Meta Quest 2 --> Oculus Link compatibility issue

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zarmanto

zarmanto

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  • #1
    It looks like maybe it's time to move this conversation to a more appropriate forum, where it might see traffic from people with some technical acumen.

    Background: My family was gifted a Quest 2 headset this past Christmas. The kids had been asking me for one for a while, but I resisted for various reasons; now, my resistance has proven to be futile, because there it is. The kids have played with it a little bit, but mostly they've pretty much forgotten about it at this point. And of course, I've explored it a little bit myself; I watched Beetlejuice in it via one of the streaming apps one evening when I was bored, and I've played some of the games; I'd say it works pretty well as a standalone VR device -- but as soon as you get away from "standalone," the conversation takes quite a different tone.

    Since shortly after we got it, I've been trying to get it to work via the Oculus Link software with my gaming laptop, with no success. My laptop was purchased during this past Black Friday sale (actually, the day before Thanksgiving, but on sale nonetheless) so it's by no means "old"... but I'm working with a budget here, so it's not rocking a 40-series, either; it's an Acer Nitro 5 with an RTX 3070 and pretty decent specs otherwise. By all reports, this laptop should be plenty powerful enough for VR usage, right? And in fact, different versions of this laptop series have even been highly recommended in articles I've read online. And yet... all I get when I attempt to invoke virtual desktop mode is a solid black screen, and attempting to stream any VR capable games to the set from my PC is likewise fruitless.

    I submitted a request for support to Meta's helpdesk back in January; they made various recommendations (many of which I had already tried on my own) which all yielded no results. One of their suggestions was actually to downgrade my laptop from Windows 11 to Windows 10, because (according to the support rep at the time) "Windows 11 isn't yet supported." I actually complained to them about that suggestion, but they stuck to their guns and would not even try to help me any further unless I downgraded... so I let the ticket be auto-closed, anticipating receiving nothing else of use from them.

    At this point, I was honestly just annoyed and frustrated, so I expressed that. I mentioned the issue in a few different places, including one post-article thread here on Ars and a Q/A thread over on the Meta forum. (Feel free to read the details in those links if you like, but I'll summarize briefly herein.) That's when things got interesting. A member on the Meta forum informed me that, yay verily, Windows 11 is indeed supported! -- and then he proceeded to blame my laptop for my issues.

    My first thought was, that's utterly rubbish. I'd already been informed by supposedly knowledgeable people that Windows 11 was my issue; how is my laptop now the culprit? So, I buckled down and finally installed Windows 10 to test the assertion. To my dismay, it didn't work under Windows 10 either. How could a laptop that's actually recommended for VR turn out to be incompatible with one of the most popular VR headsets?? That just doesn't compute!

    I know that was a lot to read, and I thank you if you actually took the time. Here are the questions I'm trying to address: Is he right -- did I somehow just spend a bunch of money on precisely the wrong laptop, where VR is concerned? Or could there be some other explanation for the issues I'm seeing?
     
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    hestermofet

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  • #3
    Paladin said:
    No idea, I haven't used that stuff myself but I would look into the USB cable and port in use to connect the headset. I think you need an HDMI or displayport cable too. The cable needs to be USB3.1 and high quality. That is where I would start.
    Click to expand...
    100% this. I am an Oculus 2 user too, and bought mine recently. I had issues with Link initially too, but mine were a bit different. Usually, the headset wouldn't be detected by the software, or if it was, performance would be terrible.

    Your graphics card should be fine, it's roughly equivalent to my 2070S desktop card that gives wonderful performance. Things I would look into:
    1. USB cable. Is it the official one? If not, is it high enough quality? is the distance too long? The official cable works well because it's fibre optic, so 5m is no issue for it. Copper cables can cause issues at those lengths for a use case like this that requires high performance from the cable. I would try a shorter USB cable. As a last ditch effort, try testing with the cable that came with headset. It's very short, but should give you an idea if the problem is the cable or something else, since it's a 1st party cable that should be guaranteed to work.
    2. USB port. Yeah, this is a weird one, but this turned out to be my issue. My motherboard has several USB ports. 3 are 10Gbps, and 2 are 5Gbps. There are 2 more 5Gbps ports on a motherboard header. I initially used a USB-C port that runs at 10Gbps, thinking highest performance, that should work the best. I could not be more wrong. In my case, it's a Thunderbolt 3 port, but since my platform is AMD, it's always been flaky. The other two 10Gbps might be on the same bus or something, because they don't work either. As well, any ports on a USB-C dock connected to that port don't work. All the 5Gbps ports work fine.
    3. There is a test in the Oculus PC software you can run to check for USB issues. Probably start with this (lol, should have put this first). Even if you are connected, the headset is detected properly, and you are getting an image, the headset may have negotiated a lower speed than 5Gbps, or the link speed could be USB3, but too low for proper operation.
    4. Try AirLink. That would remove USB entirely from the equation. If you do try this, test while the laptop is hardwired by Ethernet, if at all possible. AirLink with a computer that is using WiFi for other things can cause serious performance issues. You need an all AX WiFi for AirLink to work best.
    5. I don't use Virtual Desktop Mode much, so I can't speak much to that, and this may seem really stupid, but sometimes you need to wait a lot longer than you would think after launching a game for it to fully connect. The Oculus Link thing is still kinda buggy and janky all these years later, and the launching process for games can take a while sometimes for you to be fully in the game's loading screen.
    6. Try Oculus VR instead of Steam VR. Or vice versa, whichever you haven't tried. I personally use Oculus VR mostly, but you need to launch a game at least once in Steam VR for it to show up in your Oculus VR library for whatever reason.

