Unable to use SteamVR over USB, repeated connection timeouts (windows)

[marcvberg]

Description

I am unable to stream over USB because the streamer keeps failing to connect with repeated client timeouts. I don't get any error codes, just that the client connection timed out. If I have the headset on it will continuously "succeed" at connecting to the streamer, only to flicker and then fail again. Sometimes I get a brief stillshot of the SteamVR home, but I can't interact with it and it's just a small rectangular window rather than fully rendering the space.

I confirmed that it "works" over wireless, although it doesn't actually work because the router is too weak and my desktop does not have a wired connection. I've tried rebooting headset/desktop, different methods of forwarding the port, killing processes, deleting the session.json

General Troubleshooting

• I carefully followed the instructions in the README and successfully completed the setup wizard
• I read the ALVR GitHub Wiki

Environment

Quest 3

Hardware

Note: for Linux, an upload to the hw-probe database is preferred: hw-probe -all -upload

CPU:
R9 3950x

GPU:
RX 7900XTX

GPU Driver Version:
24.10.1
Audio:
Not using microphone, letting audio play through headset

Installation

ALVR Version:
20.11.1

ALVR Settings File:

session.json

SteamVR Version:
Build 16532387
Just updated earlier tonight

Install Type:

• Packaged (exe, deb, rpm, etc)
• Portable (zip)
• Source

OS Name and Version (winver on Windows or grep PRETTY_NAME /etc/os-release on most Linux distributions):
Windows 11 version 23H2

[marcvberg]

Additional context, I first used ALVR yesterday and it worked over USB on the first attempt. I then tried to use it this morning and spent a couple hours trying repeatedly to get it to work until eventually it did work, and now tonight I tried again and even after a couple hours wasn't able to get it to work.

I also shut off windows firewall tonight as a last ditch attempt to make sure the firewall wasn't doing anything.

[LexiBigCheese]

Are you using TCP or UDP in Settings > Connection > Stream Protocol

[marcvberg]

TCP

[The-personified-devil]

We're adding an option to directly support usb connections in alvr itself. If you grab the nightly, you can try it out, but we'll deprecate the manual way in favor of it in the next release, so no reason to try and wrangle it to work with the manual.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 5 days.

[daedalus01]

For what it's worth, I too had this issue (Quest 3, Windows 11, wired USB connection) - apparently the Quest 3 (and 2, I'm told) have some strange USB issue where the orientation of the USB-C cable actually matters. That said, someone in the ALVR Discord suggested I simply flip the orientation of the USB-C cable 180 degrees and voila, all of these repeated connection timeouts were gone.