You likely play mostly standalone but are tired of its limitations. So you looked into PCVR gaming using your Quest 3 or 2 and found yourself here. You’re probably wanting to push your Quest even further and get the most life-like visuals and immersion possible. Well, don’t worry I can help you with that. I have put together this guide after doing extensive testing, tweaking and playing around with my Quest 3, and originally my Quest 2 so we can all get the best visuals capable in the headset. So grab your quest, sit down and follow this guide and unleash the true potential of Quest 3 PCVR gaming.
A side note before we begin. This guide is strictly for PCVR using a LINK CABLE. You can check out my review on my recommended Link cable if you want to know what to buy below.
Also, this guide will be subjective to your PC’s specs. So you could use my settings as the bar and then decrease options if your performance takes a big hit. Don’t worry, you won’t have to mess around with unknown options. I will tell you exactly what to change and where.
Disclaimer
*LewPlaysWith is not liable for any damage or warranty negation if you proceed with this guide. you as the user take full responsibility*
Step-by-Step Guide
Step One – Setting Up
Make sure your link cable is plugged into a USB 3.0 (the blue colour) on the back of your PC, directly into one of the motherboard slots. Then Plug in the Quest 3 or 2 headset.
Step Two – Preparing the Headset
Now that we are connected, download and install the Oculus app then sign into the required account. If you don’t already have it installed. If your device is not already set up for Link or Air Link, Open the Oculus app, go to Devices on the left-side navigation bar and click Add Headset to follow the on-screen guide to get your Quest 3 or 2 ready.
Step Three – Testing your Link Cable
Once the device is ready you should see a screen like this.
- Green means that your device is connected and operating on USB 3.0
- Orange will mean there is a slight issue (usually the cable running on USB 2.0)
Go ahead and click on Quest 3 and Touch or Quest 2 and Touch if using that device, which will open a side menu. First, scroll down to USB Test and click on it. This will test your Link cable for data transfer speeds. The higher the number the better. The highest being 2.5gbs. This is what we want to aim for. anywhere between 2.2 to 2.5 is the ideal place to be. If your number is significantly lower, you will notice a big difference when it comes to visual clarity, sharpness and compression. You may want to purchase a new cable. My recommendation is above. Or check through this guide for settings that you may have missed or not have active.
Step Four – Changing graphics properties on the Quest 3 & 2
Now click on your quest again to open the side menu and go to Graphics Preferences. A lot of games don’t support 120 Hz, so I recommend 90 Hz. You can play with this to see what you prefer. Note, the lower you choose the more performance you gain.
On Render Resolution, uncheck the automatic recommended button. Then slide the slider to the right at 1.5x which is a rendering resolution of 5408 x 2896 for Quest 3 and 5408 x 2736 for Quest 2. Once again it depends on your system. You may need to lower this, so tune it down a notch until you find the “sweet spot” as per your machine. Hit okay and let the app restart.
Step Five – Oculus Debug Tool (ODT) Settings
Next, we delve deeper. Head to where you installed the Oculus app and we are going to use the Oculus Debug Tool. The default location would usually be:
C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics.
Open the OculusDebugtool.exe
We are going to be focusing on the important settings here from top to bottom, don’t worry once they are set they don’t need to be done again. Here is an example of my settings and how yours should look. if you have performance issues I will explain what to tweak.
Starting at the top. Pixels Per Display Pixel Override, Set this to 1.2. This will determine how much each display is allowed to Supersample or Downsample. You “technically” can go higher than the numbers I have recommended here but to my eye, there was no real visual difference as the displays are already maxed out at 1.2.
You can lower by .1 if needed due to performance loss (e.g. 1.2>1.1>1.0)
Distortion Curvature. This setting balances the pixel density in the center versus the periphery of your view. I prefer using the Low option which will reduce distortion on the boundary of your lenses thus giving more clarity in your periphery vision. But you might prefer the High value. this option will give more pixel density in the center of your vision. This option is a personal preference, try both and see what works for you. If you see no change, you can always set it back to default.
Encode Bitrate (Mbps). Set this to 500. This setting basically shows the throughput of the encoded Link video stream that is sent from your PC to your headset. The higher the number here (500 being the maximum) the less noise and artifacts you will see within the image (more noticeable with highly detailed and complex scenes)
If you have performance loss, tweak this number in increments of 100 (e.g. 500>400>300) to find the perfect balance of quality to performance
Link Sharpening. With the launch of the Quest 3, you now have two options here. For the most visual clarity make sure this is set to Quality. This option is an image quality optimization setting that will automatically make visuals appear crisper, fine details clearer and text a lot easier to read.
If you find you are having performance issues after changing this setting to Quality, change it to Enabled. Do not disable Link Sharpening completely as it does a lot for the visuals. If performance is still an issue, go back through this section and tweak the numbers for Pixels Per Display Pixel Override and Encode Bitrate.
although that is all I have changed, If you want to learn more about the rest of these settings I will leave a link to a very in-depth explanation of the Oculus Debug Tool (ODT) by Smartglasseshub here
Step Six – Windows 10/11 USB Settings
We need to make some Windows changes in order to get the most out of our Link cable and headset. Head to the start menu and search for Control Panel.
Once the control panel window opens, click on System and Security then Power Options. Make sure you have High Performance selected and click on Change Plan Settings next to it then click on the Change Advanced Power Settings.
When the window appears. look for USB Settings, click on the little + icon to drop down its sub-menu then click the + again and drop down USB Selective Suspend Setting, then change the setting to Disabled. press apply then okay, restart if the pc asks. This will allow the USB ports to draw full power without shutting off.
