it probably had nothing to do with the version). After getting my wireless adapter and using it for a couple weeks I tried going back to wired mode and disturbingly found that Ultra, High, and Balanced resolutions now all looked identical (and blurry--as if all were the equivalent of Balanced mode--only Performance mode looked worse). Neither rebooting nor powering down the link box would fix it. I thought I'd never get Ultra mode back! I put in a help request to HTC (who took it seriously and started looking into it--credit where credit is due); but in the meantime I went through an exercise of uninstalling/reinstalling all HTC software, SteamVR, and even my nVidia driver.  Note that I did NOT install new versions of any of these since I was already on all the latest versions.  I just re-installed the ones I had been using. At one point in all this the headset stopped working altogether and would not be recognized at all. I only managed to get it working again by plugging my Index back in then disconnecting it. After this the VP2 worked again. Go figure.

But that's when the most amazing thing happened!

Before I say what happened, let me just mention that ever since I bought the VP2 (and long before I got the wireless module)--that's like 6 months ago--I ran it in Ultra mode. I also tended to run it at an SS setting of 100-120%, because raising it to 150% (the default) provided no noticeable improvement in visuals, but only incurred a crippling performance hit on my i9/2080Ti.  At these settings, VP2 visuals were modestly better than my old Index and so I was reasonably happy.

Ok, so what happened after my software exorcism?  Well, stunningly, when I set the headset to Ultra mode and put the headset back on, not only was it working, but everything was sharp in a way I had never seen before.  I mean it was night and day different.  Before, in Ultra mode, the VP2 was always better than my Index--pretty much just enough better to warrant keeping it. But now it was like three-quarters of the way to what I hear people saying about the Varjo Aero (which I've now lost about 90% of my interest in). To say that I was happy would be an understatement.

The other truly odd thing was that when I checked the SteamVR video configuration, it was at the default 150% setting and yet my performance remained excellent and at least as good as before. In fact, after testing further, it turned out that my performance was now genuinely *higher* than it was previously; and not only that, but lowering the SS to my old 100-120% settings now produced no meaningful performance change and only blurred the image.  So whereas in the past I always wondered why HTC made 150% the default for SS (since it seemed overkill and destroyed performance), now it seems to be the ideal setting and makes perfect sense to leave it there.

This improvement carried over to wireless too.  Because wireless runs in High resolution rather than Ultra, it was always a bit blurrier, and this remained true. However, now, High mode in wireless looks was looking like Ultra mode used to look. Maybe even better! Crazy. 

The long and short of this is that for months I was apparently running my VP2 in some kind of a degraded mode and never knew it. It seemed to work correctly, with Ultra mode looking better than the other modes as expected; but apparently all modes were operating at a significantly lower visual fidelity than what I should have been experiencing. The only way I could have known this is if I had a properly working system to compare it with. In its new condition, every game I have is stunning in a way I never knew this headset could do, and strongly changes much of my opinion about it.  

Since this happened, I've updated to 2.0.19.0 with no ill effect and continue to have no clue as to what "fixed" my headset.  My best guess, and what feels like the best explanation at the moment, is that previously, the SS setting was badly botched somehow, so that regardless of what I set the slider to, it was never internally giving me the effect of more than 100% or so.  This would explain why I never saw much of a visual difference going from 150% down to 100 or 120% (or even going up to 200%). But it has to be more complicated than just that since not only visuals, but performance has improved as well.  Free lunch comes to mind.  

I guess the moral of the story is that if you happen to find that 150% SS seems excessive and that lowering SS improves performance without much effect on visuals, then you might own a much better performing headset than you think and not even know it. Just don't ask me how to fix it.