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sumsar158
Participant
March 24, 2026
Question

Screen tearing lines after v2.1 on quest2 and 3s

Specific Symptoms & Conditions

Only Affects UI/Overlays: The tearing and artifacts only appear on the Quest UI, menus, overlays, and video streaming layers (such as Virtual Desktop or screens with white backgrounds).

3D Environments are Unaffected: Full 3D environments, background environments, and in-game visuals work perfectly fine, as long as no system overlay is present.

Tied to Head Tracking: The visual tearing is triggered by head movement. It appears as horizontal lines when moving the head up and down, and vertical lines when moving the head left and right.

Affected Devices & Firmware

Hardware: The issue is widespread and not isolated to one headset. Users have confirmed this is happening on the Quest 2, Quest 3, Quest 3S.

Software: Multiple users pinpointed that the issue began very recently, specifically after the Horizon 2.1 update.

Troubleshooting Attempted (No Fix Found)

Users have attempted standard fixes, including factory resets and using the Meta Quest Update Tool, but the issue persists.

Hardware defect ruled out: While one user suggested it could be a loose display cable, the community consensus strongly confirms this is a software/firmware issue. A broken display cable would cause persistent visual glitches across all games and apps, whereas this issue dynamically turns on and off depending strictly on whether a UI overlay is present.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/1rz62f9/comment/oc5a99g/ - pictures and video included

https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/1rq1z31/quest_2_rainbowartifacts_tearing_but_only_on_ui/

Possibly: Screen Tearing Artifacts | Meta Community Forums - 1369036

 

 

61 replies

Participant
March 26, 2026

Quest 3's native menus aren't smooth to scroll on either. They seem to be some kind of re-projection, which, of course, is disabled in experimental mode.

New Participant
March 28, 2026

OH MY GOD!!

TL;DR:

Black grid/tearing artifacts appear when moving head in Quest 2 UI and Virtual Desktop after v2.1 update. 
Issue does NOT occur in SteamVR (PCVR), only in Quest-native rendering pipeline.
More visible in left eye and UI overlays.

This strongly suggests a problem with Quest compositor / rendering pipeline / frame timing, not GPU rendering itself.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Boot Quest 2
2. Open Virtual Desktop (no need to connect to PC)
3. Move head left/right - black grid lines appear, especially on UI Elements.

- Issue is noticeably stronger in the left eye than the right.
- Right after boot, when all serivces is still loading and the headset is a bit slow, the issue is preset there for a couple seconds before it's gone.
- Opening overlays (e.g. virtual keyboard) significantly increases the issue.


Additional observation:

- The issue intensity depends on head movement speed. Slow movement results in minimal artifacts, while fast head movements significantly increases the visibility of grid lines and distortion.

- The issue is not visible in recordings or screenshots taken from the headset, which suggests it occurs after frame rendering, during final display composition.

- The issue becomes significantly worse when multiple UI layers are present (e.g. virtual keyboard + desktop + overlayes).

 

Full Story:
I'm a having the same issue! and I though that's because I've messed with my adb commands.

Basically what happened for me is I have developer options unlocked.
I started using Virtual Desktop to boost my PCVR Experience.
With that i use  snapdragon super resolution from VD

To boost my headset performance I've raised with SideQuest help my GPU and CPU to Level 4 and lowered my quest texture resolution to Quest 1 size.

Then update 2.1 came out.... and i decided to install without reverting to default settings.

What happened is my quest got permanently stuck in Quest 1 Texture Resolution. Everything pixelated and choppy (the lines when you move your head weren't there yet) .

So my hell began. 

I went through countless adb commands, then 5-10 factory resets from USB Updater (hold volume down + power), true recovery menu (hold volume up + power then when the robot appears press volume up and power, and finnally from metas own website i did factory reset).

I was debugging and trying commands for 3 days, reflashed my firmware with meta software tool, adb sideload with both recoveries, cleared whole window compositor (adb shell wm reset) and FINALLY MANAGED to fix the texture resolution... 

and then this happened. Now that the resolution is back to normal and quest 2 should be working normally.

I have those black lines when i move my head.

They are mostly preset when you run Virtual Desktop (doesn't even need to connect to PC)

When you move your head around, I've noticed they are more present on left eye than the right one, but if you connect to PC and use desktop mode normally, and put more things on screen, like virtual keyboard for example, those line appear way more on left and right eye.

They seems to almost not exist on home screen unless you first boot your quest and its still laggy from loading things - then you see those lines and artifacts like this.

Now if you go to horizon central, there is this big video screen. When nothing is loaded there, and you move your head, those black grid lines are present there too.

If you open the menu if your left controller, those lines are on whole ui of the window you just opened but instead of them being black, they become transparent and show what is under the window as well as they appear on the borders of windows too.

