Any word about HEVC support for Link/AirLink on the Quest 2 coming? Well known fact AMD gpus have horrible h264 encoding and their HEVC encoding is actually spectacular. New cards from Nvidia and AMD can handle it just fine and so can the Q2 ( ReLiveVR and VD both support it)
@Banana4Bananas My understanding is that Air Link already supports HEVC (h.265) and that the only limiting thing with AMD gpu's is that Air Link max bitrate is 100mbps vs 200mbps with nvidia gpu's. While AMD may work great with HEVC they have slower encoding speed than RTX2000/3000 series gpu's. I don't have an AMD gpu btw so I cannot comment on this except to say that even the VD developer currently recommends nvidia over amd.
As far as Link goes, I believe h.264 is still the standard because it allows your to max out bitrates, depending on your gpu. Apparently you can check out your logfile info to verify this but it's kinda beyond me how to find this. Meta may have done this to allow both nvidia and amd gpu users to get the best results.
There are a couple of Reddit threads that discuss this if you are interested;
The second one talks more about the differences with Virtual Desktop. I've used VD and tried both encoding options and not really noticed any overall significant differences with my Q2/rtx3090 and I currently prefer to use Air Link (better colours and compatibility).
I agree that it would be nice to incorporate h.264/h.265 options, maybe in the ODT.
As far as Quest standalone goes, I believe that Meta has already given developers the option to use h.265. Since this is done with the headset chip it's probably more amiable to the Q2's faster chip. Maybe one reason we are starting to see Q2 exclusives.
i9 13900K water cooled, RTX4090, Z790 MB w/wifi6e, 64Gb 6400 ram, 2x2TB SSD, 1000W PSU, Win 11, QPro, Q3, w/Link and Air Link, Vive Pro1 with 2x2.0 base stations, Etsy lens mod and Index Controllers
Hello there. Finally, have you tried to modify the bitrate to 350-500 Mbps? I will be interested about the result. I love my RX 6800 XT but not being able to have air link is a pity
@MilkIsSalty This is from Reddit and I do not have AMD so I cannot say it it works or not. I'd backup your registry before trying this.
This registry entry will force HEVC regardless (paste into admin Command Prompt):
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Oculus\RemoteHeadset" /v "HEVC" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f And to undo:
reg delete "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Oculus\RemoteHeadset" /v "HEVC" /f Restart Oculus service after enabling and disabling.
i9 13900K water cooled, RTX4090, Z790 MB w/wifi6e, 64Gb 6400 ram, 2x2TB SSD, 1000W PSU, Win 11, QPro, Q3, w/Link and Air Link, Vive Pro1 with 2x2.0 base stations, Etsy lens mod and Index Controllers
Put on your headset and open Airlink for a short period of time so that logs are generated. To verify that it is working, open your service logs and look for HEVC inside them. These are located inside %LOCALAPPDATA%\Oculus.
A neat way to find them is to open your Run app and navigate to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Oculus. Then sort after most recently updated files and open the latest file called something like Service_XXXX-XX-XX_XX.XX.XX.txt that was just created based on the Airlink session you just had. Look for any mention of HEVC inside it, in particular AMD AMFVideoEncoderHW_HEVC Capabilities or Using HEVC. If you can see it, it works!
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