Popular Quest 2 PC Streaming Software Adds ‘Super Resolution’ Feature for Enhanced Visuals

Virtual Desktop has collaborated with Qualcomm to integrate the company’s Snapdragon Game Super Resolution, a software enhancement squarely targeted at increasing the wireless streaming quality and latency of PC visuals to Quest 2.

Virtual Desktop is a great tool not only because it provides Quest users wireless access to their computers, but because its developer, Guy Godin, is constantly adding in new features to tempt users away from using built-in solutions, i.e. Air Link.

That’s a tall order since Air Link is free and actually pretty great, letting Quest users connect to their VR-ready PCs to play games like Half-Life: Alyx, but Virtual Desktop goes a few steps further. With its PC native application developed for high quality wireless Quest streaming, you can do things like cycle through multiple physical monitors and even connect to up to four separate computers—a feature set you probably won’t see on the Air Link change log.

Now Godin has worked with Qualcomm to integrate the company’s Snapdragon Game Super Resolution for built-in upscaling, essentially creating higher resolution images from lower resolution inputs so it can be served up to Quest in higher fidelity. Check out the results below:

Because producing clearer visuals with fewer resources is the name of the game, Qualcomm says in a blog post that its techniques can also reduce wireless bandwidth, system pressure, memory, and provide power requirements.

Godin says in a Reddit post that the new upscaling works with “Potato, Low, Medium quality (up to 120fps) and High (up to 90fps), and it upscales to Ultra resolution under the hood. It can work with SSW enabled as well and doesn’t introduce any additional latency.”

You can get Virtual Desktop on Quest over at the Quest Store, priced at $20. It’s also available on Pico Neo 3 and Pico 4, which you can find in-headset over on the Pico Store.

PC VR Streaming Now Part of Virtual Desktop’s Official Oculus Quest App

Virtual Desktop

Guy Godin’s Virtual Desktop has been around since 2016, originally allowing PC users to use their computers in VR. In 2019 the app came to Oculus Quest allowing wireless PC streaming but the feature was subsequently removed. Now it’s back, officially through the Oculus Quest store with no sideloading required.

Virtual Desktop

That 2019 launch happened in May, it was in June that Facebook caused an uproar by requesting the feature be removed. With the community up in arms, the developer offered a workaround via a patch that needed to be sideloaded from SideQuest. Thus making the process more complicated than it needed to be.

He then submitted the app to Oculus’ new App Lab once that launched which would’ve made the process easier. Thankfully, even App Lab wasn’t needed as Godin announced the rollout today of Virtual Desktop 1.20, finally adding PC streaming as an official feature. So that means you can wirelessly stream your favourite PC VR titles like Half-Life: Alyx or Phasmophobia for example.

As for the other update additions in Virtual Desktop v1.20:

  • Added multi-account support in the Streamer app (Windows only for now)
  • Screenshots taken on your Quest while using Virtual Desktop are now automatically transferred to your desktop (Windows only for now)
  • Added voice-over for notifications
  • Added Wi-Fi speed information, runtime used by game and GPU name to the Performance Overlay
  • Changed Sliced Encoding and Microphone Passthrough to be enabled by default
Oculus Quest 2

Virtual Desktop is available through the Oculus Quest store for £14.99 GBP. Obviously, it should go without saying that you’ll need a VR-capable PC to run any of the awesome videogames you own (or want to buy) without the worry of a cable. And some decent WiFi without too many obstructions to ensure a smooth gameplay experience.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Virtual Desktop, reporting back with the latest updates.

Facebook’s Bosworth Discusses Store Restrictions And Virtual Desktop

In another one of his Instagram AMAs, Vice President of Augmented and Virtual Reality Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth discussed the status of Virtual Desktop’s pending App Lab submission and the requirements surrounding Oculus Store content.

Bosworth acknowledged the Virtual Desktop submission is still pending, but expanded a bit more on the context behind Oculus Store content.

Here’s a full transcription of what he said in response to a question on the status of Virtual Desktop’s App Lab submission:

“Yeah as you probably heard from Guy on Twitter, they’ve submitted the app for review. I actually don’t know the status of it yet but that’s still kind of ongoing so I don’t know that. But I do want to take this opportunity to address the broader thinking behind the store and App Lab and restrictions there.

Virtual reality is new and we want to take it mainstream. What we found is that people would try virtual reality once and if they had a bad experience, they would not be so easy to get back and try it again. So it was very important to us that when people tried virtual reality in Quest, they had a great experience.

I would say our approach appears to have paid off. Certainly relative to Go or Gear VR, we’re seeing a lot more return customers. Of course, it’s a better product, but it has a real cost – that means a lot of developers who had great content (which is doing very well, for example, on SideQuest) didn’t make it into the store, which sucks.

Developers are our life blood so, obviously having had a success, we feel like we’re in a good position with consumers [and] breaking mainstream, we’re now trying to release those constraints that we put in place, and the App Lab is just the first step in that path.

To bring this full circle, one of the challenges with Virtual Desktop is that we can’t know what your wi-fi connection is like or how it changes, and so we couldn’t guarantee a good experience, and that was why we had limitations on apps like this shipping in the store.”

While Virtual Desktop is available on the Oculus Store, a patch can be applied through sideloading and SideQuest that allows users with a strong local wi-fi connection to play PC VR games wirelessly on their Quest.  Developer Guy Godin has submitted this version of the app for App Lab approval, which would significantly lower the difficulty of installing the patch for users.

For more information on App Lab, check out our guide how to find and install App Lab apps.

Facebook Reviewing Virtual Desktop PC VR Streaming For Quest’s App Lab

Virtual Desktop developer Guy Godin submitted his wireless PC VR streaming patch to Facebook’s App Lab last week.

The patch to activate the feature is currently “under review” by Facebook, according to the developer, with hopes that the wireless PC VR streaming feature will see an easier path to installation for users.

According to Godin, more than 40,000 people every day use the feature in Virtual Desktop. All of those users had to jump through some hoops — like signing up as an Oculus developer — to play high fidelity PC VR games like Half-Life: Alyx wirelessly on Oculus Quest and Quest 2 via his paid Oculus Quest app. Distributing the feature through App Lab would make the process much easier for users and would likely reduce the amount of time Godin needs to devote to helping users troubleshoot their problems figuring out sideloading.

He outlined the feature’s review status in a pair of tweets:

Facebook forced the removal of the feature in 2019, shortly after Oculus Quest’s release, citing an effort to “deliver a consistent, comfortable experience to customers.” Godin then moved a patch for the application over to SideQuest that made it possible to enable the feature if they purchased the app from Facebook first.

While much-loved by many, the Virtual Desktop feature might provide inconsistent performance depending on a number of factors in a person’s home. It relies on your Wi-Fi network to stream a PC VR game from a Steam or Rift library to the Oculus Quest, for example, and if your Wi-Fi router isn’t top quality or there’s too many people using it at once or there isn’t a good line-of-sight to the router itself — some users might experience discomfort streaming PC VR games this way.

As Godin’s 40,000+ daily users figure suggests, however, there are still a lot of people using the feature daily despite the potential constraints. Facebook warns all App Lab users that applications available through the system “may include unknown issues relating to comfort, performance or other factors,” a warning that would seem to cover comfort concerns related to Virtual Desktop’s PC VR streaming.

Facebook is also working on its own PC VR wireless streaming solution, but details of the project are still unknown.

LIVESTREAM: Oculus Quest 2 PC VR Gameplay With Virtual Desktop At 90 Hz

For today’s livestream we’re playing a bunch of PC VR games on the Oculus Quest 2, showing off what’s possible with Virtual Desktop and SideQuest! If you’re curious about how we livestream the way we do then look no further than this handy guide for general tips and this guide specific to our Oculus Quest setup.


This week Facebook released Oculus Quest 2!

We’re going live with a variety gameplay livestream showing off some of the PC VR games you can play if you wirelessly connect the Oculus Quest 2 to a VR-ready PC. We’ve got Half-Life: Alyx, No Man’s Sky, and Skyrim all ready to go in VR alongside a number of other titles you could add to your Quest experience. You can of course also connect Quest to a PC with a USB 2 or newer cable for an Oculus Link wired connection, but be sure to tune in and we’ll have a full explanation and be able to answer questions about the differences between Virtual Desktop and Oculus Link.

Our Oculus Quest 2 gameplay livestream is planned to start at about 12:45 PM PT today and will last for around an hour or two, give or take. We’ll be hitting just our YouTube and we’ll be streaming from an Oculus Quest 2 via Chomecast and with colleagues in Discord chat to help with questions.

Oculus Quest 2 Q&A And PC VR Gameplay Livestream

In case you missed our native gameplay stream casting for more than two hours different games played completely standalone on Oculus Quest 2, you can watch that right here:

You can see lots of our past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist or even all livestreams here on UploadVR and various other gameplay highlights. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe to us on YouTube to stay up-to-date on gameplay videos, video reviews, live talk shows, interviews, and more original content!

And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely. Let’s get ready to go!

LIVESTREAM: Oculus Quest 2 PC VR Gameplay With Virtual Desktop At 90 Hz

For today’s livestream we’re playing a bunch of PC VR games on the Oculus Quest 2, showing off what’s possible with Virtual Desktop and SideQuest! If you’re curious about how we livestream the way we do then look no further than this handy guide for general tips and this guide specific to our Oculus Quest setup.


