Having tracking issues on your Quest 2? It might be your Christmas lights

Keep your room lights on and Christmas lights off while playing.

What you need to know

• Oculus Quest 2 owners have been reporting tracking issues since Holiday decorations went up.
• Turning off all Christmas lights or other illuminated Holiday decorations should solve any newfound tracking issues.
• This trick was solved with last year's Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S but seems to have cropped up again.

If you're an Oculus Quest 2 owners and have suddenly started having problems with controllers losing tracking, or have started seeing them move all on their own while playing VR, there's likely a very good explanation for it. Last year, right before Christmas, Oculus released a patch for the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S that helped it work much better in houses where Christmas lights are on while playing. Oddly enough, it seems this exact same issue is affecting Oculus Quest 2 units this Christmas.

The Oculus Quest 2 uses a visual tracking system, just like the original Quest and Rift S, which utilizes cameras on the headset to see infrared lights built into the controller. Some types of Christmas lights emit a spectrum of light similar to what the Oculus Quest 2's Oculus Touch controllers emit, causing confusion for the headset. Many players who have had these issues on Reddit and Twitter are reporting that turning off all holiday lights immediately alleviates the issue.

Why we're dealing with this problem after seeing it get solved last year is a little strange, but it's possible that Oculus never fully fixed the issue to begin with. The original solution for this problem worked by mapping the static lights along with the room space, so Christmas lights that wouldn't move (unlike your controllers) would effectively be ignored in the tracking process. It's not known yet if Oculus will be able to further solve the issue with another patch on the Quest 2 but, for now, turning off your Christmas lights should solve any tracking issues you might be having.

Oculus Quest 2

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