I used oculus link for my fs2020 and it’s been rather horrible (I have a 1070 and waiting for new video card). SO i decided to use VD to see if anything improves.
I have:
MS store FS2020.
VD (latest)
Stream VR runtime installed (with regedit)
Issues:
I can’t add FS2020 as a game in steam to put the sim in the games section of the VD. I have taken ownership of the windowsapps directory and i can browse it and find the flightsim exe. But when I go to steam and try to add it as a game it said “no permission”.
Now I can load into virtual desktop and stream my monitor but I can’t get flight sim into VR.
It shows FS2020 in the monitor but when i go VR it just shows the split screen in the “monitor” of the VD not the game full screen.
You don’t need to add MSFS to steam. And in fact I don’t think you even can.
You get VD running on your oculus. You should be able to see your PC desktop in the headset. Then just start the sim and when loaded ctrl +tab to get into VR.
I was having similar issues. I thought I’ll take msfs out of the equation. So I tried out a vr steam game demo (from the steam store) just in steam and used VD to play it. That then helped me get the VD working fine without msfs.
You can try ALVR instead of virtual desktop. It is also a wireless VR server/client system that for me at least works better than VD.
It uses Steam VR but doesn’t need the game to be in Steam at all. The key to getting all this to work good is your wireless setup. It’s best to have a 5gHz modem close to the headset. The latency can be very good, less than 70 ms total.
The graphics quality is still similar to the link cable though. It’s your GPU that is rendering the frames and then those are encoded and sent over wifi to the headset which decompresses and displays. With the headset doing the warping, it actually can perform pretty well.
I saw my screen and it had flight sim in it. Ctrl tabbed but it would still show the virtual screen but with two screens instead of one. So.
What i had to do was load VD , Load MSFS, Quit Steam VR in VD. (had to close the .exe in task manager to because I don’t know why). Then CTRL tab into VR with MSFS. Then VD would have the switch to VR mode then it would work. For some reason i can’t switch to VR in VD without Exiting and restarting the steam VR client.
Yes I understand how it worked but people here have been saying the link cable was bad compared to the VD method and well I finally got it working and i agree. I was getting the oculus camera bug via LINK and very juddery movement like screen tearing even with render scaled down to 40%. I used the tray tool to tune and it was ok.
With VD i have 80% scale with 50% LOD and it runs about 20fps on my 1070gtx. So i am happy for now but cant wait for a new video card when they are not about 2x Retail here.
You know, all I want to do is post a topic and this website doesn’t help. I have searched and searched for help creating a post and nothing. So I had to reply to a post of another topic just to find out how to post. Can anyone help me?
First, thanks for the clear instructions. However, maybe I don’t understand them, particularly part quoted above. I’m able to do all that you state. I have the plane on the runway ready to go, when using Oculus Link, I just hit alt + tab, the display finds my headset and switches to twin views. However, when I am here in VD, I have to shrink down MSFS, go to task manager as you suggest, close Steam VR. When I return to MSFS and press alt + tab, it says “headset not found”. Clearly, I’m missing something.
First of all are you running steamVR as the runtime in the registry or in the steam VR beta?
I have noticed a couple of times that MSFS2020 wont reload steam vr but after you close steam vr … Sometimes it does. If that happens and you get the no headset error make sure its exited completely in task manager (i think its called vstreamer.exe you will know becuase of the steamVR icon) then if you have to reload steamVR manually from your start menu or steam. It should auto load into steam VR home (the screen might go shakey for a while or even go grey but after a minute it should show up).
After doing that a couple of time now steam VR is showing in VD when you have the VD menu open it will have a Switch to VR button above the exit steamVR show up when steam VR loads.
Best way of doing it I found is to
Load VR steamer app for VD
Load VD on the head set
Load MSFS 2020 (get on the READY TO FLY by loading your map plane and starting etc)
Before switching to VR on MSFS
Load SteamVR
Hopefully in the VD menu “switch to VR” will come up
Wait until the steam home loads (it will go all jerky and such and flickery)
Then switch to VR in FS2020 and it should load (it may go grey first or it might flicker a bit)
That’s what has been working for me. But sometimes, just sometimes steamVR wont load properly and i have to kill it and reload it.
One thing that works for me if I see the twin view is hit the left controller oculus key. That brings up the VD menu in the headset. Then in the lower left there is a button to “Enter VR”. That then flips you from twin view to full 3D
THANK YOU! Your list is extremely detailed and helpful. I’m right with you until step 5. I’m not sure what you mean/how to load SteamVr. What I have been doing is entering VR by clicking the link at the bottom left of the VD display (i.e., the one that starts with Computer on the left side, follwed by Games, and about 5 other things I can’t remember. Is that what you mean? I could, I guess, also start by clicking a SteamVR icon that’s on my desktop.
Also, I don’t really understand what you mean by “steamVR as the runtime in the registry or in the steam VR beta?” I believe I’ve signed up for VR beta, but don’t know how to verify that. Or whether that’s good or not.
And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a button that says “switch to vr.”
So KC, if I haven’t worn you out yet, thanks again for your help. I did go thru the thread and, I believe, changed the Open Xr runtime as suggested (I think). The result was progress but not success. Now MSFS no longer says no headset found, and does shift to the two side by side views. And, for the first time ever, I see that “switch to VR” link you mention, but it still doesn’t work. I’ve tried a dozen different times and ways but every time I switch to VR all I get is a totally black screen with the blue Guardian circle.
What to put into the registry isn’t clear. On these forums I’ve seen two recommendations: C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-runtime\oculus_openxr_64.json and
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SteamVR\steamxr_win64.json. Does VD require the use of Steam VR which makes the second entry above the correct one?
Also, I wasn’t able to find information about how to actually edit the registry and may have screwed something up as I tried multiple things.