This week Facebook released Oculus Quest 2!

We’re going live with a variety gameplay livestream showing off some of the PC VR games you can play if you wirelessly connect the Oculus Quest 2 to a VR-ready PC. We’ve got Half-Life: Alyx, No Man’s Sky, and Skyrim all ready to go in VR alongside a number of other titles you could add to your Quest experience. You can of course also connect Quest to a PC with a USB 2 or newer cable for an Oculus Link wired connection, but be sure to tune in and we’ll have a full explanation and be able to answer questions about the differences between Virtual Desktop and Oculus Link.

Our Oculus Quest 2 gameplay livestream is planned to start at about 12:45 PM PT today and will last for around an hour or two, give or take. We’ll be hitting just our YouTube and we’ll be streaming from an Oculus Quest 2 via Chomecast and with colleagues in Discord chat to help with questions.

Oculus Quest 2 Q&A And PC VR Gameplay Livestream

In case you missed our native gameplay stream casting for more than two hours different games played completely standalone on Oculus Quest 2, you can watch that right here:

You can see lots of our past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist or even all livestreams here on UploadVR and various other gameplay highlights. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe to us on YouTube to stay up-to-date on gameplay videos, video reviews, live talk shows, interviews, and more original content!

And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely. Let’s get ready to go!

Virtual Desktop On Oculus Quest 2 Already Runs PC VR At 90 Hz

Virtual Desktop’s lone developer Guy Godin doesn’t have an Oculus Quest 2 yet. Nonetheless, the creator of one of Oculus Quest’s most downloaded pieces of software already enabled wireless PC VR streaming at 90 Hz on the upcoming headset.

More than two weeks before Facebook officially launches the headset on October 13 I’ve been in an Oculus Quest 2 Facebook sent me running an early version of Virtual Desktop from Godin. His software reported streaming the PC to my headset at 90 Hz both in regular desktop PC mode and while streaming PC VR games, with the latter reporting motion to photon latency as 26 milliseconds.

For those unfamiliar, the original Quest runs its visuals at up to 72 Hz while the Oculus Rift S operates at 80 Hz. The original Oculus Rift and Vive from 2016, however, both ran at 90 Hz for a fairly smooth visual experience. One of Oculus Quest 2’s most touted features is the ability to match that frame rate. Generally, the higher the frame rate that you see in VR the more solid and believable your virtual world is likely to appear to you.

Earlier today I asked Facebook about the rollout of the 90 Hz feature for Quest 2. A company representative explained the unit they sent me has 90 Hz enabled already and, at launch, buyers of Quest 2 will be able to use system software such as Home and the Browser at 90 Hz after turning it on in Experimental Features. It’ll be on by default later this year.

Facebook told me today it expects to open up the ability for developers to ship apps running at 90 Hz “soon after” Quest 2 launches. In addition, “we’ll soon ship the ability for users to select a refresh rate of 90Hz while using Oculus Link with Quest 2,” the Facebook representative explained in an email.

Oculus Link is Quest’s wired PC mode which compresses content to send it over a USB connection. Virtual Desktop, though, relies on existing Wi-Fi networks and Godin says he simply changed a line of code to enable PC VR content to run wirelessly at 90 Hz on Quest 2.

Wireless PC VR streaming is a much-loved feature among some Quest owners, and Facebook is working on its own wireless “Air Link” as well. The feature is a major point of contention at Facebook internally, however, because being subject to existing Wi-Fi networks might introduce discomfort for some Quest owners in some situations. Facebook, for example, won’t let Godin release the feature in the version of the app for Quest he sells through the Oculus store. Instead, he uses the sideloading service SideQuest to distribute a patch that enables the feature for people who want it.

Virtual Desktop On Oculus Quest 2 Already Runs PC VR At 90 Hz

Virtual Desktop’s lone developer Guy Godin doesn’t have an Oculus Quest 2 yet. Nonetheless, the creator of one of Oculus Quest’s most downloaded pieces of software already enabled wireless PC VR streaming at 90 Hz on the upcoming headset.

More than two weeks before Facebook officially launches the headset on October 13 I’ve been in an Oculus Quest 2 Facebook sent me running an early version of Virtual Desktop from Godin. His software reported streaming the PC to my headset at 90 Hz both in regular desktop PC mode and while streaming PC VR games, with the latter reporting motion to photon latency as 26 milliseconds.

For those unfamiliar, the original Quest runs its visuals at up to 72 Hz while the Oculus Rift S operates at 80 Hz. The original Oculus Rift and Vive from 2016, however, both ran at 90 Hz for a fairly smooth visual experience. One of Oculus Quest 2’s most touted features is the ability to match that frame rate. Generally, the higher the frame rate that you see in VR the more solid and believable your virtual world is likely to appear to you.

