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.
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.
Love it or loathe it there’s no getting away from the sci-fi juggernaut that is Star Wars. Especially since the franchise highjacked May 4th thanks to its similarity with a famous phrase from the films. There are plenty of celebrations going on such as Steam’s limited-time deals but what about VR? Here VRFocus has complied how you can celebrate Star Wars Day using the latest immersive tech.
Gaming
Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series
If you own an Oculus Quest or Oculus Rift/Rift S then your first port of call should be Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series. Exclusive to the Oculus platform, the series isn’t a fully blown videogame, rather mixing interactive elements with cinematic scenes.
Nevertheless, the series is still treated as canon for those diehard Star Wars fans, with its storyline set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. You get to wield the force, test your lightsaber skills out in a dojo and fight Darth Vader, what more could you want?
Released back in 2017 and created by ILMxLAB, Star Wars: Droid Repair Bay tasks you as an astromech technician for the rebels with repairing BB-8 and his droid friends.
With an official story linked to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the videogame is all about getting these droids ready back into the fight against the First Order.
Completely free, Star Wars: Droid Repair Bay is available on Steam for Valve Index and HTC Vive, or if you have one laying around Samsung Gear VR.
Trials on Tatooine
Another freebie for HTC Vive and Valve Index owners, Star Wars: Trials on Tatooineis one of the earliest (if not the earliest) official titles for VR headsets.
Set on the desert world of Tatooine, you get to repair the iconic Millennium Falcon and defend droid hero R2-D2 from incoming stormtroopers using a lightsaber.
Star Wars: Project Porg
A title likely few will play due to its exclusivity to Magic Leap 1, Star Wars: Project Porg was a mixed reality (MR) experiment by ILMxLAB.
Centred around the fluffy little bird-like creatures called Porg which appeared in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, this is essentially a pet simulator where you have to keep the Porg’s healthy and entertained.
Star Wars: Jedi Challenges
Hailing back from 2017 when smartphones were still being used for VR purposes, Star Wars: Jedi Challenges was unusual in the fact that it was an augmented reality (AR) experience which required a headset specifically designed for the title, the Lenovo Mirage AR.
The original headset came with a replica lightsaber but you needed a compatible smartphone and a spare £250. The kit was relaunched last year with new controllers and MARVEL Dimension of Heroes but still tanked. No longer available on Lenovo’s website, the headset can still be found on Amazon’s US site for around $64 USD.
Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire
A location-based entertainment (LBE) experience from The VOID which certainly would’ve been packed today had it not been for COVID-19 lockdown measures, Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire is worth a visit when restrictions ease.
A multiplayer title for up to four people, Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire offers untethered VR gaming set on the molten planet of Mustafar. Providing what The VOID calls a ‘hyper-reality experience’ which involves heat, wind and other elements to increase immersion, you’re dressed as Stormtroopers infiltrating an Empire base. With puzzles to solve and blasters to shoot enemies, this is another title which is treated as canon, created in partnership with ILMxLAB.
Entertainment
Of course, you may want to spend today watching all the films, animation series and other Star Wars content. Unless you own any of it on DVD or BluRay then the only way to do this now is through streaming service Disney+.
Unlike Netflix which does have a VR app, Disney+ doesn’t, so you’ll need to use desktop mirroring services like Bigscreen Beta or Virtual Desktop. Disney+ currently offers a 7-day free trial, so sign-up online to start your week-long binge.
Either app makes it relatively easy to mirror your desktop into a VR headset like Oculus Rift, Valve Index or HTC Vive. VRFocus uses Bigscreen Beta in conjunction with Oculus Quest for example. While not as handy as a dedicated app, the method still offers a decent VR solution.
And that’s your lot. If VRFocus has missed any other content or ways of enjoying Star Wars in VR do let us know in the comments below.
Since the release of Oculus Link, it’s been easy to forget the whole point of the Oculus Quest; most people do not own a gaming PC.
