PCVR is a pain to setup - tried Quest 3 and Pico 4

[MoonUA]

It is so frustrating reading people here plying happily in their PCVR, and not being able to set it up myself...

I have a laptop with RTX 4060 and Ryzen 7 7735HS. Been flying for about a week with a monitor - all graphics settings maxed out, running smoothly. But, I want to move it to VR, so I borrowed Quest 3 and Pico 4 to test.

Quest 3 I had just for an evening. The immersion feeling is great, and image quality too. Really want to go this way. But, AirLink is unstable, and I didn't have a proper cable for tethered. When the whole thing did work, turning of the head led to incredible stuttering of the landscape. Stopped exparimenting as the device had to go back. It was definitely not a "Plug and Play" experience.

Pico 4 is worse. Firstly, figuring out the required software is a mess. Just to get it to work, 4 separate packages are needed (Streaming Assistant, Steam, Steam VR, Revive). That out of the way, there is just a minor thing of whipping up a custom shortcut or typing a bunch in CMD (ReviveInjector Condor). Or getting yet another package, I guess (is that the purpose of revive helper?). Finally it runs, but the picture quality is miserable compared both to the Quest 3 and the monitor. And stuttering, again. No idea where to tweak the quality settings - Condor, Steam and Streaming assistant each have their own settings, plus Nvidia ones. No clue how are they interacting, and where is the bottleneck. Lowering the graphics quality in Condor just makes the picture crappy, but doesn't really help.

Going to get some rest and bang my head against that wall tomorrow some more.


Is it just me, or is the learning curve for setting up PCVR really this steep?
I don't want to troubleshoot.
I just want to fly.

[cbrunschen]

A cable is really the way to get the most reliable, highest-quality connection.

With a cable and the Quest 3, my experience is actually quite straightforward - only the Oculus software is required on the PC, and the connection between PC and Quest gives great quality and stability. And, of course, it even helps charge the headset.

For the best quality AirLink experience, you really need a separate WiFi 6 or 6e network for just the PC and the Quest; ideally with the PC connected via Ethernet to a WiFi 6(e) router just for the purpose of connecting to the Quest. Otherwise, other traffic on the WiFi network can interrupt the traffic between PC and headset.

The need for extra software (such as Revive, Virtual Desktop or Steam Link) when using a non-Oculus/Meta headset is because Condor 2 was written to use the then-current Oculus-specific VR APIs. OpenXR exists now, and would support multiple different manufacturers' headsets, but the Condor team are busy working on Condor 3 and have many other improvements to work on.

But if you have a Steam-compatible VR headset, then Revive is the only added layer – and that can be configured to make it quite straightforward to use.

Meanwhile I'm using a Quest 3 and a cable for the connection: it's the easiest to use, gives the highest quality and the most stable connection.

[MoonUA]

Thanks for your tips! I will certainly try some more, not giving up just yet.

First step now is to get a cable with a useable length. Just not to have WiFi to worry about. I'll post my progress, when I learn something new. In the hopes of saving some time to whoever might be trying the same.

[MoonUA]

After testing different things for close to a week now:

The single biggest contributor to stuttering, for me, is 90fps frame rate. I turned it on from the start just because I could. After I finally tried turning it off (back to default 72fps), the fluency of the VR experience improved dramatically.

The Graphics options didn't seem to have any influence on the stuttering. Nor settings in the SteamVR.

Edit: that applies to the Pico 4.

[Mas]

Pico and Quest 3 have quite a high native resolution . Rolling back the resolution settings to say 0.8X will also take a lot of load off the cpu/ gpu. I can't fly at 72hz- I get nauseus quickly - no issues at 90hz.

[isch]

Hello fellow VR pilot.

The good news is: your Pc and headset have way much mor potential than you might be aware of. Condor is very easy on the Graphics card and your 4060 is way more than able to push the pico to the max and beyond.

First thing you need to do is uninstall the pico streaming assistant and buy virtual desktop instead. Just do it. Set it to HVEC 10-bit, godlike mode 150mbps. There is no alternative to this and it is worth the, I think, 20€.

Then launch Condor through the latest revive injector tool and make sure to max out all the graphics settings within condor, especially the anti aliasing.

Now if youre still experiencing stutter, you are most probably having network issues. You can bring up the virtual desktop performance overlay to troubleshoot where the bottleneck is.

You will need a correctly set up dedicated wifi 6 router directly wired to the pc to make this work well. 2,4ghz band disabled, and signal strength max, disable power saving modes if it has any and the pico should be the only wireless device connected to it.

Until you get a dedicated router you can also try tethered usb mode on the pico. All you need is a usb cable and a guide on how to do it. You can find them on youtube I think. Be aware though that this method is unstable and will likely lead to bluescreens but it is a good way to narrow down network related issues. As in: if it work better when tethered, then something is wrong with your wireless setup.

I hope this helps

Happy new year to all

Cheers

[isch]

Oh and to anyone experiencing nausea, I strongly suggest reading up on „frame reprojection methods in VR and frametiming“

72hz is perfectly fine for most games, as long as they are „native frames“. If you get sick at 72hz you are probably experiencing reprojection due to lack of performance overhead. It means your Pc is actually
Rendering only half of the frames and interpolating the missing ones in between which will look horrible most of the times. It gets better the higher the refresh rate is set to, as long as your Pc can keep up with the frames per second.

Ideally you would turn off reprojection in virtual desktop and adjust you settings to maintain a stable framerate matching your refresh rate (72hz/90hz).

[Mas]

Ideally you would turn off reprojection in virtual desktop and adjust you settings to maintain a stable framerate matching your refresh rate (72hz/90hz).

I don't understand why I would be getting reprojection at 72 hz, if I'm getting a smooth experience at 90hz. As far as I know , the higher refresh rate the better with VR .

[isch]

What are your system specs?

You are probably experiencing reprojection at both 72 and 90 hz. Obviously the higher the “reprojected” framerate, the better it will feel to you.

Native 72 will alway be better than reprojected 80 or 90.

120 reprojected is probably good, but I haven’t had the chance to try it yet.

[Mas]

I doubt I am getting reprojection . I just get less feeling of nausea at 90hz. I can swing my head around and the view feels smoother at 90hz.

[Edo]

A question as a newcomer here.
I bought Condor 3 and it works perfectly well on my MacBook Pro (with Parallels, macOS Sequoia and Windows 11). Now I would like to get it running on my Pico 4 VR-headset but I can’t manage that.

With ‘Virtual Desktop’ a good connection is established between my Pico 4 headset and my MacBook. But I don’t know how to go further. I installed ‘Revive’ but that doesn't seem to do anything.
It would be nice to get advice on what to do next to install Condor 3 on my Pico headset.

[n98Bk9-NT3]

Edo,

For VR, you need to install Meta Quest Link on your Windows even though you use PICO.
Unfortunately, current Meta Quest Link is not compatible with Windows-ARM. So you may use your PICO for Mac programs, but no way to use it with Windows programs under Parallels.

Naoki.