I've had a Quest 2 and Rift S for a long time, using the Rift S for PC gaming and Quest 2 for when I go out of town. I had tried Air Link to compare and the quality was horrible, so I stuck with Rift S. Well, there's been a few patches since then and I've finally sat down and tried to tweak the Quest 2 for PCVR. The Quest 2 has the better screen, so if you can get everything else out of the way, the Quest 2 can become one of the best PCVR headsets you can own. Getting there is a bit of a journey, but here's how...
- Use a Link Cable, not Airlink
Yes, yes, I know. You want the freedom of wireless. You can do that, and you can THINK the quality is good enough, but be aware there are big tradeoffs. What we're attempting to do is crank up the bitrate to remove any and all artifacts, crank up the resolution to take advantage of Quest 2's pixels, and crank up the refresh rate to improve the overall experience. There's no way to do all three with Airlink, and certainly not at the threshold we need to meet. I got a cheap Link Cable for $16 and so far it's working great!
- Oculus Device Advanced Settings
And so our balancing act begins. Let's get this out of the way. 120Hz refresh rate is great and can feel very smooth, but it's experimental for a reason. In my opinion the tradeoffs are NOT worth it. You'll have to lower the resolution to try to get a steady 120fps, and it actually drains the Quest 2's battery quicker (more on that later). I have a 3080 and still decided against 120Hz. As a result, my settings are:
Oculus Desktop Menu - Devices - Quest 2 and Touch - Advanced - Graphics Preferences
Refresh Rate (90Hz)
Render Resolution 1.5x (5408x2736)
You want to crank that resolution as high as your computer can stand. This is the best place to supersample, though you can push it further using OTT or ODT. 90Hz is a higher refresh rate and, therefore, an improvement over the Rift S, but you can lower it as a compromise if you have trouble getting the frames.
Ok, here's where we're gonna get rid of the Link artifacts. You have two options. I recommend downloading
Oculus Tray Tools but you can also browse to your Oculus installation and find the Support folder, Oculus Diagnostics folder, and use OculusDebugTool.
In OTT click "Quest Link" on the left menu. You'll find similar settings in ODT:
Distortion Curvature: Low (more detail in the peripherals)
Encode Resolution: 3970 (may need to be lower if lesser graphics card)
Bitrate: 550Link Sharpening: Enabled
Having the bitrate at 500 is important here. It gets rid of all streaming artifacts and achieves the same fidelity as if you were plugged into the graphics card itself. Any lower and you'll notice an annoying shimmering blockiness, especially on things in the distance. Even 400 will not cut it. Priority is to keep this at 500! OTT will default back to 300 when you restart it, so I would check ODT to make sure it's staying at 500 and, if not, make sure to set it in ODT so that it sticks.
In OTT go back to Game Settings. You can optionally set Default Super Sampling here
if your graphics card can handle it. This will
multiply with the resolution you set in the Oculus settings, so be very conservative here. I've set my default to 1.2, but for games such as HL: Alyx or Lone Echo 2, I'm leaving this at 1.0. If you click "View & Edit" under Profiles you can change the super sampling per game using OTT. This requires a bit of trial and error, but it allows you to really tweak the fidelity per game.
The above settings will kill your performance in SteamVR as any attempt at supersampling from Steam's software will multiply what you've already done, tanking your performance instantly. Our goal here is to set the SteamVR settings as close to baseline as possible and let the Oculus software do all the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, it's a little counter-intuitive and took some trial and error and Googling on my part, but here's what you want:
SteamVR Settings - Video
Refresh Rate: 90 Hz (should be automatic)
Render Resolution: Custom
Resolution Per Eye: 62% (2556x2580)
Advanced Supersample Filtering - Off
Overlay Render Quality - Medium
Your impulse is going to be to leave "resolution per eye" to 100%, but this is actually supersampling what you've already done. 62% is the closest real resolution to the Quest 2, and so you want to force that setting. I'm not certain what "Advanced Supersampling" does, but I'm just getting rid of any supersampling Steam is attempting. "Overlay Render" probably doesn't make a difference, but I'm just trying to avoid any hiccups when menu hopping.
You could stop right here and be good to go. Your settings may differ from mine, but I believe the priorities are:
Bitrate 500 > Render Resolution > Super Sampling > Refresh Rate
If you're sensitive to a lower refresh rate and really want that feeling of smooth presence, you may want to sacrifice super sampling before refresh rate - just remember 120Hz is currently a trap. There are also other ways to make the Quest 2 closer to feature parity with the Rift S...
This is actually pretty important as the default headstrap for the Quest 2 is abysmal. I personally recommend a Halo style 3rd party strap for the Quest 2 to get it feeling like the Rift S, but I've also heard positive things about a simple head pad for the back of the strap as well. Some sort of counterweight on the back of the strap is also helpful, but this is where things get complicated. I had to 3D print an external battery mount that would be compatible with a Halo strap since the adjustment dial is directly on the back, but I believe there are now options of getting a Halo strap with battery holder already included.
Both the Rift S and Quest 2 lack headphones, and I recommend getting some Porta Pros and zip tying them to the sides of the strap (works for Halo - not so much of the OG strap of Quest 2). This improves the audio quite a bit! I also recommend feeding the Link cable to the back of the strap and attaching it there so that the weight of the cable pulls at the back of your head and not the side of your face. It's a lot of work, but the end result is a HUGE improvement in comfort!
There are a few caveats to using the Quest 2 as your primary PCVR headset instead of getting an expensive one designed solely for that purpose. One major drawback was already mentioned - the amount of modding needed to make it comfortable and improve the audio. This, however, would be an issue even if you were using the Quest 2 as standalone, so it's something you'd want to deal with either way if you already have one.
The other glaring issue is the battery life. Despite the Quest 2 being plugged directly into the PC, it seems it still doesn't charge fast enough to stay at 100%. Your headset will still slowly drain while playing and plugging it into the PC takes up the charging port, so there's no way for you to have an all day marathon session. This is another reason to avoid 120Hz, as it drains even faster. I still need to do more testing to see how much it drains, but after 2.5 hours of watching a movie it was at 49%.
Finally the Link cable itself can be a bit of a crap shoot when looking for third party.
This one has worked well for me so far, but they can be fickle and the official one is still a whopping $80. If you have trouble, try Google for a solution (I had to disable Air Link on the Quest 2 to get regular Link working).
St. Patrick's Day
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