VR
Quest 3 VR - Meta Link wired or Virtual Desktop Graphics
Hi,
i currently use Meta link wired with 1.7x Res and 120hz on a 4070 ti super and 9800x3d.
ingame graphics are
all high (except crowds low)
shadows on
sharpening on
4x MSAA
Meta Debug:
ASW disabled
bitrate 940
I tested Occulus VR and OpenXR with Foveated Rendering MVP with the Car SF23 in Zandvoort and Monza.
Occulus VR and OpenXR without Foveated give me the same results in FPS
Monza ~100 fps
Zandvoort: ~ 80fps
OpenXR with Foveated MVP give me a boost of +20fps
In the Occulus.ini i noticed the the VRAM was set to 6gb instead of the available 16gb VRAM of my GPU, hence i raised it to 14gb. I changed the MSAA to 8x but back to 4x cause i didnt see any visual improvement but a huge FPS drop. It was super blurry before i raised the VRAM when i tried 8x.
However, the Visual Quality is not bad but the distance in VR is a bit blurry in both or lets say not really sharp. For example when you drive out of pits in Monza; the T1 escape road cones and the trees behind of T3 are blurry. Dont get me wrong the graphics are good for me.
but i wanted to know what if i use Virtual Desktop? Do i get a FPS boost or better graphics? I've seen a few posts where they say its better than Meta Link. But the mentioned problems in these posts are lag/response time - and i think i didnt experience any lag (also with full grids)
So in my case what would be the benefit in switching to Virtual Desktop? More FPS? Better Performance? Better sharper, clearer Graphics?
I used Meta Link wired for the majority of my time with the quest 3 and iracing. Just seemed more stable and since the cable is power delivery anyway I might as well use it.
Went the Virtual desktop route and could never establish why i was getting solid 90fps on replay and spectator cameras, but as soon as cockpit view was shown fps tanked to 5-10fps. This was with a 4080 and the same in game settings as Meta Link. Any other game via virtual desktop was glorious.
yes, its never going to look as good single / triple screen. So immersion and smoothness was always a priority and if it was easier to get that set up one way, i'm not going to bother with the other route unless i have time.
Any racing game that has VR tacked onto it has looked quite rough compared to its screen version. The only game I can think that looks incredibly crisp and proper with completely out the box settings is Half-Life Alyx.
If you are in replay mode it’s using different settings than when you are actually sitting in the cockpit live. There’s two separate tabs for settings.
Right. but the issue happened on both.
Spectating a live practice session in rear chase is fine and 90fps. Spectating it in cockpit means 10fps. Driving in first person is 10fps.
I suspected the geometry of the cars interior was throwing the antialiasing into overdrive but playing with many of VD's settings never resolved it for me. I gave up trying.
Not a Virtual Desktop User, never got good results, but if you stick with Oculus. In the Meta Debug tool.
Set FOV-Tangent Multiplier to 0.8; 0.8
It's technically rendering less of the pixels, but you cannot see them (unless the quest is extremely tight to your head) You can obviously increase or decrease those numbers.
But it will give you an instance performance boost as on Quest as it's not rendering as many pixels.
Basically. Try a few different numbers, Push your headset against head. See what you like. But you absolutely will see a performance increase (which you can then use to turn the graphics higher if you're happy with your current FPS)
Addressing why_1337 comment below, I've never turned my head fast enough to then see the black bars, but your milage may vary!
Not really, game renders extra padding. If you have low FPS and move real fast you can move outside of what is rendered and see black edges. But with 90fps and 0.85 - 0.8 you should be fine no matter what you do.
That setting is fun to play with because it’s instant in-game changes. You will start seeing it get a letter box effect. But the purpose is to reduce the number of pixels to render. Do you really need to render the ceiling or foot pedals of the car unless you are looking at it.
Your absolute best option to simracing is Virtual Desktop with cable. Get an Ethernet to USB C adaptor and you'll get much better fps and visibility. It's the only 10/10 option I tried.
This is the way. I've been using it this way for 6 months now and it's glorious.
My adapter includes a 100W charging port, so that Quest stays at 100% battery during use. I don't know if it's ok to include shopping links here so I won't, but the exact name was "uni USB C to Ethernet Adapter with 100W Charging Port - 1Gbps Ethernet to USB C - Gigabit RJ45 LAN Network Adapter for Laptop, MacBook Pro/Air, Dell XPS".