Late on Wednesday, Valve revealed what percentage of SteamVR users have each headset (by scanning SteamVR logs from the previous month). The PC-only Oculus Rift S is in the lead, used by 27% of SteamVR users. But the “hybrid” Oculus Quest is sitting at just 2.89%.
So the 2.89% figure seemed to leave some in the industry seriously confused at Valve’s data. If the Quest is more popular than Rift S, why do just 1/10th the number of SteamVR users have it?
In case you’re wondering, yes, using the Quest as a PC headset wirelessly via Virtual Desktop is also seen by SteamVR, so should also be counted in this data.
Understanding This Matters
We frequently receive press kits from VR developers with subject lines mentioning Quest support. Unfortunately, digging into the kit often reveals this support as only via Link- just like any other PC VR game. If a game can’t be brought to Quest for whatever reason that’s fine- but developers should be aware how much of the market this closes off.
On YouTube, many videos are titled “<SteamVR Game> On Oculus Quest!”. To those “in the know” this is obviously referring to Link. But the comments on these videos often shows this is not common knowledge. All of us in the industry need to be more clear on the differences between a native standalone title and streaming from a PC.
Downpour Interactive’s Onward and Ready at Dawn’s Echo Arena are two of the most popular multiplayer VR titles on PC. Both developers have been working tirelessly to bring their game to Quest players, and expect to later this year.
As with all software, this means that other features on the roadmap that PC players might benefit from will get less attention. Some players of these games have expressed frustration at this, pointing out that Quest owners can already access via Link.
That kind of response is why data like this is so important. Launching on Quest would mean a huge boost to the multiplayer pool — a change that should benefit all players of these games.
Oculus Link and Virtual Desktop streaming filled an obvious hole in the capabilities of the Quest. There’s no good reason that a standalone headset shouldn’t also support PC for those who want it. But let’s not fool ourselves- the Quest is, to the vast majority of its users, still a standalone headset. And if a game isn’t natively available for Quest, that means most Quest users simply can’t play it.
So let’s celebrate the fact that standalone headsets like Quest can be used on SteamVR- but only as long as we remember this isn’t an option for most of the owners.
Half-Life: Alyx is one of the biggest PC VR releases in recent history. However, is it possible to play Valve’s flagship VR title on the Oculus Quest?
The short answer is no — at least not natively via the Quest Store. Half-Life: Alyx is a PC VR game and an intensive one at that, so it’s not available as a native Quest title and there’s almost no chance we’ll see it ported anytime soon.
However, it is possible to play Half-Life: Alyx on the Quest through Oculus Link or Virtual Desktop. Both of these solutions require additional equipment, the most important of which is a VR-ready PC. However, with the right set up, it is possible to play Half-Life: Alyx on the Quest through either service. Here’s how.
What You Need
Regardless of whether you’re using Oculus Link or Virtual Desktop, you will need a VR-ready PC for either method. In this case, the beefier the better. Not only will the PC need to be VR-ready, but it will also need to meet the minimum specifications for Half-Life: Alyx, which are:
Processor: Core i5-7500 / Ryzen 5 1600
Memory: 12 GB RAM
Graphics: GTX 1060 / RX 580 – 6GB VRAM
You’ll also need to purchase and download a copy of Half-Life: Alyx off of Steam, but you probably already knew that.
Oculus Link vs Virtual Desktop?
So which will you be using? It’s a difficult choice and both come with pros and cons.
Oculus Link allows you to use a compatible USB-C cord to connect your Quest to a VR-ready PC and play PC VR content. The Oculus Quest, when connected via Link, acts as if it is an Oculus Rift. The benefits of Link are that, with the right equipment, it is very stable and offers very low latency. The downside is that you’re tethered to your computer with a cord at all times.
Virtual Desktop is an application available on the Oculus Store that streams your PC desktop to your Quest, to interact with inside VR. However, if you sideload an alternate version of the app from SideQuest, you can also use it to stream and play PC VR games wirelessly on your Quest.
The major benefit of Virtual Desktop is that it is a wireless solution to play PC VR games on Quest. However, the downside is that the performance of the streamed VR games is highly dependant on the strength of your internal connection between your router, PC and Quest, and it can take a bit of wrangling with settings to find what works for you.
