 VR still has a lot of barriers to overcome. Cost and both the headset itself and the PC required to run it are factors here. The fact that you look like a complete doof while you're flouncing about in the middle of your living room is another one and for that matter here we are in the VR space here at Linus Media Group. You need a fair bit of space in order to even use it. But I think more people could overlook these restrictions if it wasn't for the clunky headsets and the bulky, surprisingly heavy, easy to tangle and movement restricting tethers that tie them to their PC. Well as most of you know, I'm not an engineer, so there's nothing I can really do about the headset itself. But after a particularly vigorous round of hollow point the other day, I was inspired to see if I could do something about the cable. And once again, our friends at Corning have come through. So today I will be trying, at least trying anyway, to replace the entire bulky tether with this durable, thin and light optical cable. Cooler Master's MasterCase Maker 5 features their freeform modular system allowing you to customize, adjust and upgrade. Make it yours at the link in the video description. So first things first, I gotta gather up all the supplies I need for what I'm calling Project Light VR Cable. Get it? Because it's optical and it's not as heavy. So it starts with that Corning optical cable that I mentioned before. Next we're gonna need a gaming computer with support for Thunderbolt. So while I know the G751 from ASUS with its 980M graphics card is not technically VR ready, this is a proof of concept, not my daily driver rig. So this will do just nicely. However, because the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift for that matter do not have Thunderbolt inputs, we're actually going to need to split out our Thunderbolt cable into all the necessary connectors on the other end. So for that I'll be using the CalDigit TS2 or really I could use pretty much any Thunderbolt dock. But what this baby is gonna do is give us two USB 3 super speed ports, HDMI and audio. Exactly what we need. Also, I guess there's another USB port there. Where's my power adapter for this thing? Nothing's ever simple. It's always a journey to f***ing Mount Doom when we want to make a video. Let's find a 5 amp 12 volt DC power adapter. Well, I thought the power adapter might be here where I used to have that thing set up running to the server room. It's not, but I did discover that I already had one of these optical cables. So Corning sent me an extra one, I guess. Forgot to move that. 5 volt 4 amp? See, I'm pretty sure it's like straight up non-compliant to not have the voltage of an input listed. Okay, I found this Ktech 12 volt 3 amp thing that fits which I'm hoping is enough because this would be over specced to allow for a bunch of devices to be plugged into all the USB ports and everything. But speaking of power, if we're not going to power the Vive through the original tether, one of those wires is a power cord, and we're not going to power it through the Thunderbolt cable, which we're not because optical cables do not carry power, we're going to have to do something. Which leads us to the last ingredients of our setup. A small backpack, this was the smallest one we had in the box, but it's a little bit smaller than the original one. So I thought I'd set up a small backpack, this was the smallest one we had lying around the office, and I'm not buying a backpack for this. And for some reason I thought I needed two. So two battery banks. One of which actually has an AC power outlet. Okay, so I lied, that wasn't everything we needed, but I found the things we need. A short USB 3 A to A cable, a short HDMI cable, and, this is fun, I remembered what the second power bank is for. So that one's to hopefully go DC to DC to power the Vive itself, because it's got a 12 volts something amps, we're not quite sure, max power input. However, both of our battery banks are dead, so we're going to charge these up for the night, and we'll get back at this tomorrow. So we're back. Now, when I originally conceived this project, I actually thought I was going to have to cut off the tether, and then re-solder all the individual wires, and figure out which ones were carrying which signals, and whatever, and all that. But, you know, silly me, I had no idea that the HTC Vive, I mean you can see why it took me a little while to sort this out, the HTC Vive actually just has all the inputs as plugs up at the top. There we go. Just like that. So two USBs, one of which I think has a functionality TBD, HDMI power, and three and a half millimeter. So theoretically, it's as simple as going from here, oh wow, okay, theoretically, we've already hit one stumbling block, this doesn't physically fit. So theoretically, it's as simple as going from here into our Thunderbolt hub. Wow, that is not a very long cable. So we've got another challenge as well, between all the different adapters that come with our RAV Power Extreme Series power bank, only one of them is even kind of close to fitting. So we would either have to cut off and re-splice a compatible adapter, or we'll have to rely on using the AC outlet one, and a power squid or a power brick in order to power both the Vive as well as the CalDigit box, meaning that our battery life will be somewhat more limited. Three and a half millimeter audio cable should fit though at least. Oh, it's a right angle connector. Nope, even plugging my headphones in directly isn't going to work. Okay, so it's back to the drawing board somewhat here. Hopefully this is one of those things where it gets messier before it gets better. Let's go see if we can find a low profile HDMI cable. Oh, never cut towards your fingers. Well, I'll give Monoprice this, their HDMI cables are tough. Obviously I tried to find a lower profile connector one first, but failing that, I, well, took the one we had and threw it in the vice. About 10 minutes of hacking away at it later, and it's uglier, but it fits. Wow, that is a tight fit. You might be back in action here. It was at that point that I realized we didn't have Thunderbolt drivers, the updated Nvidia drivers, or the software for the HTC Vive installed. So we took a short break while I got all the software up to date. So we have a small problem. If I'm plugged into the HDMI connection on the CalDigit box, we're getting a compositor not available error in SteamVR. But if I plug directly into the HDMI out on the computer, we're good. Now there is still hope. It's possible that we can use the Thunderbolt daisy chain port here to run HDMI over a display port into either directly into the headset or into the splitter box that's included with the Vive. But I'm really not sure if that's going to work, so stay tuned. So we're going to try this again, going from Thunderbolt to DVI to HDMI. Okay, let's try again. So just as a troubleshooting step, I'm going to go back to the HDMI output right off the computer and into this box. So let's make sure that it works if we do that. So I've reached a very challenging point in the troubleshooting. I have just tried to connect it the vanilla recommended way with the normal tether and running through the connector box, and it's still not working. But get this, when I take a standalone HDMI cable and plug that directly into the computer, whatever, take my word for it, the headset comes up and it starts working. So I'm starting to think this might be a combination of issues where the Thunderbolt implementation of this laptop might use the onboard graphics. That is a very, very likely situation. And my box might be dead. But as long as there is any potential for a problem to be solved by simply throwing more hardware at it, I'm still in the game. So I went home, I got a mini display port to HDMI. I knew I had one of these, turns out that's where it was. I got a different Thunderbolt 2 dock. I got the connector hub from my own Vive, and just for good measure, I brought my personal rig back to the office. Because this one, I know for sure, because there's a physical damn cable going from my GTX Titan X to the Thunderbolt card. This one runs off of the dedicated graphics. Let's go. I suddenly remember why. Oh, we moved to aluminum. So it's update time. The box isn't dead, and the Vive is running perfectly off of my machine. Now let's try going back to Thunderbolt. No, OK. Wait a minute. Oh, my God, I don't have the Thunderbolt. See, I'm flustered now. OK, what's this? Interesting. It says ready. Let's restart in direct mode. Wow, wouldn't it be amazing if it was that simple? I don't see anything, though. That was very abrupt. Yep, we didn't know when we were shooting this video it was going to be a two parter. So there you go. It is. So it's summer where you board planes, trains, and maybe even take a car somewhere to leave your worries behind. And today's lack of online privacy brings out your inner grizzly bear. Wow, these are new notes. They're very funny. If that happens, then you should try TunnelBear. TunnelBear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet. With TunnelBear turned on, your Wi-Fi connection is secured and your online activity is kept private from your internet provider, advertisers, hackers, and anyone sitting behind you on the train. 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