Virtual reality has gone dark for Oculus Rift users across the globe today, as what seems to be an expired security certificate in the Oculus Runtime service has temporarily rendered their headsets inoperable. Where were you the day the Oculus Rifts died?
Reports of failing Oculus Rift headsets are everywhere this morning, from Twitter to Reddit to the Oculus forums. Owners attempting to start their virtual reality headset’s software are getting a “Can’t Reach Oculus Runtime Service” error, similar to the one received below by Kotaku’s Kirk Hamilton.
Since connecting to the runtime service is required for the Rift to operate and the current version of the OculusAppFramework.dll file is out of date (via Neowin), the issue affects all Oculus Rift headsets. It was a particular problem for developer Adam Boyne (via Polygon), whose virtual reality demo was foiled by the error.
This morning, Oculus tweeted that it is aware of the problem, and is working to fix it. Until then Oculus Rift owners will have to settle for plain old boring regular reality.
Comments
3 responses to “Widespread Bug Causes Oculus Rifts To Stop Working”
Oculus is such a cluster fk, The fact that ppl had to do their own research to find out what was wrong and only after the polygon article did Oculus bother to let ppl know what was happening in a less than informative way shows their incompetence, They should know when their security certificates are going to expire.
Yes it was a dumb mistake. Companies should never let their CA Certs expire. It’s not that uncommon though. I’ve lived through this more than a few times at work.
I don’t expect it’ll happen again though. Someone’s going to get a massive kick up the butt.
I literally had just received my Oculus and was going through the setup as the issue struck. Try to use for the first time and immediately hit with the error message.
Turns out there’s a current workaround by simply changing your computer date back prior to the expiry date. Made for a fun time as I had to constantly change the time back to allow Oculus functionality, the forwards to allow Steam to download SteamVR… then back again to finally play what I wanted to.
I cannot believe they stuffed up this badly.
It was a day without using VR, it’s not a big deal. Consider it like server maintenance on an MMO, or taking your car in for a service. Besides that, they’re gifting everyone who was affected $15 of Store credit, that’s a pretty sweet deal.