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BeatOn: Pure modding magic comes to Beat Saber on the Oculus Quest

UPDATE: BeatOn has been replaced with BMBF. Follow this tutorial to install instead:

How To Install Custom Songs On Your Quest

or

 

The Following is outdated and available only for archive purposes:

 


 

After months of blood, sweat and tears, emulamer has created a revolutionary new way of modding the Quest version of Beat Saber.

Introducing BeatOn!

BeatOn is a beautiful new Quest app that lets you download & install new Beat Saber maps, sabers and mods without needing a computer!

 

How To Install BeatOn

  1. To get started, first make sure that you have the latest version of SideQuestScreen Shot 2019-07-12 at 12.10.43 PM
    You can refer to either

    or

    or

    to get SideQuest setup with your Quest if you haven’t already.

  2. Next, click on the BeatOn button at the top of SideQuest
    Screen Shot 2019-07-12 at 12.11.41 PM.jpgAnd toggle it to “on.” If you installed maps with SideQuest before, you will need to “reset BeatSaber” to start over fresh with BeatOn. SideQuest handles backing up of your scores, so you don’t have to worry about that.
  3. Once installed, you can put on your Quest and you’ll notice BeatOn in the TV section
    CleanShot 2019-07-12 at 12.15.29@2x.jpg
    Open it, and you can immediately start installing maps from bsaber.com by clicking on the “download” button of each song.CleanShot 2019-07-12 at 12.19.17@2x.jpg
  4. When you’re done downloading the maps that you want, you can then press the “Sync to Beat Saber” button at the top right

    CleanShot 2019-07-12 at 12.21.58@2x.jpg

  5. That’s it! You can then press the “Start BeatSaber” button or launch Beat Saber normally and you’ll find all your custom maps in the “custom songs” section. You can also go to the “playlists” section of BeatOn to manage songs into playlists.

NOTE: After installing BeatOn, you can still use SideQuest to download and organize your maps from your PC or Mac if you wish!

Screen Shot 2019-07-12 at 1.33.12 PM.jpg

In SideQuest, when you’re ready to sync your new maps, just press the “Sync To Beat On” button instead of the “Sync Songs” (the old SideQuest mod method).

Screen Shot 2019-07-12 at 1.37.33 PM.jpg

Mods & Saber Installing

All mods can be found from within SideQuest now by clicking on the “Mods” tab on the left side.

Screen Shot 2019-07-28 at 5.27.36 PM.jpg

Click on “More Info” on any mod and click “install”

Go here for a guide by RedBrumbler on how to make your own Saber for the Quest!

 

SyncSaber

Built into BeatOn and accessible on your Quest or through SideQuest is SyncSaber.

SyncSaber is the ultimate plugin for getting amazing new Beat Saber songs to play. It allows you to:

  1. Magically send any song from bsaber.com to your game with a single click of a button (and from any device, whether that’s from your phone, your work computer, the library, etc.)
  2. Follow mappers you enjoy and automatically have it download new maps of theirs when they release them
  3. Keep your songs up to date! If a mapper updates one of your maps, SyncSaber fetches the update and lets you play with the latest and greatest.
  4. Create playlists from your bsaber favorites to share with others.

Screen Shot 2019-07-28 at 1.12.31 PM.jpg

Screen Shot 2019-07-28 at 1.15.13 PM.jpg

Let us know if you have any issues! A lot more exciting things are coming to SideQuest and BeatOn soon, so stay tuned with updates this page!

 

Excellent BeatOn In-Depth Video Tutorial

 

 

Get Support In Our BSMG Discord

If you have any questions or need help, join our BSMG! We just open up a “Quest Modding” channel where you can get help.

CleanShot 2019-07-14 at 22.20.43@2x.jpg

https://discord.gg/beatsabermods

 

Interview With Emulamor

 

I met emulamer soon after I started to make progress with getting a proof-of-concept for custom songs working on the Quest. He came at just the right time as I was hitting a wall. We combined what we found so far, got a proof of concept working, then he took Quest modding infinitely farther with first making the mod installer SideQuest used. Now, with BeatOn, he’s created something just short of magical.

I got a chance to tap into his brilliant mind for a short interview:

Elliotttate – Amazing job with BeatOn! I never imagined that Quest modding would get this far and especially so soon. What’s been your motivation for working this hard on BeatOn?

