White horizontal stripe across screen while using link

Reposting for all the new guys to find this to help fix the issues. SerHyo Put your bit in bold to help peeps recognise your contribution here 🙂

Hi all, for those coming to this post looking for a solution to the issue... oculus has yet to find a working solution to this ongoing issue. Please follow the guide I have made below to revert your oculus PC software back to version 24 which will fix the issue and allow you to use your Q2 on pc again. Big thanks and credit to Serhyo who initially found this workaround. All I did was find a way to fix the sound/mic issue and refine the guide/method to ensure a functioning downgrade every time. 🙂

So after 24+ hours of solid tweaking and testing and all round pulling my hair out... i have found a way to downgrade the oculus software to V24 like in serhyo's post but also fix the audio and microphone issues whilst allowing 120HZ mode if required (though I recommend sticking to 90HZ as it's far more stable). You do lose the ability to run via Airlink (currently bugged on build v33 and won't run more than 72HZ anyways) but frankly, Virtual desktop is tons better anyway and has a lot more to offer including ability to watch 3D films, etc!!!

 

Please follow the steps below:

 

1)  Turn on Public Test Channel in beta tab in oculus PC app settings, once the update has finished reboot your PC.

2)  Once reboot is complete turn off the PTC and let oculus update back to V33 but this time DO NOT REBOOT YOUR PC,

3) Download https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H_Sgam3hVAtDFPajTu7ZcpUqSrEh681D/view?usp=sharing

4) Stop OVRService - (ctrl+alt+delete -> Task manager -> find OVRService -> right click Stop

5) Go to C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support, and rename folder Support to Support-backup.

6) Export the downloaded Support folder from step 3 to C:\Program Files\Oculus\

7) Create a text file using notepad named ''tmp'' and move it into C:\Program Files\Oculus\, then enable file extensions under the view tab in windows explorer and delete .txt extension from the file. (staging file is not needed, aslong as you have the "tmp" files in this directory it will stop automatic updates.)

7.5) Start OVRService again.

8)Open the oculus app, you should get a red banner appear at the top of the window telling you to "update the drivers" for oculus to run your hardware properly. Go ahead and click the button and let oculus app run its driver update. Once this is done go ahead and reboot your PC again. *It's vital you restart your PC before the next steps or this may not work!!!*

9)  Open device manager and navigate to sound, video, and game controllers, click the arrow to open the list of devices.

10) Right click on "Oculus Virtual Audio Device" and then click update driver. Click search automatically for driver and let the update process complete. Once this is finished, windows should prompt you to reboot to finish installing the new driver. Let it reboot once again.

11) Enjoy playing VR games again with fully functioning audio and a working mic and no white/pink stripes!!!!!!

 

Oculus home will initially be broken/will not load in after this workaround is applied. If you care about home/want to use it again then navigate into the support folder and delete the "Oclulus-worlds" folder and "oclulus-words.zip" file. Then you just need to copy your "Oclulus-worlds" folder from your support-backup folder and paste it back into the support folder. You will need to make sure oclulus service is stopped before you start deleting and moving folders, but make sure you do this after following all the steps above first! Once you are finished you can restart the Oculus service and when you use link again, Oculus home will load up as normal :).

 

This should work for all affected users providing you follow the steps exactly as posted, I have been using this workaround for weeks (now almost a year ><) with 0 problems and have been enjoying all my PC VR games again since before this issue occurred. This workaround has been tested and works for both RTX 20 & RTX 30 series graphics card owners. It should also work for any ATI users suffering this issue but do not own an ATI graphics card so I cannot test this to confirm.

 

I really hope this helps and please post to this forum your results and let us know if this worked for you. The more people who let me know this has worked for them, the more evidence I have to give to Oculus support to finaly make them see the issue lies with their software and look into what changed between V24 and V25 to brake this. But for now this should get most of us running again untill Oculus finally pull thier finger out and get us a permenant solution! (one can dream XD)

Sp0uny, fyte 
Thnx guys, again don't take this the bad way, but i just wanted some credit for time spent experimenting and finding workaround 🙂
Thank you too for spending your time on spreading the word, searching for solutions, and helping others find it, and also writing more detailed guide, since English is not my main language XD
PS: Anyone tried to contact some popular YouTubers to address this issue? Maybe they can help draw attention to this problem.
Thank you all and have a nice day!

