If you're like me, you got a Quest 3 and installed Oculus (called Meta now?) on your PC so that you could get it working. This used to be the only way to use Oculus headsets on your computer, however things have changed.

Truth is Oculus software is a leech, and to add to this, X-Plane only interfaces with Steam VR, which then has to interface with Oculus. So for me I had to run Oculus, then SteamVR , then X-Plane. See the problem? I had basically 3 layers going between X-Plane and my VR headset.
Additionally, I was using my headset without a cable so the information had to be streamed from my headset to computer wirelessly which has a cost in terms of latency and quality.

So information would go from Headset -> Airlink -> Oculus -> SteamVR -> X-Plane.

In the past I had searched for ways to not have to use Oculus software, but there weren't many paths available. However now that has changed! OpenXR is an open source way for VR devices to communicate with each other, and X-Plane supports it which means we can cut out at least one chain in the information link.

If you're worried this is going to be complicated, don't! It's actually incredibly easy.

The easiest way to bypass Oculus and greatly improve perfromance is as follows:
1. In your Quest 3 go to the store and install an application called Steam Link.
2. That's pretty much it. Steam Link will interface with SteamVR on your computer and if you're like me you'll see a ~300% boost in frame rate in X-Plane 12.
3. (Optional, but recommended) On your PC (if you want) uninstall Oculus. Note you may not wish to do this if you have games in your Oculus Library on your PC (note this is not the same as having them installed on your headset itself). If you don't uninstall Oculus may launch itself when you use Steam Link even though it is not needed and will still eat up some system resources until you manually close it.

I want to put a little footnote here just to say that now that OpenXR is a thing, SteamLink is just the tip of the ice berg. If for whatever reason you don't like SteamLink or can't use SteamVR there still may be other options that allow you to avoid Oculus.
Additionally if you want to use Oculus but not SteamVR you can theoretically do this, presuming you purchase X-Plane outside of Steam (via their website). Oculus I believe supports OpenXR so you could also attempt to cut out SteamVR instead. This may also be possible on steam but this guide won't cover how to do that.
In summary, there's lots of options now, but regardless of your preferences and setup X-Plane and other games will run much better with only ONE VR interface running at a time.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk™