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[Solved: Norton ate the dlls] Not able to get the 7/22 beta to go into VR mode.

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 12:38 am
by Voyager
Hardware, in this context in a HP Reverb, using the most recent patch of SteamVR, and Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR Beta patch. I've updated the VRParams.cfg VR_Mode = SteamVR and the CockpitLook.cfg tracker_type = SteamVR, however, the game does not seem to want to actually launch in VR, and if I try to launch a mission, the app just goes away, though it does seem to leave about a half dozen SteamVR WebHelper procedures lying around, if that helps.

I made a copy of my installation (1.1.3.2) prior to installing the beta patch, and that one is still working in VR.

Any suggestions on what would be useful for debugging this?

Thank you,

Harry Voyager

Re: Not able to get the 7/22 beta to go into VR mode.

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 5:42 am
by blue_max
Voyager wrote:
Wed Jul 29, 2020 12:38 am
the game does not seem to want to actually launch in VR,
Can you provide more details? Does XWA just close? In the picture you posted I see it's still running. I usually run SteamVR first and then XWA. When I put the headset, it says it's running xwingalliance.exe. What do you see?
and if I try to launch a mission, the app just goes away, though it does seem to leave about a half dozen SteamVR WebHelper procedures lying around, if that helps.
Again, what do you mean by this? Looks like the process is still running. FWIW, I *think* the half dozen SteamVR WebHelper processes is "normal" -- that happens to me as well.

If XWA is crashing, you'll see a .dmp file under %localappdata%\crashdumps. Send it to me if you can. If not, there should be a crash report in Windows Event Viewer, can you post the details here?

A silly suggestion: can you press the dot key twice after putting on your headset? One of the changes I did in the beta was the ability to look around when the Concourse and 2D menus are being displayed. Sometimes the headset begins the game "looking backwards", so you'll only see a black image. Pressing the dot key should fix that.

Re: Not able to get the 7/22 beta to go into VR mode.

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 11:15 am
by Voyager
When I launch the 7/22 beta, it comes up in 2D mode only, with the aspect ratio preserved, and the headset display continues to display the SteamVR idle space. Basically, it displays as though I had started the game in non-VR mode with SteamVR running in the background.

When I try to launch into a mission (sim training mission), I can go in all of the normal mission setup, and it will go through the Mission Loading screen that you usually see prior to it loading the 3D engine, however, instead of loading into the cockpit, the game window disappears, and I return to the desktop.

I have found the crash dump files. The 7pm files were from last night, and the 5:32 was the one going through it to test and see for this post. The attachment should have all three crashdumps. I've zipped it because they were 54mb on my drive.

The related Event viewer errors are as follows:

7/28 7:32
Faulting application name: XwingAlliance.exe, version: 2.0.0.2, time stamp: 0x3765a9b7
Faulting module name: XwingAlliance.exe, version: 2.0.0.2, time stamp: 0x3765a9b7
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0019d823
Faulting process id: 0x724
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6653fb8a294e0
Faulting application path: D:\Games\Star Wars - X-Wing Alliance\XwingAlliance.exe
Faulting module path: D:\Games\Star Wars - X-Wing Alliance\XwingAlliance.exe
Report Id: 55cae49c-fc6b-424e-ba64-24bffd775689
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

7/28 7:40:57
Faulting application name: vrserver.exe, version: 1.13.10.0, time stamp: 0x5f09473d
Faulting module name: driver_holographic.dll, version: 1.2.285.0, time stamp: 0x5f1a17b5
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x00000000000401e8
Faulting process id: 0x218c
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6653efbeed99f
Faulting application path: D:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\SteamVR\bin\win64\vrserver.exe
Faulting module path: D:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\MixedRealityVRDriver\bin\win64\driver_holographic.dll
Report Id: b35b9820-aa69-4170-a23b-b2f6b065dbeb
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

