Any Pico 4 users here?

[yanfeng12342000 132]

On 7/2/2023 at 1:02 AM, odourboy said:

If you don't, you can use a USB to Ethernet adapter and plug your Pico 4 into a gigabyte switch port which your PC is also connected to. The Pico will connect 'wirelessly' (even though it's wired) and give a perfect 1200mbps connection. The right Ethernet adapter can double as a charging port for the Pico. 

This is the first time I heard of a USB to Ethernt adapter can be used to plug the Pico 4 into a gigabyte switch port. What app do you use for streaming, Pico streaming assistant or Virtual Desktop? I am very eager to know. Thank you!

[odourboy 1,293]

4 hours ago, yanfeng12342000 said:

This is the first time I heard of a USB to Ethernt adapter can be used to plug the Pico 4 into a gigabyte switch port. What app do you use for streaming, Pico streaming assistant or Virtual Desktop? I am very eager to know. Thank you!

Virtual Desktop. One thing to watch for, for whatever reason, some adapters are polarity sensitive and even though I thought USB C was mechanically symmetrical, I had to turn a connect 180 degrees for it to work when first connecting everything up. Others reported this as well.

Edited July 9, 2023 by odourboy

[yanfeng12342000 132]

On 7/9/2023 at 12:08 PM, odourboy said:

Virtual Desktop. One thing to watch for, for whatever reason, some adapters are polarity sensitive and even though I thought USB C was mechanically symmetrical, I had to turn a connect 180 degrees for it to work when first connecting everything up. Others reported this as well.

Good to know. Sorry I haven’t been to this forum for a while. Thank you!

[Daube 389]

Bumping this topic to ensure Pico4 users are aware of some recent progress that we can benefit from 🙂

In this discussion: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/pico-4-and-openxr-toolkit/571300/140

We learn that Mbucchia, the famous creator of the OpenXR toolkit utility, has created a new OpenXR runtime that finally allows us Pico4 users to bypass SteamVR ! I'd recommend you guys to read that topic carefully (normally the link should point to the correct post, which had links to wiki pages etc...).

The real page containing explanations is here: https://github.com/mbucchia/VirtualDesktop-OpenXR/wiki. Downloading the new runtime (it's a .msi file) requires joining a Discord channel though. Hotlink to the archive is not permitted, sorry 😕 I can however confirm that despite my old hardware (i7 8700k with GTX 1070ti), I could successfully install the runtime and now my MSFS runs in VR with my Pico4 through Virtual Desktop and without SteamVR 😎

 

[odourboy 1,293]

6 hours ago, Daube said:

I can however confirm that despite my old hardware (i7 8700k with GTX 1070ti), I could successfully install the runtime and now my MSFS runs in VR with my Pico4 through Virtual Desktop and without SteamVR 

Did you find you'd gained any performance by dumping steamVR in favor of this new OpenXR version? Any other noteworthy advantages? Any downsides (like configuration options)?

[Daube 389]

Hard to tell about the performance, I didn't have the time to test properly and I'm quite lazy to make comparisons.

This is especially tedious as SteamVR had this bad habbit of decreasing the performance each and every time it was restarted. For example, every time I had to change a resolution setting for the VR, I had to restart SteamVR, which was giving me worse performance on next start. Best was to restart the computer, which is not really enjoyable... So I'm very glad that SteamVR is finally out of the way. Even in case not a single FPS is gained, my gamer-life quality had definitely improved drastically.

[Donka 687]

The consensus is that up to ~10% gain can be had by this switch. I only set it up last night and had time for a quick flight and it was all flawless. I was running motion reprojection though so my fps was still capped at 45fps. I'll try and find time for a quick flight this evening and disable MR to see what kind of fps gain I'm seeing with no other changes other than the VD OpenXR runtime switch from SteamVR.

[Donka 687]

From my quick test last night, I saw a ~7% gain in frames - nothing huge. I did have stuttering issues with motion reprojection turned off though as well as head tracking issues which I didn't experience with my initial test with motion reprojection enabled. I'll look more into this over the next couple of days.

[odourboy 1,293]

@Donka thanks for these updates!

[Donka 687]

I had more time last night to test things out and couldn't replicate the stuttering or tracking issues I was facing previously, regardless of SSW being enabled or disabled, so looks like that was a one off issue. Tried several flights and a mixture of settings and things worked really well. I did have one MSFS crash as I entered VR but that was after a break and the headset had gone to sleep and I needed to restart VD in the headset so I'm putting it down to that. I see no reason to use SteamVR going forward, especially now with the news that this new runtime will be included as an option directly in VD in an upcoming release.

[Daube 389]

Sorry guys I have another dumb question: this trick of bypassing SteamVR with our Pico4 work perfectly in MSFS, but what about XPlane12 ?

I understand we're in the MSFS forum, but the Pico users are mostly here....

[Donka 687]

If XP12 uses SteamVR then it should work the same there.

[odourboy 1,293]

4 hours ago, Donka said:

especially now with the news that this new runtime will be included as an option directly in VD in an upcoming release.

So, being extremely lazy, if I just sit tight and do nothing, this will be handed to me in a future release?

[Donka 687]

15 minutes ago, odourboy said:

So, being extremely lazy, if I just sit tight and do nothing, this will be handed to me in a future release?

Yup. 🙂 It will be an option in Virtual Desktop - I'm assuming the next release.

 

From the Dev yesterday:

An update on Virtual Desktop XR release After discussions with the Virtual Desktop developers, we have decided to include Virtual Desktop OpenXR support directly into Virtual Desktop. This means you will not need to install a separate program! Virtual Desktop will have an option to select whether to use SteamVR OpenXR or Virtual Desktop XR. Once the version of Virtual Desktop with integrated OpenXR support is released, you will uninstall the beta software (to avoid having two versions installed).

[Daube 389]

11 hours ago, Daube said:

Sorry guys I have another dumb question: this trick of bypassing SteamVR with our Pico4 work perfectly in MSFS, but what about XPlane12 ?

I understand we're in the MSFS forum, but the Pico users are mostly here....

Replying to myself after a bit of research: for Xplane12, you must add the command line option "--open_xr" to your shortcut that launches XPlane.

This option allows the sim to work without SteamVR, just like MSFS..

Edited October 20, 2023 by Daube