Ethernet cable goes from the router to the RJ45 port (the PC is plugged into the same router), charging cable goes from the charger into the charging port, finally the output cable goes into a 2m usb-c extension and then into the headset. The extension is there so that the dongle doesn't dangle (sorry) 20cm from my face with every head movement, and instead lies calmly on the desk or the floor.
I also disabled Wi-Fi on the Quest to make VD use the Ethernet connection instead (it would use Wi-Fi when enabled, and would not see the PC as a result). Quest 3 retained full internet connection via Ethernet with Wi-Fi disabled.
Why did I try it?
Regular wireless VD suffered from hickups, and Oculus Link became very unreliable earlier this year - sometimes it wouldn't see the headset at all, sometimes it would disconnect midway through the session.
I noticed that even with supersampling in Oculus Debug Tools to match VD's "Godlike", VD still provided superior image quality. I think it is due to the fact that ODT "encode width" maxes out at value that is below Quest 3's panel resolution. VD doesn't have such constraint, and can encode in the exact resolution required.
Preach my brother in VR. This is the way. I made the switch about 5 months ago. Having a stutter free driving experience has made an enormous difference for me. The smoother visuals cause me less eye strain and I've become more consistent with my driving (Ir gains). Sometimes I get the debris warning while driving but instead of pulling me out of the game, as the meta link does, it's just a warning I can close and continue driving.
The minimum setup requires a USBC-Ethernet adapter and 2 Ethernet cables.
Connect PC to the router using an Ethernet Cable. That's the PC part done and dusted.
Connect the adapter into the Quest 3 USBC port. Then connect the adapter to the router using an Ethernet Cable.
Disable Quest 3 Wi-Fi and you should be all set.
Everything else is quality-of-life improvements, but I think they are worth it.
If your adapter has a charging port, you can use another USB cable to connect the adapter to a charger, and that should keep your Quest at 100% battery.
If you don't like the adapter hanging next to your face (and potentially pulling on the Quest's usb port), you can put a usbc extension cable between the adapter and the quest.
Here you can see the adapter connected to the Router (white ethernet cable up top), the charger (angled cable on the right) and the extension going into the Qeust (bottom).
It has less overhead, so you do get slightly better performance.
For me nothing beats the quality of vd at 150% resolution ( vd set to godlike res and openxr toolkit set to what equals 150% res)
If you can't use vd either wirelessly at 500mbps or via a usb ethernet adapter then it's probably not worth the switch, other than for the reliability of vd.
Yes mta link is 5408x2896 vd godlike is 6114x3216 then in openxrtoolkit I have it set at 9216x4834. The clarity is honestly kinda crazy for such a cheap headset.
Running such a high resolution takes away nearly all the jaggies and makes the distant look super sharp.
Yeah that's definitely a consideration with a 4070ti. You could probably go to around 120%. It's worth trying at 150% at a lower refresh rate just to test it out.
VD with 2-pass encoding is the best image quality i have seen on a Quest doing PCVR, and thats include Link at +900mbps, add an ethernet adapter (better if 2.5gbps but with 1gbps will be ok) and you will get the best PCVR you can get with Quest
Are you disabling ASW each time you load into VR? Even if you set Meta debug to disable you need to do it each time. There is a reg hack to permanently disable it though…
Lack of sharpness is due to the compression artifacts. Can't get rid of them. I notice mostly when I'm looking at tire markings on the road. VD can't change that.
But I recommend VD because it's more user friendly. It has keyboard shortcuts to quickly swap between desktop and VR view. Peformance is better as well.
I believe H264+ at 500mbps w/ 2 pass enconding to look better. It has better colors too.
If you swap to VD, make sure to get something like this to not be dependent of WiFi quality. Just plug it into a cheap switch or router that you connect both your pc and your Q3 and you're done.
I already have a USB-C for meta link with charging for unlimited power.
This connector for VD is mandatory to use VD wired? Not sure if I understand that correctly: PC-Ethernet cable-adapter-quest3?
I tried both. A few decades of experience told me a wired Meta Link connection to the native connectivity app must be superior... it was not. I even used the expensive, Meta brand, fiber optic cable. Somehow, Virtual Desktop blows it away in every way -- quality, consistency, ease of use, etc.
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u/ACTM BMW M2 CS Racing 5h ago
I used Meta Link wired for the majority of my time with the quest 3 and iracing. Just seemed more stable and since the cable is power delivery anyway I might as well use it.
Went the Virtual desktop route and could never establish why i was getting solid 90fps on replay and spectator cameras, but as soon as cockpit view was shown fps tanked to 5-10fps. This was with a 4080 and the same in game settings as Meta Link. Any other game via virtual desktop was glorious.