Oculus Thread - Quest Edition

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Hey, Forums are up~!  I recently sold my Rift S and got a Quest 2 headset.  My jump was motivated by getting a Quest 1 headset a bit before the Quest 2 released.  Long story short, the stand alone Quest headset functionality is pretty impressive but as a bonus, you can hook a Quest up to your PC and use it for PCVR / Rift Games.

 

This morning I got the Oculus Link cable.  This is an expensive ($80 USD) USB3 cable that has a fiber optic connection apparently.  I was using the USB cable that came with thew Quest 1 and thought it was a Link cable, but I was quite wrong.  The Quest 1 cable looks very similar until you see both cables side by side, as the Link cable is quite a bit thicker.

Keep in mind the cable that comes with the Quest 1 is only USB2 and caps out speed wise at 360 MB/s or so.   A Link cable connects as USB3 and the speeds are about 2.4 GB/s on my desktop.

 

Oculus Link cable support is still largely rolled out for Quest 1 support and does not upscale to Quest 2 at a higher resolution yet... but there are some tools available in the Public Test Channel / Beta line of the Oculus desktop software.
 

C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics

You can edit Oculus Link parameters here to increase your Encode Bitrate and Encode Resolution Width.  Doing this on the USB2 cable is kind of a waste since it will not like being set to 350 to 500 for the Bitrate Mbps.

 

If using a cable to your desktop sounds shitty, you can also use Virtual Desktop to connect to your PC for remote desktop but also actually play desktop VR games from SteamVR or your Oculus Library.  Quick overview is you buy the app on the Oculus Quest store, run the streamer app on your PC then you can connect.

 

If you would like some Quest diagnostics, feel free to sideload OVRMetrics to your quest headset.

 

Freeze frame to mention sideloading apps on your quest! This Oculus guide shows you how to sideload from the debug console.  Better yet you can also use SideQuest to install custom APKs and browse the custom VR software community.  Huge amount of games and utilities available. 

When you have Virtual Desktop installed, you want to sideload the patch from the SideQuest community.  The Dev added functionality for your SteamVR games to keep working well.  Most all stuff works pretty well wirelessly however you will possibly want to plug in a cable for the more intense game like Half Life: Alyx

 

That is a good overview for the time being. Speaking of Alyx, I'm off to play more of this with a mix of Tetris Effect.  Tetris Effect is rad and I cannot even explain why it's so good.  I play so much of it, especially on weekends for the community events.

I'll add more as I think of it and feel free to ask any questions. 🙂  I also have a prescription lenses insert for my headset.  Happily, the same ones I got for my Rift S, work on the Quest 1 and Quest 2.  Glad I didn't have to buy a new pair of lenses.

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Quest 2 got the version 23 update that enables 90 Hz / FPS for desktop VR mode and also more support for Quest native games at 90 Hz.

 

Works pretty well so far. There is also image quality upscaling support. At current on my setup with an Intel i7-7700k and Nvidia 1080 Ti I am getting good performance and maintaining 90 FPS at 4128 x 2096.

 

As mentioned I am using the official Oculus Link cable that connects over USB3.

 

In the Graphic Preferences details, you can crank up the resolution and toggle your FPS / Hz refresh rate.

 

 

Glad I got rid of my Rift S at this point.   Even with the drop from 80 Hz to 72, I was having a better desktop experience overall with the Quest 1 and Quest 2 headsets.

 

For the time being, if you want to jump in, I would say to scoop up a Quest headset.  I saw John Carmack was speaking about some headset with 120 Hz support but presuming that was either a Valve Index or some other Facebook prototype.

 

Speaking of Facebook, keep in mind these headsets will require a Facebook account and have social features tied into some of the apps.  I set most all my privacy settings to be associated to 'Only Me' level and they continue to work.  Just wanted to make sure that's noted to not shock anyone looking to get a headset.