TPCast Wireless Adapter for HTC VIVE - PC

I have to admit, after reading the reviews and researching and making sure this would be something worthy, I finally bought this and got it yesterday. I was worried from the start that this was going to be a waste but I was so hopeful due to the fact that the INTEL wireless adapter was not an option for me because of the laptop set up. I was so disappointed because INTEL is the real deal and backed by the company 100%! I got all the items and started the set up. I was scared as @@&)&!$ after paying out $300 for this thing, all I could remember is saying to myself please work please work lol! Got everything set up, lights blinking everywhere, the manual totally sucked and didn’t tell you jack! I quickly turned to Utube for help. It took me exactly three videos and almost two hours later to get everything connected. The router was connected wrong and the headset was not recognizing the receiver. If you have a TPCAST or you are thinking of getting one, you have to sync the headset receiver to the other receiver that will be placed higher than you. It doesn’t have to be next to a base module as explained in one of the videos. Your other connection from your computer to the router has to be connected in one of the yellow ports, not the blue one if you are running WiFi to your set up. This was part of the frustration for me after understanding this. FINALLY after almost two hours everything was on and ready to go. Make sure you power down everything if you run into a problem during set up, it will NOT recognize anything if you just simply restart your set up. Unplug and shut down everything. Once that’s done and you download the software from the website, it will check to see if everything is connected. I have a Alienware 17r5, the connection to TPCAST is flawless and smooth as butter! I think one of the issues that some people are having is if your internet connection speed is not above average, your going to have issues. My connection is the fastest speed/connection that Comcast has and it worked flawless. I would definitely recommend this product to anyone. But, the set up is a mother LOL! Other than that, this is a five star rating for me!Update: 10-26-18 so the TPCAST is still working great. One small issue. When I first start it up it says that the VIVE has an error 208. Simply unplug the unit box, USB cables and HDMI cables only. After re connecting them, reboot the VIVE through steam and presto, your back in business. I was able to enter VR games, quit those games and enter other games with no interruption. Now I know this isn’t how things are suppose to work. The playing and selecting should be flawless. Unfortunately that’s not how it works for me and I’m ok with the extra small steps to get it to work over all. This is still a 5 star rating for me. The only mistake I made was getting the laptop because although it’s a powerful machine that can run VR, a desktop is just going to be better because of the upgrade options. So, I bought a desktop lol. Now the other option for it is the intel wireless which should perform much better and consistently than the TPCAST. But, it still works. If it’s not completely broke, don’t fix it lol!

The TPCast is a great idea, but horribly executed. Starry-eyed about no longer being tethered down by a cord, I looked up some YouTube reviews about the product. While they did mention some of the downsides, I believe that many VR enthusiasts downplayed the TPCast's flaws due to being so excited about the prospect of wireless VR today.I too shared the same enthusiasm and dropped what came out to about $350 after tax and shipping. While it did technically deliver a wireless VR experience (which was awesome at times), the TPCast does the bare minimum in every other area. The following issues I had with the TPCast are not only common issues that every buyer seems to be having, but they end up overshadowing the novelty of wireless VR very quickly:1) It cripples your internet. This was the number one deal-breaker for me since I actually like playing a few online VR titles (Bridge Crew, Elite Dangerous, Orbus, etc). Personally, I use LAN for internet since Wi-Fi is much less reliable, and like any reasonable motherboard I have one Ethernet port. Well, the TPCast needs that LAN port apparently (instead of just being able to connect to your existing network...) so I have 2 options:- Run my internet connection through the TPCast rounter, which is limited to 10Mbs! Christsake TPCast this is 2018!)- Unplug my LAN port and switch to Wi-Fi every time I want to use VR, which wouldn't be a problem if the TPCast router didn't cause so much Wi-Fi interference that a simple Google search takes 30-120 seconds.To the apologists saying I should just buy another network card, if that hardware was required it should be included. I am judging this based on how it comes out of the box.2) The green line. I honestly didn't notice it at first. I have my headset pushed away from my face to fit my glasses, but I was playing with contacts and I noticed it out of the corner of my eye. I searched around to see how to fix this bug but apparently artifacting is just part of the package?3) Tracking was noticeably worse. I don't know if it's a CPU bottleneck, wireless interference, or what, but I noticed my tracking stuttered so much while using the TPCast that I started to measure lost tracking and re-projection on some more demanding titles. I encountered an average of 12 tracking stutters per hour and 10-20% more reprojection in certain titles versus wired VR (4790K, GTX 1080 if you're curious).4) No camera or mic. These are more than just "nice-to-haves". The camera and mic are an integral part of the experience for many players and games. The community allegedly has a fix for this through open source firmware updates, which proves that the hardware is capable, but TPCast just couldn't be bothered.This device is the embodiment of most non-enthusiast's complaints about VR. It's a cool proof of concept, but it's a pain to use and is certainly not ready for the consumer market. I think I'll wait to see how Intel's wireless tracking performs. They have much more R&D and a solid QC reputation for the most part. Either way, I think I'll steer clear of the TPCast 2.0 regardless of what it promises.I did not try OpenTPCast as it was already a tedious process and I didn’t want to have to mod the crap out of everything just to get it to work properly. I’m honestly wondering why if these open source fixes exist, why they don’t implement them out of the box?