The easiest option to adopt with the least hassle is the official Oculus Link Cable, available to purchase from Facebook. It is a 5m, fibre optic cable that is relatively thin and provides good flexibility, with USB-C connectors on both ends.
The official cable is pretty much guaranteed to work, provided you have a USB-C port on your computer that is the USB 3.1 Gen 2 standard. If you only have USB-A ports, you’ll need to buy a USB A to C adaptor to use the official cord. Make sure that both the adaptor and the USB-A port on your computer are USB 3.1 Gen 2.
Once you have your Oculus Link cord of choice, you’ll need to make sure you have the Oculus app installed on your PC.
Then, simply plug in your Oculus Quest (while powered on) to your computer using your Link-compatible cord. In the ‘Devices’ tab of the Oculus PC app, you’ll see an option to set up a new headset. Select the option for Oculus Quest.
The app will then run through the Link setup, test your cord and connect and then enable your Quest for use with Oculus Link. Once setup is complete, you can connect your Quest to your PC at any time – your Quest will ask if you want to enable Oculus Link, and from there you can launch SteamVR and play Half-Life: Alyx.
Setting Up Virtual Desktop
First and foremost, you will need to purchase and download Virtual Desktop from the Oculus Store for Quest.
However, the default store version of Virtual Desktop does not allow you to stream games to the headset wirelessly. To do that, you’ll need to sideload an alternate version of the app using SideQuest, which enables the functionality.
Once you have the sideloaded version of Virtual Desktop installed, you will also need to install the streamer app on the same PC from which you want to stream Alyx. This is available on the Virtual Desktop website.
With the streaming app installed and opened, enter your Oculus username into the Streamer app’s menu on your PC.
Then, launch Virtual Desktop on your Oculus Quest and enter SteamVR to play Half-Life: Alyx wirelessly.
However, there are some important caveats: Virtual Desktop is not as much of a ‘works-out-of-the-box’ solution as Oculus Link. You’ll likely need to do some tweaking to adjust the performance, visuals and latency.
Some users get great visual fidelity with very low latency through Virtual Desktop, while others struggle to get consistent performance. It will all depend on the quality of you internal connection between your router, PC and Oculus Quest.
Here are some things to check to ensure optimal performance:
Make sure that your Quest is connected to a 5Ghz network.
Make sure that your PC is connected to your router via ethernet and not Wi-Fi.
Try to play as close to your router as possible, with minimal physical interference from walls, furniture and the like.
In our experience, we’ve found your mileage with Virtual Desktop can vary greatly depending on your equipment and setup. There may also be additional steps which we’ve seen recommended by others – such as changing security settings on your router – that may improve you performance even more. You’ll just have to see what’s required for your situation and setup.
That should cover the basics of how to play Half-Life: Alyx on the Oculus Quest using Oculus Link or Virtual Desktop. Any questions? Put them down in the comments and we’ll see if we can help out.
Half-Life: Alyx is one of the biggest PC VR releases in recent history. However, is it possible to play Valve’s flagship VR title on the Oculus Quest?
The short answer is no — at least not natively via the Quest Store. Half-Life: Alyx is a PC VR game and an intensive one at that, so it’s not available as a native Quest title and there’s almost no chance we’ll see it ported anytime soon.
However, it is possible to play Half-Life: Alyx on the Quest through Oculus Link or Virtual Desktop. Both of these solutions require additional equipment, the most important of which is a VR-ready PC. However, with the right set up, it is possible to play Half-Life: Alyx on the Quest through either service. Here’s how.
What You Need
Regardless of whether you’re using Oculus Link or Virtual Desktop, you will need a VR-ready PC for either method. In this case, the beefier the better. Not only will the PC need to be VR-ready, but it will also need to meet the minimum specifications for Half-Life: Alyx, which are:
Processor: Core i5-7500 / Ryzen 5 1600
Memory: 12 GB RAM
Graphics: GTX 1060 / RX 580 – 6GB VRAM
You’ll also need to purchase and download a copy of Half-Life: Alyx off of Steam, but you probably already knew that.
