The solutions aren’t pretty, but they work!
Yesterday, Oculus released Oculus Link Beta for Oculus Quest. It allows you to use your headset with it’s gorgeous AMOLED display as an Oculus Rift, essentially. As with any beta software, there a number of issues that you should be aware of going forward. In order to get started, you need to download the Oculus software for PC, and use another USB cable to connect the Oculus Quest headset to your gaming PC. After going through setup, you should be ready to go.
I was using a Razer Blade laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. While Oculus said that this card isn’t supported at the moment, we didn’t have any problems running games like Arizona Sunshine and Crow: The Legend through Oculus Link Beta. You can read about the problems we encountered during our testing below.
Controller and headset problems
When you connect the Oculus Quest to PC, you’ll keep on getting errors that say that your Oculus Quest has a problem or one or both of the controllers have a “problem.” It’s unclear what this “problem” is, but you just have to ignore it because everything works fine. Instead of using your “eye and the volume button” to select menus, you have to point the controllers and press the trigger. Turning off notifications for this software is a good solution if you find them to be a nuisance.
Random disconnections
Many times, the Oculus Quest will randomly disconnect from the PC and revert back to its built-in menu. In order to fix this, you just have to unplug the headset from your PC and plug it back in after a few seconds. In the headset, you’ll get a prompt that asks if you want to connect the headset to the PC. Just accept and you’ll be taken to the PC Oculus menu where you can launch any Oculus virtual reality (VR) games you have installed on your PC. While this isn’t a great solution, it’s the only one that works reliably.
Incorrect height
When you’re playing select VR games, you’ll notice that you’re way taller than you really are. For example, when we tested out Arizona Sunshine, the device pegged us at 15 feet and our field-of-view was sticking out of the roof. In order to fix this, you’ll have to disconnect your headset and then reconnect it to your PC and relaunch the game. We tried using in-game calibration options, but they didn’t work.
Are you using Oculus Link Beta with Oculus Quest? Let us know. Hopefully, this troubleshooting guide will help you fix the most frustrating problems at the moment. If you encounter a bug, let us know and we’ll try to find a solution as soon as possible.
Versatile VR
Oculus Quest
From $399 $399 at Walmart
Options to enjoy VR
The Oculus Quest is known for its untethered nature, but now it also has the ability to play PCVR games with Oculus Link. The feature is in beta but allows you to play powerful VR games on a headset that you can then detach from your PC and use on the go.
Anker Powerline USB-C to USB 3.0 Cable
$13 at Amazon
Oculus recommends this cable for trying out Oculus Link until the official Oculus Link Cable becomes available.
GodSpin USB-C to USB-C Cable (6.6 feet)
$30 at Amazon
This USB-C to USB-C cable supports 20Gbps transfer speeds, 5A/ 20V power, and USB 3.1 and USB 3.2.
