r/BigscreenBeyond

Hey folks, title says it. but here's the background. I have a set of valve index knuckles controlers. absolutely -l- -o- -v- -e- them. But valve has screwed us. Cant actually buy them now, and the Right one has died. Not even like, dead dead, but the spicy pillow inside has become spicy.

Yes, ive attempted a repair. If it went well i wouldnt be here. Even for an experienced guy like me, this is not an easy swap, and the damn battery connector on the board snapped off the PCB while i was working on getting the mother flipping GLUE off of the connection. WHY.. WHY VALVE?! This was after I tried to see if i could get valve to replace or repair, and no good. Im out of options.

Ebay has em, but i dont trust that they arent just going to have the same problem.

What are my alternatives?

Title says it all, not sure which to get. I already have 2 base stations and the index controllers, both seems like a good option but not sure. If anyone has used both of these headsets let me know what you think.

Has anyone's halo strap shipped out yet? Bigscreen said the majority of pre-orders should ship out this month and I still haven't seen any movement.

Hi everyone! I’ve been working on a home project I’m calling VROSTBridge (Vr Rendering OutSide The Box… Bridge). I’ve taken some liberties with the acronym, so please don’t check my working too closely.

The idea came from wanting to leave my gaming PC in the office while using my VR somewhere with more space. It streams VR over my local network from a Windows gaming PC to a separate Bazzite computer near my play area (might look at a windows client soon to as then linux vr hoops have been fun to jump though to say the least aha). The headset plugs into the second computer, while the main PC handles rendering.

It’s co-developed using AI and builds on ALVR, OpenVR and FFmpeg, with Baballonia for optional eye tracking. Full third-party credits and licence things will be included with the release.

It already has one-button sessions, automatic stream setup, Wake-on-LAN, a controller-friendly Game Mode screen (as well as the desktop web ui), Index finger tracking and optional Beyond 2e eye-tracked foveated encoding/streaming (still ironing out the creases on this but it very close).

The current requirements are:

• A Windows gaming PC capable of running VR games.
• A separate Bazzite computer with hardware video decoding and suitable DisplayPort/USB connections.
• An Index or Beyond 2/2e (maybe A Beyond 1?) already working locally in SteamVR on the Bazzite computer.
• A reliable local network, with Ethernet preferred for now (though i have had sucess with wifi 7 mlo connections and my ethernet is using a wifi 7 molo mesh)

My current setup uses an 7900XTX host and a GPD Win Mini 2024 as the client (plus a dock and a USB C to DP adapter, and a 100w usb supply (45w would not handle it... many many head scraching crashes...)). That’s my tested configuration so far anyway... a minimum spec still needs to be established.

I’m planning to release it fully open source on GitHub soon. For now, I’m mainly curious whether this solves a problem other people have too?

Upgrading from a 2016 CV1 Rift to an Index (that I bought last week specifically for the controllers and lighthouses) to a Beyond 2e is simply mind blowing. Large, visible pixels and awful blacks were something that I had just accepted as an inescapable part of the VR experience but this headset is truly unbelievable in how good it looks while being so light and small that I don't feel like I'm dying after 30 minutes.

That said, I'm really struggling with how poorly everything currently works on Linux and how so many things simply don't work at all. Before you say it, I was aware of the stated Windows requirements going in and had done research on how viable it was to use a BSB2 on Linux -- the consensus seemed to be that it was workable but imperfect. My experience so far however has not been great. Independent of the headset, SteamVR is unbelievably unstable on Fedora 44. It randomly crashes frequently, immediately crashes when you try desktop mirroring, and every headset I've tried has EXTREME screen tearing right across the middle of the displays. This, along with really bad blur during head movement, are apparently known issues with the SteamVR compositor on Linux. I've also been disappointed to realize that eye tracking and DFR aren't currently in the cards either based on what is and isn't supported. I've found some potential workarounds for almost all these issues in forums and bug reports, but the headset/SteamVR settings necessary to even try are apparently inaccessible/greyed out in my current config for some reason. Even if I try to ignore all this and play a game anyway, Half Life Alyx consistently crashes when I trigger certain particle effects and the screen tearing is nausea inducing already.

It's truly a shame because the beyond is such a fantastic piece of hardware and I'm frustrated that I can't get anything close to its full potential out on my current configuration. I REALLY do not want to go back to dual booting Windows (or using any microsoft product for that matter) but it's sadly looking like I have no choice if I want to actually enjoy my $1600 worth of hardware based on the current state of Linux software and driver support.

Happy to hear advice or suggestions from fellow Linux users if they have any, but this is mostly just a vent and a warning to potential buyers who are trying to break away from Windows...