Oculus Link vs Virtual Desktop?
So which will you be using? It’s a difficult choice and both come with pros and cons.
Oculus Link allows you to use a compatible USB-C cord to connect your Quest to a VR-ready PC and play PC VR content. The Oculus Quest, when connected via Link, acts as if it is an Oculus Rift. The benefits of Link are that, with the right equipment, it is very stable and offers very low latency. The downside is that you’re tethered to your computer with a cord at all times.
Virtual Desktop is an application available on the Oculus Store that streams your PC desktop to your Quest, to interact with inside VR. However, if you sideload an alternate version of the app from SideQuest, you can also use it to stream and play PC VR games wirelessly on your Quest.
The major benefit of Virtual Desktop is that it is a wireless solution to play PC VR games on Quest. However, the downside is that the performance of the streamed VR games is highly dependant on the strength of your internal connection between your router, PC and Quest, and it can take a bit of wrangling with settings to find what works for you.
The easiest option to adopt with the least hassle is the official Oculus Link Cable, available to purchase from Facebook. It is a 5m, fibre optic cable that is relatively thin and provides good flexibility, with USB-C connectors on both ends.
The official cable is pretty much guaranteed to work, provided you have a USB-C port on your computer that is the USB 3.1 Gen 2 standard. If you only have USB-A ports, you’ll need to buy a USB A to C adaptor to use the official cord. Make sure that both the adaptor and the USB-A port on your computer are USB 3.1 Gen 2.
Once you have your Oculus Link cord of choice, you’ll need to make sure you have the Oculus app installed on your PC.
Then, simply plug in your Oculus Quest (while powered on) to your computer using your Link-compatible cord. In the ‘Devices’ tab of the Oculus PC app, you’ll see an option to set up a new headset. Select the option for Oculus Quest.
The app will then run through the Link setup, test your cord and connect and then enable your Quest for use with Oculus Link. Once setup is complete, you can connect your Quest to your PC at any time – your Quest will ask if you want to enable Oculus Link, and from there you can launch SteamVR and play Half-Life: Alyx.
Setting Up Virtual Desktop
First and foremost, you will need to purchase and download Virtual Desktop from the Oculus Store for Quest.
However, the default store version of Virtual Desktop does not allow you to stream games to the headset wirelessly. To do that, you’ll need to sideload an alternate version of the app using SideQuest, which enables the functionality.
Once you have the sideloaded version of Virtual Desktop installed, you will also need to install the streamer app on the same PC from which you want to stream Alyx. This is available on the Virtual Desktop website.
With the streaming app installed and opened, enter your Oculus username into the Streamer app’s menu on your PC.
Then, launch Virtual Desktop on your Oculus Quest and enter SteamVR to play Half-Life: Alyx wirelessly.
However, there are some important caveats: Virtual Desktop is not as much of a ‘works-out-of-the-box’ solution as Oculus Link. You’ll likely need to do some tweaking to adjust the performance, visuals and latency.
Some users get great visual fidelity with very low latency through Virtual Desktop, while others struggle to get consistent performance. It will all depend on the quality of you internal connection between your router, PC and Oculus Quest.
Here are some things to check to ensure optimal performance:
Make sure that your Quest is connected to a 5Ghz network.
Make sure that your PC is connected to your router via ethernet and not Wi-Fi.
Try to play as close to your router as possible, with minimal physical interference from walls, furniture and the like.
In our experience, we’ve found your mileage with Virtual Desktop can vary greatly depending on your equipment and setup. There may also be additional steps which we’ve seen recommended by others – such as changing security settings on your router – that may improve you performance even more. You’ll just have to see what’s required for your situation and setup.
That should cover the basics of how to play Half-Life: Alyx on the Oculus Quest using Oculus Link or Virtual Desktop. Any questions? Put them down in the comments and we’ll see if we can help out.
