HackPerception

@ROBYER1 If I'm following, I believe this is one of the common misconceptions about base stations. In essence, the early versions of the 1.0 base station firmware did not have error detection/correction. That means that a 1.0 basestation can spew out bad tracking data but SteamVR won't show an error message, and the station won't stop itself from spewing out laser data. Newer firmware will detect there is a problem, stop the station from emitting laser data, and then send an error message to SteamVR so your altered. In context, people who commonly update to the newer firmware and hit error messages try to revert to the original firmware using the procedure above. While it gets rid of the error message, the station can function improperly and spew out tons of bad data. If your station is a 2021 purchase, it's potentially still under warranty. I would scrape the S/N off the back and contact live chat at www.vive.com/support -> Contact Us -> Contact Us and see if you can just get that replaced.

Settings -> Advanced -> USB Debugging (toggle on) enables things like ADB developer commands and sideloading. @harshit98

@bst Yeah - it's super out of warranty. I'd recommend contacting care via www.vive.com/support -> contact us to see what options they have. I'm not super plugged into hardware support and I'm not sure if they have repair or replacement pricing. That station is deffo a sadboi though with the sync array out.

@bst The sync array in that station may have failed. This is super dooper rare - I haven't seen that myself. You should see the 9 LEDs from the photo above. I think that stations a goner. When is your purchase date?

@ozten I saw on Linkedin this week that at least one member of the Mozilla Hubs team was rehired. Hopefully that's a good sign. I personally think the metaverse hype will be a boon for WebXR.

@ozten WebXR is in a bit of a sad place because of Google's depriortization of XR, and Firefox's layoffs. It's still progressing - it's just getting a small fraction of the resources as the game engine side of the industry. I haven't had luck with chrome and WebXR in some time outside of Oculus' fork of chromium they use in the Quest Browser. I just tested and can't get WebXR to work with any of my SteamVR headsets (including ones that don't require Vive Console) on the current Chrome - same problem as you. I'm not aware of what steps might be required to get SteamVR linked up on the current chrome build. I was able to get WebXR to work perfectly with Firefox with Vive Pro 2 via SteamVR without any fuss - it just works as you said. That's using all of the current APIs and working perfectly with SteamVR so that leads me to think it's a Chrome specific issue.

@bst 1.0 or 2.0 stations? What do you mean by when you enable "only this one". Generally - SteamVR should be giving you some specific error messages if the station is broken. If 1.0, try unplugging the good station, and try the station while it's set to mode A and see if you can get tracking out of it. If 2.0 stations, use a paperclip to press the pinhole on the back of the affected station while it's plugged in. Give it a few presses - this will manually index the station Be very careful not to move the station around too much. This will eliminate the possibility that there is a channel conflict. I also recommend taking your smartphone camera and holding it up to the base-station. You should be able to see two dots where the lasers are being emitted from. If you only see one, or you see none - that might mean the base-station isn't emitting. This is true with both 1.0 and 2.0 stations, but on 1.0 stations, there will be an array of 9 sync LEDS.

@bfalandays It kind of the opposite situation. I'm not an expert on this product, but I know that SRAnipal is a licensed version of Tobii's runtime a subset of the Tobii XR SDK APIs/featureset. We've basically white-labeled Tobii's runtime and APIs to provide an SDK that enables core functionality out of the box. I think in this case you'd defer to Tobii's stuff completely to prevent interference.

