DCS Not Showing In Quest Link Apps

[Desert Drydock]

I'm starting all over with VR after about 3 years of not doing any VR. Yesterday I received my new Quest 3S and after setting it up it won't recognize DCS. DCS is not showing up in the Quest Link App library. I searched and read forums until about 2am then got up this morning and went back at it. I can't find the right answer, so I decided its best to go to the pros here. What didn't I do or what am I missing?

Edited October 4 by Desert Drydock

[sleighzy]

DCS isn’t a Quest game so won’t be in the app library. How are you currently connecting your headset to your PC and running games? Connect your headset to your PC via link and then start DCS on your PC using the normal shortcut you always use. Make sure that you have enabled VR headsets in the VR settings of DCS. 

Edited October 4 by sleighzy

[Desert Drydock]

Thanks for the reply sleighzy. As I was further investigating my issue after I posted here earlier, I learned that Windows 10 doesn't support mixed reality. So I'm just going to box the Quest 3S up and send it back.  Its clearly time to build a new PC designed around supporting the Meta Quest 3 512GB in DCS.  It would have been nice to learn about this before I ordered the Quest 3S but as usual, I like doing the hard and more expensive way.

[sleighzy]

2 hours ago, Desert Drydock said:

Thanks for the reply sleighzy. As I was further investigating my issue after I posted here earlier, I learned that Windows 10 doesn't support mixed reality. So I'm just going to box the Quest 3S up and send it back.  Its clearly time to build a new PC designed around supporting the Meta Quest 3 512GB in DCS.  It would have been nice to learn about this before I ordered the Quest 3S but as usual, I like doing the hard and more expensive way.

Quote

I learned that Windows 10 doesn't support mixed reality.

What do you mean by this? Windows Mixed Reality (WMR)? Can you clarify what you mean by that.

Not sure what you're trying to do, there's no reason to send it back.

Edited October 5 by sleighzy

[Desert Drydock]

sleighzy I learned that Windows 10 won't work to support mixed reality in the Quest 3S this afternoon and was confirmed by meta support. The main reason I'm coming back to DCS and VR is because mixed reality has finally caught up to my past hopes of having a basic simpit meshed with VR.  I bought a Quest 2 when it first came out, it was awesome for flying but irritatingly awkward for trying to find the correct switch or button by feel, like MFD operation.

[sleighzy]

20 minutes ago, Desert Drydock said:

sleighzy I learned that Windows 10 won't work to support mixed reality in the Quest 3S this afternoon and was confirmed by meta support. The main reason I'm coming back to DCS and VR is because mixed reality has finally caught up to my past hopes of having a basic simpit meshed with VR.  I bought a Quest 2 when it first came out, it was awesome for flying but irritatingly awkward for trying to find the correct switch or button by feel, like MFD operation.

You're probably better off upgrading to Windows 11 anyway, you'll find it's recommended for DCS due to better performance, especially with Intel chips.

I'm not sure if your plan is to bring your MFDs into the game with you, but I have never heard Windows Mixed Reality Link being used for this (don't know if supported for OpenXR games). Do you have sources for that information if that's what you were intending? Folk who normally do this do it via OpenKneeboard (creating coloured sections for chromakey passthrough) and Virtual Desktop.

[Desert Drydock]

1 hour ago, sleighzy said:

Folk who normally do this do it via OpenKneeboard (creating coloured sections for chromakey passthrough) and Virtual Desktop.

That's exactly what I'm up to, I envisioned it 25+ years ago when flying Jane's EA USAF n IDF. I just realized a couple weeks ago it arrived while I wasn't paying attention. I just wanted to jump into it with my 9 year old PC build, but I need to slow down n get it all thought through and catch up a bit more methodically.  I figure I'm looking at 4K plus to set it up. I'm a CAD artist with 3D printers but I'll start with the Win Wing TOP GUN MIP n toss my old Thrustmaster MFD's to the dust bin. 

I have an original Oculus Rift that was set up for MSFS X with the VRS F/A-18E on my old Win 7 machine. A Steam update destroyed it in 2018 or 19 and life was too busy to take the time n fix it.  Needless to say I miss my SHB's and Okay3's...

[Brainfreeze]

Fligh DCS  with quest via Virtual Desktop. Link implementation is very bad and not really necessary on it

[Phantom711]

@Desert Drydock

I still think you got caught up between different terms here.

Metas own Mixed Reality does not work with PCVR. Doesn‘t matter if you upgrade to Windows 11. 

I think the way people do get a Mixed Reality cockpit with their Quest3 is to use Virtual Desktop which allows passthrough of certain colors and Open Kneeboard to get that color in the desired shape into DCS.

