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Rift: Short-lived "low battery" notification

Tobias1595
Honored Guest

To preface, I am owner of an Oculus Rift (not a Rift S), with two "touch controllers". I use rechargeable batteries in these controllers, rated between 2'000 and 2'500mAh each. The total battery lifetime is not the issue of this post.

There are three ways to tell a controller's battery is running low. The first is a little notification bar rendered into whatever scene you are looking at. The second is the system opening up the dashboard to display a dialogue box saying "Critical error: [side] controller battery low." The third, finally, is the controller itself ceasing to work, usually leaving the virtual representation of it stuck in mid-air.

My critique at this system is two-fold.

For one, the "Critical error" dialogue is jarringly disorienting and unnecessarily intrusive. The little warning beforehand is enough to notify me about the issue and make me change the batteries at the next opportune moment, and the controller ceasing function is a sign for me that I waited too long to do that. Both these things are pleasantly subtle. I appreciate the times where the intrusive warning on the dashboard is skipped and I'm left with stuck controls that force my hand in the real world, and I would love to have a way to disable this kind of warning completely.

For the other, over time these three 'warning signs' have moved closer and closer together timing-wise, for a while now to the point of absurdity. I just had a session earlier today, playing a rhythm game (Ragnaröck). While I played, I got the little notification banner, and made a mental note to change the batteries after the current song. Before the banner even disappeared, Oculus switched to the dashboard to show me the "critical error" message. I dismissed it and pressed the Oculus button to return to my game, only to see my hand frozen in the air from when I dismissed the message. From the first warning to the controller shutting down not even 10 seconds have passed. This is unacceptable in my eyes. Please give the warnings early enough that there is actually time to act on them.

To summarize: 1. I'd like an option to disable the "critical error" message related to low controller battery. It annoys more than the controller actually switching off from power loss. 2. The detection whether a controller is low on battery is unreliable, issuing the warnings about the battery state too late.

PS:
- Other people have already complained that if a controller shuts down from low batteries, it can be 'woken up' again by pressing a button, running for up to an hour more with these repeated wakeup-calls. I have observed the same behaviour. It may be related to the second point I mentioned above.
- The form to submit this message required a label, but didn't allow "Oculus Rift", only "Oculus Rift S". While technically incorrect, it's the closest label that allowed this message to be posted.

1 REPLY 1

MetaQuestSupport
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hiya @Tobias1595, we see you have a suggestion to better the user's experience with the controllers. We love and encourage any ideas that other users can benefit from! If you post this on our Ideas Forums, it'll have a higher chance of having our engineers review it. Especially if more and more users chime in, and help bring attention to this proposal! 

 

We hope this was informational, and we hope to see your post over there soon!

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