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Massive yaw and pitch (!) drift under Linux

bluenote
Honored Guest
I'm currently at a point where I should do some alpha testing of my project (developing under Linux). Unfortunately, I have massive issues with drift. I'm now sure that the problem is not related to the bug I reported in this thread, where I found out that the Linux SDK's configuration utility generates malformed JSON files, and thus, calibration data is unusable. What I did now is to copy the respective configuration JSONs from Windows (which btw do use a "." a decimal seperator). But still I have massive drift issues. I spent the whole day to track down the reason without success. I made the following confusing observations:


  • The drift is not only a yaw drift, but a combination of yaw + pitch. The pattern always seems to be the same: A very fast downward drift right after initialization (the floor becomes the wall in front of me) followed by a slower yaw drift (but still about 3 min for 360°).

  • I did not have any drifting issues in Linux a few weeks ago, when developing and testing with the old SDK. So my initial guess was that the drift came with SDK 0.3.2, but it looks like this is not the case since:

  • In Linux I have this massive in every application: The 0.2.5 world demo, the 0.3.2 world demo, and my own projects irrespective of which SDK I use.

  • Now to the situation on Windows: If I reboot my PC from Linux to Windows, there seems to be a side-effect of having run Linux first (!) with the result, that I have the exact same drifting pattern in every application on Windows as well (irrespective of SDK version or whether I re-calibrate the yaw correction). This almost led me to conclude that the tracker really must have been damaged recently. However, unplugging+replugging the USB connection solves the problem! Cold-booting Windows also avoids the problem.


Now I only see a few reasonable explanations:


  • In the last few weeks something on my Linux system must have changed that influences the communication with the Rift.

  • Having executed the 0.3.2 configuration utility had a side effect on the Rift (very unlikely!?).

  • My tracker is broken in a very strange way which allows Windows to still work properly with the device, while Linux cannot deal the tracker any longer.



It would be great if you guys at Oculus can comment on the likelihood of the two latter causes. If I would know the issue is caused by my system I would be willing to dig deeper to resolve this problem.
13 REPLIES 13

FictionX
Honored Guest
Is this issue being purposely ignored by Oculus?? Cyberreality?... Vrdaveb?

I'm experiencing the same problems as Bluenote. My Rift is close to useless in Linux now.

I tried reinstalling Linux from scratch, and only install the 0.2.5c libs from the SDK, thinking that the bug had been introduced with 0.3.2. That didn't help.
I even tried re-flashing the firmware - but surprise, surprise - that didnt' work in Linux, but left me with a Rift in "Flash-mode". Luckily I was able to flash it from Windows - but even though it's rock-steady (well.. steady, anyway) in Windows, in Linux it drifts like crazy.

Could you please give Linux some attention soon? At least have the courtesy to answer when we inform you of a bug! Bluenote have obviously gone through a lot of trouble to find the cause.

Also - please implement Unity integration for Linux, too, and bring it on par with Mac and Windows. There are now several games in Steam that boasts Rift support - but they don't work in Linux. It reflects badly on both Oculus and Linux - as well as on the devs of those games.

cybereality
Grand Champion
Sorry for the delay guys. We are still looking into this, I don't know what the issue is off-hand.

I'll let you know if I find anything out.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

FictionX
Honored Guest
I speak support, so I know that Cyberrealitys comment is code for "This is not a priority for us at this moment, and we are in no way committed to fix this issue.", but on the off-chance that anyone else at Oculus should care a bit about Linux (and Linux users) and read this, I've recorded a 25 second clip to show the level of drift I'm experiencing:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/199065/Riftdrift.mkv

I wanted to try to flash an old firmware in the hope of "resetting" everything, but I cant find any of the older versions. Anyone got one lying around? I'm not sure if it's a good idea (or even possible), but since my Rift is useless with Linux anyway, I thought I might as well try.

vrdaveb
Oculus Staff
We really are looking into this issue. We've reproduced it on our end and found the root cause. As soon as a fix is available, we'll make sure it gets rolled into the next release.

FictionX
Honored Guest
Ok - Thank you! Very glad to hear it... Fixing the drift issue and adding unity integration will eventually bring Linux back on track (once the devs who published Rift-games with sdk 0.3.2 has been persuaded to rebuild their games).

bluenote
Honored Guest
@FictionX: I just found a work-around for our problem. In order to investigate the possibility that the issue is caused by a change on my system, I booted into an older kernel version. If you are also running Ubuntu 14.04, you are probably on kernel version 3.13.0-29 as well. For me the oldest available kernel is 3.13.0-24. By using this kernel, the drifting issue disappears in both SDK 0.2.x and 0.3.x. So it looks like one of the kernel updates (which happened to be released around the release of SDK 0.3) introduced a HID related change which doesn't play well with the SDK's tracking.

FictionX
Honored Guest
"bluenote" wrote:
@FictionX: I just found a work-around for our problem. In order to investigate the possibility that the issue is caused by a change on my system, I booted into an older kernel version. If you are also running Ubuntu 14.04, you are probably on kernel version 3.13.0-29 as well. For me the oldest available kernel is 3.13.0-24. By using this kernel, the drifting issue disappears in both SDK 0.2.x and 0.3.x. So it looks like one of the kernel updates (which happened to be released around the release of SDK 0.3) introduced a HID related change which doesn't play well with the SDK's tracking.


Kernel updates - of course.. Very nice find! Thanks for sharing!!

I can confirm that there isn't any drift with 3.13.0-24. However, it brings back an issue I had (which is then apparently tied to that particular kernel), where Steam/Half-Life won't show on the rift, but only on my main monitor in the wrong resolution. Switching back to the newest kernel fixes that problem - but brings back the drift.

I hope Oculus will release the next version with a fix soon - but it's great to be able to play a couple of Unity demos again. Thanks again!

ali1234
Honored Guest
If I were a gambler I would bet all my money that this commit caused the problem: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubuntu/ubuntu-trusty.git;a=commit;h=aa6c390c4d59c9ff4fffd887e15783b2b...

cybereality
Grand Champion
Yeah, we are aware of this and are looking into it.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
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