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My Oculus Rift S, that is. Man, I'm having a bad month. My Rift S is no longer functioning and I can't seem to fix it. Consensus after researching the symptoms suggests that I've got a failed unit. Ugh. I can't go back to flying non-VR after doing VR for 6 years (and this is my second VR HMD). I also can't afford to buy a new one right now. They don't make the Rift S anymore and the decent competitors are far too expensive. I may be done with flying for awhile.

I spent 2 hours on the phone with Oculus support. We tried a bunch of things but no success. They have referred my case to their "special" team, but not sure what will happen. We'll see.

Really sorry to hear about that. That really sucks to say the least.

Sorry about that Xpen.

I know it comes with its own risks but have you tried FB marketplace or a Kijiji type site? Add those keywords to google notifications in case a sale for used one (or something) comes up. (?)

dude that really sucks.

Man.....I'm sorry Xpen. That really sucks.Been a very rough month for you on the Flight Sim front.

Hey Xpen... If you can find a used one in Canada for sale I can grab one for you and maybe ship it down to you? Might be cheaper in CAD.

Im not sure if its the best idea, just spitballing....

https://www.kijiji.ca/b-ontario/oculus-rift/k0l9004

Thanks for the offer, Trichome. It's something I'll have to think about. In the meantime... something bizarre just happened. About an hour ago, just for the heck of it, I put on my VR headset and it was actually working. WHAT? I did nothing since troubleshooting it on Sunday. And now it's all of the sudden working again. Hopefully it stays that way. It will be interesting to see if its an intermittent problem. Will keep you all posted. I won't be on for Wednesday because of my girls' softball games, but I'm definitely going to try to do some flying this weekend and see how it goes.

I tried donning the headset tonight and was malfunctioning again. I started playing with the cable looking for any signs of damage (didn't see any) and I sometimes got the HMD to work, but only partially. left and right tracking would work but no position tracking and it would not see the hand controllers (which I don't use for flying anyway). The z-axis is pretty critical. I'm starting to suspect it's the cable. Oculus actually informed me today that they have shipped me a new cable to try, so I'll install that when it comes and see if the problems go away.

Xpendable wrote: ↑

10 May 2022, 18:35

Oculus actually informed me today that they have shipped me a new cable to try, so I'll install that when it comes and see if the problems go away.

Fingers crossed this was the issue and the new cable sorts it out....

The saga continues. About 1 1/2 weeks ago I received a replacement cable from Meta (Oculus) to try with my Rift S. It changed nothing - I continued to have the following 2 problems: Oculus software would say the sensors couldn't track and would suggest trying a different USB 3.0 port (and I've tried them all), or I would get 3 white flashing circles in the center of the VR view on a black background, which simply indicates a "problem". After I updated Meta on the situation, they issued an RMA and sent me a shipping label with instructions to ship my HMD back. They informed me I would likely be getting a refurbished unit back. Fine with me.

Today the replacement unit arrived. With excitement, I plugged in the replacement unit. It definitely says refurbished on the outside and came in a different box than a new one, it looked pretty spotless. Happy so far. The first thing it did is require a firmware update from the Oculus software. That took about 5 minutes. Then it went into the normal setup procedure, and there's where I ran into a roadblock. It literally is failing to complete the setup because it is saying the sensors aren't tracking and suggests to try a different USB port. Same thing as before essentially.

Okay... at this point I am suspecting the problem is actually with my computer. Either something is wrong with the USB 3.0 ports on my computer, or something is screwed up with Windows, the drivers, or the software. There's an Oculus tool that will reinstall the Oculus drivers, and I've already tried that a number of times and it doesn't fix it. I checked the Windows application logs, and there does seem to be some errors from the oculus software saying it can't read a key or two. Well that doesn't seem normal.

So now I've completely uninstalled the Oculus software and reloaded the entire thing (5GB worth) and trying a fresh install of the software - hopefully something was just corrupted. If that ends up being the issue, then it was never a problem with the hardware in the first place. We'll see what happens.

Update: Nope. First thing it says after installing the drivers is: Sensors can't track headset. I'm super frustrated. I'm going to noodle on this a bit more. The only other thing I can think of is, I had to download an obscure Thrustmaster utility to recalibrate the thumbstick on the throttle after replacing the circuit board, and I know it installed some driver in order to do that. That's literally the only thing that got installed between the time things were working and things were no longer working. But I can't seem to find that driver to remove it - but it's at least a possibility. It was written long before Windows 10 existed.

The other possibility I'm concerning is something got damaged with the USB 3.0 ports themselves on my computer - and even though all my devices to seem to work fine when plugged in, maybe something isn't working quite right. I dunno. But I am considering buying a PCI USB 3.0 card just to try out - which would isolate the problem from being the USB ports on the backplane of the computer.

Success! I resolved the issue, and it was indeed a software issue. I found some errors in the Windows System event viewer logs saying the Windows Camera system was crashing. I went into device manager and deleted the Oculus cam driver I found there and the Logitech web camera driver. Then fired up the Oculus software and setup completed without a hitch. I'm back up and running - sorta. Now my USB 3.0 hub has crapped out, so I have to figure what happened there. But that'll be for next week when I get back from a mini Memorial Day weekend vacation.

Congrats! Glad it worked out! What a saga.

v6,
boNes

Definitely great news Xpendable. I'll see you in the virtual skies next week!

I would look at usb drivers since you have done so many different things trying to resolve this. maybe new drivers?

Awesome News Xpen!!