First let me address the elephant in the room, as of writing this it does not violate the FB/Oculus terms of service to use the consumer Quest for commercial use. It may well change as it has done in the past, so it is not without risk. I certainly would not recommend using Quest (or any other standalone headset) if you are not comfortable with troubleshooting tech and especially wireless networks.
Here are links to the Oculus ToS which cover commercial use of their consumer products (i.e. not for the Oculus for Business headsets which have their own ToS):
https://www.oculus.com/legal/oculus-commercial-terms/
https://www.oculus.com/legal/terms-of-service/
https://www.facebook.com/terms/
With that out of the way, I’ve been using six Quest 2 headsets very successfully in my arcade for several months now, and planning to expand it to ten soon.
These six headsets are running Virtual Desktop, which I got permission to use directly from the creator Guy Godin. I suggest everyone else do the same if they want to use it, or you could use Oculus Link or Air Link, but Virtual Desktop offers far more flexibility which you need for an arcade setup. You’ll need to buy the Quest version through the Oculus store and install the PC streamer app from their website.
In this way, I am able to offer all the same licensed PC VR games I already had, as well as the SpringboardVR launcher which runs fine over VD.
Onto the tips. First, you’ll need to spend a few extra hundred dollars to get accessories for the Quest 2 to make it arcade ready.
Get some leather or silicone VR Covers for the facepad, and I’d highly recommend 3D printed adapters from ‘Business Company VR’ so you can attach the HTC Vive Deluxe Audio Strap (with a leather VR Cover on the back), to make it much easier getting customers into the headset and better audio.
Also get the AMVR lens protector rings for glasses-wearers, and VR Cover lens covers to protect them from the sun. Finally, you’ll need a 10,000mAh battery to attach to the back of the head-strap (I just use velcro straps and dots to secure it), which combined with the onboard battery will get you about 6-7 hours from a full charge. Since it’s secured with velcro, it’s easy to swap out for a fresh battery if you need it to go longer.
Make sure the batteries are 3amp 18w with quick charge power delivery or they won’t be fast enough to play and charge the headset, these can be somewhat difficult to find and/or more expensive. I also like the ones with a full LED readout of the remaining charge percentage since most only come with 4 little LED lights and you have to guess to the closest 25%. You’ll want a 15cm charging cable with a 90degree L-shape USB-C adapter for the perfect cable length (see my attached photos).
For the controllers, get the white halo ring protectors from VR Cover, and any cheap silicone grips will work for added texture to avoid slipping.
On the software side, once you’ve got the basic Virtual Desktop system setup on the Quest and your PC, you should be able to connect 3 Quests per router without noticeable lag. I have mine on 90mb/s bitrate and the picture quality vs latency is decent for any game I throw at it. Use the performance overlay in VD to test your setup with the games, if any of the data goes high into orange numbers, then it will start to lag.
I’m also using the 80fps mode in VD since higher FPS will cause a huge drain on your battery life. I haven’t tested it as much to be sure but 90FPS drained it around 30-40% faster.
Use ‘stage tracking’ in VD so the front of your play areas don’t rotate every time the headset boots from idle.
On the PC side of the software, un-check auto bitrate, check use the virtual audio driver, and leave the rest on default or change to your taste either way. You can use H.264 or HVEC or auto, I didn’t notice much of a difference so I left it on auto.
On your routers, make sure they are connected to your PCs with an ethernet cable. This is crucial. Then make sure you are using 80mhz connection, this is the most stable with Quests connecting to the WiFi, even compared to WiFi 6 routers which can use 160mhz. Just use 80mhz. Take the WiFi channel off ‘auto’ and select a frequency which isn’t being used by others in your area (use inSSIDer to check this, a free PC app). If you use multiple routers (for more than 3 headsets) set their channels far apart from each other. Obviously this is all with 5Ghz WiFi, don’t even bother if you only have 2.4Ghz.
VD gets updated every few weeks so make sure you get in early to check for updates and connect it to your PCs to be sure. You don’t want to have customers waiting while you do the updates! Just today Guy added SSW (Synchronous Space Warp) to VD which looks amazing. Couple weeks ago he added ‘phase sync’ which improved the latency massively for me. The updates are always well worth it.
You’ll find that when the headsets go idle after running SteamVR for a bit, when you boot it up and put it on a customer they will likely find themselves looking at the ‘big picture’ or ‘desktop’ mode. A quick way to get them into VR mode is to quickly double-click the left hand menu button. It might take a few tries. If you can see the mouse moving when the controller moves, it is still in the desktop mode. It’s a workaround, but not too difficult to perform.
There is a possible fix for this using some custom scripting which I’m going to test this weekend and will update this post if it works well enough.
Onto the games. VD tricks SteamVR into thinking the Quest is a Rift, and unfortunately many games don’t properly support Rift controls despite Quest now being the most popular SteamVR capable headset (looking at you in particular SkyfrontVR).
So you’ll need to adjust a lot of control mapping in SteamVR. I’ve published several of mine on the Steam workshop so if you open the SteamVR settings while in-game and open the control mapping settings, select change to a different profile (or whatever that setting is called) and look for the profile made by VRClub.Player5 or VRClub.Player6 those ones are from me.
You’ll definitely need it for Skyfront since that game is completely broken with Quest/Rift (once a player changes weapon on their left hand they can’t go back to the thruster so they become unable to move). I made a workaround where you can’t change from the thruster in your left hand at all, and it works well enough. I tell customers that they “fly with your left hand, shoot with your right hand”.
Others I’ve made profiles for, of the top of my head:
Private Property
Sweet Escape
Job/Vacation Simulator
Rec Room
ABC Paint
For Batman Arkham VR you’ll need to use the WMR version of the game. Go to the game properties and enter the beta code WMR4BatmanArkham then select that version from the Beta tab. There are custom profiles floating around the Steam forums for the standard version if you prefer that.
Finally, in the Quest settings, you can change the Oculus button on the right controller to be a long press to open the Home menu. Makes it much less likely customers will click it by accident to exit the setup. This does mean you also can’t change the front orientation easily (which is good you don’t want customers doing that), so if you do need to change the orientation, just close Springboard and click ‘reset standing position’ in the SteamVR menu (in the headset) and face forward.
That’s it! Let me know if you have any questions about my setup. I’m also running HeroZone which is what I want to do with the additional four headsets.
