Cannot load SteamVR home or most VR titles with Oculus Link but works fine with ALVR (Quest 2)

[oO_Konan_Oo]

Hi, hope someone can help as I've scoured these forums and cannot find others with quite the same problem.  I have Quest 2 and a decent gaming PC and a Link cable and the Oculus software installed. I'm having trouble getting Steam VR and the majority of titles working when using the Link cable.  SteamVR and all titles work fine when using ALVR instead (but the quality isn't so good, so I really want to be able to use my Link cable).

I'm not even quite sure I'm "doing it right" and would be very grateful if someone could explain what you're supposed to do to get SteamVR running with Link (e.g. what order of apps do you open?).

I do the following:-

• Open Oculus software on PC
• Connect Link cable to Quest 2 headset
• Enable Link when prompted on the headset
• Run SteamVR from the Library menu on the head-set.

The result is that Steam VR loads on the PC and starts running but reports that it cannot detect the headset or controllers.  On the headset, the splash screen for SteamVR loading appears briefly and them I'm taken back to the Rift home screen.

Some games which I purchased through Steam, will launch on the Link cable just fine (Elite Dangerous, Star Wars Squadrons) but these games seem to have their own native VR support rather than relying on SteamVR to work.  I cannot get SteamVR home to load at all or most other titles such as Half-life Alyx or Phasmophobia.  These titles fire up SteamVR first and the game loads and starts running, but I cannot see anything on the headset and SteamVR reports it cannot find my headset or controllers.

If I don't use the Link cable and fire up ALVR on both PC and headset, then SteamVR home auto loads on both PC and headset and I can select all SteamVR titles from the SteamVR home screen in the headset.  They all load and run fine (it's just that my WiFi isn't quite good enough to give the frame rate and quality I would like).

I've uninstalled and re-installed Oculus and SteamVR neither of which helped. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[satshanti]

Sorry for not being clear enough. I merely meant what you call the Link home screen. |f you have first imported the Steam library into the OTT (there's a menu item for that), Steam games should then also be visible in the library tab of the Oculus Link menu in the headset. If you sort by location, you first see all the Oculus games listed and underneath that all the Steam games, because they're stored in a different location on your HD. Let me know how you fare. 

[acidwind]

Try use(install) steamvr in beta version 17....

[oO_Konan_Oo]

Satshanti - thanks for the clarification.  Unfortunately this hasn't helped me.  I was always able to see and launch the games from in-headset and SteamVR and the game fire up on the PC.  It's just that SteamVR doesn't recognise the headset and nothing shows on the headset.  The splash screen will just appear on the headset, then dissappear again.  Installation of The Oculus Tray Tool doesn't seem to have helped (although it's a cool looking took I'm definitely going to play around with to try and improve the performance and graphics in some of my games).  Thanks for the tip about using this tool 🙂

[satshanti]

Yes, the OTT is very useful for setting different levels of supersampling for different games. Some have to stay at default, while others can go up to 2.0x. On my 3060 Ti I can typically handle up to 1.3x. Sorry to hear it hasn't helped you. Another possibility occurred to me just now. Have you tried starting SteamVR from the desktop, so not from within the headset. Obviously the headset needs to be plugged in, just not worn. If a little window appears (in Windows) and stays on screen, great! That means it's not actually SteamVR that's crashing. If it doesn't appear, check the Windows tray icons and see if you need to open it manually. Once you have the little window open, see if SteamVR has blocked some of its own functions. I don't remember exactly where you see this, but either it's obvious or just right-click on the window and see what pops up. You're looking for a message like "SteamVR has blocked XXX as it might have caused a crash" or something like that. All you need to do then is unblock XXXX with a button. Maybe this won't solve your problem either, but it's worth a try, right? 🙂

[oO_Konan_Oo · Accepted solution]

RESOLVED - I hadn't realised that if you want to use both ALVR and Oculus Link on the same PC you need to manually switch between the two in SteamVR settings.  I had expected it to auto-detect based on whether I had Oculus software and Link running or ALVR Server.  The fix to get SteamVR working with Oculus Link was:

SteamVR > Settings > Startup / Shutdown > Manage Add-ons > ALVR_server = Off

Thank you to everyone who had tried to help me with this issue.  It was driving me nuts.  Best wishes, Tony

[Extrosy]

This advice is applicable to virtual desktop as well.  When I turned off the virtual desktop server under add-ons it started working.