Half-Life: Alyx from Valve is supported across the overwhelming majority of PC VR headsets. Whether you’re playing on a Valve Index, Oculus Rift S, HTC Vive or even Windows VR headset, Valve has you covered. However, one important subset of users is those who will play the game on Oculus Quest, either tethered via Oculus Link or wirelessly with the sideloaded version of Virtual Desktop.
For these users, the biggest question is how the game runs on either service and which is better. I played my entire first playthrough of Half-Life: Alyx exclusively on Oculus Link, and then went back and tried a couple of select sections using Virtual Desktop after that.
In terms of which is better, the answer depends very much on your internet connection. You can rely on Oculus Link to give you a solid experience with no latency right the way through. It’s almost as good as playing on any other PC VR headset. Virtual Desktop, meanwhile, remains impressive from a technical standpoint, but your experience will be down to the quality of your connection. Personally, I found it still delivered a subpar experience that I wouldn’t recommend to Quest users looking to play Alyx for the first time, but our reviewer, Jamie, also tried his hand at the streaming and had far less issues than me.
For Virtual Desktop, you’ll need to buy a copy of the app from the Oculus Store on your Quest and then sideload an alternate version of the Virtual Desktop app that is available on SideQuest, enabling SteamVR and other VR games to be played through the app.
In terms of performance, here’s a more detailed breakdown of how Oculus Link and Virtual Desktop stacked up:
Oculus Link
The good news is that Half-Life: Alyx plays exactly as you would expect on Oculus Quest via Link. Provided you have a capable system, the performance is solid and I encountered very few technical problems, frame drops or glitches at all in my playthrough. This stability is not something exclusive to playing via Oculus Link, but a byproduct of good performance across all headsets.
Visually, the game is stunning and on Link this is no exception. While the Oculus Quest obviously does not have the same visual fidelity as headsets such as the Valve Index, I found that the detail and aesthetic style of Alyx made me more immersed than I’ve ever been in any other VR game. That being said, there was some slightly noticeable compression which prevents the game from looking quite as clear is it does on other devices. Overall, though, the game ran and looked excellently, if not better than I would have expected.
It’s also worth nothing that unlike headsets such as the Valve Index and the Oculus Rift S, the Quest does feature an OLED panel. This means that dark sequences (of which there are quite a few) appear hold a visual advantage on the Quest, with deeper, richer blacks. It’s not a huge difference but it’s there.
The Oculus Quest only has four cameras compared to five on the Oculus Rift S, which can be a source of tracking woes in certain situations. Before starting Half-Life: Alyx, I was mainly concerned about tracking issues with the frequent over-the-shoulder actions used when storing ammo and reloading guns. However, I encountered surprisingly few tracking issues at all. The inside-out tracking was reliable and the Touch controllers are identical to the Rift S, so you have controller parity when playing via Link.
While Alyx can be played seated or in small spaces, I would recommend playing with as much space as possible and with an ample Link cord length. I played in a space that was roughly 2m x 2m with the official Oculus Link cable, and had plenty of slack to move around freely.
Virtual Desktop
Virtual Desktop, on the other hand, can be a different story with mixed results.
This section comes with some pretty heavy disclaimers. By all accounts, the quality of your experience using Virtual Desktop to stream PC VR games to your Quest varies hugely depending on the game itself, your computer, your router and the physical layout of your space. Something as simple as a wall in between your Quest and your router might cause havoc with the wifi signal from time to time, meaning you might experience stutters.
Personally, I’ve always had mixed results with streaming VR games to my Quest via Virtual Desktop. Despite what I say below, you might find that your setup provides a smoother experience than mine. It’s very hard to make definitive statements regarding something as fickle as Virtual Desktop wireless game streaming.
With those disclaimers out of the way, what I experienced was both very close and very far away from playable. The bottom line is that I wouldn’t recommend using Virtual Desktop for a first playthrough of Half-Life: Alyx. I experienced frequent stutters, frame drops and out of sync audio. The input latency was also very noticeable in combat and when using the gravity gloves. Even if you consider that my latency may have been higher than the average Virtual Desktop user, I can’t help but feel that some of the magic and satisfying feeling of using the Gravity Gloves would be lost in translation (or latency) when playing via Virtual Desktop.
