#VIVE LAUNCH COMPOSITOR DRIVERS#

If when you start up SteamVR your HMD sees the lighthouses but never actually starts tracking, try to either powercycle the HMD (by unplugging/replugging the powercable in the linkbox or by triggering a 'Vive reboot' in the settings>developer menu)Īnother more rigorous option is to uncouple all vive hardware from the computer, go to steamVR>developer>Remove all USB Devices, reboot and plug in the vive hardware after windows has restarted. (this magically solved a seemingly unsolvable problem for me recently) If none of these things helped (or you dont have the converters) you can try removing your graphics driver, rebooting, and reinstalling your graphics driver from scratch. If steamVR claims it cant find a monitor try unplugging/replugging the display cable.Īnother thing to try is to hook the vive up over a DVI>HDMI or a DVI>minidisplayport or HDMI>minidisplayport or a Displayport>minidisplayport converter. Be sure to check the diagrams as there's also an auxilary usb port and the audio and DC jacks have a similar diameter. you can slide it towards you (when you have the camera and the plastic frontpanel shield facing you) After removing them, put them back into place. To do this you have to slide loose the 'clip' at the top of the headset. If you see in the USB screen some devices aren't working, try unplugging all cables from the headset (on the side of the headset) If you see a specific device that stays greyed out (even after a vive reboot or two) you at least have a culprit to refer to with the RMA Re-seating the cable on the HMD side can improve things. When the mainboard or watchman board is not active it can be a loose power connection to the HMD. (make sure to click the 'refresh' button) With direct mode you can only see 3 things:Ī properly tracked view, a grey 'i cant find tracking' screen and a turned off screen.Ĭheck the settings>USB to see if all 'devices' are active.

#VIVE LAUNCH COMPOSITOR DRIVERS#

Setting direct mode, having steamvr restart and not seeing steam using direct mode can mean your gpu is not supporting it or if your drivers are too old.Īnother advantage of Direct Mode is that it 'protects' viewers from getting disoriented from seeing your desktop after SteamVR has shut down or crashed (or when it's restarting). This also allows SteamVR to turn off the screens in the headset when the vive isn't being used.Ī good way to know if 'direct' mode works is by shutting down SteamVR, if the display turns off it's directmode, if the display shows your desktop wallpaper, it's not in direct mode. However in order to do this the vive needs to run with very recent graphics drivers and a current gen Graphics card.ĭirect mode causes the vive's monitor to be seen by your computer as a 'device' instead of a regular monitor.

Running in direct mode gets you a slight performance boost and gets rid of the compositer issues. Try to enable this though SteamVR>Devices>Direct Mode If steamVR keeps complaining about the 'compositer not being full screen', showing a red screen on the vive's display, your vive is not running in direct mode. If you cant get tracking this can be due to the camera or some other problem, further down this post there's some tricks that can solve this. Make sure it's in view of the base stations. If your screen is on, but showing solid grey, the vive's display is working properly, though it cant find a valid tracking position. Unplug all the plugs from the linkbox, USB/HDMI/DC replug them again. (this also can fix some 'magically appearing' problems in vives that worked fine previously)

Trying multiple ports will sometimes work. After plugging in the cable you'll get a 'installing new usb hardware' dialog running in your taskbar for a few seconds (Make sure to wait until all of the installs have concluded). The first thing to try: If in doubt, pick a different USB port on your computer. The first step to getting it fixed is to see if the 'default' troubleshooting pages get you anywhere:Īfter this there are a few things that seem to make things work for unexplainable reasons. Various 3 number error messages will display on the SteamVR driver claiming something went wrong and that something should be fixed in order to play with the vive properly. Sometimes a system reboot will fix things magically but other times it requires a more shenanigans. I believe most have been fixed already in the consumer version, however the 'tricks' that got my vive running again might still apply to those unlucky people that are now assuming they have a 'dead' vive. When developing on the vive i've come across a variety of errors with getting the vive to function. Recently i have noticed a unlucky few people getting errors while starting up their vives for the first time.

Vive launch compositor