Vive Pro 2 only supports Windows. I believe you can use the OG Vive, and Vive Pro 1 on Linux via SteamVR's linux branch, but all other PCVR Vive Headsets are Windows only (Pro 2, Cosmos, Cosmos Elite, Focus 3 via Vive Business Streaming). There is not a linux distro of the required middlewear Vive Console, and it is not currently on the roadmap due to request for linux support being fairly niche. @davide445 @towc

@Tomie - This is a super weird one. I have never heard of a case quite like this. That cable I linked has historically been $6. I'm sorry that listing skyrocket an absurdly high price. The 6 footer is still cheap - it's probably one of those supply chain things where Amazon sold out and hasn't gotten a resupply. You generally want to aim for Displayport 1.4 cables that can support 4K @ 60fps. 2 meter cables are usually the max, with best performance on 1 meter cables. Quest 2 doesn't connect to your dGPU directly. What you see on Quest 2 is a compressed video that's being transmitted over USB/WiFi. PCVR headsets are creating an uncompressed video link directly from the headset to the dGPU. It's a different approach. The issue you're having with mains power is super weird. We have seen examples in the past where basestations can be affected by unstable power supply. E.G. A high-draw device like an AC or dishwasher kicks on, and it affects the quality of the current supplied to a basestation causing them to spin at an incorrect speed causing tracking lost. You could try to temporarily disable high-draw devices to see if something is spewing out electrical interference. If you have access to another VRPC, you could use that to isolate it between the laptop and the headset. You could have a bad power supply on your laptop or a faulty motherboard Pretty weird situation that would be very hard to troubleshoot without physical access.

SteamVR hosts all firmware locally at ...steamapps\common\SteamVR\tools\lighthouse\firmware\htc. The controller ones are the vr_neo_vrc_ files. I'm honestly not sure which one of the ones in that folder currently being distro'ed by SteamVR is the Vive Pro's - we super don't recommend manually pushing firmware to the device but rather using SteamVR's firmware tool. I think the one ending in BD is first gen Vive controllers. I'd deffo try the procedure I posted above first though

@Michelangel0 Try holding every single button down for 10 seconds (trackpad, steamvr button, system menu button, grip, and trigger - everything) - the LED should start flashing orange rapidly. While it's flashing orange rapidly, plug it into your PC with a MicroUSB data cable, and then open SteamVR. You should see the following screen immediately pop up which should allow SteamVR to flash the firmware. That said - if the controller isn't turning on without being plugged in - there may be another problem (e.g. bad battery) that is messing things up.

@patfish The SteamVR binding system can definitely be frustrating. I'd recommend posting in the SteamVR group - that's all SteamVR systems that's managed by Valve. You might be generating a configuration that's not valid? I personally have had better experience when using the legacy binding UI - I've never had luck with the new UI.

@Andy4077 If you're referring to a first gen Vive kit - that headset/controller kit doesn't have sensors that are compatible with BS 2.0. That said, all of that gear is backwards compatible with the 1.0 basestations.

@vkoester The major change is that Valve officially discontinued efforts to bring SteamVR to Mac OS in April 2020: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/250820/view/2216278054495230717 There simply isn't a ton of data points about using SteamVR & bootcamp. Beyond the original Vive, I don't think there has much if any testing with getting the newer desktop headsets working on Mac hardware simply due to the lack of official support, and the lack of community interest. The PCVR community is deeply coupled with Nvidia cards. What headset are you using? Vive Console is needed for: Cosmos & Pro 2. If you have an OG Vive or Vive Pro - that connects directly to SteamVR without the Vive Console.

@Andy4077 SteamVR is a consumer-facing tool. It's going to be exponentially easier to navigate certain parts of the SteamVR compositor's UI and toolest (e.g Room Setup) if you have a headset and 2 controllers. This can be extreemly helpful for roomsetup. I've never heard that you you'd need a controller. I'm not sure what purpose the controller would serve. There'd be zero way for the controller to communciate with SteamVR because in a standard setup, the controller connects to one of two bluetooth recievers within a SteamVR-tracking headset. Valve does not allow you to download previous versions of SteamVR for security reasons. If you know how to manhandle the Steam client - you can technically pull old clients down, but there are UX gaps. You'd need to set up a "null HMD" driver to use SteamVR without a headset. Triad Semicondutor used to have a guide that I referenced, but it's now offline and I can't find anything psudeooffical to link to. If you have basestation 2.0, you need to use the pinhole on the back of one of the stations to manually change the channel of that station. Otherwise, both stations will be broadcasting on channel 1 and will interfere with each other out. Overall, this is not considered a "supported" setup by HTC because SteamVR changes frequently and it's a consumer-facing tool meant to be used by full VR kits.

