This is interesting.... confirmed working with Windows 10 and NVidia drivers 158.78 I didn't think 0.5 was compatible with this driver but it works and I have Elite Dangerous back 🙂 Now to whip up an autoit script to make the whole switch invisible from the ED shortcut.
ED seems a bit blurry to me though compared with what I remember (no judder, just blurry movement), interested to hear what anyone else thinks.
Have to test Assetto Corsa and Alien Isolation next!!
13700K, RTX 4070 Ti, Asus ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming, Corsair H150i Capellix, 64GB Corsair Vengence DDR5, Corsair 5000D Airflow, 4TB Samsung 870 , 2TB Samsung 990 Pro x 2, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, Quest, 2, 3, Pro, Windows 11 Pro 24H2 (10.0.26100)
2. unzip Oculus_500 to your "C:\Program Files (x86)"
3. unzip the windows folder to, yes windows. (So the dll files are in the respective System32 and SysWow folder).
4. The Oculus_500 folder contains a folder called switch and there are some .cmd files to switch between the different versions. Create shortcuts to these from your desktop. Click properties of the shortcut and advanced then tick run as Administrator.
5. And finally say thank you to the guys on twitter and the OP, Dark_Fread for bringing to our attention.
This is actually a very simple trick. The .cmd scripts you can find inside does not do anything complicated. All they do is stopping the HMD-related services from one version, killing the Oculus Config utility and restarting those from the other version. (and some commands hide the cmd.exe window) I don't know if the 0.501 files have been modified though. Why is it not natively implemented ? I understand the rt0.7 provides major enhancements but if it is so easy to switch, without the need to downgrade, it almost should have been an official feature...
Little hint if someone else has problems getting this solution to work (maybe it helps someone):
I was freshly installing Win 10 on Monday and couldn't get this solution working. The rift was detected and got set to extended mode but I couldn't rotate the display in the driver (always kept switching back) or set the correct primary monitor. Found out that Nvidia really messed up stuff with their latest driver (358.91)
Solution that worked for me: Install Windows, install the latest Nvidia driver, install the latest runtime (0.8 in my case) -- make sure it works. Freshly install the 358.50 driver from Nvidia (the 0.8 SDK says you need a new driver at this point - ignore it for the moment). Execute the SDK 0.5 command from the downloaded package --> set up your rift and test some 0.5-content to make sure it works. Execute the SDK 0.7-cmd from the package and UPDATE the Nvidia-Driver to 358.91.
If you switch back to 0.5 now your rift will have the correct orientation and the monitor settings will be correct aswell.
Intel Xeon E3-1231v3 @ 3.40 Ghz -- Kingston Hyper X 8GB DDR3-1600 -- EVGA GTX980 ACX 2.0 -- Asus H97M-Plus -- Asus VG278H 120Hz 3D Monitor
This no longer works with the latest build of Windows 10 (at least with NVidia cards), which is annoying is I've written a number of scripts which auto switch the runtime depending on what the various games/demos require.
I assume for those who have this working, you don't have auto update enabled, or the update hasn't yet rolled out in your area. So if you have the likes of Elite Dangerous and Alien Isolation running ok in Windows 10 using this method, don't update Windows, unless of course you want to benefit from the other Windows 10 fixes.
Type 'winver' in windows run/search bar to display your Windows version, it seems v1511 build 10586.3 onwards prevent this switching method from working.
I've tried to find a work-around, including using the various HDMI, DVI-D & display-port connections for monitor and Rift, also forcing Windows to recognise the Rift as a generic uPNP monitor, nothing works. So if anyone has any other ideas, please let me know... I really don't want to go back to dual-boot!
13700K, RTX 4070 Ti, Asus ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming, Corsair H150i Capellix, 64GB Corsair Vengence DDR5, Corsair 5000D Airflow, 4TB Samsung 870 , 2TB Samsung 990 Pro x 2, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, Quest, 2, 3, Pro, Windows 11 Pro 24H2 (10.0.26100)