There are videos on youtube about this.

but since you want to send the Q3S back anyways, go and get the regular Q3…pancake lenses are so much better.

EDIT: Oh and „Windows Mixed Reality“ has absolutely nothing to do with it. I was a program to link certain headsets like the HP Reverb G1 and G2 (and others) to the PC.

Edited October 5 by Phantom711

[Phantom711]

I think this is probably the way you want to go:

 

[sleighzy]

Another really good one by the Warthog Project guy as well. 

 

[Desert Drydock]

On 10/5/2025 at 1:52 AM, Phantom711 said:

@Desert Drydock

I still think you got caught up between different terms here.

Metas own Mixed Reality does not work with PCVR. Doesn‘t matter if you upgrade to Windows 11. 

I think the way people do get a Mixed Reality cockpit with their Quest3 is to use Virtual Desktop which allows passthrough of certain colors and Open Kneeboard to get that color in the desired shape into DCS.

There are videos on youtube about this.

but since you want to send the Q3S back anyways, go and get the regular Q3…pancake lenses are so much better.

EDIT: Oh and „Windows Mixed Reality“ has absolutely nothing to do with it. I was a program to link certain headsets like the HP Reverb G1 and G2 (and others) to the PC.

Yepper, I'm a FNG to the VR language... So you're telling me that I can create the Open Kneeboard passthrough with what I currently have here? I'm likely 4-6 months out on the new PC build because I have a lot of dollar$ tied up in another project which is taking up my toy money for a while. I purchased the Q3S just to try it out and get back to my beloved carrier ops which will revert back to training. Catching a three wire isn't like riding a bike, so I'm sure I'm really rusty...

The Warthog Project videos, like sleighzy's above post are what alerted me to the "mixed reality" features now available. The first one I watched a couple weeks ago caused me to wet myself and vapor lock. Then hating myself for committing to so much money with my current project. So I decided that I would try the Q3S with its lower resolution that my nine year old PC build may handle it just well enough if I stay at sea and keep a clean deck on the CVN. In all reality this old PC will likely surprise me, it smokes on F1 24. I fully planned on getting the Q3 after the new PC build anyway. So if the Q3S will run the Open Kneeboard passthrough, I'll just keep it and resume training in the interim.

A P.S. note, I'm sure you can see how a FNG might get cross threaded on the terminology when first being introduced by a video that calls it "mixed reality" but I really appreciate the clarification!

Edited October 6 by Desert Drydock
bad grammar, unnecessary information

[Desert Drydock]

8 hours ago, sleighzy said:

Another really good one by the Warthog Project guy as well. 

 

The Warthog Project videos were what lit my fuse a couple weeks ago. In a couple of his videos he says "What a time to be alive!", I couldn't agree more although my list of reasons go way beyond VR, but VR is certainly one of em. Like I said previously I'm a CAD artist so I plan on taking a series of screen shots of the DCS F/A-18C cockpit. Then using the best one as a CAD background to create my overlay picture for an outline trace. Once created it can be scaled in either direction to make a perfect fit to the DCS cockpit and tightly match the physical panel. This way I can keep the lower panels with the analog gauges and RWR on the right and the engine monitor, fuel quantity indicator and so on, on the left. I also already have most of the switches/levers for the forward side panels, hook, LG, wing fold, ect. I'll just carve them out of the image in the shape of the placard panels. I'm also pretty sure I can omit the pink boundary line by switching the overlay picture to a two color map then reintroduce it to a color layer and hoping its not a quirk of Open Kneeboard..

What a time to be alive!..

 

[sleighzy]

55 minutes ago, Desert Drydock said:

I'm also pretty sure I can omit the pink boundary line by switching the overlay picture to a two color map then reintroduce it to a color layer and hoping its not a quirk of Open Kneeboard..

Let us know how you get on. Think that yes this is a "quirk" of OpenKneeboard. I'll dig up the thread that has been had on this before in the OpenKneeboard Discord (or other location where I've seen this discussed).

[Phantom711]

@Desert Drydock @sleighzy I think the pink outline is simply a side effect of how the whole passthrough works ATM. You are telling virtual desktop, that it should show the passthrough where ever the PCVR stream has a certain color (i.e. pink). So I‘m not sure you can get rid of the pink outline.

Another thought I had on this was to „simply“ create an alternative cockpit for the Hornet where you would just make the relevant parts show up in pink (i.e. UFC, DDIs and AMPCD). That would save you the CAD work because those textures are already on the correctly shaped polygones.

Just thoughts and very theoretical in nature…the passthrough of my QuestPro is not good enough to jump into that adventure.

