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How to: DK2 Setup & Troubleshooting on Win 8.1, NVIDIA

VisionPunk
Honored Guest
Hey, I recently set up DK2 on a new machine. Thought I'd post my findings here in the hopes that they might help someone, especially since my specs are probably quite common. This lore was gathered from various sources (reddit, google, these forums, etc.). Some of it may be incorrect or vague, but atleast it got me happily set up after some 10 hours of scavenging for tips and tricks =).


Incompatibilities encountered
- Windows 8.1 (Rift not detected -> rolled back to default driver installed by windows)
- Firewall (Rift was blocked -> switched firewall)
- NVIDIA driver 347.09 (caused double vision -> rolled back NVIDIA driver)
- Unity 4.5.x (blackscreen -> use Unity 4.6)
- Unity 5 Beta (blackscreen -> use Unity 4.6)
- USB 3 ports (potential connection trouble -> used USB 2 ports).


General notes
- At earliest possible point / as soon as your Rift gets detected, upgrade to the latest firmware through the configuration utility.
- Word has it the DK2 has issues with USB3 ports so I just made sure to only use the USB2 ports on my machine. I've seen many people recommending getting a USB 2.0 hub.
- The "runtime" referred to here was the "oculus_runtime_rev_1_sdk_0.4.4_win.exe"


Rift not detected on win 8.1
1) Plug in all hardware and let windows install default drivers.
2) Install oculus_runtime_rev_1_sdk_0.4.4_win.exe. This will install the necessary server software to allow for head tracking, but it will also install its own driver. The HMD driver is incompatible with Windows 8.1.
3) Go to Control panel -> Programs -> Uninstall a program -> Oculus Driver. NOTE: do NOT uninstall the camera / positional tracker driver
4) Reboot the computer. This will allow for the oculus drivers to be unloaded and the Windows 8.A compatible drivers to be loaded again.


Problems getting OVRService to run / "Oculus service is not running"
OVRServer_x86.exe / OVRServer_x64.exe uses network functionality to run. This network traffic may be blocked by your desktop firewall. Make sure to allow inbound and outbound network traffic for both these applications. Go into your firewall and make sure that anything related to oculus / ovr has full rights. This worked for me. Some users have reportedly had to uninstall their firewall completely to get things running (notably: ZoneAlarm) .


Double vision on NVIDIA cards
- The 347.09 NVIDIA driver creates a problem with double rendering. Basically, you see two scenes in every lens (4 scenes output to the HMD in total). This is very frustrating and there seems to be many people asking questions about this around the Internet. To fix it you can simply roll back the NVIDIA driver (in my case rolling back to v 344.75 worked like a charm).
In Windows:
1) Open Device Manager.
2) Double-click on Display Adapters.
3) Double-click on your NVIDIA GPU.
4) Select the Driver Tab.


Misc display problems
If the "Direct to Rift" display mode does not work you must use the "Extended Display" mode, that is: extend your desktop to a second screen (the Rift) and set that display to 1920x1080 resolution. Every time you run a full screen app, you must make sure it opens on the rift display, and every time you run a windowed app (such as the unity editor "Game" window or a fullscreen youtube movie) you must drag the window to the rift display, peek through the goggles, try and find the mouse cursor, and maximize the window on that display. Many times I've found myself having to remove the lens cups to see what's going on (far from ideal) but if you do then put them on quickly again or dust will gather on the screen.
- Configuration utility -> rift display mode -> "Extend Desktop to the HMD"
- Make sure games are opening in full screen, or in a borderless, maximized window
- Some games require running on the main display
- If game opens on the wrong screen (impossible to get it to open on the correct one) this can be enormously tricky and frustrating to get working. I recommend using either "Bilago's VR Game Manager" or "Virtual Desktop" to easily solve these problems. The latter is quite awesome actually and allows you to work with the Rift without taking your headset off all the time.


Unity specific issues (basics)
- Black screen issue: When pressing play, screen remains black for several minutes. The game may eventually start but likely in a bad state. Solution: DK2 only seems to work on Unity 4.6.x, not 4.5 or the Unity 5 Beta (?).
- The unity "Game" window should be non-docked, placed on the rift display, set to "Maximize on play". You then Maximize it on the desktop by clicking the tiny square in the top right corner.
- Judder: For me the Tuscany demo had horrible judder. It appears the game must run in true fullscreen, which is not supported by the Unity Editor. Build to standalone exe and run in fullscreen and judder should go away beautifully. While you're at it, go to the Unity editor settings and activate / beef up the antialiasing and the Tuscany demo will look quite a bit slicker.


Camera does not work / "waiting for camera"
(note that camera led only comes on when an app is using it)
Same steps as "Rift not detected on Win 8.1" above, in short:
1) Reinstall the runtime
2) Before restarting, uninstall the DK2 HMD driver but not the camera / positional tracker driver
3) Reboot, and the DK2 HMD driver should fall back to the default Windows one.