So, I have had problems with this since the very very beginning, been using Virtual Desktop to get the games working and had gotten used to it pretty good.

But with one of the later updates in VD, game started freezing on me and I just have had enough. 

- My original system is Windows 11.

- I have created a Dual Boot with Windows 10 on my second SSD

- All I have installed is GPU Drivers, Discord, Oculus app and iRacing.

- Been racing for 2 days now with Link and did not have any issues with it.

- The version in Oculus says 38

On top of that, while racing and connected  via link, my quest 2 stays charged - this was not a thing in my previous system, it was discharging still.

my PC spec:

AMD Ryzen 7 3700x

RTX 2070

32gb ram

Other than the OS no hw changed since I got the Quest 2

idk but i accidentally changed brightness to max when reconnecting oculus link and feels like it doesnt show the white stripe for hours, was thinking if im just lucky or it can be a temporary fix or something. can someone else check if changing brightness (probably especially max) make the white stripe gone or not ?

Hello I use an Oculus quest 2 I have a 3060 gpu. 16 GB of RAM. And i have no idea what is causing this. I am using link with 250 mb in debug tool. I try disabling or 45fps force with aws disabled but maybe it's still enabled some how?  When im playing a game and there is fast turning. Such as snap turning on skyrimvr these 1 or 2 white horizontal line appear for a second as i am turning. Does anyone have any idea??

I started having this problem after I tweaked some values with the ODT. As one reply below mentions, the issue seems to be with the Encode Resolution Width. Following a guide, I've set it to 4000. Setting it back to 0 (which defaults to a high value, like 3680 or something anyway) fixed it for me. If you look carefully, the horizontal line appears as a visual artifact when you move your head around, but compared to before it's pretty much negligible. Oculus Home and my sim racing games are gorgeous again now :D. Don't forget to restart the Oculus service (and potentially the headset too!)

Just a update on my previous white box issue.I have not had it back since so hopefully this is resolved. I have played hrs of vr since . 

I reinstalled Dirt Rally 2.0 after some time away, and started getting this shortly after starting the first race. The bar starts off faint and slowly gets brighter and more distorted and more distracting. Eventually, it develops a bit of a magenta tint. Unplugging the cable and plugging it back in will "reset" the process, but the white band slowly starts coming back as soon as it reconnects.

The problem persists in other secondary menus like the Oculus Home overlay, but switching apps (like opening Home or a different game) makes the artifact go away. The artifact does not appear in some apps, like Home. Of games I've recently tried, it does appear in Dirt Rally 2.0, MS Flight Simulator, and Project Wingman... all games that have cockpits. I've also noticed what appears to be really bad compression artifacts in all 3 games... not just in the white band area, but across the entire view. IMO, this appears to be a major software defect with Oculus Link video encoding.

Honestly, finding this thread, and seeing that this has been a problem for well over a year with no response or fix from Oculus... it's shameful. Again - this is OBVIOUSLY a software defect in Oculus software, and the "revert to old software" trick mentioned earlier proves that. This product is broken and does not function as advertised - and it has been broken for well over a year; we should all report the company and product to the appropriate regulatory authorities until this defect is remediated.

I've got the same problem ONLY AFTER I've messed up with some OculusDebugTool.exe configs. The one I found out as guilty is the Encode Resolution. I've heard "the higher the better", as it allows for a lower image compression, but around 4000 it started to show that white stripe across the bottom. The value I'm using now is 3900 and I have no crazy white stripe anymore. You might need some try and error. 

Hi . I have a problem with the white horizontal stripe in my Oculus Quest 2.
And I got it right when I followed Fyte's tips on page 56.
But now a while ago I started to lose tracking Now when I tried to reinstall everything again then I had version 38.0.0 .... in the app on PC.
did as Fyte wrote then I have Oculus app version 24.0.042393.
But then it will not find my headset.

Checked which version I have in the headset: 39.0.088.336.363807235. then it says driver version: 39.0.0100.369.363650567.

Tried to reinstall the pc app, change to beta, then I got 39.0.0 ... Then the headset was found but then White horizontal stripe came back almost immediately. And there is only 72Hz nothing else to choose from.

Anyone have any tips?

Is it possible to get an older version back in the headset?