[Desert Drydock]

20 hours ago, sleighzy said:

Let us know how you get on. Think that yes this is a "quirk" of OpenKneeboard. I'll dig up the thread that has been had on this before in the OpenKneeboard Discord (or other location where I've seen this discussed).

I'll update once I get it up and working.

[Desert Drydock]

On 10/5/2025 at 1:55 PM, Phantom711 said:

Another thought I had on this was to „simply“ create an alternative cockpit for the Hornet where you would just make the relevant parts show up in pink (i.e. UFC, DDIs and AMPCD). That would save you the CAD work because those textures are already on the correctly shaped polygones.

That's basically what I plan on doing but after doing CAD for over 25 years I think in CAD. Making the outline trace won't take me long. I've made a lot of F-18 cockpits over the years going back to my first full creation of an F/A-18C for FS2K. Having a properly scaled map will make it much easier to add further switch panels. The whole issue with doing it is figuring out how to correct the pink border because it would suck to have a pink line around all the physical panels. I'm certain the OpenKneeboard creator is seeing where their software is headed and looking to correct it. If not, eventually someone will create the software that will allow a more seamless transition. 

On another note, I finally got into DCS with my Q3S... I've been too busy the past few daze and couldn't mess with it but brought everything together yesterday afternoon.  So I have an off topic question for you @Phantom711 I've looked around for a while but can't find out how to setup voice coms with ATC and the LSO. Will you point me in the right direction? Googleing DCS voice commands just sends me to endless in game voice chat links and Voice Attack links. 

[sleighzy]

3 hours ago, Desert Drydock said:

That's basically what I plan on doing but after doing CAD for over 25 years I think in CAD. Making the outline trace won't take me long. I've made a lot of F-18 cockpits over the years going back to my first full creation of an F/A-18C for FS2K. Having a properly scaled map will make it much easier to add further switch panels. The whole issue with doing it is figuring out how to correct the pink border because it would suck to have a pink line around all the physical panels. I'm certain the OpenKneeboard creator is seeing where their software is headed and looking to correct it. If not, eventually someone will create the software that will allow a more seamless transition. 

On another note, I finally got into DCS with my Q3S... I've been too busy the past few daze and couldn't mess with it but brought everything together yesterday afternoon.  So I have an off topic question for you @Phantom711 I've looked around for a while but can't find out how to setup voice coms with ATC and the LSO. Will you point me in the right direction? Googleing DCS voice commands just sends me to endless in game voice chat links and Voice Attack links. 

You want Vaicom. It’s a VoiceAttack plugin and application that directly interfaces with DCS. Removes the need for the radio menus as it uses DCS APIs instead.

https://github.com/Penecruz/VAICOM-Community

 

[Desert Drydock]

Thanks sleighzy that's exactly what I was looking for. I just watched AnyTimeBaby's  videos on installation, setup and use.

4 hours ago, sleighzy said:

Removes the need for the radio menus as it uses DCS APIs instead

Wow! Much better then I could have imagined...

[MAXsenna]

Thanks sleighzy that's exactly what I was looking for. I just watched AnyTimeBaby's  videos on installation, setup and use.
Wow! Much better then I could have imagined...

As a happy VAICOM user for the past six years, if you have questions ask here in the forum under input\VAICOM,
and/or join the Discord.
There are lots of extra stuff you can do with VoiceAttack/VAICOM, like say "gear up", and it can trigger the correct keybind sequence depending on the modules you're in. You can also have different TX/PTT buttons per module.
Word of note! Tracks WILL be broken!

Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Desert Drydock]

On 10/13/2025 at 9:48 PM, MAXsenna said:

As a happy VAICOM user for the past six years, if you have questions ask here in the forum under input\VAICOM,
and/or join the Discord.
There are lots of extra stuff you can do with VoiceAttack/VAICOM, like say "gear up", and it can trigger the correct keybind sequence depending on the modules you're in. You can also have different TX/PTT buttons per module.
Word of note! Tracks WILL be broken!

Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk
 

Thank you MAXsenna, it looks awesome!  I'm still in the process of setting up as time allows and haven't even downloaded it yet. I'm currently trying to figure out why I'm getting flashing in my headset with some missions. If I can't find an answer soon I will start a new post on it because I can't be the only one experiencing this...

[MAXsenna]

Thank you MAXsenna, it looks awesome!  I'm still in the process of setting up as time allows and haven't even downloaded it yet. I'm currently trying to figure out why I'm getting flashing in my headset with some missions. If I can't find an answer soon I will start a new post on it because I can't be the only one experiencing this...

Best of luck! Can't help you with that issue!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk