It’s not the hardware. It’s not the fact that a year after release, there are still only novelty games worth playing. It’s the Steam VR service itself, which NEVER WORKS. The ‘compositor is not fullscreen’ bug is omnipresent, popping up with a link to fix the issue which does. not. work. This is something which should have been patched months ago, but Steam VR is too busy pushing out unit breaking updates every other week to bother to fix what they’ve previously broken.
Every time you use the HTC Vive it’s a magical journey into what they’ve screwed up this time. Is one of my controllers in need of a firmware update? How about my tracking stations? Will I need to find the controller cord and plug my controllers in to have a chat with the PC? Will one of the tracking stations just not track? Or will the compositor remain firmly not fullscreen, screwing the entire system into complete uselessness?
The compositor is not fullscreen bug most often appears when the Vive has been activated before Steam VR. So deactivating the entire unit by quitting Steam VR sometimes fixes it. But the Vive software should not be this fundamentally buggy and broken a full year after it was first released.
This is some early access, alpha testing BS. The hardware of the Vive is being let down by shoddy software. It shouldn’t break in some new and interesting way every time you try to play it. It should be like every other piece of gaming equipment, be it console or PC. You turn the damn thing on, you open your game, you play. You shouldn’t be worried about synchronizing the software of five different pieces of hardware plus whatever nonsense the developers have decided to patch your insanity into oblivion.
I played my Vive an hour ago. When I tried to restart it now, I have the following issues:\
Compositor not fullscreen (not fixable in the normal way.)
Headset needs updated drivers.
Controllers not paired.
Base stations not detected.
The VIVE is like a computer which takes itself apart when your back is turned then sits there and smirks while you try to make it even slightly usable. This sucks. It sucks. And Steam’s attitude to the people who laid out a grand or two for this piece of machinery which mostly comes in handy for pretending to hit glowing orbs, sucks.