Real quick... Just so you're aware, this video is aimed at people that already know about Oculus
Link and Air Link so I'm not going to be showing how to use them to connect your Quest 2 to your PC
in this video. If you need help with that I do have another video I made that deals with that
in detail so I've linked it in the cards and the video description to help you out.
Ok, with that out of the way and hopefully clear, let's get started.
First of all I feel it's important you should know that how games will look
and perform when playing via a Link cable depends greatly on your PC's hardware and if you're using
Air Link it will also depend a lot on your home network's WiFi speed.
I know that some of you watching this already understand this
but please bear with me for a minute because not everyone does.
My PC back here has a Ryzen 9 3900X CPU and a GeForce RTX 2070 Super graphics card;
so it's a fairly powerful gaming PC so the settings you see me use in this video may be
higher or lower than what your PC is capable of.
I also just upgraded my router to one that supports WiFi 6,
which is what Oculus, or Meta recommends to have the best experience when using Air Link.
Your WiFi router doesn't have to support WiFi 6 in order to use Air Link though.
It's just to get the best experience, having WiFi 6 helps a lot. Going from a WiFi 5 router to WiFi
6 I definitely notice a difference when using Air Link. When playing games like Half Life Alyx with
my old router there were times the streaming bitrate would drop for whatever reason and the
game would look really muddy and blurry and just terrible. Since upgrading our router I haven't
had this happen to me once, knock on wood, games have stayed looking sharp and clear.
I know some of you now are wanting me to hurry up and get to the point;
I've started the video off talking about this because I feel it's important to understand
that your computers hardware and home network are going to play a
HUGE roll in how games are going to look and perform when using the Quest 2 for PCVR.
The Quest 2 is capable of some pretty high resolution graphics so if PCVR games are
looking like doo doo on your Quest 2, especially when using Air Link, I know some of you are
going to be a little disappointed to hear this, but it's not necessarily the Quest 2's fault.
To change the resolution and refresh rate for PCVR games...
Yes... this only effects PCVR games being played on the Quest 2. If you're looking to
increase the resolution of native or stand alone Quest 2 games I have another video
showing how to do that linked in the cards and in the video description.
Ok, so to change the resolution and refresh rate we need to first turn our Quest 2 on,
open the Oculus app on our PC and enable Oculus Link or Air Link.
We're then going to click on the Devices tab here on the left.
You should see your Quest 2 and Touch controllers displayed here as being Active. Click on this area
here and it will bring up a menu with some settings we can adjust. If you scroll down
a little you'll see Graphics Preferences... click on that and it will bring up this menu.
Your default settings here may look very different from mine because I believe the
app recommends settings for you based on your PC's hardware. As you can see mine is set to 72Hz and
the Render Resolution is at 4128 x 2096. I like to change the refresh rate to 90Hz but
when I do that you'll notice my recommended render resolution, indicated by this line
here went down some to 3712 x 1872. That's because we're now targeting a higher maximum frame rate.
Just FYI, setting it to 90Hz or 120Hz doesn't guarantee you're going to get 90 or 120fps. All
this does is set the maximum frame rate your PC will be trying to render games at on the Quest 2.
Now you might be thinking, why not set it to 120Hz so you get a higher max frame rate?
Well the problem with that is if your PC hardware isn't capable of staying at or near 120fps at
all times then what can happen is the frame times will suffer. Meaning the time between frames being
displayed could become irregular; potentially leaving you with a stuttering, jittery mess which
no one wants. The nice thing about setting a lower refresh rate is it takes some stress
off your GPU allowing it to deliver frames at a more consistent interval which results in much
smoother game play. If you want to learn more about the difference between frame rates and
frame times and why having consistent frame times is important; I've linked a video from BitWit
in the cards and the description where he explains it really, really well.
Now for the render resolution. Again how high you can set this depends on your computers hardware.
Primarily your graphics card. Since I don't know what hardware you have I can't tell you
what resolution to set it to, to get a good playable frame rate. It's really just a matter
of trial and error. You'll have to set it to different resolutions, play a game for a bit
and see where the visuals and the performance is acceptable to you. As for me and my 2070 Super,
I can set it to 4704 X 2384 at 90Hz and most games I play run great. If I turn the refresh
rate down to 72Hz I can go all the way up to 5408 X 2736, but since I've grown accustomed
to that 90Hz refresh rate, 72Hz feels a little off to me. Game play just isn't quite as smooth,
so I prefer to lower the resolution a little so I can increase the refresh rate without any issue.
Oh! And get yourself a pair of Russels on the way out.
Russels?
The gloves Alyx! You know, the gravity gloves!
I have a few sets through there. You can calibrate them out by the shed.
Got it.
We can do this Alyx.
You got that didn't you? That I said we could do it? 'Cause we're gonna do it.
Yah we are!
I'm with you every step of the way.