Emulamor – Portable Beat Saber. And what’s Beat Saber without at least custom songs? Official custom songs code being stripped from the Quest version was a bummer and I almost returned the Quest to the store. Jumped on the BSMG on Discord and there was plenty of interest so figured I’d give it a go.

I got the first mod out in rough fashion, then decided to focus on the longer term goal of getting it running entirely on the Quest… the whole idea was “portable” after all. Mods and SideQuest integration were a natural fit, so thanks to lots of people’s work, it all came together.

Very cool! Yeah, portable Beat Saber really is a magical thing. If another game didn’t come out for the Quest, I’d still be happy with it for that alone. Was this your first VR headset?

Nope, I’ve been in since the DK1, then went the Vive route, then with the Index. The Quest is my first mobile headset, I haven’t bothered with any other portable ones (gearvr, Go, cardboard, etc.) because they seemed pretty bad compared to what you get on the PC.

Yeah, sometimes I worry Google Cardboard did more harm than good because their experience with it seems to be what they think all VR is like. The 6DOF is really a game changer for portable VR. In your opinion, how do you think it compares to PC based ones?

Tracking wise in Beat Saber (probably the most demanding game), somehow it’s 85-90% as good as lighthouse tracking, I.e. plenty good up through expert plus unless you’re seriously competitive. The graphics are obviously a big step down from PC, but they are down right amazing for a $400 all-in-one headset.

The Quest as a whole is a miracle of software/hardware engineering I don’t think most people appreciate. If I could arrange it, I would buy another Quest just to get it signed by the team that designed it and put it in a display case. Amazing work by Oculus.

I hate to say it, but the Quest is the future of mass-acceptance of VR. You can get it, take it wherever and put it on your face. That’s it. No wires, no expensive PC, no wires, no mounting things to the walls, no wires, no screwing around with drivers, and it’s wireless. I really, really hope PC VR doesn’t go anywhere because it is a significantly better experience overall (other than the wires), but the Quest is more than “good enough” for almost everything.

Yeah, I totally agree. What would you like to see for the future for Quest modding?

Root on the Quest would be nice ;). More realistically, better support from game devs on mods would make things like Beat On not even necessary. For Beat Saber specifically, the likely future of mods will be through hook/code injection mods. I don’t think I’m going to be the best person for the job, but the next major step will probably be building up a framework in C to make creating or porting mods from PC easier. The holy grail would be something that can compile/inject PC mods to the IL2CPP format the Quest uses.

Yeah, that could open up some really cool doors.

One mod that I thought might be fun for the Quest version of Beat Saber would be a “Pokemon Go” type mod where you could become the “king” of actual physical locations to take advantage of the Quests portableness.

Players could battle out in front of the Washington Monument and have its own leaderboard at that spot. Is there any Quest specific mods that you think would work really well that couldn’t be done on the wired PC version?

In general, as far as mods go or even just as a game feature (to be clear, this is extremely unlikely to ever happen with a beat saber mod on the quest): party multiplayer.

PC VR in any social setting is one person playing VR and everybody else sitting around wishing they were playing VR. With the Quest, there’s no reason (aside from bodily injury) multiple people in the same general space couldn’t be part of the same game.

They’re portable enough that your friend can just bring his over and you could both play, even if it’s just synchronized score competition, instead of somebody sitting around bored.

Yeah, that would be awesome! Beat Games announced that official multiplayer is coming (and still coming when someone recently asked about it) so I really hope that makes it to the Quest version if modding it in doesn’t happen first.

How can others help with making mods for the Quest?

In order of technical difficulty: Testing and feedback, looking into what’s possible with the current asset-replacing mod format in Beat On (e.g. model making and such), see if there’s a way you can contribute to the Beat On codebase (on github at https://github.com/emulamer/BeatOn) or furthering the C hook mod efforts.

Great! How can people give back that want to support your fantastic work?

If you want to toss me a donation for the work on Beat On I have a paypal link set up here, it would be much appreciated.

In general, get people interested in VR (especially with as portable as the Quest is) and don’t pirate apps: support the game devs that are investing in VR so they keep on investing in it!

Thanks for your time and thanks for all your hard work on BeatOn! Can’t wait to see what’s next!