Earlier today I asked Facebook about the rollout of the 90 Hz feature for Quest 2. A company representative explained the unit they sent me has 90 Hz enabled already and, at launch, buyers of Quest 2 will be able to use system software such as Home and the Browser at 90 Hz after turning it on in Experimental Features. It’ll be on by default later this year.

Facebook told me today it expects to open up the ability for developers to ship apps running at 90 Hz “soon after” Quest 2 launches. In addition, “we’ll soon ship the ability for users to select a refresh rate of 90Hz while using Oculus Link with Quest 2,” the Facebook representative explained in an email.

Oculus Link is Quest’s wired PC mode which compresses content to send it over a USB connection. Virtual Desktop, though, relies on existing Wi-Fi networks and Godin says he simply changed a line of code to enable PC VR content to run wirelessly at 90 Hz on Quest 2.

Wireless PC VR streaming is a much-loved feature among some Quest owners, and Facebook is working on its own wireless “Air Link” as well. The feature is a major point of contention at Facebook internally, however, because being subject to existing Wi-Fi networks might introduce discomfort for some Quest owners in some situations. Facebook, for example, won’t let Godin release the feature in the version of the app for Quest he sells through the Oculus store. Instead, he uses the sideloading service SideQuest to distribute a patch that enables the feature for people who want it.

Virtual Desktop Cleared $3 Million In Revenue On Oculus Quest Alone

We’ve got a big number to report from the sole developer of Virtual Desktop, Guy Godin. Today Godin told UploadVR he’s cleared $3 million in gross revenue (that’s before Facebook’s cut of sales) on just the Oculus Quest standalone headset.

The figure establishes his software, which allows owners to operate their entire PC in VR wirelessly, as one of the most successful on Quest. In May, Facebook said more than 10 titles cleared $2 million in revenue on Quest alone and named several games to the list.

When combined with Virtual Desktop’s availability on Steam, Oculus Go, and Rift, the figure establishes the utility as one of the most successful pieces of VR software ever developed primarily by a single person throughout its entire development cycle. Godin says he brought on some contractors from time to time to help primarily with art.

Virtual Desktop’s Wireless Connection

Last year, Godin slipped a feature into Virtual Desktop which allowed buyers to play PC VR games on Quest wirelessly. Facebook pressured Godin to remove the feature from his app, though, citing comfort concerns. The feature co-opts your existing Wi-Fi network to make the connection from PC to Quest, and that makes it vulnerable to congestion and other factors which could create comfort issues for some users. Godin worked around Facebook to offer a patch for Virtual Desktop through sideloading platform SideQuest. This allowed anybody who bought Virtual Desktop to still access the feature, and the release helped anchor SideQuest as a useful tool for lots of Quest owners. Godin rebuilt the feature and improved its implementation considerably over the course of the year. In recent weeks Godin even added hand tracking support to the software.

“I don’t have an exact number but I estimate about 90% of users have patched it through SideQuest,” explained Godin in a direct message, who says he doesn’t use any analytics software to track app usage. “I could be wrong however, just guessing based on the numbers provided by SideQuest and the amount of support/help questions I get; it’s always about the VR feature.”

Here’s an interview we did we Godin in February if you’d like to learn more about his journey:

The post Virtual Desktop Cleared $3 Million In Revenue On Oculus Quest Alone appeared first on UploadVR.

Virtual Desktop Adds Offline Support Over LAN Connections On Oculus Quest

A new beta release of Virtual Desktop adds an option that allows computer discovery when all devices are on a LAN connection that is offline and not connected to the internet. Previously, although Virtual Dekstop is run entirely over LAN, the network still needed to be online initially in order to find the host computer and begin Virtual Desktop streaming over LAN.

Virtual Desktop is available on the Oculus Quest Store, and allows you to control a remote streamed version of your computer while in VR. In addition, a sideloaded version of the app enables extra functionality, allowing you to wirelessly stream and play PC VR games from a computer to an Oculus Quest.

This change will apply to all of Virtual Desktop, allowing you to control your computer on your LAN network and do any other activities in the app as normal. However, those users streaming PC VR games to their Quest are the ones who might find it most significant. Now, in the event that your home internet goes offline, you will still be able to use Virtual Desktop through the local network.

It may seem like a small change, but it’s a big quality of life one that will impact Quest owners who are frequently using Virtual Desktop and may not have a consistently stable internet connection. The beta release also includes some other minor changes, which you can read over on GitHub.

The APK file for this beta release is available to download now, which you will need to be sideloaded onto your Quest after buying the store version of the software. These features are still in beta testing but are expected to come to a full release of Virtual Desktop at a later date.

The post Virtual Desktop Adds Offline Support Over LAN Connections On Oculus Quest appeared first on UploadVR.