But, like I said, I wasn’t the only one that tried Alyx with Virtual Desktop.
Jamie also played a bit of the game this way and reported a much smoother experience than mine. He could see some latency in controller movements from time-to-time but very rarely did it effect his ability to play the game. The compressed image quality definitely didn’t compare to playing on Rift S or Valve Index where he spent the bulk of his time, though; certain sections really lose their detail unless you’re inspect items and enemies (not a good idea) up close. Even then, though, Jamie agreed that it’d better to first experience Alyx in a much more dependable way and then maybe running back through it on Virtual Desktop to enjoy the tetherless freedom.
You can watch some footage I captured natively on the Quest while playing Alyx through Virtual Desktop, embedded above (if you’re wary of spoilers, most of the opening sequence and the beginning of chapter 3, about an hour into the game, are featured).
I also encountered a strange bug when I put on a gas mask, also visible in the footage. Gas masks are usually only partially visible on your face while you wear them in Alyx. While using Virtual Desktop, the mask was pushed out further from my face, obscuring a lot of my view.
I tried both smooth (continuous) and shift movement options, and found that continuous provided more frame drops and stuttering, as you would expect from the increased movement. There were also many more noticeable compression artifacts. Smoke effects looked muddy and featured lots of banding, as did darker areas of the game. Given just how beautiful Half-Life: Alyx is to play on any other system, it would break my heart to think someone would play it on Virtual Desktop with such obvious and frustrating compression. This is, of course, just an inevitable byproduct of wireless streaming, but it’s also one that would heavily dissuade me from recommending it as an option to new players.
That being said, it’s not all bad. It’s definitely far from ideal, but it’s also very close to being a workable solution. Despite my issues, many people have anecdotally noted that they don’t encounter as many problems as I have while using Virtual Desktop. So while I wouldn’t recommend it — and neither would Jamie with an improved experience — your mileage may vary, potentially quite a bit, too.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you have a VR-ready PC and an Oculus Quest, your best option to play Half-Life: Alyx is definitely Oculus Link. If you don’t own a Link-compatible cord, Alyx is the kind of game you might want to consider buying one for. It’s definitely worth investing in to properly experience the game, removing the chance of any potential issues with Virtual Desktop. The only situation in which we would recommend using Virtual Desktop over Link is if you don’t own a Link cord and are 100% confident in the stability and performance of your equipment when using Virtual Desktop. If not, Oculus Link is not just a formidable solution, but an excellent one.
How will you be playing Half-Life: Alyx? Let us know in the comments.
French startup Blade, behind the Shadow cloud PC service, will launch a closed beta for an Oculus Quest app allowing subscribers to play owned SteamVR games from anywhere with a good internet connection.
With Shadow, owners of Facebook’s Oculus Quest standalone headset who don’t own a gaming PC could play games like Half-Life: Alyx by purchasing the game on Steam and paying Blade a monthly fee.
Shadow is a subscription service providing customers remote access to a high end PC in the cloud. It first launched in 2017 in France. Shadow allows users full access to the operating system of the PC, so users can install and use whatever software they want, including games. Better yet, unlike Stadia, users don’t have to re-purchase games they already own on Steam.
Shadow is hoping to streamline this process so it can be used in much the same way as Stadia, while still giving the user the freedom to use the PC if they want to.
There is of course an obvious catch to cloud streamed VR: latency. Oculus Link and Virtual Desktop have more latency than “real” PC VR because it takes time to compress (encode) and decompress (decode) each frame. Frames need to be compressed because USB and WiFi have an order of magnitude lower bandwidth than HDMI or DisplayPort. Shadow adds further to this latency because each frame has to travel across the Internet from Shadow’s premises to your home.
I’m particularly sensitive to latency. When I tested out Shadow + Virtual Desktop on Quest, even with a high end WiFi router I found the delay to be very noticeable, and even when immersed I was unable to get used to it. Some people are able to deal with more latency than others, but if you find yourself getting VR sick we’d recommend picking up a real gaming PC instead of going with Shadow.
