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VR still has a lot of barriers to overcome cost and both the headset

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itself and the PC required to run it are factors here the fact that you look like

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a complete doof while you're flouncing

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about in the middle of your living room is another one and for that matter here

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we are in the VR space here at lonus Media Group you need a fair bit of space

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in order to even use it but I think more

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people could Overlook these restrictions if it wasn't for the clunky headsets and

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the bulky surprisingly heavy easy to

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tangle and movement restricting tethers

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that tie them to their PC well as most of you know I'm not an

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engineer so there's nothing I can really do about the headset itself but after a

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particularly vigorous round of hollow point the other day I was inspired to

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see if I could do something about the

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cable and once again our friends at

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Corning have come through so today will be trying at least trying anyway to

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replace the entire bulky tether with this durable thin and light optical

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cable cooler Masters masterc case maker 5 features their free form modular

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system allowing you to customize adjust and upgrade make it yours at the link in

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the video description so first things first I got to gather up all the

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supplies I need for what I'm calling

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project light VR cable get it cuz it's

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Optical and it's not as heavy so it starts with that Corning optical cable

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that I mentioned before next we're going to need a gaming computer with support

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for Thunderbolt so while I know the g751

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from ASUS with its 980m graphics card is not technically VR ready this is a proof

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of con not my daily driver rig so this will do just

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nicely however because the HTC Vive and

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the Occulus Rift for that matter do not have Thunderbolt inputs we're actually

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going to need to split out our

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Thunderbolt cable into all the necessary connectors on the other end so for that

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I'll be using the Cal digigit TS2 or really I could use pretty much any

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Thunderbolt dock but what this baby's going to do is give us two usb3 super

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speed ports HDMI and audio exactly what

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we need also I guess there's another USB port there where's my power adapter for

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this

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thing nothing's ever simple it's always a journey toing Mount Doom when we want

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to make a video let's find a 5 amp 12vt

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DC power well I thought the power adapter might be here where I used to

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have that thing set up running to the server room it's not but I did discover

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that I already had one of these optical cables so coring sent me an extra one I

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guess forgot to move that 5V 4

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amp see I'm pretty sure it's

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like straight up non-compliant to not

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have the voltage of an input

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listed okay I found this kte 12vt 3 amp

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thing that fits which I'm hoping is enough because this would be overspeed

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to allow for a bunch of devices to be plugged into all the USB ports and

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everything but speaking of power if we're not going to power the Vive

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through the original tether one of those wires is a is a power cord and we're not

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going to power it through the Thunderbolt cable which we're not

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because optical cables do not carry power we're going to have to do

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something which leads us to the last ingredients of our setup a small

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backpack this was the smallest one we had lying around the office and I'm not

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buying a backpack for this and for some reason I thought I needed

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two so two battery Banks one of which

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actually has an AC power outlet okay so

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I lied that wasn't everything we needed but I found the things we need a short

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USB 3 a TOA cable a short HDMI cable and

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this is fun I remembered what the second power bank is for so that one's to

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hopefully go DC to DC to power the

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itself because it's got a

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12v something amps we're not quite sure

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uh max power input however both of our battery banks

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are dead so we're going to charge these

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up for the night and we'll get back at this tomorrow so we're back now when I

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originally conceived this project I actually thought I was going to have to

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cut off the tether and then resolder all the individual wires and like figure F

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out which ones were carrying which signals and whatever and all that but

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you know silly me I had no idea that the HTC

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Vive I mean you can see why it took me a little while to sort this out the HTC VI

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actually just has all the

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inputs as plugs up at the

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top there we go

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just like that so two USBS one of which

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I think has uh functionality TBD HDMI

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power and 3 and 1/2 mm so

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theoretically it's as simple as going from

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here oh wow okay theoretically uh we've

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already hit one stumbling block this doesn't physically

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fit

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um so theoretically it's as simple as going from here

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into our Thunderbolt

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Hub wow that is not a very long cable

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H so we've got another challenge as well

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between all the different adapters that come with our RAV Power extreme series

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Power Bank only one of them is even kind

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of close to fitting so we would either have to cut off and rece a compatible

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adapter or we'll have to rely on using

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the AC outlet one and a power squid or a

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power brick in order to power both the

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Vive as well as the Cal digit box

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meaning that our battery life will be somewhat more limited 3 and 1 12 mm

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audio cable should fit though at

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least oh it's a right angle connector

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nope even plugging my headphones in directly isn't going to work okay so

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it's back to the drawing board somewhat here hopefully this is one of those

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things where it gets Messier before it gets better let's go see if we can find

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a low profile HDMI cable

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oh never cut towards your fingers well

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I'll give mono price this their HDMI cables are tough obviously I tried to

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find a lower profile connector one first but failing that I well took the one we

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had and threw it in the vice about 10

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minutes of hacking away at it later and

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it's uglier but it fits wow that is a

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tight fit we might be back in Action here it was at that point that I

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realized we didn't have Thunderbolt drivers the updated NVIDIA drivers or

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the software for the HTC Vive installed so we took a short break while I got all

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the software up to date so we have a small problem if I'm

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plugged into the HDMI connection on the Cal digit box we're getting a compositor

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not available error in Steam VR but if I plug directly

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into the HDMI out on the computer we're good now there is still hope it's

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possible that we can use the Thunderbolt daisy chain Port here to run HDMI over

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DisplayPort into either directly into the headset or into the splitter box

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that's included with the Vive but I'm really not sure if that's going to work

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so stay tuned so we're going to try this

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again going from

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Thunderbolt to DVI to

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HDMI okay let's try

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again so just as a troubleshooting

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step I'm going to go back to the HDMI

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output right off the

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computer and into this box so let's make sure that it works if

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we do that so I've reached a very challenging

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point in the troubleshooting I have just tried to connect it the vanilla

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recommended way with the normal tether and running through the connector box

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and it's still not working but get this when I take a standalone HDM my cable

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and plug that directly into the computer

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oh whatever take my word for it the headset comes up and it starts working

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so I'm starting to think this might be a combination of issues where the

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Thunderbolt implementation yeah there see there it is ready where the Thunderbolt implementation of this

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laptop might use the onboard Graphics that is a very very likely situation

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and my box might be

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dead but as long as there is any potential for a problem to be solved by

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simply throwing more Hardware at it I'm still in the game so I went home I got a

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mini DisplayPort to HDMI I knew I had one of these turns out that's where it

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was I got a different Thunderbolt two

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dock I got the connector hub from my own

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Vive and just for good

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measure I brought my personal rig back

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to the office because this one I know

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for sure because there's a physical damn cable going from my GTX titanx to the

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Thunderbolt card this one runs off of

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the dedicated graphics let's

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go I suddenly remember

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why we moved to aluminum so it's update

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time the Box isn't dead and the Vive is

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running perfectly off of my

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machine now let's try going back to Thunderbolt see no

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okay wait a minute oh my God I don't

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have the Thunderbolt see I'm flustered

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now okay what's this interesting it says ready let's

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restart in direct mode wow wouldn't it be amazing if it

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was that simple I don't see anything

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though that was very abrupt yep we

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didn't know when we were shooting this video it was going to be a two-parter so

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there you go it is so it's summer where

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you board Planes Trains and maybe even

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Tak an a car somewhere to leave your

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worries behind and today's lack of online privacy brings out your inner

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grizzly bear wow these are new notes they're very funny if that happens then

161
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does that thing have an

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Buton go ahead and shut that down you know what I'm just going to give it the

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old reboot just in case hey whoa whoa

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can you see what I see no I think we're in business