Comment by paulmd

The goal here is wireless, a single thinner cable would be better but it's better to not have to worry about wires at all. And I'm not willing to set up a facebook account just for a Quest.

The Vive Wireless Adapter (VWA) is a PCIe card (single slot/low profile/mitx length). The output from the card is an SMA connector with a RF signal that goes to the antenna, max official length is 2 meters (and it isn't another SMA on the other end, it's hardwired into the antenna, so you have to use an extension, meaning multiple SMA connectors in the middle). I've seen people use some fairly long extension cables, but that attenuates the signal somewhat. It's probably fine but it's undesirable.

There are USB wireless adapters (TPLink makes one iirc) but generally they are agreed to be an inferior solution in various respects - higher CPU usage, higher latency, worse signal quality, a green bar on the top, etc. This is basically an ideal use-case for WiGig, it was literally designed to be a wireless display transmitter, and that's what the Vive Wireless Adapter uses inside, it's actually an off-the-shelf Intel WiGig card. The TPCast uses a much lower-bandwidth solution and compresses it much harder and that requires more latency, more oomph on the PC, and still gets a worse signal quality.

But, the WiGig card only has a short cable to the antenna. Solution: put the card in an enclosure and mount the enclosure on the wall, run the cables to the PC. Problem: thunderbolt also only runs 2 meters. Solution: optical thunderbolt cables. The rest is solvable from there.

The other reason I haven't raced into it is that HTC hasn't kept it up with the newer hardware. The Vive Pro has a higher-res screen and the VWA can only run at (iirc) 3/4ths resolution. It's still a better screen, there's less Screen Door Effect, but when you're talking about dropping around $1000 to get wireless working flawlessly and tucked away into the walls, it better be fucking flawless. On paper the WiGig actually has three channels and should be able to send on all three at once, but this doesn't seem to be implemented...

Honestly the TPCast is probably a 90% solution, it probably chokes on the Vive Pro as well but maybe for $200 instead of $1000 that's acceptable. But it's tough for me to accept "good enough" when there's a technically better solution. The VWA is an absolutely ideal solution here. At one point there were some updates pushed that looks like Valve was working on it, but (with apologies to South Park)... in typical Valve fashion, "they just sort of got high, and wandered off..."

And then, the Index is just an all-around better headset... but it doesn't have a wireless solution at all right now (apart from maybe the TPCast?). It kinda sucks, drives me up the wall that there's no "perfect answer" here. Every solution has some large downsides.