Index front Cameras and Passthrough

[M0rph3u5]

Hi
Does anyone know how to activate or use the passthrough/chaperone rather than having to take the HMD off everytime you wanna check your surroundings?
Thanks

[BOLL]

Haven't got my headset yet, but on the Vive it was a double-tap of the system button. Might have to enable the camera in the settings before that, if it's again, anything like the Vive 🤔

[Babo]

Check the SteamVR desktop settings window. There's an option to enable the camera and all that jazz. That being said I still can't get my cameras working.

[M0rph3u5]

Thanks guys. I did enable it and I think you may bee need to press the system button twice to enable it, but I am not getting any image. I saw a youtube video a while ago where a guy had a small picture within a picture through the VR display which was the passthrough feed.
Anyways, I had to disable it as it can reduce the fps/refresh rate

[Trip Rodriguez]

I'm still looking for the answer to the OP. I really want to experiment with the cameras but so far no luck getting them to work. I enabled them and tried every kind of double press of the system button possible. I know the cameras work for some people, but how!? "Test camera rate" always fails. I've tried pretty much every USB port on my computer including 3.1 and the formerly recommended 3.0 dedicated USB card. Tried with Knuckles, tried with wand, tried at all the different refresh rate options, rebooted HMD, rebooted PC, etc. etc. I really want to test out my ideas!

[Trip Rodriguez]

Got it working. Deleted all SteamVR devices, did a full uninstall of SteamVR, and reinstalled it and it worked immediately. Cameras are still horrible though, I thought they'd be much better this time.

[RC-1290]

SteamVR sometimes forgets about the existence of the cameras. Sometimes it's a USB bandwidth thing. Most of the time it's just restarting SteamVR n number of times until it remembers how to USB.

[toolie]

It's maybe worth noting that I had to activate the beta version of Steam VR in order to get the cameras working. No amount of reinstalling or restarting the non-beta worked for me.

After install and restart of the beta, the camera options were all there and it works as described.

[Qant]

Cameras in rift s much better then this...

[The Maddog]

Originally posted by Qant:

Cameras in rift s much better then this...

No they're not.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/dk9d7n/through_the_lens_of_full_colour_passthrough_of/


Sorry but there isn't anything about the Rift S that is "better" other than the price. Rift S pass through is black and white, Index is colour (if you enable it).

[Kiritosblade]

You can get the cameras working. Check in obs or windows camera app to see if the device/camera "EtronVideo" is showing up, if so open that as your camera source to see the valve index two cameras showing your actual space. If that is installed then in steamvr make sure under the vr settings page "Camera" tab you have the camera Enabled and on. Use Test Video option to check they are working, if not you'll need to do a couple things involving drivers to get them working. If it worked however you can close the steamvr menu and then double tap your system button on either remote to engage the passthrough using the cameras.

If they were not working there are a few steps to take for fixing them.
First go into steam vr, don't actually put on headset though you don't need to be in vr for this.
Hit that little Triple -- thing at top left of SteamVR to open the dropdown menu,
Navigate to the Developer additional dropdown and select the "Developer Settings" option.
This will open a new window labeled "Developer Settings".
From here you want to scroll almost to the very bottom, locate the "Reset" section with the option "Remove All SteamVR USB Devices", select that option to remove them.
- This will uninstall all drivers for the devices allowing you to do a steamvr update which reinstalls them fresh to the system.
After a restart of pc (Make sure to unplug the Displayport & USB before you restart, and plug back in after restart) when you open obs/camera/etc you should be able to see "EtronVideo" for a camera source once the devices are installed, windows might be the one doing so, otherwise a steam update to SteamVR or such will do so.

After all that if you had done this correctly you can now try launching steamvr and double tapping the system button to activate the passthrough. It should work. If still not working I would highly suggest you use a driver tool to check your current setup for new drivers and update them.
Along with this any windows updates will help **Don't upgrade to windows 11 if on windows 10** just update non win11.
If you do all of this then you should be all set.
If this still doesn't resolve the issue you can try to do a BIOS update if you feel comfortable doing so, not 100% sure this made any difference in my case but i did it regardless just because.

[Loading_M_]

Hello, I just wanted to add a few things to this discussion. First, I found that enabling the camera doesn't immediately work - rather, a restart of the headset is required to get the camera to actually enable. Second, it seems like double tapping the system button doesn't work, however once the camera is enabled and working, a button appears on the system menu to view the camera overlay.

This feature works well, at least as far as the headset is concerned. However, I have a lightbulb in my room that flashes at a visible frequency in the headset (It's not visible IRL, just through the camera), however I'm pretty sure I can fix this by just getting a better lightbulb.

[sfrtv4]

Originally posted by Kiritosblade:

You can get the cameras working. Check in obs or windows camera app to see if the device/camera "EtronVideo" is showing up, if so open that as your camera source to see the valve index two cameras showing your actual space. If that is installed then in steamvr make sure under the vr settings page "Camera" tab you have the camera Enabled and on. Use Test Video option to check they are working, if not you'll need to do a couple things involving drivers to get them working. If it worked however you can close the steamvr menu and then double tap your system button on either remote to engage the passthrough using the cameras.

If they were not working there are a few steps to take for fixing them.
First go into steam vr, don't actually put on headset though you don't need to be in vr for this.
Hit that little Triple -- thing at top left of SteamVR to open the dropdown menu,
Navigate to the Developer additional dropdown and select the "Developer Settings" option.
This will open a new window labeled "Developer Settings".
From here you want to scroll almost to the very bottom, locate the "Reset" section with the option "Remove All SteamVR USB Devices", select that option to remove them.
- This will uninstall all drivers for the devices allowing you to do a steamvr update which reinstalls them fresh to the system.
After a restart of pc (Make sure to unplug the Displayport & USB before you restart, and plug back in after restart) when you open obs/camera/etc you should be able to see "EtronVideo" for a camera source once the devices are installed, windows might be the one doing so, otherwise a steam update to SteamVR or such will do so.

After all that if you had done this correctly you can now try launching steamvr and double tapping the system button to activate the passthrough. It should work. If still not working I would highly suggest you use a driver tool to check your current setup for new drivers and update them.
Along with this any windows updates will help **Don't upgrade to windows 11 if on windows 10** just update non win11.
If you do all of this then you should be all set.
If this still doesn't resolve the issue you can try to do a BIOS update if you feel comfortable doing so, not 100% sure this made any difference in my case but i did it regardless just because.

Hallo! Any chance I ccan get some help?