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LandonDeam

Member

Registered: 2022-12-17

Posts: 33

[SOLVED] Steam VR Error 496 and extreme artifacting

Part of this is being tracked on the following GitHub issue, however I think that the problems seem to be coming not from SteamVR, but from Kernel drivers and Vulkan implementations (AMD's GPU drivers, and Mesa), and possibly OpenXR/Wayland, as at least the Error 496 portion does not happen in the same way on X11.

The other portion of this is extreme artifacting, where it seems that the view from the headset it split up into a grid, but the grid squares have been randomized from their true positions, giving an almost kaleidoscope look from the screens. This does happen in Display View, so it's probably not a problem with handling Direct Display. If I had to guess, it's a driver issue. In addition to this, I know that it's not exclusively a hardware problem, because the artifacting does not occur when in SteamVR's non-home base world, with the circles at your feet and such. I think that this might also be related to some heavy artifacting within the "VR View" that SteamVR provides.

I've also encountered the following message when running the command `cat /sys/class/drm/card1-DP-2/edid | parse-edid` which parses the EDID of my VR headset.

Checksum Correct

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "Index HMD"
        ModelName "Index HMD"
        VendorName "VLV"
        # Monitor Model Year: 2018
        # EDID version 1.3
        # Digital Display
        # Display Physical Size not given. Normal for projectors.
        Gamma 2.20
        Option "DPMS" "false"

        #Extension block found. Parsing...
I only know about extension blocks of type 02h. PLEASE email me!
Something strange happened. Please contact the author,
Matthew Kern at <pyrophobicman@gmail.com>

This is the output for the headset in xrandr:

lease-DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   2880x1600     90.00 + 144.00   120.02    80.00  
   1920x1200     90.00  
   1920x1080     90.00  
   1600x1200     90.00  
   1680x1050     90.00  
   1280x1024     90.00  
   1440x900      90.00  
   1280x800      90.00  
   1280x720      90.00  
   1024x768      90.00  
   800x600       90.00  
   640x480       90.00  

I also got some dmesg errors related to booting SteamVR:

[38646.947982] traps: vrwebhelper[11665] trap int3 ip:761960cbd50b sp:7ffec06808b0 error:0 in libcef.so[5cbc50b,76195caec000+7770000]
[38663.901779] vrwebhelper[59247]: segfault at 39 ip 0000704209603824 sp 00007ffd5a6d74f0 error 6 in libcef.so[1c02824,7042094ec000+7770000] likely on CPU 8 (core 0, socket 0)
[38663.901791] Code: 00 00 00 48 01 df 31 f6 4c 89 f2 e8 b6 27 65 07 49 01 de 4d 89 b7 88 17 00 00 eb 82 cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc 55 48 89 e5 <c6> 04 25 39 00 00 00 21 5d c3 cc cc 55 48 89 e5 53 50 48 89 fb 48
[38665.260283] vrwebhelper[59493]: segfault at 39 ip 0000704209603824 sp 00007ffd5a6d73d0 error 6 in libcef.so[1c02824,7042094ec000+7770000] likely on CPU 1 (core 1, socket 0)
[38665.260297] Code: 00 00 00 48 01 df 31 f6 4c 89 f2 e8 b6 27 65 07 49 01 de 4d 89 b7 88 17 00 00 eb 82 cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc 55 48 89 e5 <c6> 04 25 39 00 00 00 21 5d c3 cc cc 55 48 89 e5 53 50 48 89 fb 48

Someone experiencing a similar problem said it might be udev rules, but after adding Valve's udev rules for SteamVR, the issues persisted. The issues also persisted after compiling my own version of the Zen kernel with the recent AMD patch that supposedly fixes some errors with VR on the X11 side. I should also note that these issues all persist for the SteamVR branches beta, stable (none), and previous. Changing Proton versions also doesn't seem to affect anything for the VR games themselves.

Last edited by LandonDeam (2025-06-02 18:49:27)

sliceofpizzaxd

Member

Registered: 2025-05-23

Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] Steam VR Error 496 and extreme artifacting

I'm having similar issues, except I get no display on my headset at all. It always comes back with error 496, at least on Wayland. It connected when I tried on X11, but the menu was completely invisible. Yesterday I got the display working after unplugging and replugging power from the headset, but audio would not work. Today, I can't get it to launch the display at all. The only thing that's changed since yesterday was one day of updates.

I get exactly the same outputs as you, including the error codes for the segfaults in dmesg. The only difference is that the headset's device name is listed as "XWAYLAND2" in xrandr (idk if this is relevant, but worth bringing up anyways).

I've also tried downgrading mesa to 25.0.1-2, and tried Sway as well. I've also tried changing GPU drivers, caused a different error telling me to update them.

LandonDeam

Member

Registered: 2022-12-17

Posts: 33

Re: [SOLVED] Steam VR Error 496 and extreme artifacting

The OP in the GitHub issue said that it's fixed for them, but I'm still getting the exact same problems. The VR view from Monado is also just as messed up as what's going on in Steam. (Note: This is on X11, simply opening SteamVR seems to work perfectly fine on X11 outside of having to powercycle the headset and the menu being invisible)

I'm guessing that the issue with the artifacting is either a connectivity problem of some sort (which would explain some of the weird behavior of my headset, like not having 120Hz as an option), or it's a problem with Mesa/Vulkan/Drivers, because I don't know why else the inside of the headset would look fine in the main SteamVR void, but be completely fucked up in anything else.

LandonDeam

Member

Registered: 2022-12-17

Posts: 33

Re: [SOLVED] Steam VR Error 496 and extreme artifacting

Marking as solved because I got it working under Wayland after updating my kernel to 6.14.9 and uninstalling AMDVLK and the 32 bit library entirely from my system. Seemingly, either a kernel bug that got resolved, or AMDVLK was somehow sneaking it's dastardly way into my VR setup. I also had to powercycle my headset to get it to work, but that seems par for the course at the moment with Linux VR for whatever reason.