Step Seven – Nvidia settings
During my testing, I can’t say for sure if tweaking some of these settings has made a difference as I already had them set from where I play non-VR games. However, I will include them anyway. I cannot speak for AMD users as I do not have an AMD graphics card (GPU) either way tweaking these will give you more performance overall whether that be for standard gaming or PCVR.
Right-click the desktop and open Nivdia Control Panel (If on Windows 11 you will need to click the “show more options button at the bottom)
under 3D Settings, click on Manage 3D Settings. Copy my settings below. NOTE that this will be different per system specs so mine might not be perfect for you. I have made the important ones in bold.
Image Sharpening – Sharpening Off
(US users may see “Sharpening” appear as “Scaling”)
Ambient Occlusion – Off
Anisotropic filtering – Off
Antialiasing FXAA – Off
Antialiasing Gamma Correction – On
Antialiasing Mode – Off
(the next two options will be greyed out if Antialiasing Mode is off)
Background Application Max Frame Rate – Off
CUDA GPUs – All
Low Latency Mode – Off
Max Frame Rate – Off
Monitor Technology – G Sync
Multi Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) – Off
OpenGL GDI Compatibility – Auto
OpenGL Rendering GPU – Auto Select
Power Management Mode – Prefer Maximum Performance
Preferred Refresh Rate (your monitor) – Highest Available
Shader Cache Size – 10 GB
Texture Filtering Anisotropic Sample Optimization – On
Texture Filtering Negative LOD Bias – Allow
Texture Filtering Quality – Quality
Texture Filtering Trilinear Optimization – On
Threaded Optimization – Auto
Triple Buffering – Off
Vertical Sync (V SYNC) – Off
Virtual Reality Pre Rendered Frames – 1
Virtual Reality Variable Rate Super Sampling – Off
Vulkan/OpenGL Present Method – Auto
And that’s it for my settings. If you want to know what each individual setting means here is a link to Nvidia’s explanation of it all.
Conclusion
Thats it! Congratulations, you made it all the way through! This is my current setup for the sharpest, clearest, most immersive visuals while using the Quest 2 via Link Cable for PCVR gaming.
*This Guide may be subject to change based on whether I find better options to tweak*
I followed this guide and with myself not being technology minded I was able to follow the instructions to achieve the desired results. Enjoyed the no-frills Guide!
I’m glad you were able to follow the guide and unleash the true potential of your quest 2!
thanks bruh I havent tried it yet but it came from a very reliable source so I am pumped
You’re more than welcome! Hope you enjoy those crispy visuals and see how good the quest 2 can truly look!
Power Management Mode – Prefer maximum performance >> I would advise against setting this as a global setting.
This will cause it to constantly increase power draw. Aside from an increase on the energy bill it will also cause your card to constantly run a lot warmer, decreasing card (and fan) lifespan. In a lot of cases the gains from this setting are also very minimal, however there’s some fps increase in others.
If you do want to squeeze out that extra performance when playing games, I would advise setting it in the next tab (program settings) by selecting the game or application you want it active for – It will give you the performance increase in game and clock down when you’re doing other things. A bonus is less spinning fans when on your desktop 🙂
How different would these instructions be for airlink?
Well… That is an interesting question as many people use wireless different ways. I was working on a guide for users that play wireless. Airlink directly through the headset limits a lot of what you can do, especially with a Quest 2. But if you were to use something like the virtrual desktop app, a lot more options become available. In the new year, I will do my best to produce a guide as useful as this one for the airlink (wireless) users
Very nice write up. I was able to walk through it with ease. I am curious what your PC specs are so I will know how to alter these base settings for my PC. May reduce the number of iterations. A question I do have is how playing wireless will affect these settings. Any setting that should be changed if playing wirelessly? I have a D-Link VR Air Bridge and PC is connected with ethernet, so no issues with the wireless connection.
Hey – Thank you! My PC Specs are nothing spectacular, in fact they are started to show their age now but for VR i have no issues.
currently still rocking an i7 8700, alongside a 2080 TI and 32gb of RAM
So these particular settings will only effect users who play wired. there may be a few settings that are effected for wireless users but i dont see them effecting the visuals. likely more of a performance adjustment.
For wireless users, ESPECIALLY on a Quest 3. I highly recommend using Virtual Desktop (buy it from the meta store NOT Steam) then using the H.264+ codec (this is set on the PC side) then in the app choosing which preset sounds closest to your PC specs.
playing wireless does lose a visual clarity compared to wireless but with the new Quest 3, its so close that i think its actually nicer to play wireless again than with a wire.
I will make a guide soon for my wireless set up!
Hi Lew, and thank you very much for this great guide which helped me a lot in configuring my Quest 3 for use in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. I have been a flight simulation enthusiast for several years and MSFS is fantastic but it is also very poorly optimized for VR.
Although your guide has helped me a lot, I still have an unpleasant effect that I’m not able to eliminate.
The view has some ripples that look alike when, on a very hot day, you look into distance.
Could you suggest me how could I correct this defect?
Can it depend on a hardware component?
At the moment my rig is as follows:
AMD Ryzen-7800X3D CPU
ASUS nVidia GeForce TURBO RTX3090 GPU
MB MSI MPG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI
windows 11 and MSFS are on two different Samsung MZ-Evo HDDs
Do you think it would be worth selling my RTX3090 to get an RTX4080?
Thank you
Giovanni
Is there a way to play pcvr with the link cable without the oculus app (on quest 3)
Hey John – Do you mean, without having to enter LINK first? or just to bypass the Oculus operating system (OS) all together? If it’s the latter then yeah it is possible to disable the Oculus OS and launch directly with Steam VR. I cant say for sure what this will do for performance as I have never tried it, I know a few people that have though. they do have high spec PC rigs.