VR - Is it really going to be a success? Or, thanks Time for starting a discussion!

Games
4363

The Rift Store is not part of SteamVR. It’s part of the Oculus Home app that runs whenever you use Link and connect to your PC.

So in Quest native mode you are browsing the Quest section of the Oculus Store, and when connected to PC over Link cable you are browsing the Rift section of the Oculus Store.

When you run SteamVR then you are connected to Steam.

PC will look higher fidelity yes, but then you need to be always running the PC to play it.

Personally I tend to favour native Quest versions, I think they just run that little bit better and look sharper than streaming PC versions, and I don’t need to start the PC up to use them.

Generally the best version is the Oculus Store version if it has cross-buy, i.e. you get both Rift and Quest versions for the same price. Then you can either stream the PC version, or play the Quest version.

If you really want the PC version (or there is no Quest version), then get the Steam version if it has native support for Oculus…

That’s the other confusing wrinkle in the PC world… currently there are two different runtimes (Oculus and OpenVR), and a game runs best if you use the one that matches your headset. It still works if you have to use the other, but not as well.

This is mostly automatic in practice but it factors into the purchasing decision as sometimes a Steam version only supports OpenVR, while the Oculus version will support Oculus runtime.

This is why you’ll see on Steam forums people always asking about ‘native Oculus support’.

There’s a new cross-platform runtime called OpenXR that will natively support all headsets and remove this wrinkle once and for all, but it’s not quite there yet.

Another consideration is the Steam version will probably be more compatible with other headsets, if you move away from Oculus in the future (due to the aforementioned runtime differences).

That started life as a PC app for viewing your desktop in VR. Then the Rift got a built-in way to easily do that, which you can use when connected via Link cable.

Then the dev made a separate Quest version of Virtual Desktop, which added the ability to stream from the PC wirelessly. This is the version you need.

Oculus nixed the streaming, citing concerns with it not being a reliable out-of-the-box experience for the Quest Store given it relies on so many external variables. So he added a patch to re-enable it via SideQuest, which you’ll also need to apply. Then you need to run the streamer app on PC, which you get from the Virtual Desktop website.

SteamVR is just another app that runs, and SteamVR games run inside that. SteamVR has its own menus and library - the left controller menu button brings those up. Inside there you can browse your SteamVR games and Steam store and set SteamVR options etc.

You can quit the currently running app by pressing the Oculus button on the right controller and choosing exit.

You can start SteamVR by going into the virtual desktop mode and launching it from Steam with the ‘VR’ button.

After you first run a SteamVR game, it often appears directly in your Oculus Home library, and you can launch it straight from there without having to manually load Steam first.

Not really, but you can always factory reset your headset in a pinch. Purchases are tied to your account.

Most games have the teleport and vignette snap turns for the beginners… ;)

Many people do get their ‘VR legs’ after a week or two, but some say they never do.

4364

Great overview. Wish I’d had it last year when I got my Quest!

4365

Beat Saber Multiplayer: I haven’t seen anyone else talk about it, so here goes.

tl;dr it’s kind of shit.

I’m only going to talk about Quickplay. There are private rooms also, which I don’t have enough friends to try (sob). In QP, you get to choose your difficulty and which packs to include (e.g. built-in packs only or all of the ones you have.) Then you get matched with 1-4 other people (total 5) and each person can choose a song. The song you all play is chosen randomly from among selections and play starts. You play your chart and other people are way off in the distance playing their charts too. You couldn’t possibly pay attention to them. Whoever is the currently point leader gets to loom large, projected into the middle of the arena, but you barely notice unless it’s you (in which case you see no projection.) If you fail you get to spectate, either from a distance or from behind any player. At the end, scores are tallied and ranked… and that’s it. That’s it.

Notably there is:

  • no skill ladder. you’ll get matched with whoever
  • no penalty for bailing at any time
  • no way to restrict packs (HOLY SHIT ANOTHER CAMELLIA SONG!!!)
  • no way to interact with other players at all other than waving
  • no real reason to ever play this mode
4366

Some info relevant to the new settings for Link
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/jgfoco/oculus_link_bitrate_settings_latency/
Computer specs: Ryzen 7 2700X, RTX 2070 Super 8GB, 16GB DDR4-3200
Beat Saber settings: 1.0 supersampling, anti-aliasing disabled, all effects disabled
Oculus Debug Tool settings: 0 Pixels Per Display Override, Default Distortion Curvature, 3664 Encode Resolution Width

And comparison with Quest 1 and a native headset

edit: reminder that VD latency meter is different, and not comparable. See also this post by a Oculus dev

4367

Wait now, is not this thread for hardware talk and trouble-shooting? What the deuce are you doing mentioning a game in here? (joking, joking internet!)

Color me very curious about this game. Would love a battle royale game in VR in theory. The wonderful Rec Room has or had one, and I may go back to see how that is now. Anyone tried Population One?

4368

Jesus Christ they just sent me another one. With exactly the same text.

4369

So awesome - thank you very much @Profanicus !

I try to log in a tiny bit every day, since I can feel it tends to give me slight headache and vertigo. I am also a bit limited in my movements due to surgery still, so I just use try games that have little action.

One thing I am rather annoyed about - The lack of accounts. My GF of course wants to try, but since its ALL my account, she cant start the games I’ve started from scratch, since most dont have saveslots. Thats rather silly and very very limiting.

