Are you using the 6GHz band, or just 5GHz AX?
I'm on 5GHz, from the network standpoint 6GHz does not give you a lot more - 5GHz 4x4 MIMO setup is able to push ~2Gbits trough air between two linux hosts. The usual bonus for 6GHz are less crowded channels, but that's not the issue for me, rarely anything here up in the air. I kinda feel like introducing 6GHz to the bunch was mostly for that reason, in populated areas wifi nowadays is a mess, often with people having unregulated 5Ghz radio links pushing few W.
And the best result of my yesterday tinkering is... ...burned in ODT performance overlay on my Quest 3 screen!
Nowadays LCDs should not burn in, right? o_0
According to wiki LCD burn-in is a thing but it's to do with pixels not returning to their relaxed state after prolonged static 'on' state, but is temporary compared to OLED.
I saw that effect on mine too against a grey background, same cause, the overlay. It disappeared after something appeared to 'wipe' the display while loading a game. I've seen this with some LCD types, notably on my gameboy advance with an aftermarket LCD panel upgrade. Very specific image conditions seem to cause it. It's not permanent, but it's a little odd.
Anyhow, I want to use 6GHz because the crowding of 5GHz in my apartment block is so bad that wireless VR is unusable. I've been struggling along by grabbing DFS channels but there's radar contention so I'm never able to retain them for long.
My testing shows that with Airlink, 5GHz is okay, but 6GHz is not stable and the stream desyncs every several seconds. However, using Virtual Desktop 6GHz functions perfectly. So something is up with Airlink.
I wonder if it's possible that AirLink reconfigures "itself" on WiFi 6 - like using different codecs on cable (looks like Airlink uses h265 and cable switches to h264 in my case). Have you checked the performance overlay, the one with encode details? Maybe it switches to some insane bitrate on 6GHz
I'll settle in to do some more testing soon, and I'll report back as I do.
All I've done so far is test various dynamic and static bitrate settings in the Airlink home settings only, from 75 to 175, with everything set to default in ODT. I would expect it to respect those limits. It's definitely worse when I increase the bitrate limit, but on dynamic it should be smart enough to adapt appropriately if the throughput isn't good. But of course, it is; the WLAN link speed always maintains 1800 or higher, and of course Virtual Desktop runs with high bitrate and quality settings without a hitch. This leads me to believe there's just something that needs to be addressed in the Airlink deployment for Q3.
rmzalbar One other element about the performance of 5GHz vs 6GHz, keep in mind that the higher the frequency of a radio signal, the less penetration through dense materials it will have (for the same transmit power). It means that maintaining direct line-of-sight between the headset and the Access Point (which might be a wifi-router or mesh node, or Airbridge).
6GHz really, really does not like to penetrate walls. It was bad with 5GHz but much worse with 6GHz.
Another example of the same phenomenon is in cellphone / mobile networks: 5G networks rarely penetrate into buildings and are mostly useful outdoors, but it only takes a hill or a tree to interrupt the signal. Those signals have massively higher amplification but it's the same issue. You can't really overcome physics 🙂
I can safely say that the propagation/penetration limits of 6GHz are not a factor in my testing, as the router is about 6 to 10 feet away in the same room with unobstructed line of sight, and different positions in the room have been tested. The link speed stays minimum 2100+ but generally remains stable at 2400. I've also tested 80MHz to see if there's increased stability, and even performed a walkaround site survey (I'm actually the only 6GHz broadcaster as yet in my housing complex.) However, a ping test and a throughput test are showing no hiccups, and Virtual Desktop is running well with aggressive settings.
I'm seeing some reports of issues as well as reports that Quest 3 Airlink is performing fine on 6GHz even with aggressive bitrate settings, so I'm going to expand my testing to include a different host PC environment and an alternate 6GHz router.