Once I got this all working the DK2 was a blast and I'm sure this will eventually be easy-peasy to set up and use.
I especially recommend Vox Machinae and Virtual Desktop. Both had my jaw hit the floor =).

Cheers

/Cal
15 REPLIES 15

cybereality
Grand Champion
Thanks for sharing.

Vidjay
Honored Guest
Thank you for all the tips, unfortunately I still can't get the HMD recognized after following step by step the "Rift not detected on win 8.1".

The camera shows up in the manager as "Camera DK2" after having it plugged to my PC and the rift as "USB device".
Once the oculus runtime is installed, and the HMD driver uninstalled. I reboot, and get the camera showing up as "Oculus Positional tracker" and the rift still as "USB device".

There seem to be some kind of driver problems between the last runtime and Win 8.1...

I had the rift working without any problem for hours, and one day...without any sign It do not want to be detected, I just got that orange light of death... :twisted:
Seems to me the rift is "stuck" in some kind of sleep mode, because I can hear the win "plug, deplug" noise.
Now I am looking for some possible troubles caused by "Asus Instant on" (got an Asus PC) but without sucess. I'll let you know if I find something.

So, once again, thanks for this complete Tip list that will for sure help a lot of persons. 🙂

Vidjay
Honored Guest
As trying to solve the problem by updating once again to the last firmware, i got this exception message (see the attachment).

In case somebody sorted this out...

OS : Windows 8.1 (64bits version 9600)
Gaming laptop ASUS ROG G750JH
Bios : G750JH.204
Intel Core i7-4700HQ CPU@2.40 Ghz (8CPUs) ~2.4Ghz
Memory 16384MB RAM
DX11
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M @ 344.75
Rift and camera plugged on USB HUB 2.0 (and was working fine with it before this problem)

Mu7der
Honored Guest
"Vidjay" wrote:
Thank you for all the tips, unfortunately I still can't get the HMD recognized after following step by step the "Rift not detected on win 8.1".

The camera shows up in the manager as "Camera DK2" after having it plugged to my PC and the rift as "USB device".
Once the oculus runtime is installed, and the HMD driver uninstalled. I reboot, and get the camera showing up as "Oculus Positional tracker" and the rift still as "USB device".

There seem to be some kind of driver problems between the last runtime and Win 8.1...

I had the rift working without any problem for hours, and one day...without any sign It do not want to be detected, I just got that orange light of death... :twisted:
Seems to me the rift is "stuck" in some kind of sleep mode, because I can hear the win "plug, deplug" noise.
Now I am looking for some possible troubles caused by "Asus Instant on" (got an Asus PC) but without sucess. I'll let you know if I find something.

So, once again, thanks for this complete Tip list that will for sure help a lot of persons. 🙂


Try the following :

Deinstall the "USB device" > Deinstall the runtime 0.4.4 > Reboot
Install the runtime 0.4.2 > Reboot > Install the runtime 0.4.4 without deinstalling the preversion

Good luck

Vidjay
Honored Guest
Thank you for this advice, unfortunatly this was not the solution. DK2 HMD still not recognized by runtime.

cybereality
Grand Champion
@Vidjay: Would you happen to have another computer you can test on? It may help to determine if there has been some sort of hardware failure. Also, I would disable or uninstall and security/firewall software like ZoneAlarm or Comodo.

Vidjay
Honored Guest
Yes I'll test it on a totaly different machine tomorrow. I also bought another USB 2.0 Powered HUB because the problem really seems to be linked with USB/driver/win8.1

Anti virus and other stuff as firewall were already disabled/uninstalled and no joy.

I'll keep you informed 😉

Vidjay
Honored Guest
Ok i got it to work ! 🙂

The new USB hub did the job, the older one is working great....but not with a rift indeed.

Here is the old one : http://www.mrgadget.com.au/catalog/images/i-rocks_4_port_usb_hub_ir-4300_powered.gif

and here comes the one that made the rift work again (even if it is not win8 compatible) : http://i2.cdscdn.com/pdt2/8/7/0/1/700x700/ml300870/rw/mobility-lab-hub-mini-10-ports.jpg

I think that the difference of USB power can be the source of issue because both are 2.0 USB hubs (And I know there are issues with 3.0 USB ports) (Or maybe because this new USB hub is win7 designed ? ....)

Thank you for your advice and tips ! I hope that my solution and the tips at top of this topic will help you all !

Peace and Love

Vidjay
Honored Guest
Okay, I was too fast about that solution, once I rebooted the rift was again stuck with that orange light of death again :lol:
BUT I found a solution that seems to work most of the time : I plugged the rift into my old usb hub >> no Joy but generic usb drivers got installed. Then I plug the rift into my new usb hub >> new generic usb drivers installed and the rift goes blue.

I have to say that this is kinda strange for me as I already mannualy uninstalled/installed generic usb drivers. But result is here so I hope this will help some of you with usb/driver/win 8.1 issues. 🙂

Peace and Love