7/28 7:40:59
Faulting application name: XwingAlliance.exe, version: 2.0.0.2, time stamp: 0x3765a9b7
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000
Faulting process id: 0x588
Faulting application start time: 0x01d66540c9cb607b
Faulting application path: D:\Games\Star Wars - X-Wing Alliance 1.1.3.2 Working\XwingAlliance.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report Id: a6266413-0a39-42dc-99aa-edd4eb1578cf
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

7/29: 5:32
Faulting application name: XwingAlliance.exe, version: 2.0.0.2, time stamp: 0x3765a9b7
Faulting module name: XwingAlliance.exe, version: 2.0.0.2, time stamp: 0x3765a9b7
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0019d823
Faulting process id: 0x2dec
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6659362628bbd
Faulting application path: D:\Games\Star Wars - X-Wing Alliance\XwingAlliance.exe
Faulting module path: D:\Games\Star Wars - X-Wing Alliance\XwingAlliance.exe
Report Id: 1af9a077-c56d-4eef-b594-12438e108997
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:


The 7/22 Beta branch is the one installed in D:\Games\Star Wars - X-Wing Alliance, while the 1.1.3.2, last known working is in: D:\Games\Star Wars - X-Wing Alliance 1.1.3.2 Working\

I think what happened in the 7:40 crash was I tried to launch the 1.1.3.2 version without clearing out the running executables from the 7:32 7/22 beta run, and crashed things rather spectacularly. After that one I did a full reboot of my machine and 1.1.3.2 and steam worked again.

Let me know if there's anything else you'd find useful to know.

Thank you,

Harry Voyager

Re: Not able to get the 7/22 beta to go into VR mode.

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:42 am
by blue_max
Mmmm... so... none of the crashes seem to have happened in ddraw itself. They happened in XWA, in a function called "_shift" that seems to copy a string. Here's a few things you can try:

1. Copy the DDraw.cfg, VRParams.cfg, and CockpitLook.cfg from your stable installation to the beta version. Maybe some setting in there might be causing the crash.
2. Install the latest music freeze hook. The DDraw.cfg from the beta patch has "ProcessAffinityCore = 0" which will run the game using multiple threads. This is known to cause some music glitches.
3. Disable the text and 2D renderers. You can do this by setting the following in DDraw.cfg and restarting the game:

Text2DRendererEnabled = 0
Radar2DRendererEnabled = 0

4. Sometimes XWA doesn't fully close when you exit the game. Make sure xwingalliance.exe isn't still running when you launch it. If you still see this process, just kill it.
5. Check that you have only one ddraw.dll and one Hook_CockpitLook.dll in your XWA directory. If you have two with different names, that'll cause trouble. For instance, if you renamed Hook_CockpitLook.dll to, say, Hook_CockpitLook-old.dll and then put the new Hook_CockpitLook.dll on the same path, that's not going to work.

More questions for you:

1. Can you post your CFG files, please?
2. Can you run the Beta patch game in non-VR mode without trouble?
3. Does the crash happen on any mission? If it only happens on a specific skirmish mission, can you post it so that I can try and reproduce the issue on my end?
4. Are you running on Windows 10? Some people have reported problems trying to run SteamVR in Windows 8.1.

Re: Not able to get the 7/22 beta to go into VR mode.

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 12:59 am
by Voyager
Checking DDraw.cfg shows no difference between files

VRParams.cfg has a number of differences

CockpitLook.cfg shows no differences.

Testing the old VRParams.cfg with the 7/22 results yields the same results as the 7/22 version of the VRParams.cfg file.

However, in checking for duplicate copies of the ddraw.dll and the Hook_CockpitLook.dll files, I found the problem. It turns out Norton had helpfully deleted them. Now that I have gotten them back in the folder (and convinced Norton to do less helping) it actually works.

Lesson learned: run folder compares to make sure everything is there that should be there in future...

Thank you,

Harry Voyager

Re: [Solved: Norton ate the dlls] Not able to get the 7/22 beta to go into VR mode.

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 7:17 am
by blue_max
Wow... So your antivirus was deleting the DLLs? I had heard that antiviruses complained about the installer, but not that they removed the contents. Thanks for letting us know!