Thursday, July 14, 2016

Dev update #18

Quick update (beta channel): 
1.1.1 desktop update deployed with minor background fixes. Many phone specific fixes, extended diagnostic mode + blog post coming tomorrow (2016/07/29). 

If you get "Update failed" exit Steam before the RiftCat update begins.
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Finally we can release our multi-channel updates. It took us longer than expected but we wanted to make sure that we don't mess anything up with updater because having bugs in update process may result in forced reinstall and we don't want to waste your time with that.

We wrote about it in our previous blog post but here's a copy-paste description of update channels:
  • Beta update branch will be updated few times a month (probably once a week like we used to do in beta phase). Use it if you want to be first to access new features and bug fixes.
  • Stable update branch will be updated less often, every few weeks. We don't want untested changes going live for everyone as forced update.
  • Previous stable updates will contain stable versions from the past. If somehow beta bugs make it into stable branch you will be able to switch back to previous versions and ignore updates.

This will not always work. For example, VR SDKs, graphics drivers or some other condtions can change in a way preventing backwards compatibility. We're not always in control but we will try our best to give you the most options.



What's next?

GearVR version is still in development. Most of boring groundwork is already done and we hope to run some in-office streaming tests in upcoming weeks. We are still on track to release GearVR for public testing this summer. We're also gonna spend some time fixing some incompatible phones so expect some news on that next week (hopefully).

46 comments:

  1. The update is failing for me. It seems to be unable to replace driver_ocukus_vridge.dll.

    Here's a link to the update.log
    http://pastebin.com/G7MqnZv7

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Try shutting down Steam before updating Riftcat. It probably keeps our driver loaded.

      Delete
    2. It turns out the Steam client had kept a lock on the file. Closing Steam fixed the problem.

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    3. Next update we'll check if Steam has our driver loaded and ask users to exit Steam if this happens.

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  2. Hey, is there gonna be support for higher frame rates in the future?

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    Replies
    1. Do you have a phone that supports more than 60 FPS?

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    2. Increasing frame rate isn't a problem on our side but as Reda Da mentioned there are no 90+ Hz phones on the market.

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    3. When Google Daydream comes out in a month those phones will have 120hz screens. Might look pretty good if you have enough PC to push it.

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    4. Don't forget that you will need at least usb 3 or usb c to be able to get 90fps..

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    5. @Jonathan
      Not really, transport medium bandwidth won't be a huge problem because the steam is already compressed to 10-50Mbps so some extra frames won't change a lot in this case.

      Rendering/encoding/decoding performance on the other hand will be a bigger problem but it all depends on the hardware available. GTX 800+ GPUs already can encode at 90FPS. Now we need phones being able to decode it.

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    6. Is there any way to turn compression down or off for phones that have usb3? I have a note 3 which is capable of 286Mbps. Should I turn that down to 50 to get less latency?

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    7. I'm pretty excited to see the daydream phones. Hopefully they work well enough with vridge to compete against the current gen of HMD's

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    8. Can't disable compression completely. This would require HDMI connection (or other raw video signal cable). 50 Mbps is plenty for 1080p and even 1440p at 60 fps.

      Delete
  3. Has anyone got dirt rally working? Tried it last night with revive but it didn't do anything (it booted as normal)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, see this comment (video included):
      https://www.reddit.com/r/vridge/comments/4swtzq/working_with_dirt_rally/d5d8pyu

      Delete
    2. I don't get it, i just doesn't do anything. I followed the instructions but as far as i can see dirt boots up normally is though theres no vr active. All i see is the grey steamvr world

      C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DiRT Rally>ReviveInjector_x64.exe drt.exe
      Launched injector with: ReviveInjector_x64.exe drt.exe
      Creating process: drt.exe
      Delegating 32-bit process (1064) to ReviveInjector_x86
      Launched injector with: ReviveInjector_x86.exe /handle 360
      Injecting process handle: 360
      Injecting DLL: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DiRT Rally\x86\openvr_api.dll
      LoadLibrary found at address: 0x75fe4bf0
      Injecting DLL: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DiRT Rally\x86\LibRevive32_1.dll
      LoadLibrary found at address: 0x75fe4bf0
      Injected dlls succesfully

      Delete
    3. Sorry for the delayed response - we'll get D:Rally and test it ourselves in upcoming days.

      Delete
  4. Please add more Video Cards ! like old NVIDIA GTS360M
    or universal driver

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. I know that you guys are trying to get to work every game that works nowadays in VR into VRidge, but if we can ask you a favor can you do this game/mod work??

    http://www.roadtovr.com/news-bits-hl2vr-1-4-mod-released-best-half-life-2-experience-just-got-better/

    I know that it is an old one, but you guys are doing an awesome job, would be very very interesting see this mod working.

    Link for download: https://www.reddit.com/r/hlvr/wiki/index

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unfortunately this mod relies on old extended mode which is really hard to support without remaking legacy runtime. I'm sure someone will mod HL2 to support SteamVR. After all it's flagship Valve game and it would be a shame for it not to work on Valve's own SteamVR.

      Delete
    2. It so frustrating isn't it? hl2vr was the reason i was so excited for vr I thought I'd finally get to play hl2 with presence. I don't understand why it was abandoned, sure it was very high on the discomfort factor but I've not heard anyone mention it was a problem

      Delete
  7. Improved in zenphone 2, but ta still missing some frames ... I think it is coming to an end the saga in Zen 2 .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Currently working on optimizations for Zenfone 2. I assume you're running Android Marshmallow, right?

      Delete
  8. Just figured out why RiftCat is heating my phone, the Cardboard SDK is processing the lens distortion on the phone, if it was done in the PC side, it wouldn't heat, may you add on Menu button, the option to disable the lens distortion correction of the SDK ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Are you sure? Then it would be awesome if they add this solution! I love Riftcat so much I bought it.. but it drives me crazy that it's overheating my LG G3 phone after 10-15 min gaming... :'( :/

      Delete
    2. @Unknown
      Distortion itself isn't causing overheating but some extra optimizations will be coming that should reduce heat gen.

      Delete
  9. Does Kinect2TIR work with VRidge, I really would like to use this for positional tracking, but I don't know if I should by the usb adapter for my Kinect.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Currently VRidge accepts only FreeTrack 2.0 input but maybe there is some software that can translate TrackIR format into FreeTrack 2.0. One example of this kind of software is OpenTrack which can accept various tracking sources and output VRidge-compatible FreeTrack 2.0 protocol but I'm not sure if TIR is supported as an input there.

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    2. Opentrack works pretty well. Better than freetrack in Win 10. Facetrack noir works pretty well for a lot of different inputs. I just had it working with Kinect.the only thing I don't like about the kinect is the latency/fps.

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    3. Where is free track noir I cannot find a download.

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    4. @sdfghjk

      OpenTrack:
      https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack/releases

      FaceTrackNoIR:
      http://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/home/default.htm

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    5. It only lets you download the plugin pack

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    6. Right, didn't know that it's not 100% free. It seems that core program costs $3 - http://www.facetracknoir.nl/

      Sorry for the misinformation.

      Delete
  10. VRE.Vridge.Transmission not working can you help me?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, please send logs as described here:

      https://support.riftcat.com/hc/en-us/articles/208781529-What-diagnostic-data-log-files-should-I-send-with-bug-report-

      Delete
  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. Replies
    1. Working on it, more news this week - hopefully it will be a fix but if not - we'll continue looking for more potential causes.

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  13. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  14. Great work guys, waiting for the zenfone 2 optimization to buy a license!

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