Quest 2 + Link Cable/SteamVR setup - any tips or guides for a first timer?

Chadwiko

C
Hey all,

Coming back to ED after a nine year hiatus because I just picked up a Quest 2 and am super keen to head back into the black.

I have 32gb ram, and a 2080 super so I feel I should be all set to run ED in nice settings for VR.

This will be the 1st game I play via my Link Cable on my PC, so I'm just curious if anyone has any tips for me before I dive in?

Thanks I'm advance!
 

Arioch

Arioch
Chadwiko said:
Hey all,

Coming back to ED after a nine year hiatus because I just picked up a Quest 2 and am super keen to head back into the black.

I have 32gb ram, and a 2080 super so I feel I should be all set to run ED in nice settings for VR.

This will be the 1st game I play via my Link Cable on my PC, so I'm just curious if anyone has any tips for me before I dive in?

Thanks I'm advance!
Click to expand...
Are you intending on playing Legacy or Live?
 

VR andysonofbob

VR andysonofbob
Look at my sig. Your rig is halfway between my PC and my Wife's one set your resolution and hz accordingly

Don't forget to have the oculus debug tool running and set the encode bitrate to 500 or it will look rubbish.
 

Faded Glory

Faded Glory
You need the Oculus app running on your PC, and you will need to enable unknown apps in it - I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it's the first or second option in general settings.

Plug your link cable in and get it so the headset is seen by the app and enable Oculus Link in the Oculus app.

When you start the game up, you should now be in VR. If for any reason it fires up flat screen, go into ED's graphics settings and under 3D enable HMD and Headphones. You should be good to go.

This is based upon starting from the Frontier launcher.
 

Arioch

Arioch
Chadwiko said:
Live!
Click to expand...
Then be prepared for low settings and a number of graphical issues 😅

The setting mentioned by Faded Glory above is Settings/General/Unknown Sources.

The Quest 2 is set at a low-ish resolution as default - if you go to Devices, click on “Quest 2 and Touch”, scroll to Graphics Preferences, you can increase the Rendering Resolution - I run at 72Hz @ 4480x2256 but you’ll need to see what your PC can handle.

I wouldn’t bother delving into manually adjusting bitrates yet - there will be a performance hit if you increase it, so get the game looking and playing the best you can first with the defaults. The VR defaults in Elite are very outdated and I suggest not using them - put everything Low/Off, SS 1.0 and HMD Quality 1.0 and adjust upwards from there. Personally, I prefer the clarity of HMD Quality 1.25 and adjust settings to give stable performance at that level.

Be aware of the VR bugs affecting Live/Odyssey - there is a list of current issues in this sub-forum, and there are still areas of the game that really hit performance (certain surface settlements really hammer the framerate, for example).

I take it from the thread title you are using the Steam version of Elite; if SteamVR is running when you play, make sure it’s not using its own super-sampling - this will stack with all the other SS going on and can really drag performance down.
 

VR andysonofbob

VR andysonofbob
Am I right in thinking new ED users have to load via Steam and consequently need to use SteamVR? Or can you load direct from the launcher and use the Oculus runtime?

I have never found adjusting bitrate affects FPS performance on any of my systems, but what it does do is increase latency.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Just got myself a Quest 2 ... huh, this thread is shorter than I expected/hoped.

I purchased the Kiwi link cable (after a fair bit of research), haven't tried it yet tho.

There seems to be some pretty solid info in this ..

Source: https://youtu.be/ERnRVLEjqoQ

I'm struggling to find the UploadVR article referenced ..

ImHCxc5.png


.. but I did grab this screenshot from that video ..

wGA7xvc.png
 
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Arioch

Arioch
Alec Turner said:
Found a mirror of it ..

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That’s outdated info Alec - it’s much more simple to do these days!

In the Oculus desktop software you can select your headset and increase the resolution there, as well as frequency.

As per my post above: The Quest 2 is set at a low-ish resolution as default - if you go to Devices, click on “Quest 2 and Touch”, scroll to Graphics Preferences, you can increase the Rendering Resolution - I run at 72Hz @ 4480x2256 but you’ll need to see what your PC can handle.

Edit: also, welcome to Q2 VR 😁👍
 
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Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Helmut Grokenberger said:
Welcome to the VR club. We have cookies. Did you do your maiden voyage in VR yet?
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It's not my first rodeo (had a CV1 for many years) but it's a fantastic bit of kit and being able to do VR stuff anywhere in the house is very exciting. Mildly disappointed that I've had to buy Beat Saber again (don't know why I expected otherwise ... then again Robo Recall just worked so there's that) but I'm enjoying learning all about hand tracking and casting to the TV and stuff like that. Will hopefully get to try ED this weekend (although there is a Buckyball race on so that takes top priority of course).

For interest, as well as the Kiwi link cable I also got the GeekVR head strap which is a quality add-on from what I've experienced so far.
 
