The joys of full body, huh folks? Yesterday, I finally had enough time to enjoy full body. Because it was bad timing of getting it as Kovo needed my help with a raid in Destiny 2.
Anyway, picture time!
Each one of these has three parts– a dongle, a dongle stand, and the USB charger cable. I had no idea how to go about setting these up. ..Yes. I never thought of looking up a video. I assumed you just attach the trackers to your feet and belt and off you go.
…There were a lot more steps than that. There are two ways to set these up;
1. Plugging in the adapters (called ‘dongles’) directly on the back of your computer.
2. Using the dongle with the dongle stand and attach it to the USB cable, and attach that to the back of your computer.
Friends told me to do the second option. Also, I did prior look up a few videos showing how to set it up, and they say to turn on your headset and controllers before pairing your trackers. When I asked my friends, they said I wouldn’t need to do this.
So I’m plugging in the USB cables. For some reason (unknown to me) I was trying to plug in the 3rd one.. into my graphics card. Somehow I got confused. I dunno. I was still in a call with the friends, then I hear *click* and the sound of my computer… shutting itself down without warning.
Had a mini heart attack, not knowing what the fuck I just did. I do remember having my hand above the tower’s power button. I pressed it again, computer booted back up as if nothing happened. I began to fear the worst, thinking there’s a short in the motherboard or the USB 3.0 card.. or somewhere. Yet it isn’t really doing anything abnormal since then. It’s behaving perfectly normal.
Anyway, got the 3rd plugged in and got the firmware updates alright. Now it was time to actually get things going. Using rubber bands my mother found around the house and an old belt I had, I put 8 bands on– four on my feet, and three on my belt. Slipped the foot trackers on my feet and used the two bands each to strap them down, then attached the waist or ‘hip’ tracker to my belt.
In SteamVR, I’m freaking out over seeing the trackers move when I moved my legs. Played VRChat. In my homeworld I see three small orbs where the trackers are, and notice I was somehow floating yet still able to move.
Pulled out my menu and clicked the new Calibrate button. Nothing happened. Confused I tried to look for a friend that could help me figure out how to do this.
Found a friend and started going over to him. This is when I realized I was stuck in a T-Pose all of that time (saw my shadow) and ‘asserting my dominance’ everywhere. The friend told me to press my triggers to complete the calibration. Did so when they were aligned with my avatar’s hands and was no longer in a T-Pose, and saw my legs move when I moved them IRL! EEEEEE!!! 😀
Sat down and saw my legs sit down too. Ohh this is glorious. Brings back those pure memories of moving my hands for the first time. And best of all, no more full body-like poses! If I want to do the pose, I can actually do the fucking pose IRL!
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Yesterday I got to spend the longest time in full body, and did the #1 thing full body users do– lay infront of a mirror for hours and also ‘twerking’ infront of one (aka testing my hip tracker). Watching my tail sway was so wild, and then hearing Kovo yelling “WOOK, BENIE’s TWERKING!!”.
But as the day went on, I immediately ran into a rather concerning problem. Just chilling infront of the mirror, suddenly my left controller completely malfunctioned and my body went where my controller was. The controller’s buttons would not respond.
The only thing that fixed this was restarting SteamVR. Odd. Very odd. Went back in, the issue happened again. Wtf?! Why am I having issues ever since I got these trackers??
Went back in one more time, this time it was my right controller doing it. Okay this is really starting to make me regret getting these. What the FUCK IS GOING ON?!
Final time, the tracker batteries were getting quite low. Went back in my homeworld and hung around a bit. Issue happened again, this time revealing the issue clearly to me.
For some bizarre reason, a random tracker is switching places with one of my controllers. My right foot became my right hand. So I tried something different, turning off the affected tracker. This restored functionality to my right controller. But turning the tracker back on and trying to calibrate, the game wasn’t picking up pressing me down the triggers.
I asked the next day and got mixed, confusing responses. Most of them said I need to right click a tracker in SteamVR and select ‘Manage Vive Trackers’ then click the button at the bottom of the menu that pops up with the same name, and then assign roles (such as Left Foot, Right Foot, and Hip).
But, this would get quite confusing (and highly annoying) for me when I dunno which tracker goes to which body part when it’s time for VR.
The only answer that actually had a reason for doing so was Jusper’s, who told me to set each and every one of them to ‘Disabled’ instead.
He explains VRChat does not read the roles, and setting them to Disabled will enforce them to stay as a tracker (not try to switch to a controller). This to me, is a hell of a lot easier when setting all of this up (as SteamVR seems to auto-configure them).
Since then, I’ve never ran into that issue. But I am using a bit of a cheese to keep the trackers charged while in full body. Similar to the controllers, having them plugged into a USB charger adapter (this thing) while its plugged into a power strip. Though it’s a bit of a pain incase I need to re-calibrate, trying not to step on and/or pull a cable out.
I’m hoping with these TrackStraps I’ll (hopefully) be getting by the end of this week, this won’t be as big of an issue.
Though the micromanagement of only having 4 USB ports is really annoying. So I bought another of those adapters that should arrive this Saturday. I need a total of 7 ports (three for the trackers, two for the controllers, one for my phone and one for my wireless headphones).
..
As for how big of an impact it does on my computer.. not really that bad. Like I lost 10FPS in Furry Village. Nova’s with her 40FPS, and I had 30 (infront of the main HD mirror). Still playable though. I haven’t felt I needed to get out of there, unlike Novice with his weak CPU. So that’s good.
Though I haven’t tried an instance with over 30+ people yet. Yet that’s why there’s safety settings.
And finally, do I feel these trackers were worth it? Yes.. and no. More ‘yes’ than ‘no’. I guess because I didn’t get my fucking TrackStraps before the trackers. 😛
Can hardly do anything with my hip due to the rubber bands going everywhere. I might try hair bands instead and hope they work better. I just need something more secure, that isn’t going to flop around everywhere.
That and I also hate how short the charger cables for the trackers are. It’s perfect for pairing them to my computer, but not for this cheese of charging them while in full body. Hopefully I can find some longer micro USB cables that are good at charging.