Shadow’s pricing has been restructured into a new 3 tier system:
Building out datacenters with gaming PCs takes time, so Shadow is currently heavily backordered in most countries it serves. The base tier is available in most US states, but Europeans will have to wait until June. The higher tiers with RTX are unavailable until 2021 for all but a handful of US states, where it will be available in summer.
Given the most European countries do not have data caps whereas many US ISPs do, this seems like a strange decision from Blade. However, the cost of building the data centers in the US is likely lower.
Startups can reach a pace of innovation that big corporations can’t match, but struggle to deploy their ideas at scale. For this idea to be readily available to all Oculus Quest owners who want it, it may take a giant like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or even Facebook itself jumping into the ring. Facebook execs have hinted at the need for “a new rendering architecture” to deliver low latency cloud streaming, and acquired a Spanish cloud gaming startup late last year.
If low latency cloud VR can be delivered to consumers this decade, it could eliminate the gulf between mobile and PC power and open up high fidelity PC-based experiences like Half-Life: Alyx to the mainstream. For those who can handle the latency, Shadow brings a glimpse of this future.
Guy Godin rebuilt the wireless streaming feature Oculus Quest owners use to PC VR play games from their computer using Virtual Desktop.
The new update adds the “ability to stream native Oculus Rift games without needing Revive or SteamVR.” Godin notes you should have the Oculus PC software installed on your PC for the new method to work. There’s also a “Games” tab in VR to launch Oculus and Steam games as well as “improved tracking smoothness and latency.”
Wireless PC VR Steaming And Latency
A delay in VR between your movements and what your eyes see of less than 20 milliseconds is generally considered comfortable. A number of factors could contribute to latency between the wireless Quest and the PC VR system. Godin suggests some people with a good VR-ready graphics card, router, the right game and an uncongested Wi-fi network could see motion-to-photon latency clocking between 30 and 40 milliseconds via the streaming feature. I saw numbers in this range while testing a pre-release version of the Virtual Desktop update.
The first public beta version with the new update is 1.9.6 and there are still a few more bugs to work out, according to Godin. To experience it, you’ll need the requisite hardware and the Oculus Store Quest version of Virtual Desktop which is usually priced around $20. You’ll also need to use SideQuest to patch Virtual Desktop and unlock the PC VR streaming feature. You can find Virtual Desktop on SideQuest here and instructions for how to use the sideloading platform here.
VR Interview
Godin first released the wireless PC VR streaming feature for Virtual Desktop on Quest shortly after the headset’s release in May 2019. Facebook blocked the feature, though, citing comfort concerns. Godin turned to the sideloading platform SideQuest to release a patch for the product which essentially unlocked the feature for buyers who wanted it.
I interviewed Godin in our virtual studio recently about developing Virtual Desktop and the relationship with Facebook. He started building the software in 2014 when Facebook acquired Oculus. In 2016, he released the PC version which is available on Steam and the Oculus Store. In 2018, he released the separate mobile version for Gear VR and Oculus Go.
Virtual Desktop filled a gap in the market early on allowing people wearing headsets to operate their PC while inside VR. Since then he’s been continually adding more features, like 360 photo and 3D movie viewers, while optimizing performance. Other services like Bigscreen allow operation of your PC while inside VR and even allow sharing of your screen with faraway friends, but Virtual Desktop maintains a steady presence on top downloaded lists across all platforms as a go-to utility for operating your PC while in VR.
Godin says the latest update also improves “initial connection reliability” and fixes “lots of compatibility issues with games including hand position in Boneworks and error launching The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners”. There are also other bug fixes in the release.
You should be able to play SteamVR games like Skyrim and No Man’s Sky on your Oculus Quest when Oculus Link arrives in November.