    And just as an addendum, I ended up going with this for wireless operation.
    https://shop.us.dlink.com/products/f18-vr-air-bridgeIt works amazing for fully wireless operation, even with my desktop upstairs and me wearing the headset downstairs.
     
    Last edited:
    zarmanto

    zarmanto

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  • #5
    hestermofet said:
    Your graphics card should be fine, it's roughly equivalent to my 2070S desktop card that gives wonderful performance. Things I would look into: ...
    Click to expand...
    Thank you for the well thought out list of suggestions. Let me see what I can address, in that:

    1. Cable: I've actually tried three different cables; the "charging" cable that came with it and two other cables off of Amazon which are specifically labeled to be used with the Quest. I'm reasonably certain that these latter two cables meet all of the stated specs, and they include an optional power injection port for use with PCs that can't supply enough power to the headset on their own. I have tested with and without a separate power adapter connected.
    2. USB port: I have three USB-A ports and one USB-C port. Like yours, I believe my USB-C port is Thunderbolt. I have tested it in two of the USB-A ports, however, I'm tempted to discount this as the likely culprit; the Quest Link software is actually able to test that connection, and reports that it passes the test successfully.
    3. Testing: Oops; I guess I just covered that. This is why our high school teachers always insisted that we read all of the directions first -- but apparently, I never really learned that lesson. LOL!
    4. AirLink: I've tried that, with the same results as wired -- the only difference is that the connection test tells me I'm connecting at a slower speed.
    5. Load speed: I concur with your assessment. I have sat there with the headset on my face for quite a while, staring at that useless black screen... so I believe I've covered this possibility. Interestingly, while sitting there I was also able to observe that the mouse cursor does indeed move when I point the VR controllers at the screen, and the cursor changes appropriately in the headset view when I hover over different things (such as changing to the insert bar over text boxes or changing to the hand over web links.)
    6. Oculus VR vs Steam VR: I have not tried to launch No Man's Sky from Oculus VR yet; I'll give that a try this weekend -- hopefully this evening, but no guarantees.
    Other things I'm planning to try:
    • I'm going to attempt to connect the Quest to at least a couple of other computers this weekend. So far, I've only been testing on my own laptop -- but before the past few days, I had no reason to believe that the laptop itself could be the problem.
    • At some point, I'll likely visit my brother-in-law; he lives only a couple of hours away and his kids also have Quests. My objective there will be to ask him if I can try one of their Quests on my laptop, to potentially narrow down the issue one way or the other. I don't know for sure if that's in the cards for this weekend, though.
     
    Paladin

    Paladin

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  • #6
    hestermofet said:
    Not required. It all done over USB data and WiFi.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah I had read about that but it seems to be the less reliable option and possibly still in beta or something but the article was from a while ago. I'm assuming you need a good wifi 5 5Ghz or wifi 6 access point to have good results.

    I'm surprised though since it sounds like video output to the quest works? Is it possible the games are simply not using the right display option to use the VR display instead of/as well as the main monitor?
     
    zarmanto

    zarmanto

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  • #7
    Paladin said:
    ... I'm surprised though since it sounds like video output to the quest works? Is it possible the games are simply not using the right display option to use the VR display instead of/as well as the main monitor?
    Click to expand...
    I suppose that depends upon how you define output as "working." A big black box where there should be a Windows desktop doesn't really fit that definition, to my mind.

    As for not using the correct display option: that reminds me of another thread that I read today, wherein it was suggested that it could be related to the integrated GPU. I don't remember where exactly I saw that before, but one of the things I recall doing during some early troubleshooting efforts was to disable the iGPU entirely. Unfortunately, that didn't help.
     
    zarmanto

    zarmanto

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  • #9
    Unexpected update: The situation has changed, very much for the better... but I'm afraid I have no idea how. I was trying to follow hestermofet's suggestion and use the Oculus VR app to open the game instead of the Steam VR interface, but No Man's Sky wasn't in the library in O-VR. So I went to launch it in S-VR again, as I'd attempted to in the past -- and this time it worked! Not the vaguest idea what I did differently, but hole-lee-crap! I've only spent five minutes in the game so far, because family comes first and one of my older kids just came over to visit, but that brief five minutes looked positively amazing. (Big re-learning task in front of me, though, for the controls... so that's going to be interesting.)

    So now, the one thing I know still isn't working is virtual desktop... but that's definitely going to be a secondary priority.
     
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