Vive Controller not showing up anymore, tried everything, need help

So I got into Unity VR (Vive) yesterday and played around a little, watched some tutorials and everything worked more than perfectly.

Suddenly today the Controller (left) doesn’t show up anymore. (Imgur: The magic of the Internet - Hierarchy during Play mode)

What’s happening is that when I enter playmode, Unity should assign an index to each Controller (Like this on the Controller (right): Imgur: The magic of the Internet)(This is Left: Imgur: The magic of the Internet)

However, the index is still “None” on the left Controller when entering playmode.
I can enable the Controller Object manually and assign an Index (Device 4) to both the Controller and the Model and the Controller will start showing the correct Transform data in the inspector. In the scene I can “see” the controller too but not the model, just the XYZ axis arrows that are used to scale it, but they move around when I move the controller.

I have completely reinstalled Unity over 5 times now, including everything in AppData, all assets, all registry keys and any data related to Unity. I tried the latest and the beta Unity versions. I tried SteamVR beta and the regular one.

The controllers both work fine in any game and in the SteamVR home, even while running in Play Mode I can press the Home Button on the non working Controller and it works fine.
I also changed the controllers once and it seems that the issue is not related to a specific physical Controller but to the “Controller (left)” in [CameraRig].

I am absolutely out of ideas, I would’ve loved to make my own game but Unity doesn’t want me to.

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I get your “left” picture during play only if a controller is not awake. As soon as I turn it on, Unity immediately assigns a device index. I guess you have already checked that in your SteamVR cockpit all’s green when you’re in Unity play mode?

I’m on 5.3.5 Pro with latest SteamVR Plugin. Which Unity version are you working on?

Are you using the SteamVR Standard Asset?

Should work standardly without changing much.

If you need help:

Skype: Jaudatus

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i see your inspector the controller object is turned off. (the checkbox left top in the inspector).
and seeing the object in the hierachy it is turned light grey (so not in use)

Just happened to me as well. Beginner following a basic vrdev school tutorial and my left controller now always deactivates when i hit play in unity. I’m not attaching pics to this post because it looks exactly the same as the original post. I had a basic trigger press debug message script I was working on in the left controller so I copied it to the right controller (which is the only change to the standard steamvr asset) and it works fine. Left controller shows up fine in regular steamvr, it just deactvates when I hit play in unity. Object Null, regarding your question I think in the picture OP shows the properties while playing, which happens to me too. The controller is checked as active and then I hit play and it deactivates. degrees, did you figure it out?

Addendum- I made a new scene and my controllers were asleep so I turned on left first and it showed up, and then I turned right on and left disappeared. Just in case that means anything :slight_smile:

Had the same problem and started investigating, as it turns out the problem seems to be a new update in the Steam-part (or at least the communication between SteamVR and the Unity plugin), so rolling back to the official SteamVR release (and not the beta) in Steam fixes the problem.

Confirmed, the beta’s doing that. Thanks!

Huge luck I found this thread. Same problem here. I would have never guessed it was the beta.

Same problem here. Even SteamVR’s samples Test_Throw and Test_IK don’t show the left controllers, BUT the SteamVR Example scene works fine, even w/the beta. Interesting to note the different hierarchy/setup in that scene.

When I ran into this last week I tried restarting SteamVR and re-pairing the controllers, to no avail. Eventually I shut down Unity and restarted it, which somehow resolved the issue…

I have fix this problem with a patch I wrote~ you can take a look at it~

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This is so awesome! You solved a huge problem for us, thank you!

I have the same problem here , but i can"t detect both of the controllers. the steamVr was updated yesterday.
What should i do?

Wealou. I had the same problem. It has todo with all the unity updates and going from 5.4 tot 5.5 etc. I my case i had to add the script update_poses to the camera(eye) object in the camerarig manually.

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Thank you so much , it did work for me ( unity 5.6 beta9 / all updates of steamVR)

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I have personally experience lot of glitches while using htc vive. There are lot things that might go wrong and you can see many errors messages popping around on your screen like vr headset not connected, vr driver not installed, errror 108 and much more. Here is the article that really helped and might help you as well. How to Fix Any HTC Vive Error. Let me know in the comments below if this doesn’t work out for you. I would be happy to help you out…

Thanks so much for the solution! Works for me, Unity 5.6.0b5

Thanks! This helped me too!

I updated to the 5.6 beta and I lost the controllers - now fixed, but I also get ArgumentException errors that seem to be related to the controllers in the sdk manager. I dont suppose you have any advice here? The only 2 things I have done is upgrade to 5.6 and also try and bake a nav mesh to my scene.

  • P.s I am a complete newbie, any solution that isnt rebuilding the entire scene would be amazing!

This works for me too. Updated from Unity 5.5 to 5.6 and this brings back the Vive controllers.