What is the "Crash course" version of getting Unity working with Oculus Quest for development?

[DarkGryphon]

Hi.  I'm not new to Unity, but very new to both VR and Oculus Quest.

I've tried various "setup guides" from the developer help sections on oculus developer site.  Mostly I just crash Unity, or don't understand how to use any of the intergrations, or they complain messages about needing XR this or that (it's all greek to me) OR even better they tell me NOT to use X or Y with them even when the guide says to install them into Unity.  There are too many ways to interpret "installing X", and no screenshots to guide me on what it's supposed to look like.

What is the idiot proof way to go from a blank scene and unity project, to something that I can drop into my headset and look around with controller tracking?  (In other words, the bare bones classic "empty scene but works" setup.)  I gather the quest uses apk files to install applications, I have side loading setup from a player standpoint with some sidequest apps to play, but I can't seem to understand how to get the headset working INSIDE Unity, or how to get my own unity stuff to play on the headset.

Having 0 experience with the tools, I don't know if things like the Play button are supposed to be working, or if the oculus link software needs to be running, basically I don't know anything.  A lot of the guides say to "install X" but don't explain or show what is supposed to be happening.  I'm completely lost where to begin getting this working, or if it's supposed to be working with my setup at all.

I am on a Aspire V17 Nitro Black Edition Laptop, with usb 3.0, a link cable, a Quest headset and controllers, and a NVIDIA GTX 960m graphics card.  The default Oculus software of course says my card is too far behind to play any games over link and won't set that up properly.  I'm ignoring that since I am trying to develop things using Unity anyway, and am well aware that my computer is on the bleeding edge of "barely supported".  It's all I have to work with though.

[DarkGryphon]

I managed to get some kind of apk installed to the device using Build and Run, but it just crashes on bootup with endless three dots loading.

My project is currently an unholy mix of the oculus store package, the XR manager plugin, the oculus XR plugin, and then manually selecting the device in the Unity build targets window.  (All installed in that order, with "yes" to whatever "we recommend removing X" popups the XR plugins said to do.)  So I'm not surprised the application crashes given my "train wreck" approach.  But at least I can rest assured the cables and hardware push to device work?

I think I'll close all this down for now and go play some games.  I would appreciate any help in understanding how this all is supposed to work. 🙂

[freqout]

if you are planning to use the XR Management plugin, maybe just avoid the Oculus XR plugin altogether? That's how I have one project configured.

and then i have another where i'm experimenting with hand tracking and in that one i've forgone the XR management system and i'm only using the Oculus asset store package.

[DarkGryphon]

Thank you for the info, I think that clears some of my confusion up!

So either do XR Management method, OR do the asset store package from oculus.  I'll give that a go this week and see if I can get something productive up and running.

What are the benifits/features of each method?  A lot of Unity documentation says the XR manager is the "new, supported" kit, but I don't know how important that is in a practical developer sense for a solo/small team dev.

The latest Unity (from unity launcher) also has check boxes for VR and oculus in the unity settings menus, which get disabled when XR is installed.  So are there currently 3 kits floating around? Oculus Unity store package, XR, and presumably the older "built in" Unity kit?

I might have another unrelated/related issue going on here, in that the official Oculus application won't let me run anything over the cable.  I think that's because my graphics card is one model number below what they set the "minimum requirements" to.  Not sure if being unable to set that up might break things.  I can build to the device, so I think I'll just be unable to test the "link" functions.

Unity/Oculus documentation is not clear what state the "play/user" side of the developer's setup should be in.  Should Oculus drivers be installed, for example?  Does the setup for the store and Link through the desktop Oculus application need to be completed first?  Or is Unity it's own thing instead?  None of this is explained or mentioned in the documentation from what I could find.

[GameLoverBoi]

I recommend the Unity XR plugin (other than any others, here's one example) if you want to release it for more than Oculus Quest (Like Oculus Rift or other brands) you can and very easily and I like how it doesn't change its system every five seconds (unlike something else). Using only one XR plugin (Unity's one probably) is perfect, more than that and you got yourself a mess of "Should I use Unity's tracking system or models or the Oculus tracking system or models?! etc" 

Basically the upsides for Unitys XR plugin is that you can publish it more to just Oculus headsets, doesn't change its system that much, has simple easy settings, and LOTS of pre-made XR scripts that WILL be VERY useful and easy!

The upside to the Oculus one is Its made from Oculus and that's it really it

I'm currently following Valems tutorial which is the only good, up to date VR tutorial I could find youtube com/watch?v=gGYtahQjmWQ&t and it uses Unity's XR plugin if you want to learn how to use it alone.

[ArcticSeascape]

Yeah I can second Valem's tutorial. They have helped me out a lot!