@Bear8899 That's not surprising for a 1060 GPU. You're pretty much at the hardware minimum requirements for VR, let alone the minimum requirements for specific pieces of content. You're likely not able to drive a full 90FPS on most modern games at 100% native resolution with that GPU and would require down sampling and interpretation. VR is just demanding like that.

@Conan76 That indicates there is unfortunate a mechanical issue with that basestation. It would be covered under warranty at that age. Document the serial number off of the back of the unit and contact support via www.vive.com/support -> contact us To extend the lifespan of a basesation, be sure to never touch it or move it around while it's powered on, and enable basestation power management within SteamVR.

Adding in that Vive Flow can only run apps in VR that natively have Vive's WaveSDK integrated into the APK.

@Kay2029 - Care sometimes has a stash of these - but it depends on what region/country you're in. Since Valve is the OEM on that component, you can also try contacting their support to see if they can help. The 1.0 and 2.0 stations take the same current/voltage so they're generally cross compatible as far as I'm aware. Ifixit has some stock for 1.0 stations: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Generic/HTC-Vive-Base-Station-Power-Adapter/IF453-015?o=1

@Sincrono - The Vive Pro Eye can be run by two SDKs: SRAnipal - a simplified SDK that licenses Tobii's eye tracking product for basic functionality (gaze, foveated rendering, ect). Tobii XR SDK - A paid SDK that you can license from Tobii to do more advanced analytics. This has a variety of toolkit-type pre-built In other words, with the basic SRAnipal SDK - there are some limitations on the richness of data that Tobii allows you to access. You can use Vive Pro Eye to detect people's gazes and can use that to drive things like avatar animations or to build your own tracking analytics (e.g. playback of a user's gaze). E But you can't use that SDK to access the actual images of the iris for instance. Ovation is an example of an app that is built with SRAnipal. The developer built their own custom tools to derive the analytics from the basic gaze position data. Some of those tools can be purchased prebuilt from Tobii within their SDK.

@5thWolf If it happens at specific angles it means that you likely have an environmental reflection that's causing the headset to receive confusing tracking data. If it happens when looking directly at a station, it could indicate that something is wrong with one or both of that station's laser systems. If the stations have recent firmware, they should be able to detect and report if there's a problem there though. See here for how to confirm if it's reflections: "Reflective surfaces" in practice are hard to track down without specialized equipment because materials interact differently with IR light than optical light. A material may not be reflective in the visible spectrum but may be highly reflective in the IR spectrum; the same is true with opacity, some visibly opaque materials will be complete transparent in IR and vice versa. To detect reflections, generate a system report or open up the SteamVR web console and search for the term "back-facing". I'll post an example of what a reflection looks like in the logs below. 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

@Sincrono There isn't much if any end-to-end 3rd party documentation about eye tracking since the headset is kind of a niche enterprise product being used by enterprise developers rather than the broader gaming development community. The SDK has HTML documentation that's hard to find. See /SDK-v1.3.3.0/SDK/03_Unreal/Document/Eye/html/index.html and SDK-v1.3.3.0/SDK/03_Unreal/Document/Eye/Getting Started with SRanipal in Unreal Eye-v1.3.3.0.pdf

@Dragonlord - The wireless adapter is a desktop PC product that requires a free PCI-E slot on your motherboard. There isn't a suitable option for laptops because mobile architecture is much more complex and far less standardized than PC hardware. You would unfortunately need a VR compatible desktop to attempt to make the Cosmos Elite wireless.

@testijg Admins can change it. What do you want it to be?