JohnyDL

I haven't but there's a combination of limiting factors on higher resolution HMDs First is the technology of displays you've got to balance out resolution, refresh rate and weight. You can have a higher resolution but the cost is usually lower refresh rate which would suck in most applications and that doesn't mean it can't be done but to deliver more pixels and faster means more electronics over all. Second is processing vs transmission, this problem has always existed, we've always had lower resolutions than would be ideal because the cost of computation just isn't there to provide higher resolution with a low bandwidth, and a larger bandwidth just isn't feasible. For TVs this meant 625 lines of resolution for broadcast but the output of many early computers were less than that 320x200 in some cases. Increasing the resolution requires either more bandwidth and so heavier/bulkier cables or wireless packs, or more processing which could mean higher latency on the headset, if you compress the data signal and decompress it that takes time and while for TV that's fine it doesn't really matter if your TV is whole minutes behind the actual broadcast in most cases fractions of a second for VR can be nausiating. Third is graphics processing bottleneck. Looking at the gaming monitor ecosystem there's simply a limit to how much a reasonable computer at a reasonable price can display. This is because it takes lots of processing to render scenes, just sticking more and more GFX cards into a computer doesn't linearly increase performance, even using SLI or Crossfire you don't get a doubling of performance for paying twice as much and getting 2 cards. You can throw more and more money at the problem but you still hit a hard wall, and the result is that even if you can create a display that's the same weight as present and it could serve 4k 144Hz to each eye and it's cheap enough to be a consumer product you could never realistically buy a computer in the under $1000 price point that would be able to serve out enough pixels I honestly think that HTC/Vive have somewhat of a sweet spot on all of this stuff so that 99% of people who can buy have a good time with it and the 1% that want or need those extra pixels can either wait for everything to improve rather than join the early adopters, or they can pay excessive amounts and the extreme early adopter tax for products that're still in development and not really ready for the larger market.

No portals but the movement method is basically teleportation anyway, so you get the puzzles but not the portal gun itself, there's still things you can't do without them but it's only a mini quest. I think it would be possible to do a full VR Portal game but level design would have to be really clever. For some levels put a portal dividing the room set up, if you're on the orange side of the portal you can shoot blue and blue side shoot orange and then you have this magical doorway that helps you move about the space. Other Levels you get the full portal gun but you never go through it yourself. But anything momentum based would have to be excised because yeah motion sickness

it can take a day or so for that page to work, it sucks but it doesn't mean your order isn't coming. It will definitely be working by the time they ship.

Portal Stories is a Mod that's on the steam store https://store.steampowered.com/app/446750/Portal_Stories_VR/ I've not played either of the original games I figured I didn't really need to

Like I said there are some HDMI to DP converters, but they're not cheap and I don't have any idea what the latency might be This one from Belkin is $80 https://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F2CD066/ but I didn't look that hard you might find something suitable. So long as you can get the Steam VR to output to the HDMI Port (which I wouldn't know how to do) it might work but it's also quite an expensive gamble.

My only VR FPSs so far are all Valve things, Alyx, Portal Stories, and the Lab, I can't say if there's a bad one between them, Maybe Portal Stories cause it's based of P2 and a fan project rather than designed to be in VR from the ground up.

When I went to the website to redeem I put in the one code and it gave both VivePort Infinity and HL:Alyx codes, you then can redeem the VP:Infinity within that app and HL:Alyx on steam the same way you would any other game (go to your library add a game in bottom left corner) If you're having trouble don't hesitate to contact customer support I've had to and they're really really helpful

You need to have a USB type C and a Display Port, I'm not sure if a single dongle will do the trick converting both into one thunderbolt cable, It might, but I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath, the dongle may also add some lag to the heaset which I can assure you is not fun. There are some HDMI to Display port Adaptors too though again I can't vouch for Lag. I'd also recommend running Steam VR Performance Test on your laptop, this should tell you if you have the specs. Honestly I think @VibrantNebula might be the best person for answers here 😉 I'm sure I saw them recommend a specific dongle a week or two ago but I can't find the post

I think you'd be better off with the Vive pro for full body, it uses base station 2 technology so you can have more light houses and so better tracking, though I think you need to buy the extra trackers and 3rd/4th base stations separate The cosmos elite does come with the external tracking faceplate, controlers and base stations no other accessories. (well chargers and cables but you know what I mean)

I'm thinking I actually agree with the idea a Laptop might be a valid accessory for a VR rig too, right now there's the current global thing going on but if I could grab my VR headset, controllers and a single light house and go to a friend's house or set up in a side room of a party/wedding and let others try VR (especially beat sabre) I think that'd be fantastic, especially if you throw it together with a cheap projector and a soundbar you can turn a one person experience into something closer to karaoke. I'm wondering if it might even be an experience that people might want to rent in the same way as they might hire a DJ or bouncy castle. I mentioned before that I might not recommend any "gaming" laptop but I'm struggling to think of a none gaming device that'll out of the box have the horses, stability and most importantly the customer services because while I'm at home I can tinker to get my home built PC working nicely but if I'm demoing things to others I need it to look really easy to set up especially if part of the reason is I want other people to buy in and make more developers think there's an audience in VR worth making games for. My first experience with VR was the original Oculus dev kit I think in 2014 and because I watched the people struggle to get something set up that was worth demo-ing and didn't make everyone who touched it have motion sickness I knew that while a nice tech toy it was just a toy at that point and it wasn't something I'd want to buy for myself or would get any use out of. And while Dell might have cheapped out on the case (I have no experience myself) the hardware inside is all that really matters and that seems priced competitively (see my last post in this thread) and dell hardware just never gives up from my experience. I absolutely love my desktop and would definitely say that's a better choice for me at home that doesn't mean everyone has the space for one or that everyone would see the benefits from having one like I do. Laptops are a thing of compromise sort of by design, but if the compromise is a laptop with steam VR or any mobile VR, then the laptop makes a lot more sense to me.

I ran Vive Room Setup from the start menu. I have a Cosmos Elite, so it's installed with an external tracking face plate. However see the screenshots that I'm shown that completely ignore this fact and in fact gets stuck at the 100% load time in the last screen shot StamVR Room Setup on the other hand is launched at the end of the Vive Setup program and today, as I generated this feedback I discovered I can launch this from within the SteamVR Menu while the headset is turned on without going through all the here's how to set up your base stations, here's how to plug in your headset, here's how to pair your controllers that I don't need to do again.

Just an FYI the program installed as "Vive Room Setup" with the Cosmos Elite is actually the version that's expecting to use inside out tracking and as such I had to basically reinstall the system when I replaced/moved one of my Lighthouses and the floor level was set 20cm below my real floor. It'd be fantastic going forward if you could make it so the software detects which tracking system to use based on the face plate installed when it detects a Cosmos and recognises also that it should be looking for the Vive controllers not the cosmos controllers that would make re-calibrating just that little easier

Wow that sucks, might sound stupid but A sounds like the display is rotated 180 are your base stations displaying A, b, c the right way up? if they're sending out the laser signal in the wrong orientation to reality your headset and computer might think it's upside down. For me my power LED is at the top If that helps with the tracking you might be able to find something that works to resolve B. I know when certain things are loading for me I get jitteryness, certainly opening up each dimension in the lab gives me 10 seconds where tracking just fails because my computer is probably focusing on other things this usually clears itself up though.

Have you run the ViveSetup.exe HTC sent you when you brought the headset? (is this what you meant by Vive cosmos elite software?) Have you plugged everything in as directed? There's an order to setting things up, I don't know if it matters but I know it's easy to forget a power lead or think a cable is optional when it isn't Can you start the Vive Console? that should make the headset come on at least with a totally white display. Can you run Vive Room Setup? it might be if your floor is calibrated wrong then the screen might not have anything to display You should be able to drop in screenshots, or photos even if you have to save them, use the snipping tool to take and save your screen shots it's super useful *hopes I can help I'm new to VR stuff myself*

I ordered on Sunday29th arrived Tuesday 31st, Ordered a spare lighthouse yesterday before 12noon and arrived today, basically still seems DPD do next day delivery within the UK

Okay so for others with this problem the answer: First don't panic. It may seem like the end of the world when something like this happens but it's really not Second, you can play VR with only one base station. the tracking can have bad moments but it still works, you're not going to be without VR although you may lose out on quality temporarily Third get in contact with Customer Services, I couldn't do this right away cause they were closed when I first posted but they'll help, a repair should always be cheaper than a total replacement. Fourth and finally having a spare. If you've broken one Lighthouse you might want to think about keeping a spare. You can't mix and match 1.0 and 2.0 because syncing uses a different technique/technology between generations. 2.0 you can use up to 4 lighthouses at the same time for the same setup so a third station will only improve tracking if you have a third, 1.0 you can use only 2 bases but again having a spare may help you down the line, if one stops working you can recover the set up in a near instant with the spare and arrange sending in the broken one for repair, and right now the value of second hand base stations is almost the same as new, and this is likely to remain the case for a while if you want to sell your spare on ebay once you have had your repair you'll not lose much if any money spent on the spare itself.