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Arioch

Arioch
Alec Turner said:
It's not my first rodeo (had a CV1 for many years) but it's a fantastic bit of kit and being able to do VR stuff anywhere in the house is very exciting. Mildly disappointed that I've had to buy Beat Saber again (don't know why I expected otherwise) but I'm enjoying learning all about hand tracking and casting to the TV and stuff like that. Will hopefully get to try ED this weekend (although there is a Buckyball race on so that takes top priority of course).

For interest, as well as the Kiwi link cable I also got the GeekVR head strap which is a quality add-on from what I've experienced so far.
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I went from CV1 > Rift S > Quest 2 and the move to wireless was a surprising eye-opener - be sure to try the 90/360 degree levels in Beat Saber!

If you fancy some old games on stand-alone, setting up a dev account is very easy, and then you get to play all the good stuff from Team Beef - so far I’ve replayed HL1 (with OpFor + Blue Shift), Doom 1, 2 & 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and most recently Jedi Outcast.
 

Helmut Grokenberger

Helmut Grokenberger
Alec Turner said:
It's not my first rodeo (had a CV1 for many years) but it's a fantastic bit of kit and being able to do VR stuff anywhere in the house is very exciting. Mildly disappointed that I've had to buy Beat Saber again (don't know why I expected otherwise ... then again Robo Recall just worked so there's that) but I'm enjoying learning all about hand tracking and casting to the TV and stuff like that. Will hopefully get to try ED this weekend (although there is a Buckyball race on so that takes top priority of course).

For interest, as well as the Kiwi link cable I also got the GeekVR head strap which is a quality add-on from what I've experienced so far.
Click to expand...
Ah okay. Still, moving up to a modern higher resolution headset is almost as impressive as the move from 2D to VR. I started with the Rift S and later moved to the Reverb G2, and it was a difference like night and day; especially the, for all intents and purposes, elimination of the screen door effect. When I moved to the G2, the sense of scale made a giant leap for me.

Personally, I cannot imagine flying a ship on a flat monitor. In VR, it's not a game; I am flying a frikkin' space ship.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Finally got to try Elite at the weekend ... wow, the Quest 2 really is an awesome bit of kit. I was worried my old i5/GTX1080 wouldn’t be able to handle Odyssey (never tried it with the CV1) but actually it was fine. I'm getting some stuttering but that's probably because I'm using the same high quality graphics settings I'm using for flat screen (or because I've upped the default Oculus Link sampling frequency and quality slider a bit). Does anyone know if Dr Kai's old ED Profiler still works for Odyssey? (looks like I'm going to need to switch between alternative profiles again ... yes, I will still be switching between flat screen and VR as mood and activity dictates). Very happy with my decision to go with a link cable for PC VR (incl. Elite) and the Kiwi cable I got is lovely. And yes, the ability to go wireless and take the headset anywhere I want to play Beat Saber (which I re-bought) or Robo Recall is a complete revelation (tho I love the reliability, simplicity and potentially increased battery life of a cabled connection for Elite or Google Earth). Oh, and I would heartily recommend the GeekVR headstrap ... nice design, comfortable and, with the hot swapable battery on the back, really nicely balanced.
 
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Alec Turner

Alec Turner
P.S. I don't suppose anyone has tried "casting" their Quest 2 to a Samsung TV? I played around a bit and the only thing I managed to get working was to cast to my iPhone and then use the Samsung SmartThings feature to mirror my phone on the TV. The performance was TERRIBLE. Is there no way I can cast directly to the TV?
 

pFVD

P
Oculus Tray Tool

Not ED Profiler (obviously) but I use Oculus Tray Tool to set a VR settings profile for Elite. I set HMD scale in game to 1.0x and then use Oculus Tray Tool to alter the supersampling. Why do it this way? Because in game, you have to jump in increments of .25x; with OTT I can set in .5x. I can also set it to turn off ASW (Asynchronous Warp) in different profiles, which I do for ED as I get a watery blur effect from the cockpit HUD, a bit like a heat haze when it's switched on, especially via wired link. Pretty much everything this tool does can be done manually and/or with the Oculus Debug Tool but having it one place and with separate profiles is very handy. Obviously it's not the same thing as ED Profiler at all, but I thought I'd post here about it as it might be handy for @Alec Turner / some.
You might also want to try playing with the FOV Multiplier; this essentially shrinks the amount of rendered/viewed pixels and can help with performance a little without losing much if anything visually. This will vary greatly between users as it will be dependent on your eye distance from lens and how much you can see at the edges. Personally, I find I can reduce the view to 0.90 width and 0.80 high without noticing, but I do have a thin facial interface that puts me closer to the lenses.
Has voice commands for some features and allows you to put game executables and Oculus server at a higher CPU priority.
I believe the app is due an update, as some features are not working properly, but AFAIK, everything in the game profiles works, which is the important part.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Is flickering shadows in asteroid fields in VR a known thing? Like not mild annoyance flickering, full on all the asteroids intolerable migraine inducing strobe light flickering! Anyway, addressed it by taking shadows down from Ultra to High which stopped it completely.
 
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