Does a Quest 2 work well enough without a cable?

[lascaris]

Question in the title. I have a Rift S at the moment but it's a nuisance with the display and USB cables so I was curious if a Quest 2 would work with reasonable performance with no cable.

[Supmua]

Depends on how good your Wi-Fi signal is, but if you want optimal image quality wired is the way to go (still have to deal with some video compression due to limited USB C bandwidth).  Mine works in wireless (Wi-Fi 5) with DCS but the overall experience is suboptimal due to occasional signal hiccups or image artifacts, so I prefer wired mode with PC.  Now if your household have better Wi-Fi signal maybe the experience might be better.

[lascaris]

My wifi is pretty decent. My DL speed is ~190MB/s and my ping is routinely <20ms. Hopefully that is sufficient.

[AlpineGTA]

Does anybody use their Quest 2 wireless in multiplayer?

I usually use my Rift S because the connection is reliable and I don't have to worry about battery life ending mid server session, but yesterday I thought I'd try the Quest to see what the performance would be like. The extra clarity was nice and fps seemed on par with the Rift S but every few minutes there was horrible slow down and stutter before it would return to normal again, until, after a few minutes it would happen again, almost like it was performing a regular background process, like buffering or a large download or saving a large file. I don't know if it's just my wireless connection or what. I don't think it was anything to do with the server I was on, this never happens with my Rift S.

I haven't tried the Quest with the Link cable yet to compare. 

[dburne]

53 minutes ago, AlpineGTA said:

Does anybody use their Quest 2 wireless in multiplayer?

I usually use my Rift S because the connection is reliable and I don't have to worry about battery life ending mid server session, but yesterday I thought I'd try the Quest to see what the performance would be like. The extra clarity was nice and fps seemed on par with the Rift S but every few minutes there was horrible slow down and stutter before it would return to normal again, until, after a few minutes it would happen again, almost like it was performing a regular background process, like buffering or a large download or saving a large file. I don't know if it's just my wireless connection or what. I don't think it was anything to do with the server I was on, this never happens with my Rift S.

I haven't tried the Quest with the Link cable yet to compare. 

 

Definitely try the Quest with the Link Cable.

[AlpineGTA]

I tried it again, this time using the Link cable and it worked very well. no stutters or lag, so it must have been the wireless buffering or something. And the image quality was very nice too.

The only problem is the limited fly time due to the battery draining. Not good if your battery gets critically low and you get disconnected from the server mid flight, this might cause you to receive a strike or ban from the server. So for now I'll stick to using the Rift S online, unless I know I'm going to be doing short missions.

[lascaris]

So I received my Quest 2 and it performs very nicely so far without the link cable. On one flight I had several short, maybe 200ms stutters but other than that seemed fine and not much different than stuttering I would occasionally get on my Rift S. The battery life is going to be concerning so I might pick up a small power pack that I can strap to the back of the headset to trickle charge while I play. I can imagine if your wifi was heavily loaded or not the latest in performance it might be problematic.

 

So far, so good however and I'll keep on going to see how it performs with more stressful conditions. So far I've only done free flights, although one was at low level over the Marianas which can be pretty demanding graphically.

[AlpineGTA]

I've got the more comfortable head strap with the extended battery, but the annoying thing is this battery has to be unplugged and is not utilised when using the link cable.

[dburne]

Yeah so much depends on the quality/speed of the wifi connection.

IMHO Link cable is way to go with the Quest. Unless one does short sessions and has great Wifi.

[AlpineGTA]

Yes, agreed, but even with the Link cable the battery still drains relatively quickly. If only they'd made a Rift S successor with the fidelity of the Quest 2.

[dburne]

5 hours ago, AlpineGTA said:

Yes, agreed, but even with the Link cable the battery still drains relatively quickly. If only they'd made a Rift S successor with the fidelity of the Quest 2.

Odd, back when I was testing my original Quest with the Link cable when it first came out I did not notice a battery drain.

Maybe it is different nowadays with Quest 2.

[Lensman]

On 10/16/2021 at 12:59 AM, dburne said:

Odd, back when I was testing my original Quest with the Link cable when it first came out I did not notice a battery drain.

Maybe it is different nowadays with Quest 2.

You just need a decent USB expansion card with a dedicated SATA power connection. Quest will stay at around 80% charge indefinitely.

[AlpineGTA]

I'll have to take a look at that then and maybe try a hub. I've got it plugged into a blue USB 3.0 port on the motherboard but it must be draining more power than it's pulling to charge. 

[streakeagle]

I have learned that when using the link cable, the usb port does not allow rapid charging (maybe not any charging at all). Once I switched to using the air link, I was running out of power and connected the link cable which was in a rapid charging port of a usb 3 hub. I stopped getting low battery warnings immediately and was able to continue playing. The next day I played in the same configuration from the start: air link connection, but link cable plugged into rapid charging port. The end result was continuous play for over an hour and the headset was still at 100%. So using the link cable for data appears to restrict or disable charging. So, if you have good wifi, you can play DCS as long as you want on the Quest 2 using air link if you have a long enough charging cable to permit moving your head around.

[AlpineGTA]

So, I tried installing a USB 3.0 expansion card, powered directly from the PSU and plugged the link cable into that, but it still drained power. I then tried an external USB hub, powered from it's own mains plug and I flew on the Storm of War server all night without losing any charge! Strange how it still drained when plugged into an internal powered expansion card but not when plugged into an external powered hub. Anyway, I'm happy I can now enjoy the extra clarity of the Quest 2 and not have to worry about battery drain. Thanks for the suggestions.