Request: Change behaviour of Rift after (bigger) Windows updates

Feature Requests
#1

Hi Jake and Ben,
your Rift is one of the few plugins out there that seem to base their license recognition upon a certain computer ID on Windows that unfortunately changes on every bigger update (like 22H2 etc.). This might not be too often for normal users, but since I am a Beta Windows Insider Preview user, it requires me to login from the plugin and to my web user account here and reset a seat every few weeks (and it’s even worse for die-hard Dev-channel Insiders that get an update every week).
Now, what is fantastic is that Rift is still operating in the background, causing the audio not to change or mute, unlike many other companies when a license is missing or needs to be re-entered. Would you be in some way able to still detect a working license in a different way? On top of having to reset a seat on the website and log into the plugin again, I have to go through the 8-part tutorial again which shows up in Rift every time I login.

This all is comparably minimal, and I am already grateful how fair you handle a missing login/license in the plugin, but if you would find a different way of assuring a license is stored, I’d be forever grateful!

Yours truly

Eno

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#2

Hey @ratzekind –

Sorry it’s taken us a few days to check in here.

Yes – Rift will always continue to play back session details regardless of your license state – but with regard to the hardware ID issue – it’s definitely a tricky one and I’ll be honest we’ve struggled a bit to get it right in a cross platform manner which works for everyone.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a bullet proof ID on windows which never changes – and as you’d expect – people aren’t really willing to publicly share how they are handling their licenses so details are fairly scarce on the subject.

It is however something on our radar that we’d like to fix in our next release cycle, we’re currently working on a bunch of new products and we need to get this fixed before we put more new products in the wild, but we’d like to fix what’s there without kicking everyone out of forcing them to upgrade.

Happy to move this to a DM if you know some ID we could use which is more stable! – Otherwise I can confirm here that we’ll be improving this, even if it means hiring some outside consulting to finally get it right.

Best,

J

#3

Thanks for bringing this up @ratzekind

I just thought I’d add that you can skip the intro tutorial by closing and re-opening the plugin’s UI.

Best,

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#4

Hi @jake.minimal and @ben.minimal ,

thanks for taking care of this matter.

I am in no way an expert in these matters. I would assume most plugins either store the license in a file somewhere (sometimes pretty much hidden) or save it to the registry, so changing machine IDs are not affecting license states. I know that machine IDs can change by a simple swap of a network card or even just a drive that you exchange, apart from Windows updates. A stab in the dark, but maybe even based on MAC IDs (which would then make sense to cause trouble if you had a different network card)?

If you need any assistance or insight from me, feel free to DM me again :slight_smile: .

Cheers

Eno

#5

Hey! We have a new implementation here, but i’m not sure how to trigger the machine change that was causing the inital bug @ratzekind do you know how i could check that?

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#6

Hi Jake, that’s fabulous to hear!
Yes, I know how to trigger it. It’s caused by the ‘heavier’, big updates that Microsoft pushes for Windows, like 22H2. The safest route to trigger it is either by installing such an upgrade, or joining the Insider program for Windows and opt into the Dev channel. That’s bringing you an update of the machine-ID changing type almost every week. The Beta channel brings fewer updates, more like once a month, so if you want it to happen more reliably, use the Dev channel.