4370

Yes. Yes it is. It’s been a major request of users since the Quest’s launch day.

4371

And given that VR is in the “show off to friends” stage, and it’s in their best interest to have it shown off, you’d think they’d at least enable a guest account.

I feel you, @Ginger_Yellow. I’m not getting notices, but it’s all Quest 2 news and I’m aching to at least maybe see some updated tests of the final G2 or something to hold us off while we wait.

I loaded up Prepar3D because I wanted to do some VR flying and it’s sooo cartoonish compared to MSFS. I just can’t wait for the VR support in Flight Simulator – that’s going to be amazing. I hope my DxDiag gets me into the first round of tests, since I should have the G2 around the time they actually start the test anyway.

4372

According to that dev, playing with those debug settings won’t be neccessary for long hey?

Quest 2 Link is currently looking blurry, assuming you also have the GPU to drive it at the recommended resolutions, relatively soon it will easily trump Rift CV1 as well as Rift S in clarity

4373

Yeah of course, they said as much when it was announced, that they would improve Link over the coming months. This is the first step, letting people tweak the numbers with a tool, later we can imagine it will be automatic.

4374

Population One happens to be the only game released on the last months on the three stores (oculus pc, oculus quest, steam) without big gaps between the dates, so review numbers can be comparable and be used as a proxy of market share. Here it is:
Rift - 47 reviews
Steam - 231 reviews
Quest - 567 reviews

I started to search for more games to have a more accurate average but I didn’t find any game in the three stores in the same way. It was a bit surprising, I thought I would find 3 or 4 titles with ‘simultaneous release’. Star Shaman also released a few days ago, but only in two of the stores. In any case it’s interesting to have it a sample of a more minor title:
Steam - 2 reviews
Rift - n/a
Quest - 13 reviews

I don’t want to compare titles likes Rez Infinite, Walking Dead or Until You Fall, as they were released several months or even years in one platform before the other. I found Falcon Age winning in Steam by a bit, later I remembered it isn’t VR exclusive, so it isn’t comparable.
Eleven Table Tennis is curious case, release dates are way different, but on the other hand the game is ideal for wireless.

Rift - 317 reviews - Dec’17 release date
Steam - 1532 reviews - Jun’16 release date
Quest - 850 reviews - Feb’20 release date

Vacation Simulator is the last title I will put, as you can see the release dates are also not comparable.

Rift - 77 reviews - April’19 release date
Steam - 440 reviews - April’19 release date - edit: 334 reviews in the first 11 months. I noticed you can select range of dates in Steam.
Quest - 735 reviews - Dec’19 release date. Given the difference of months, I suspect the real ratio is actually similar to Population One?

Note: I looked into written reviews for the Oculus stores, not number of classifications (people who has given a star score). For example Vacation Simulator Rift has 77 written reviews, and 362 star scores.

TLDR: Quest is around 240% bigger than Steam for VR exclusive titles, although we don’t have good data points.

4375

Another Facebook thing for people to get angry about

I guess it sucks for people with old Oculus hardware in 2023 and beyond when Facebook linking is mandatory, but otherwise… I mean, delete your Steam account and you’ll permanently lose your Steam games too, so…?

4376

I’ve played ten or so matches, it definitely hits the BR points well. Animations are VR standard, ten years old, but the gameplay is there. The zone moves FAST! so it’s a different experience than PUBG or the others but I appreciate that, quick games so that you get the gratification or the loss quickly.

I’m mgriffinlou if you want to friend me for some mediocre teammating or just to enjoy my Kentucky drawl.

4377

I just discovered Sidequest for the Quest 2.

Now I just finished playing some Quake 2 VR 6DOF on it. I’m very happy. Gotta figure out how to turn the snap-turn newbie thing off though.

The Rift link, however… not so happy. There’s a big quality impact (at least for me, on USB2 cable I ended up buying) that lowers screen res to CV1 levels (but without the screen door, though). It also has a pretty big PC impact(*). So, for now, I’m still using my 2nd-hand CV1 for PC games, and I’m super-happy with that. I’m using Steam/Steam virtual desktop/Reshade/SuperDepth3D_VR on this Unity app I like for decent fake 3D, and, in just normal Rift virtual desktop mode (no 3d, no Steam virtual desktop), the CV1 acts as a PERFECT head-tracking app for WoFF.

Currently in VR heaven :)

(*) Star Wars Squadrons plays like butter with the CV1 and high settings. Going through the Rift Link and the Q2 results in chunky play on medium settings, and other than not having the SDE, looks the same as playing with the CV1.

4378

I’ve linked my FB and Oculus accounts. I sure hope FB doesn’t misuse its data on how much time I spend playing flight sims.

4379

You know they will. But at least your advertising will be entertaining.

4380

Streaming the pc has indeed an effect in performance, but that effect is small in comparison with others, like resolution. Take in account too that the CV1 resolution was 1080x1200 per eye and Quest 2 is 1832 x 1920 per eye. That’s almost three times more pixels, so it needs almost three times more gpu.

4381

You’d be surprised how little Big Data can do with that. The adbot is utterly confused by me. Am i someone whos into trucks and guns? No. Am I into vacation flights then? No not at all. Can it perhaps sell me jeans with planes on em? Lol.

4382

Has anyone tried Minecraft for Windows 10 lately, and can get it to work? Mine just starts, says its looking for updates, and then exits and pretends I never pressed play.