A night of Oculus Quest 2 fails, and man FB loves porn
I’ve got a few VR pieces I’m working on and one of the things that would massively aid me is being able to use Air Link. Air Link is the wireless beta that Oculus has been pushing since version 28 that should allow you to use VR apps on your PC without a cable. I think we’re in software version 30 or 32 at this point (don’t have the headset with me.)
Idea is simple, open settings on your Oculus software on the PC, navigate to beta, turn on Air Link. Open the settings in your Oculus Quest 2 home, advanced settings I believe, beta, turn on air link. At that point you should be able to connect. Should be.
What I had happen on a fresh installed Windows 10 unit (you might recall I built a machine recently, so we’re talking under a week and nothing fancy yet) is that the PC is never discovered by the headset (PC plugged into the back of the Portal WiFi, headset connected to the Portal WiFi.) I check the network, I can ping the headset from the PC, just no way appears to exist to connect.
Went down the rabbit hole of reboots, firewall off, VPN not running, using WiFi on the desktop to connect to the same WiFi, joining public test, if there’s a FAQ out there on how this works, I probably followed it sans factory reset and becoming a developer/enabling developer mode, because I was really, really tired.
So I went to open a ticket, but at a suggestion by the site, decided to visit the oculus VR community forums to see if anyone had an answer. Now, I’m not a prude but when we have a Facebook owned tech support site that suggests you go to the VR forums where the VR Porn (MEGATHREAD) NSFW is item number one item on the landing page linked off of Oculus, having been going since 2013. Eh whatever. Seems like a company’s tech support recommendation would funnel you to at least a subforum or just not display that thread even if it is the most popular.
Combine the above with a bunch of babbling pseudoscience enthusiasts who show no understanding of EMF or radiation posting everywhere to “save the children,” and I see no reason why Facebook/Oculus would point anyone to the forums.
After finally giving up I went back to the cable plugin and tried to get Steam working with my VR Googles. I’d had it working on the old PC but whatever I’d done had been long long ago. So I hit up the internet for help and was consistently running into FAQs claiming I needed to purchase a $20 app to make this happen.
I had not previously purchased a $20 app to make this happen. I spent about 20 minutes trying to get this working, installed Steam VR (in the Steam app on the PC, not as mentioned in two FAQs from the Oculus store (really, they said install it from Oculus, and searching that brought up the $20 app again – surprise surprise)) and waited. VR with Steam didn’t work for about 10 minutes after I installed Steam VR, then one last try and I was suddenly in yet another room when I was connected to the PC.
Finally, after an hour and something I was able to play Throw Anything on Steam in VR. Plugged into my computer because I couldn’t Air Link it, which meant there’s really little space for me to safely play (my office space at home is tiny.)
The whole experience reminds me of why I started writing articles about rooting phones in … 2010 now? Has it been that long? The information out there is fractured, well SEOd, incorrect, and seems designed to funnel you to purchases you do not need to make. Even newer guides mention enabling developer mode in the phone app, but don’t mention that you have to sign up to be a developer at a web page before your app/account would even display that as an option.
Maybe I’m just landing on the wrong set of pages, but damn it’s 14 minute long monetized YouTube videos for every single thing as opposed to three lines of text that would solve the issue. Finding and pairing a headset and a computer should be about the most stable and done pieces of the equation.
Oculus, I am unimpressed with you. I mean hardware’s great so far but damn.