Comments (45)
  1. Darek says:

    I actually have issue, I got stuck on step 3.
    After BeatOn deleted my Beat Saber and asked me to confirm installation of New Modded Beat Saber. Then it says please wait for past 35minutes..

    1. elliotttate says:

      Go ahead and reinstall it from you Quest and try again just by toggling the switch. Let me know how that works!

  2. Pikapika says:

    Loving it! Just did it about 45 min before this. I am having an issue though. When I go to sync to Beaton, it seems to hang in random jsons. I originally deleted the trouble tracks, but it keeps happening and never finished the list. Left it for 30 min to make sure I’m not nuts. Would love to resync since it would be tedious to re-add.

    Will syncsaber be moved over to quest?

  3. RedBrumbler says:

    don’t want to be intrusive, but We got a guide up for making custom sabers!
    https://github.com/RedBrumbler/BeatOnCustomSabers/blob/master/README.md

    Wish everyone luck who wants to try this!

  4. ShibeMan says:

    So, I can install beat saber, but when I get to the menu, it gives me and error saying “Something has gone wrong and Beat On can’t function. Try Reset Assets in the tools menu.” But I cant find reset assets.

    1. ShibeMan says:

      I restarted and now I’m not getting the error, but it’s stuck on loading config.

      1. elliotttate says:

        Can you try using the update that was released today?

      2. Jowwn says:

        J’ai le même problème. Avais-tu trouvé une solution?

      3. Jowwn says:

        I have the same problem. Did you find a solution?

  5. Anna says:

    im having trouble installing the mods? when i drag the files into sidequest it doesnt appear to do anything

    1. JBeat says:

      I downloaded one of their files (the KatanaV1.zip) but when I drag it over it says it’s an unrecgonised file.

      1. elliotttate says:

        If you could also look at the updated tutorial, it should direct you better where to drag the file to. Thanks!

    2. elliotttate says:

      If you look at the tutorial above, I updated it to make it more clear where you need to drag the mod to. Sorry about that!

  6. Ant says:

    Fresh installed Beat Saber and installed Beat On. Scores did not transfer, was I supposed to do something extra?

  7. Danny says:

    I got beat on to install. I then sync my old songs back via the old sidequest way and when i go to the TV app it wants to uninstall and reinsall beat on.

  8. InfernalSyndicate says:

    Have fresh installed this three times now and just keep getting 3 infinite loading dots. Tried it without even using any custom songs just the modded apk with no mods or songs and it still doesn’t launch.

    1. El Tigre says:

      I get this as well when I install via SideQuest or even when running it through the TV app and having BeatOn mod my copy of Beat Saber on the quest. When I go to boot up Beat Saber I get a dialogue box asking for permissions to my files, and then 3 loading dots that go on infinitely.

      My Quest version is 3.60.71.150513939, and I notice that I also don’t have a TV section in my Quest navigation menu, as in I have to go through my library to see the TV app. Is this a weird county thing perhaps? Anyone get this working in Canada?

      1. RoTaToR says:

        i also have not a tv button in my navigation menu! (germany)

        1. Die Dreizehn says:

          you can just go into your Library there is oculus TV as an app (geh einfach in die bibliothek da ist eine tv app drin
          )

  9. Tristan says:

    Love your work, but I’m having issues with making UI selections within the BeatOn app. I’m finding the interface unusable as it won’t register majority of my button presses making navigation impossible…

    Is there anything I can do to address this? Thanks

  10. Cameron says:

    i tried downloading the new sabers that you juxt posted to this page and now even my katana sabers that were working are broken. I cant get any of the sabers to work. i just get an assett error everytime i try to add them. What do i need to do to get them to work again?

  11. Hotdog374657 says:

    I can’t get BeatOn to work it keeps telling me to reset assets but I don’t know-how.

  12. Ryan says:

    Love the work, but my one issue is that when i sync my sidequest songs to beat on, my playlists don’t transfer, and the songs show up in one big list, forcing me to re organize them on the quest it self.

    1. Tiffany Mahr says:

      Same, having this problem as well it ignores my playlists and it ignores the alphabetical sorting I set on my pc and it’s a giant jumbled list, sad. Not to mention all scores are gone.

