jefmes

You have good timing, seems a few of us are all looking at wireless configs at the moment. Check out here: I just got the ASUS ZenWiFi ET8 in the past few days and if you do get the RT-AX86S I'll be curious to see what your experience is. Bottom line right now seems to be to get the full potential out of the Focus 3, we might have put the 6 GHz network on a dedicated SSID. But, I'm waiting to hear back from ASUS too to see if something can be updated/changed about the "Tri-Band Smart Connect" to nudge the headset over to 6 GHz automatically when it's available.

You have posted at exactly the right day! 🙂 I just recently have been experimenting with the Focus 3's ability to connect at 6 GHz and also have questions. One thing I ran into Niil is that with a combined single network (one SSID for 2.4/5/6) I'm only ever able to connect at 5 GHz. If I created DEDICATED SSID for only 6 GHz channels, I am then able to connect at amazing 2200Mbps+ speeds. I have opened a case with ASUS to try to figure out why the headset does not "understand" that it should also be able to connect at 6 GHz on that SSID, but I would also like to hear from the Vive team if they have any experience with this? It seems like the Focus 3 doesn't attempt to connect at 6 GHz once it's connected at 5 GHz. I sent detailed logs to ASUS today, if I hear back any ideas or solutions, I will share that here too. In the meantime Niil if you're able to try creating a separate SSID just for 6 GHz, I'd be interested to hear your experience too!

That makes sense! I still haven't been able to get it to work (I've been using VBS as a simple example since I'm in that a lot, and I like seeing the connection screen and what kind of connection I'm getting rather than using the VBS IP Setting option) - I assume that means it should work from within SteamVR home too, right? I'll see what I can work out.

I haven't had any luck getting that to work unfortunately. I've tried from Vive Business Streaming, the basic HelloXR WaveSDK app I built and deployed to the headset (it does show my hands, but no gestures were recognized), and even though I didn't think it'd work I used the smaller articulated hands in SteamVR Home and no change using the palm facing myself and trying either pinch gesture with just thumb and index finger, or pinch using all five fingers.

I actually haven't tried changing the RS settings, I was trying to stick with the app defaults for to avoid reporting back issues I might have caused myself. 🙂 Now that I know the bandwidth shouldn't be a problem I think I'll give some of those other settings a try. @HackPerception Would there be any way we could get some more info on what/if the higher bitrate options have on some of those other parameters in the .json file? Some are kind of obvious of course, but I'm not sure what the OF, BR, and CP tags are. I'm assuming PS is "preset" and then if Raeldor is correct RS is resolution scaling to some effect? "PS": 0, "RS": 1.0, "OF": 1.0, "RX": 2048, "RY": 2048, "BR": 100000000, "CP": 1

Wifi 6E FTW! I just played an hour of HL:Alyx on Ultra quality, with Vive Business Streaming on Quality mode, mid-way sharpening, and 200 Mbps bitrate, and it was awesome! It's not *quite* native direct connect just yet, the hand movements are still just a bit more laggy in comparison, but that's really nitpicking. It's absolutely playable fully wireless in GOOD quality for the first time for me. If the latency gap can be closed just a bit more with further software updates I don't think I'll ever want to use it wired again. Well done HTC crew. 🙂 My next request is to get proper Focus 3 controller models into SteamVR so I don't have to see the Cosmos controllers again LOL. This headset keeps getting better and better.

Thanks CT I'll give that another try. I think I tried that but I might been doing palm up instead of palm towards me.

Well I just decided to splurge a bit after feeling like my current wifi setup wasn't quite adequate from my living room devices too, and I should have a Linksys Hydra Pro 6E router in my hands by the end of the day. 😄 This will be an interesting experiment either way it goes, I'm very curious to see how well the Focus 3 is able to utilize a Wifi 6E connection in the same room!

Ah good to know! Thanks.

@RaeldorAm I correct in thinking your 200mbps/quality/max sharpness streaming is over USB 3? My headset is telling me my Wifi 5E connection is at 720Mb (in the same room) but using those high settings I'm getting pretty massive view port re-projection of some sort if I try to look quickly from left to right, or shift by body around side to side. The experience over wifi w/ 100Mbps and Balanced quality has been very good today, but I'm curious about your setup because I'm wondering if the max quality and high bit rate options are maybe only really viable over Wifi 6E.

Also just something of a feature request please please please... 🙂 We are desperately in need of some kind of "home" gesture to be universal across all apps. I have gotten stuck inside test apps many times with no clear way to exit beyond rebooting the headset. For full hand control experiences where maybe controllers are not available, we very much need to be able to navigate into and out of apps and to always get back to the home screen.

Well it looks like screen recording is not working on my headset for some reason on the current build with the headset + vol up combo press, and I can't find record options in the headset menus either. I was able to get snapshots though, so apologies for the very hackey images here. 🙂 But you can see what's going on, with any choice of hands or the controller model, put hands vertical in front of you, and it's with palm facing up in VR. In the second image the hand vertical in a controller grip position (which should be default I think) you have to hold your hand horizontal or palm down. I confirmed this with all 3 of the available controller models in SteamVR home, and in multiple games. I understand the idea was probably to have flat hand forward feel like normally holding a controller forward, but since most controller based interactions are controller focused, the hands need to replicate that as long as there is not full 1 to 1 hand tracking in these apps. Basically, it just feels very unnatural right now.

Wolvic FAQ now actually states the HTC Vive Focus is on their support list. When can we expect to hear something from the HTC Vive team about our roadmap for browser plans? I've pretty much given up trying to use WebXR content on the headset as things have degenerated in Firefox Reality over the past year. https://wolvic.org/en/faq/

I wasn't aware there was a way to change what controller or hand model showed for your hands, I'll give that a try and see how that works. Either way though, I would expect the controller model to be oriented upward in a default position with a user's hands vertical, as if they were holding the controllers. I will confirm again but I believe the Cosmos controller model was in standard upright position when my hands were held flat/horizontal to the ground. I tried to play "Elven Archery" to confirm and my hands were not at all aligned with what I would think would be a "normal" position (if the hands are supposed to basically replicate controllers in the OpenXR/SteamVR usage)

This update is looking great so far! I was happy to finally try hand tracking with StereoKit w/ SteamVR as the OpenXR runtime, and it worked! There is one problem though, and I thought it was a StereoKit issue, but then also noticed the controllers (hands) in SteamVR also. The hand/controller rotation seems to be off 90 degrees on the z-axis I believe. Basically if I put my hands flat out forward, the virtual hands/controllers are then in the expected upright position. Pinch and trigger motions are working just fine though and tracking has been good so far (using Quality mode, 200 Mpbs, and wired USB3). Any ideas on the hand-controller rotation issue though?

Have you tried it with Vive Business Streaming as a wired connection? I'm curious if people are seeing a difference between wired and wireless, because I'm very sensitive to compression artifacts and loss of clarity, and my issue with wireless streaming is more about responsiveness and occasional judder when shifting sideways and forward more so than clarity. It actually looks very good to me - not as clear of course as my Reverb G2 but I don't expect it to. I've played quite a few games with the Focus 3 wired and wireless and the image quality hasn't really been a concern. Don't get me wrong though, I'm all in favor of more detail if we can get it... 🙂 I would think especially with Wifi 6 being enabled those limits would be lifted to some degree.

This is great to see! Looking forward to trying it out.

FWIW, I would *absolutely* target OpenXR first if I were starting a new project right now.

Hey there crapshot.ai - I really haven't given it much more of a try so far, I keep hoping we'll hear something back officially soon. If I have some time this weekend maybe I'll give it another go. I was able to get the foundational WaveSDK pieces set up and working properly for a native app and deployed it successfully to the headset, so I at least have the base pieces in place, but compiling an entire browser not properly targetted for the device...that's a little out of my comfort zone. 🙂 But I might be able to make it work. If I do I will let you know.

I can't speak to the USB problems as it's worked fine for me the entire time I've had it, but I agree wholeheartedly about not purchasing directly from the headset. FWIW I love the headset otherwise, it works great with SteamVR and native OpenXR apps (using SteamVR as the OpenXR runtime for now) via USB or Wifi for me, so I encourage you to stick with it and try to figure out what's going on. I have zero interest in supporting Metabook so I'm willing to jump thru the extra hurdles for now, and the headset HAS improved substantially over the past few months. A 20' USB cable could certainly be causing some problems so I would try a nice short length for now to confirm things are working.

Kind of a weird question maybe, but I've been thinking about using my Focus 3 as my only VR headset down the road. Speaking specifically about using it in a "tethered" scenario (not Android/local to device, I understand that's part of the OpenXR for Focus 3 early access piece.) Are you guys thinking about adding something perhaps to the Vive Business Streaming app to also control setting the Vive OpenXR as the default system-wide OpenXR runtime? I'd love to not have to run through SteamVR for using native OpenXR tools.

Now that we know Firefox Reality is official being sent out to pasture and Igalia is forking it to take over development as "Wolvic" I have to assume HTC has a game plan to replace Firefox Reality w/ Wolvic on the Focus 3 ASAP. Do you guys plan to put out a statement about this soon, or have anything you can share about what direction you'll be going? I'm thinking about trying to build it myself for the Focus 3 with the latest WaveSDK, but I don't really want to put in the time if you're already working on doing that. https://wolvic.com/ Otherwise, I consider this a good thing and I hope HTC will support the effort in light of us not having any other real browser options. Thanks guys.

You would need to find a similar option for whatever GPU you're using, make sure it's forcing the system to use the discrete GPU whenever possible. If you're able to tell me what model of laptop you have and what kind of GPU I might be able to point you in the right direction.

Happy to see this, and I'm only using it as purely a prosumer/enthusiast dev-test device, but I'd happy to see if I can get native StereoKit OpenXR code working on the headset.

I'm not sure if there's a more official way to do this, but I suspect you'd be able to grab them from here: webxr-input-profiles/packages/assets/profiles/htc-vive-focus-3 at 0c8a54da698327f77762109a57c5ff13110502c0 · ViveSoftware/webxr-input-profiles (github.com)