Skip to main content
jeremydeats
Up and Coming
May 30, 2020

OculusLink still having issues even with minor version differences between Oculus PC and Quest ver

My Oculus PC software is at 17.0.0.183.462. My Oculus Quest run-time software is on version 17.0.0.168.x.x The Quest software must have received an update as 1.) during guardian setup I'm now seeing red dots/voxels indicating if things are in the way 2.) the odd off-axis positioning of menus on startup bug is gone. However immediately after my Quest booted with this patch, Oculus Home has now stopped working.... I tried switching to the Beta Public Test Channel and restarted the Oculus Home software with no luck.... Guys this is NOT how it should be done. I just finished a 12 hour day behind the keyboard, working on a VR project... was near the finish line and now I'm completely blocked from moving forward because I received an update that has now wrecked my ability to do any more work.

I don't know the specific issue here, and I know that Oculus seems to believe that this is a non-issue now (version compatibility "within 2 releases" is what I recall), well there are still issues. This is unacceptable, it's unprofessional and it really has to stop. How can we build for a platform that's unreliable? This inconsistency, this problem- even if it's a problem that's only impacting certain hardware configs (I'm guessing with that one), it's a HUGE problem. You can not expect developers to go to bat with Oculus technology selling to Enterprise clients with half-baked solutions. 

My spec-

Intel i7, 8 cores
32-GB of RAM
Samsung EVO 970 m.2 nvme drive (60% free capacity on root) 
Using the $80 Oculus Link fiber cable 
Windows 10, 64-bit

ONLY running Unity 2019.3 and Oculus Home software. No other applications. Only critical background processes. Again, it's unacceptable this would be continuing to happen. For the past five days I've been raving to other developers and gamers about how incredible the official Oculus Link cable has been at enhancing my overall Link experience. No this?!? I'm so angry, I'm thinking of leaving your platform as a developer and just using Oculus for gaming. Horrible engineering. 




    1 reply

    jeremydeatsAuthor
    Up and Coming
    May 30, 2020
    An update of sorts- After many reboots and careful attention to the order of things, I no longer believe this to be a compatibility issue between Oculus PC software and Quest, my apologies to the team at Oculus for quickly jumping to this conclusion. However, there is something very strange going on between Unity 2019.3 and OculusLink.

    To better document the steps causing the issue-
    1. Fresh boot of Windows 10. Power cycle Oculus Quest
    2. Load Oculus Home software
    3. Plug official Oculus Link cable into USB-C port on PC
    4. Power up Quest, set guardian, get to Quest main menu
    5. Plug other end of Link cable into Quest

    These 5 steps (and only in this order it seems) got my back into Oculus Rift Home

    6. Launch Unity 2019.3 and load my project. As the project loads (note nothing in Unity is "running", no other instances of Unity are running, Visual Studio isn't even running much less with debug attached). As the project loads the Rift experience slows down and becomes very unstable, in hmd I'm seeing extreme judder and even image tearing. In Unity 2019.3 my scene has now loaded, with Auto light baking taking place. This is a very simple scene with one Point Light, shadows completely disabled. 4-minutes in and Unity has flat-lined my CPU as the "auto light baking" continues. What's more, the Rift Home is now showing my Unity project trying to run in Rift/Quest (I never hit run, this odd "auto run" behavior was reproducible multiple times). At this point things in the Quest (Rift) become very unstable and a bit of a slide-show within 3-4 minutes eventually we get a complete lockup. In Quest I get a message "PC disconnected". I use task manager to kill Unity, then reset Oculus PC software. reconnect OculusLink and now Link refuses to connect. I'm prompted in Quest to allow Link, the Quest flashes black then back to Quest menu. In Oculus PC software under devices I see an orange circle indicating a hardware issue.

    But there isn't a hardware issue. I know this because, I've repeated all steps above and if I change step #6 to load other Unity projects I have (both in Unity 2019.3 and older versions as well) this issue does not happen... and in the problem Unity project, I was able to load the project without Link enabled (fresh system boot leaving out steps 1-5) and the project loads. I was able to switch to a different scene in the problem project and that one works fine. But when I switch back to the problem scene the same issue happens.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement