The Oculus Quest has been my daily driver for standalone VR ever since its release. I wanted to share my personal experiences and things that I do to get the most out of the headset. Here are 20 tips & tricks for new users (and maybe even a few for seasoned Questers). Cas & Chary Present Cas and Chary VR is a YouTube channel hosted by Netherland-based duo Casandra Vuong and Chary Keijzer who have been documenting their VR journeys since 2016. They share a curated selection of their content with extra insights for the Road to VR audience. https://youtu.be/XxIni9hWp8c 1. Comfort The Oculus Quest can be front heavy for many. It may sound like a no-brainer, but we see people wearing headsets like Quest sub-optimally all the time. Before you research any comfort accessories, let's make sure you’ve got the right approach to fitting the headset. This is how I do it: First, loosen the top velcro. Then make sure the back strap is low and cradles the base of your head. Ideally, the headset should be primarily supported by a good on the mound of the back of the head, with the headset’s weight supported by the top strap, so tighten the top strap once you fit that fit on the back of your head. Only after you’ve done the above should you adjust the side straps while moving the headset up and down until the visuals look clear. If you rely too much on tightening the side straps for a ‘grip like’ fit between your face and the back of your head, you’re in for discomfort. Again, the top strap should be doing most of the lifting, while the side straps should only be as tight as necessary to keep the headset from moving out of place. 2. Comfort Mods & Accessories If tip #1 doesn’t help, then you can buy comfort accessories or make one yourself. Here are two free DIY comfort comfort mod ideas: Counterweight: Tape something heavy together like a pair of AA batteries. Then use Velcro or anything else you have laying around to attach it to the back of the headset. A power bank can be a good choice too because it doubles as weight and extra battery for your headset. Use your hair (if it's long): Tie your hair in a ponytail and put it through the hole of the headset. Your ponytail will act as a counterweight. [irp posts="93377" name="5 Oculus Quest Hardware Mods for Better Comfort"] 3. Measure and Set Your IPD IPD is short for interpupillary distance; this is the distance between the centers of the pupils of your eyes. You can use the IPD slider at the bottom of the headset to move the lenses to match your IPD. If you don’t do this, your visuals will be blurry, and will likely make using the headset less comfortable. You can use apps on your phone or online to measure your IPD but I prefer easily measuring it with a ruler in front of a mirror. Just align the end of the ruler to one eye, then close that eye and look out the other; the number directly underneath the second eye is your IPD. Ideally this is done with a milimeter ruler, but you can easily convert from inches to milimeters online. [irp posts="95607" name="How to Measure Your IPD and Why It's Important for VR & AR Headsets"] If you wear glasses, your eye doctor will most likely have your exact IPD number. You can request it or go for another eye check. You can also skip direct measurement and estimate it by just using the slider. Put on the headset and look at something sharp and well defined (like text). Close one eye and look at the text directly through the center of the lens. Move the slider back and forth until you find where the sharpest position is. This should put you in the ballpark of your IPD, but a direct measurement will be more reliable and accurate. Use the included lanyards in the box and make sure to wear them every time you play to prevent throwing your controllers away when you are fully immersed in a game. You may think you’d never be foolish enough to really throw your controller when throwing something in the game, but natural reflexes and muscle memory can easily override conscious thought, especially when you’re deeply immersed. And you’d be far from the first… even I’ve thrown a controller before! 5. Optimal Tracking The Oculus Quest tracking should work well out of the box, but if you’re having issues, here’s some things to consider. Quest looks for clusters of small invisible infrared lights on the ring of the controllers to understand where they are. If you’re having trouble with controller tracking, make sure that your play space doesn’t have any clusters of small lights that might look like the tracking dots to the headset. That could include a mirror (which would reflect the controller’s own tracking lights), a chandelier, or holiday string lights. The headset also tracks its own position by looking at the room around you. It needs to be able to make out features in the room, which means if it’s too bright or too dark tracking may not work well. As a rough gauge, Oculus says Quest can track well if a room is bright enough to comfortably read a book. The easiest way to tell how well Quest can see the environment is to turn on the ‘pass-through’ view which shows you what the world looks like through the headset’s eyes. If you turn on the pass-through view and you can easily make out your room, the headset should have plenty of light. In rare cases it’s possible for it to be too bright, but generally that would take a bright sunny day (or a bright sunny way seen through a window). While a single overexposed (blown out) window in your room shouldn’t be an issue, the more visible area the headset can see, the better (so closing your blinds could help). [irp posts="89349" name="Here's What Facebook Says About Camera Privacy on Quest & Rift S"] The tracking system also works better when there’s clear shapes in the room around you. So if you somehow find yourself playing in a room with no furniture, flat lighting, and white walls, you might see tracking issues. The same could happen if you’re a streamer planning to use a green-screen room. 6. Playing in the Dark If for some reason you really want to be able to play Quest in a dark area, you can use an infrared illuminator to ‘light’ the area with infrared light (which the headset uses to track) while keeping the area dark in the visible spectrum.I haven’t tried this method myself yet, but it seems fun for outside play at night. 7. Playspace Ok, now you should also figure out your playspace. The recommended space of 2 x 2 meters is good enough for most games, but the bigger the area you have, the better. If you have only a small area, get a floormat or cut up a yoga mat and put it at the center of your playspace. Tape something like a bottle cap on it so that you can feel where your ‘front’ position is. If you step too far you’ll feel yourself stepping off of the mat and know to move back to the center. We are using a Proximat, which is built with VR users in mind, but it’s a little more expensive. 8. Motion Sickness Motion sickness is probably the number one cause that scares people away from VR, which is a shame as, from personal experience VR is generally very comfortable, but some games you’ll come across have intense motion that could make you dizzy. If you pay attention to these tips however, you’ll avoid risking motion sickness and you may even become less sensitive to it with practice. Ease yourself into it. Pay attention to the ‘Comfort Level’ of apps and games as listed on their Oculus store page. Though it might be tempting, don’t start with games like rollercoaster simulators! Just like real-life rollercoasters can cause motion sickness, VR coasters can too. Start simpler and try those later. Games which have no ‘virtual’ movement will be the most comfortable—the ones where you physically move around your playspace to navigate. Beat Saber, and Superhot VR are among many great Quest games with no virtual movement. There’s a free demo available on the store for both games so you can try before you buy! Also, don’t push yourself. If you start to feel nauseous or uncomfortable, stop playing for a while. ‘Pushing through it’ doesn’t work; quitting while you're ahead is always the best choice when it comes to motion sickness. If you still feel off after taking a break, try drinking ginger tea and get back into the headset only after you feel better again. 9. Use Your Body to Play So this is a tip that you might forget about once you are used to games that use artificial motion with your joystick. People tend to forget to use their real-life bodies when in VR even though their playspace is big enough for them to move around. For example, sometimes you are standing near a virtual table, but not quite close enough to reach an item on it. Your first instinct might be just to use your joystick to get closer, but don’t forget that you can simply take a step forward in the real world to get closer. The same goes for ducking and crouching. It’s much more fun to crouch for real than with a button. Moving ‘for real’ helps prevent motion sickness too (and makes games more immersive). 10. Controller Grip When you play a movement-intensive game like Beat Saber you might notice the battery covers of your controllers occasionally sliding off depending upon how you grip. Some people find that very annoying, so if you want to get rid of that, a little bit of tape can help. Or you can get one of the Mamut Grip accessories. 11. Settings Oculus Quest has gotten many updates since launch. Significant updates, for example, added support for hand-tracking and Oculus Link. Improvements keep coming, so it’s worth it to check what's changed every so often. Check your software version by going to ‘Settings’ and then ‘About’; you may even have an update available that you haven’t gotten yet. Then you can scroll through the settings and check if there’s something that you would find handy. Also check the ‘Experimental’ section of the settings for a look at some early test features. 12. Oculus Store & Game Tips The Oculus Store has sales every so often on games too. If you’re sure you are buying a Quest, then it might be worth it to check the offers even before you got your Quest. If you’ve ever bought any games for Oculus PC, then it is also worth it to check the Oculus Cross-buy Apps list. These are games you only need to buy once and will be available on both PC and Quest. It’s probably also good to know that the Oculus Store has an excellent refund policy. If you find a game isn’t for you, you can refund it if you played for less than two hours and make the request within 14 days. You can initiate your request through your purchase history page. Continue on Page 2: PC VR Games on Quest with Oculus Link 13. Play PC VR Games with Oculus Link One of the best things about the Quest is that you can play PC VR games too if you have a decent gaming PC. The most stable and easiest method to get started with this is using Oculus Link. This is a software update that was added after the Quest released and allows you to use most USB 3 (and some USB 2) cables to play PC VR games. You can even use the charging cable that comes with Quest. [irp posts="94326" name="You Can Get a 26 Foot Oculus Link Cable for $34 With an Active Extender"] All you have to do is connect the Quest using a compatible cable to your gaming PC with the Oculus PC app installed and turned on. It should be recognized immediately. A pop-up inside the headset will ask you if you want to turn on Oculus Link. If that doesn’t work, you can just go into ‘Settings’ on Quest and turn it on from there. If you plan on playing wired, you can make things more comfortable by using velcro to fasten the cable to the Quest head-strap so it falls at behind your back instead of hanging straight down in front of you. 14. Streaming PC VR Content Wirelessly You can also stream PC VR content wirelessly if you have a good 5Ghz WiFi connection. You can use the free app ALVR for that or you can use Virtual Desktop. The latter is my go-to as it works well. You can get it from the Oculus Store for $20. You do need to sideload a Virtual Desktop patch for this to work, which you can get it from SideQuest. 15. Stream Gameplay to Show Friends & Family You can stream your gameplay to a Chromecast or to your phone by tapping on the stream-icon at the top right in the Oculus smartphone app. Tap on the stream screen on your phone for options that are handy for showing off the headset to newcomers; you can do things like recenter the headset’s view and even launch apps remotely. 16. Battery & Charging Quest’s full charge lasts for about two hours of use. You can extend this with a power bank (ideally small enough to mount on the back strap as a counterweight or you can attach it on a belt or put it in a fanny pack). Not every power bank will work though, you need one with enough power delivery. The one I use is an Anker PowerCore Speed 20000. As for the controllers, definitely get rechargeable batteries to save yourself money in the long run. I have four rechargeables, which means I always have two spare ones fully charged so I can switch to them anytime. If you’re really trying to squeeze every ounce of power out of your controllers, you could remove the batteries when you’re not playing to avoid passive draining. 17. Turning Off & Storage One thing that helps against the battery draining is to turn off your headset all the way when you’re done with it. A lot of people leave it on sleep mode which is convenient, but if you know you’ll be away from power for a while (like packing up Quest to take to a friend’s house or on a trip), turning off the headset will extend the battery life significantly. You don’t even need to put on your headset to turn it off, just hold the power off button and wait until you hear the turning-off sound. And when you store the headset? Make sure to never expose your lenses to direct sunlight or the Sun could damage your screen. So don’t place it near a window that doesn’t have curtains. 18. Cleaning For your lenses, Oculus recommends to never use any liquid or chemical cleaners. Use a dry microfiber lens cloth instead and gently wipe the lens in a circular motion moving outwards. And if you’re getting sweaty while working out in the headset, consider a silicone or leather face pad. I’ve been using ones from VRCover and they work great. Much easier to clean as they won’t absorb sweat and you can wipe them with anti-bacterial wipes after each use. [irp posts="93819" name="Cas & Chary Present: Why Working Out in VR is Game-changing"] 19. Prescription Lens Adapters This tip is for those that wear glasses. You can get special snap-on lenses for your exact glasses prescription from WidmoVR. We use these and they’re excellent quality. 20. WebXR Experiences There are a lot of free WebXR experiences to try out on your Oculus Quest and they work without the need to install an app. All you need is the built-in Oculus browser and a link. Try it out by navigating to a link like XRswim.com which will point you to WebXR experiences to try. If you’re interested, I made a video with a couple of WebXR game and app recommendations. - - — - - And those were my tips! I hope these tips help you out and that it makes your VR experience with the Oculus Quest more fun. Are there some great tips we missed? Let us know in the comments below!