      1. Tiffany says:

        Also sigh for autocomplete printing name and these posts being uneditable lol

      2. Tiffany says:

        Sigh on auto complete fields and not being able to edit after. If a mod could delete my post then thanks lol

  13. Bryce says:

    I cannot get the custom sabers to work. I get a clear asset op error message when turning on or off any of them. The saber in game is just a rectangle.

  14. navin n says:

    Hey all. i just wanna say, great tutorial, very well made and very informative. However i do have one question if you are up for it. I want to install mods, but whenever i got get one from the beatmod repository and drag it into mods on BeatOn, it says it cannot read that file type. Ant help would be greatly appreciated

  15. Pikajew says:

    Would kill to see SyncSaber go live as a mod. Make everyone’s life easier <3

  16. jdmi3n says:

    Got everything working but now my beat saber says “casting not available “ when before i was able to cast to my chrome cast to tv.

  17. Akmal Salikhov says:

    Is it posisble to add custom platfroms to Oculus Quest?

    1. elliotttate says:

      At the moment, the custom platforms are fairly simple for the Quest. Keep checking back though, it shouldn’t be too long before we get those made.

  18. bneiderman says:

    I don’t see Syncsaber in newest Sidequest. Am I missing something? It says it is supposed to be there.

    1. elliotttate says:

      It’s actually in BeatOn, not SideQuest.

  19. Max B says:

    I just added beat on through sidequest, but i don’t have the TV menu on my quest : I can’t find bea ton when i have the headset o, even though sidequest tells me it’s installed. Onmy have set i have Home -> Libeary ->Store -> Browser -> Gallery -> Search.

  20. persason says:

    I dont’t have the TV section either in my oculus menu. Is it dependant on region? I can’t find beat on in the quest after I have installed it.

    1. elliotttate says:

      If you don’t see it, search the Oculus store for the TV and download it. It’s installed by default for most people, but if you’ve ever done a factory reset (or maybe there’s other cases), you’ll need to manually download it from the Oculus store.

  21. hiva says:

    Hello!!

    Thanks a lot for your contributions!

    Is there any way to adjust the vibration on my controllers? Turn it off completely or maybe adjust the intensity of it?

    Thanks!

  22. It doesn’t work! I can’t install any mod or custom song. Im stuck with the message “Loading configuration… depending on how many songs are loaded, Beat On may take 5-90 seconds to load…” and a red box saying “Critical Error: Something has gone wrong and Beat On can’t function. Try reset Assets in the tools menu.”, but there is no option like this.

    1. Peter Petrelli says:

      Go to the modding section of side quest, search “Beat on” and install latest.
      Then go to the side quest tv app and open beaton. follow the set up instructions.

  23. keith says:

    Ok so Beaton is not working at all and my modded beat saber won’t work either modded beat saber won’t open and when i open beat on nothing loads it just the little cloud sign with a bunch of messed up text were some of the buttons are nothing works when i click it it says to reset assets but how am i supposed to do that is the button that leads me to it isn’t even their also I have factory reset the headset redownloaded it many times and i still get the same error is it may be a faulty song but even so shouldn’t it just forget about it after restoring the headset and stuff and reinstalling it many times over im really freaking angry cause i had so much fun with moded beat saber but now nothing works please tell me theirs a way to fix it please i really love beat saber and all of its glory but its just not fun without custom songs

  24. SimpFJS says:

    Its not WORKING!
    Every time i try to start up Beat On it tells me that it had an error that i have to reset the assets but ive tried so many time and it wont work! Please Fix this i really wanna play custom songs again!

  25. CyborgVR says:

    I’m so psyched that BeatOn has been updated to work with the latest Beat Saber 1.3 release! Thanks to the whole team, for their ongoing INCREDIBLE work!

    A nitpick or two: Can this page (https://bsaber.com/beaton/) be updated to correct the typo in the very first section: “To update properly so that you don’t loose maps, playlists or scores, follow this guide here” … should be “… so that you don’t LOSE maps…” (improper use of loose/lose is a particular pet peeve of mine…).

    AND, I’d suggest making the “here” link (directing users to http://gg.gg/beatonupdate ) more obvious – or maybe just spelling out the URL directly? Upon first reading, it seems to be referring to “this page” rather than “a URL linked from this word”.

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