Quest 2 VR freezing sim after 15mins or so, PMDG aircraft

Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

yes and no, made no changes within. No difference with outcome running non-dev or dev

Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons?

yes

Brief description of the issue:

When running PMDG’s 738, about 15 minutes into session and setting up for pushback, VR image freezes, I get the frozen image, black around top, bottom, sides and back, infinite hourglass anim. PC monitor shows frozen as well. Sound continues, only thing I can do is close other programs and restart windows.

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

Windows 11 Home
i9-13900KF
32GB DDR5 RAM
ASRock z690 C/D5
RTX4090 24GB
Samsung 970 EVOplus 2TB M.2 SSD
Meta Quest 2
USB-C to A 3.2 Link cable plugged into USB-A 3.2 mobo slot

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

1.30.12.0 msfs, and 3.0.60 and 62 for the PMDG 738

I haven’t been able to get a full flight since late January about. Then roughly after the 2 updates from MSFS early Feb, as well as PMDGs last 2 updates for the 738, I’ve been getting the issue I’ve described above. I would have asked in the PMDG group but I’m getting forum registration issues.

Some additional info:

-have unchecked “allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” under power mgmt, all USB entries
-have set screen to never sleep
-have unloaded all mods from community folder
-have run in both dev and non dev mode, no difference
-Used to be able to run flights for hours but somewhere around the time PMDG updated their 737-800, or when MSFS updated around early Feb '23, I developed the issue
-happens both DX11 and 12
-cleared DXCache, rolling cache
-Run ODT, OpenXR toolkit, sidequest for 60Hz.
-in ODT, I set to encode bitrate @ 256Mbps

I had done a few flights in default GA aircraft and by the 20-30min mark, no issues at all running VR. Also had flown the PMDG 738 starting from a pre-taxi startup state, nothing set in the FMC, all just hand flying, minimal fiddling with FMC, MCP or overhead switches and VR doesnt crash- probably a 25min flight- until I get to the ground and start playing with overhead switches to shut down aircraft. Makes me think manipulating the PMDG’s systems are provoking this crash/freeze.

Anyone get this specific issue and found a fix for it? PMDG update related? MSFS recent updates related?

Thanks guys. This is frustrating. Ive finally gotten the frame rate to sync and be smooth.

I am trying to resolve this issue myself, happens in the black square but I’ve had it happen in other aircraft. Seems to happen when I manipulate a switch or look around. Restarting the pc seemed to help it but I have no idea if that was just luck or not.

I’ve got the same problem here.
The picture in VR freezes mostly at the beginning of the session during the pre-flight preparation and before the final approach which is extremely annoying…
As a workaround, quickly disconnected the headset, and switch off VR mode, then the sim returned to normal, so plugging back and I can finish the flight.

Reading a lot of posts, I was bearly sure that AMD graphic card hasn’t been a good choice, but seeing your specs I do not think that is the root cause. The question, if this problem is caused by Oculus software or just bug in sim…

Here’s my specs:

  • i5 13600k
  • ASUS PRIME Z790-P
  • 32gb RAM DDR4 4000mhz
  • Radeon 7900xt 20gb
  • VR: Oculust Quest 2 connected via USB-C 3.2

Hi All,

I bought an MQ3 a couple weeks ago after my Reverb G2 just died (turns out it may just be a board so I’m getting it fixed anyway). After unpackage, configuring and setup, I encountered the same as the topic subject line and started to research the problem by vetted this through the PMDG forum. With little success and no solution, several crashes in a row trying slight variations in setup, I tried a hunch. The hunch was that when the freeze occurs, I’m not necessarily doing anything in particular and then BAM! A couple times I noticed that it froze when I was looking at the direction of the tablet. So, I disabled the tablet. The problem went away, immediately! The (VR) graphics were glitchy but I flew at least 6 legs in the last two days no problem. For grins I turned the tablet back on again and sure enough, BAM! MSFS crashed on the climbout to transition altitude.

I reported my findings on the PMDG forum here: https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/pmdg-737-for-msfs/general-discussion-no-support/275471-meta-quest-3-freeze-after-15-minutes-of-ngx-flight

I then submitted a ticket to PMDG of which they replied promptly. Their response was that they don’t have any MQ3/2 hardware in-house, that one of their team members has a 4K setup with no reported issues (whatever that is) and that he’d pass it along. Bottom line, don’t expect a response from them. My suspicion is that this is a problem between MQ3->Virtual Desktop->Steam VR and MSFS. The PMDG tablet with the Navigraph API (of which Navigraph may or may not have an affect) just happens to be the catalyst that exposes the bug somewhere in that value chain. I should note that I read somewhere (the Meta forum on the same topic) that updating the Nvidia driver would remediate the problem, it didn’t. I’m lucky enough that I can still take my MQ3 back, of which I plan to.

My recommendation: Disable the tablet under the settings on the FMC and report back to this thread. If you can fly without problems then this theory is confirmed and Microsoft/Asobo should take a look at this. The downside is that it only appears to affect MQ owners as they have to use an unorthodox method to interface to MSFS. Even the original Rift series (though proprietary) was more seamless than this paradigm.

For details on the discussion, visit the link to the PMDG thread above.

Good luck and please report your findings to this thread.

Howard

Doesent seem to be headset specific or aircraft specific. i get the same vr crash using various aircraft on pico4. after 15-20 min the picture freezes and i have to reboot the pc. has there ever been a solution posted somewhere or is this an uncommon issue?
this is how the event looks like in event viewer. no idea if that is relevant

AppName FlightSimulator.exe

AppVersion 1.35.21.0

AppTimeStamp 00000000

ModuleName FlightSimulator.exe

ModuleVersion 1.35.21.0

ModuleTimeStamp 00000000

ExceptionCode c0000005

FaultingOffset 000000000268ae23

ProcessId 0x1a40

ProcessCreationTime 0x1da37e40f1885a1

AppPath C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.35.21.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\FlightSimulator.exe

ModulePath C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.35.21.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\FlightSimulator.exe

IntegratorReportId 752e4423-c3ea-48e0-9c33-991f7dd51532

PackageFullName Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.35.21.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

PackageRelativeAppId App

Exactly the same issue here with a 4070ti on Oculus 2.