I tried playing CoD BO 3 today on Windows 10 with my bluetooth headset. I get sound at game startup, till it says “connecting to online service”. After that, the sound gets cut-off (I could hear some ambient noise as if the mic has been turned on).

After a lot of head scratching and trying to find solutions online, I found one that works:

Right-click on the speaker icon in the tray and goto “Sound Settings > Manage Sound Devices”.

Here, you should see the bluetooth device connected in stereo mode. If you see another device like “Hands-free AG audio”, you have to disable that.

Once that’s done, restart the game and the sound should work with bluetooth headphones!

But seriously, we shouldn’t have to do these things in 2020! Whose fault is it – Microsoft’s? Activision’s? Treyarch’s? As a consumer, I shouldn’t have to deal with these things.

To improve usability:

1. Classify roads – size, safety, infrastructure. avoid bad roads even if it saves time or is unsafe. Why take me through a small “galli” just to save a few minutes when I could take a better main road even though it may be a few minutes longer?
2. Dropoff at a stop close-by, and switch to walk – will save a lot of time in areas like ORR in Bangalore.
3. Not fully rely on traffic data all the time – major junctions and roads should be permanently marked as congested esp. at peak hours, based on annual data. In my experience, the live traffic data is wrong on many important congested junctions.