When you go to horizon worlds and are in the view with the city that is in front of you with the mirror on your right and white window with worlds to pick up from that is in front of you, when you move your head the black grid lines are on the whole windows as well as on the mirror.

When you open vrchat natively on quest 2, things gets different here. Most of the game runs fine but when you are loading to worlds and you see the picture of the world you're about to load into and you move your head. Around that picture transparent lines messes up the image. It looks like graphical artifacts but it's the same thing.

I tried recording this on video with my quest but it seems like the video didn't pick this up so it looks to be a problem with render pipeline and something misaligned and not being able to catch up when you move your head before the image is displayed on your screen. 

This is definitely NOT a hardware issue, it's pure software/firmware problem (after my debugging this issue for another 4 days, I've spend on this stuff 7 days straight thinking i messed something up but now I've found this topic and looks like Meta is the ones who messed up theirs's firmware...

Now if you connect your Quest 2 with VD to your PC, run VRChat from there

SteamVR opens up and the problem is gone in steamvr. You can play all your PCVR games in steam VR (I'm using VDXR runtime) without any glitches, artefacts or those gridlines, but as soon as you hold the left controller menu button to open up the Virtual Desktop menu UI where you can see your desktop the black lines are back, if you from there go to desktop mode - the black lines are there when you move your head. Now go back to VR Mode - everything is fine again, so the problem doesn't exist when you view your screen through SteamVR but exists everywhere else when quests rendering is involved.

Worse problem is, I cannot screenshot this so I'm hoping this post will be seen by meta firmware developers or maybe I should just open a support ticket on PC. (reporting this through quest i think is not possible for me.)

Or where should I go to fill a bug report?

Hardware:
Quest 2

Firmware version after which the problem started to occur: earliest v2.1 build that has been distributed to quest 2 now i can't tell the exact build number because since then, Meta release one more firmware update (and it made things even worse).

This problem is present after every type of Factory Reset (even couple times) and even after as I said above flashing my firmware again with different methods.

This issue seems to affect multiple users after the update.
Please investigate Quest compositor / UI rendering pipeline.

steve40
Honored Contributor
March 28, 2026

Like I posted earlier, I get the screen tearing/artefacts in VD but not in the Quest UI. Two different problems are presenting here and being conflated. You seem to have been unlucky and got both issues together. Maybe because you use SideQuest, QGO, ADB commands etc. I don't touch any of that stuff that's not officially supported. Maybe that's why I haven't encountered the issue except in VD.

Fatalution
Up and Coming
March 28, 2026

Same problem, sudden and random tears in wired Link.

Didn't have this problem a month ago. Didn't change anything about my setup aside from the Nvidia driver update and the Meta Link software update

  • 85.0 PC Link, 2.1.1 Quest 3.
  • 5090 with 595.79 driver, 9800X3D, 64GB RAM.
PC: 9800X3D / 5090 / Windows 11 Pro Headset: Quest 3 with Link Software: 76.0 PC, 76.0 Quest 3
steve40
Honored Contributor
March 28, 2026

This thread is not about Link. You're conflating yet another different problem.

Fatalution
Up and Coming
March 28, 2026

The problem that I experience seems to be related to what this thread is about, but after watching the videos - it doesn't manifest in the exact same visual way. Noted

PC: 9800X3D / 5090 / Windows 11 Pro Headset: Quest 3 with Link Software: 76.0 PC, 76.0 Quest 3
Up and Coming
March 28, 2026

PCVR with Virtual desktop can not be used since the last update. Please meta , fix this

steve40
Honored Contributor
March 28, 2026

Virtual Desktop is not Meta's software. You should report the issue on the Virtual Desktop Discord.

Participant
March 29, 2026

Sorry, it seems like the glitch came back after a while

sumsar158
sumsar158Author
Participant
March 29, 2026

doesn't restarting device reset the sidequest settings and updating requires a restart ?

Participant
March 29, 2026

My method didn't work; the issue came back after a while.

Participant
March 29, 2026

My method didn't work; the issue came back after a while.

Participant
March 29, 2026

Sorry, it seems like the glitch came back after a while

Participant
March 29, 2026

Let's wait for someone else to mail their unit to the official team. I've completely given up.

steve40
Honored Contributor
March 30, 2026

I think Meta may have fixed the issue now. This was posted on the Virtual Desktop Discord:

So it appears that the fix will be some sort of silent server-side setting change, and not a software update.

New Participant
March 30, 2026

My headset has been doing this for a long time. Its my 3rd or 4th rma, I dont even remember anymore. But mine does it with 3d environement, so everything basically. All of my 3s headsets have had this issue and I stopped after awhile because I taught it was done for or that it was normal to a certain degree.

steve40
Honored Contributor
March 30, 2026

Your problem is entirely a different issue. The issue at hand, it turned out, was caused by Meta's A/B testing. The Virtual Desktop developer has confirmed that, and Meta has now fixed it, apparently.