Communication to Lighthouse (2.0? w/ Index) unreliable in coming Windows 10 20H1 update in April

[Glowtape]

I'm playing around with the upcoming 20H1 update of Windows 10, that's scheduled to release next month in April, and it turns out that communication to the Lighthouses seems flaky. Sometimes they don't start up or power down when requested, and in the settings, scanning for them fails for at least one like 3-4 times in 5.

This isn't an issue with the current Windows 10 build. AFAIK Microsoft has ostensibly messing about with the Bluetooth stack, however not sure how much that'd affect the Index.

Certainly worth investigating, to avoid drama from April onwards. Thanks for looking into this.

[Kurai Shidosha]

Not the first time I've seen this reported. Yet nothing officially acknowledged from Valve or Microsoft on this issue. Like so many other bugs with SteamVR, just goes completely ignored.

[Glowtape]

It'd be nice if it was addressed. I submitted it to Microsoft's Insider feedback hub, but since it's not an item that'll gather a million upvotes, it's probably futile. So it'd be interesting if Valve would take a look at it.

How do the Index controllers communicate, anyway? Is it also Bluetooth? Because they work flawlessly.

[Kurai Shidosha]

It's a custom wireless mode that I believe is built on Bluetooth but proprietary to Valve.

[Glowtape]

Oh OK. I was wondering, because you can use them on the Vive.

Shutting down the base stations seems way more reliable than back in December, when I tried an earlier version of 20H1, so there's at least that.

[Glowtape]

Guess I jinxed it. Now it throws BT-213's and doesn't turn them off properly.

Dear God in heaven, look into this, Valve!

[Kurai Shidosha]

Just posting in here to confirm I am now on 20H1 and I too can echo the BT-213 errors! Frustrating man!

[Glowtape]

I just keep refreshing the Base Station power management settings for it to search for the Lighthouses and have them turn on.

If I want to turn them off, I keep hitting Refresh All until it sees all of them, then immediately shut down SteamVR.

[Kurai Shidosha]

Yep spamming it eventually makes it work but I gave up. I don't even like the lighthouses going to sleep because they take too long to wake up and make an even more annoying noise when they're sleeping. But I just wanted to let you know this wasn't a problem with your setup, that it's the combination of Windows 10 2004 + SteamVR that is at fault here. Hopefully Valve can figure this one out before it rolls out to everyone.

[Danno]

I'm also seeing this problem.

[Glowtape]

It might be worthwhile to update to the latest build and check again.

So far it's been more reliable, but I'm not entirely sure. That said, I'm intentionally posting about it, so that it breaks, like last time.

That said, time to the Lighthouses reacting to wake commands does seem shorter.

[Kurai Shidosha]

What is your exact build version? I'm on 19041.207 and still getting Bluetooth error on startup randomly. Also still having issues with some lighthouses not waking up/going to sleep on start and shutdown of SteamVR.

[Glowtape]

Jinxed it as expected. FFS.

Come on, Valve. The new Windows 10 version is on Release Preview already.

[Kurai Shidosha]

Yeah this always bothers me from companies like Nvidia and now Valve. They are completely MIA during release previews of upcoming Windows changes and wait for the update to drop before even taking a look at any problems brought on by it. Why not actually partake in the dev builds and be prepared for when it officially drops, so your customers have no gaps in functional products? Makes no sense to me. I'm just gonna keep on rolling with no power management for the time being and hope to god when the official release drops, that Valve hotfixes this issue ASAP.

[Glowtape]

NVidia is actually working with it, since the upcoming release enables Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling. Whatever that does.

[Kurai Shidosha]

Yeah I remember the whole "DX12 Ultimate" nonsense and how Nvidia is partnered with them to deliver full support with Turing GPUs from day one. But it's a fairly one off thing and is more about feature support they're trying to use to better market their 20 series GPUs, rather than the noble cause of trying to keep up with OS changes to avoid bugs and problems.

A really good example with Nvidia and Windows changes is the fullscreen optimizations fiasco and G-Sync. When 1803 came out with WDDM 2.4, enabling true exclusive fullscreen in D3D9 games breaks G-Sync completely. It just doesn't work. Nvidia never got around to fixing this problem neither before 1803's release nor after. It gets better. On 1903 and newer, not only does this scenario break G-Sync completely, but it also results in massive artifacting if you don't cap your FPS. Only solution is to either turn FSO back on or disable G-Sync for that game.

It's just frustrating to be at the bottom rung of the ladder in this whole setup where these different companies fail to communicate with each other, and it all falls down on us. Why isn't Valve looking at this Bluetooth problem? What's going to happen in a month when 2004 starts rolling out on customers PCs and SteamVR cannot properly manage lighthouse power states? The answer is obvious, we will continue to be screwed over and have to wait for the solution to come from either Microsoft or Valve. I'm just so tired of this situation happening when there's 0 excuse for it in the first place.