1y ago

Issue with Valve Index

I got myself a valve index, as I've heard that it works well on GNU/Linux (I use Debain 12 with GNOME). Turns out, there were a bunch of hurtles. At first, my cable was just broken, so I needed to get that relaced. Later on when I got the cable, Everything worked fine, but nothinig is being displayed in the headset. The screen is just off and the frightening red lights on the front are lit. Every time I run steamVR, it doesn't give me any errors, but after about 20 seconds of waiting, these two LEDs turn from blue to red. The eye adjustment slider and even the tracking works perfeclty, as I can see the rendered image in the "VR view":

I also get this warning in the console before the lights turn red:

(vrwebhelper:3686): dbind-WARNING **: 15:09:07.618: Couldn't connect to accessibility bus: Failed to connect to socket /run/user/1000/at-spi/bus_1: No such file or directory

The lights turn blue again when restarting SteamVR. Has anyone experienced anything like this before?

I also get this error sometimes, even though the display is very much plugged in:

In case it matters, here is the entire console output up from running steamVR:

EDIT: Here is some other important info on my system:

Running the X version of GNOME
GTX 1060 6GB

31 comments

The vrcompositor failed to initialise. Check the vrcompositor log in the Steam log files directory.
- Where can I find that vrcompositor log?
  
  Your Steam directory has a log (or logs?) sub-directory and that contains a vrcompositor.txt
Listen, ill be real with you, its basically unusable and unreliable in most scenarios. The technical reason for this is due to Wayland vs X11 and other underdeveloped display technology. Normal gaming just got good enough after years of work. And before anyone tells me that the Index does work on Linux, it sure does just not well at all.
I have since sold my Index but when I used it, 80% of it was on windows. Be on the lookout for something called the Valve Deckard. I believe thats when Linux VR will finally be ready.
- ... I'll also be real with you and tell you something terrible. I installed Windows just to test if it works there and it did not. The same red lights, the same error. This seems like either my graphics card has some problems with it, or the headset is simply faulty. Unfortunatly I did not purchase this one new, but used, so no warrenty. It was for "only" 400€, and it came with perfectly functioning base stations and controllers. It's "just" the headset display which does not work. You think it would make more sense to purchase a new headset specifically or to sell all the base stations and controllers to purchase a simple htc vive 1 ?
  
  I would get a brand new headset from valve if I were you cause its going to be worth more to sell all of your stuff as a complete set in the future if you need to vs an old vive with that stuff.
  Would only cost you a hundred more than you bought the used one for and its worth it cause Index is still the best VR experience you can get at the moment imo.
- Honestly I doubt it that Deckard will change that much. First the basics must be fixed. My Index is also laying around collecting dust. Worked okay-ish at first but is mostly unusable at the moment.
Try using distrobox arch. I did that on nixos and after some troubleshooting I got it to work.
When you say you got a new cable, you mean an original tether cable, which is connected directly to the graphics card without adapters or extension cables?
Also, are you using Nvidia's closed source drivers or Nouveau?
- Yes exactly that. I got a new cable, the one which goes from headset into the graphics card. I am using the latest Nvidia-driver package from apt, so yes the proprietary one. No extension cables anywhere.
  
  Any possibility to verify that the headset's power adapter is working? E.g. multimeter
  I saw someone suggesting a headset firmware reset for this issue, but others are saying they had to RMA their headset when they got solid red lights on it :(
What graphics card are you using? What driver is installed for it?
How do you have the USB's plugged in for the headset and lighthouses?
- The lighthouses I only have plugged in to the wall. They magically connected to steam VR, and both appear as green. As said before, the tracking works perfectly, even for the knuckles controllers. I have a GTX 1060 with 6GB of VRAM. I'm using the latest version of the Nvidia-driver package (It's something like 525 or somethin). I don't think I need to plug the lighthouses right into the PC...
  
  I have an original Vive and the only time I had to plug the lighthouses into the PC was to update the firmware through Steam.
  Rest of the time I also only had them plugged into power.
For me it does something similar most of the time
I plug the headset in, start streamvr, and it falls to connect to the headset display, with red lights on the headset
What fixes it for me is just hitting quilt vr on the steamvr window, unplugging the headset, plugging it back in and then starting steamvr
Then it usually works
In my experience after reboots, or after extended periods of time without running vr, I have to do this dance to get it to work, I don't know why
I'm running an RTX 3090 with the proprietary drivers on Arch KDE X11, with the native (non flatpak) steam package
- SteamVR has weird issues like that sometimes but restarting it or logging out and back in has always fixed it for me (aside from that one time I had to replace the headset cable)
I see you noted how you're running gnome and what video card, but not how you're running Steam, so I'll ask:
How is Steam installed on your system? I know some people use a flatpak-based install but one of the potential issues with Flatpak (also Snap) is permissions to certain locations or devices can sometimes require extra config.
If you're currently running from Flatpak, perhaps try the direct install from .DEB instead
- I am using the apt version of steam, so that should be fine
It should show up in the output of xrandr. At least my Vive does. Could you share that?
I believe in the past I was able to turn the display on with xrandr and extend the desktop to it. That would at least prove that the hardware works.
- The output of the xrandr command is this:
  
  Hmm, nothing there looks like an index display. My vive looks like:
  
  DisplayPort-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 2160x1200 89.53 + 1920x1200 89.53 1920x1080 89.53 1600x1200 89.53 1680x1050 89.53 1280x1024 89.53 1440x900 89.53 1280x800 89.53 1280x720 89.53 1024x768 89.53 800x600 89.53 720x480 60.00 59.94 640x480 60.00 59.94
  Perhaps there's a good reason for that, but this seems like a dead-end.
I use a Valve Index on GNOME as well, so here's a few things:
VR doesn't work yet on GNOME Wayland, you need to select GNOME on Xorg when logging in
Sometimes the LEDs are red and the headset doesn't get detected, just unplug the cable and plug it back in
You might also need to press on the cable where it connects on the headset sometimes, it can become a little loose
Use CoreCTRL to manually set the GPU performance profile to high, it doesn't do that automatically for some reason and there's a huge performance difference
If you have the issue that moving your head makes it look like the image is jumping back and forth, go into the per-application video settings of the game from SteamVRs menu and turn on Legacy reprojection
This only happens when I have very low FPS, the CoreCTRL thing fixed it for me without having to use this option
There's an older SteamVR version for Linux you can select as a beta option for SteamVR in Steam but I'd actually not recommend using it, it only works when games use Proton 5 and there are newer games that don't work with a Proton verison that old. A lot of the issues the regular SteamVR version had are fixed now and it works pretty well for me.
- What exactly do you mean by "press"? In which direction? I have plugged the cable into the headset until it kinda clicked, like a thump, so I thought that would be enough. So yeah, press in which direction? Also I have tried all the steamVR versions, so yeah that's likely not the issue
  
  It's just in case you have issues with the headset not getting detected, the cable can become a little loose and you might need to press it into where it connects to the headset

31 comments