One of my lighthouses fell from where I secured it last night (it's been there 7 days the whole mount came off the wall) and now doesn't seem to want to turn on, I'm not sure what to do, I've had my Cosmos Elite for a week now. Do I need to assume it's dead and need's replacing? is there anything I could try to trouble shoot this problem? The first day I had them the other lighthouse did it's own jump to the floor while I was setting them up and survived, so I didn't think they were that fragile... I'm not sure what to do? @stvnxu

Sanity while I wouldn't myself recommend the Alienware brand (I generally wouldn't recommend any laptop that's branded as "gaming") Alienware hasn't been that much outside the price to performance curve on their laptops, desktops maybe but not on laptops. That said going prebuilt does come with a few perks over building your own, they're preconfigured, guaranteed to work out of the box and have a decent amount of warranty and customer service. You may have had a bad experience, the people I know who've had them have had mixed reviews too some hyping them others not. But I don't see that as a reason to call another user a troll for trying to help. My personal experience with Dells tends to come from the optiplex lineup and I can vouch for those as I've seen them treated really badly and the unbranded OEM hardware putting up with more abuse than what I've seen branded hardware handle. I'd assume that Dell would bin parts so that the highest rated ones end up in Alienware machines rather than the office ones in order to maximise profits and reputation. Had you read what they said they offered minimum specs for a VR capable laptop and made one specific recommendation... do you disagree with the minimum specs offered? I don't, though I might suggest that AMD has some interesting competition coming out right now and it could be worth waiting 6 months to buy a laptop if you're not in the market immediately. And do you have any specific recommendations? Do you actually own that recommendation and can recommend it from experience? As for Pricing The Alienware Laptop that was recommended (M15 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-9750H Windows 10 Home NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 2060 6GB GDDR6 (OC Ready) 16GB DDR4 2666MHz) is $1700 from Dell's website Equivalent MSI Laptop seems to be the GE65 Raider priced at $1800 on new egg (and only the upgraded 2070 version for $2500 is on Amazon right now) Equivalent Gigabyte Laptop seems to be the GIGABYTE AERO 17 which is $2000 on new egg (WA-7US1130SO) and $1950 on Amazon (XA-7US1130SO)

I completely didn't think about games as accessories but yeah I brought the cosmos elite mainly for beat saber which is lots of fun (though most of the custom levels seem to not bother with "newbie" modes) and tilt brush which I like but I wouldn't necessarily recommend (I should have waited to try it on VP:Infinity) I'm still talking to customer services to get my HL Alyx and VP:infinity set up (I screwed up they're really helpful) so I'm for the most part making do with the games I already own and the things I can get free. Vivecraft is a rather unique experience if you already own Minecraft Java Edition takes a bit of getting used to and I had some vertigo here and there from the none teleport movement method, but I got used to it quickly and The Lab from Steam has become my go to start up program to get into the VR space, I love the archery range even if it doesn't quite match the real thing (I'm really struggling to dial in my aim, though I'm getting better). There are a few 'free' movie theatre apps (like CineVR) that I've given a quick look nothing that'll let me connect to streaming services like amazon video. netflix or even youtube it'd be cool to have a virtual cinema trip with friends right now but there's no point when there's nothing to watch without IAPs and extremely limited selections. And talking of things that it'd be really cool to have if they existed, micro trackers (one sensor and the smallest amount of electronics possible) that you could stick to your keyboard or mouse or chair to find them without taking off the headset, I can touchtype fine but knowing where my keyboard is after a few spins, not happening. There's no orientation to worry about so long as I can put my hand anywhere on these things I can feel around them (or more likely would know their orientation by instinct). They could show their locations like how the lighthouses show themselves when you're in the in between space changing games. *shrug* I'm definitely adding LightFeilds and Google Earth to my to do since they're both free on steam.

I hear that the Valve controllers are the best and should be compatable with anything using lighthouses As for a PC You might be okay building your own with last years parts. but building a PC for a VR experience you probably want to spend about the same amount on the PC as the headset. And given the current global *situation* extra face cushions are a must have if you plan to share your vive.

it can take 36 hours to actually come through the system to be checked that way, I had the same problem ordering sunday morning, by monday afternoon I could log in and I got my stuff delivered tuesday. Frustrating? Sure. A problem? not really 🙂