Facebook revealed this new feature at Oculus Connect 6 yesterday. The free update to Quest will allow you to play Rift games when you plug the headset into a PC with a USB-C cable. During the keynote speech, Mark Zuckerberg said “any” Rift game could run on the headset this way. There was still some confusion, though, as to if this simply meant games on Oculus’ own store, or titles on Valve’s competing Steam store too.
We followed up with Facebook, directly asking if this meant Quest can run Steam content through Link.
“Yes,” a Facebook representative told us over email. “When you tether your Quest to your PC with Oculus Link, you will be able to operate the headset the same way you do Rift.”
If that’s the case, then this opens up Quest to not only the hundreds of apps on the Oculus Store, but also all of the Rift-compatible experiences available through SteamVR too. That includes high-profile releases like Bethesda’s Skyrim VR and Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky Beyond. We didn’t get to try this option for ourselves when we tried Link at Connect yesterday, though.
Unofficially, Quest owners can already boot up a sideloaded version of VR productivity app, Virtual Desktop, and then use its PC streaming feature to access SteamVR content. Link, however, could present a more stable way to do this; it’ll just need to be tethered to the PC.
We can’t help but wonder if that might mean we’ll soon see Quest show up on SteamVR’s monthly hardware survey.
A new app distribution project called SideQuest gained steam this week on Oculus Quest.
Some developers, like Virtual Desktop’s Guy Godin, turned to SideQuest to distribute software updates which won’t be approved by Facebook’s leadership. Included on the distribution system is a version of Godin’s Virtual Desktop utility that essentially patches the software so it passes through PC-based SteamVR apps to the completely standalone wireless headset.
Quest Platform Launch
Facebook is less than one month into the launch of Oculus Quest and the standalone headset is sold out pretty much everywhere.
New orders for the $400 system from Oculus’ own website won’t ship until July. For software on the VR console, prices range from $10 up to $40 with most top games $20 to $30. Facebook invited more than 50 apps into its launch lineup plus free social services Rec Room and VRChat. A few more arrived since launch, too, and our E3 VR showcase earlier this week confirmed optimized versions of both Arizona Sunshine and Echo Area are coming to Quest. It is a strong lineup except that it lacks many new titles which push the limits of simulation with complex physics or detailed graphics that depend on power hungry desktop-class GPUs and CPUs.
Facebook’s Oculus signaled to developers months ago its Quest storefront would be highly curated. It still stings, though, for some developers who don’t have a clear path to launch on the system after years of work. I spoke to both Facebook’s Jason Rubin and Chris Pruett this week about their decisions. I published a transcription of my exchange with Rubin. In summary, though, Facebook is encouraging developers they don’t want in their lineup on Quest to target the PC-powered Rift for their projects instead. Rift offers an early access program and “we turn no developer away unless the thing is really really like not shippable on PC because we want to give them an opportunity to prove their idea has value,” according to Rubin. Pruett said it was too early to commit to offering something similar on Quest. The Oculus Start program offers a forum and sometimes free hardware to support developers just starting out in VR.
VR Platform Wars Part II
Oculus “asked” Godin to “roll back an update” to Virtual Desktop on Quest after “receiving user complaints,” Rubin tweeted.
Godin obliged, but he also placed what is essentially a patch for the app on SideQuest. This update reinstates the PC VR streaming feature for people who purchased Virtual Desktop from Oculus. I reached out to SideQuest’s creator, Shane Harris, to find out more about the software, which he says got its start around Quest’s launch.
“Originally it was intended to provide a way for us to get our game The Expanse to users of the Oculus Quest headset as our submission pitch was declined by Oculus – something we understood as many more well established apps were also being declined. It then struck me that maybe some of those other developers could also benefit from a super easy sideloading process with things like drag and drop and several apps inbuilt,” Harris wrote to me in a message on his Discord group. “SideQuest is a sideloading tool at heart and actually works with any android device but it has evolved into an unofficial source for apps that you wouldn’t otherwise get on Quest. I would love to see it fill the niche of a testbed for pre-release/alpha/beta testing or for deploying demos for users to try out. I have no plans to monetise SideQuest like a traditional app store as I don’t want to affect the Oculus bottom line and I would love to work with Oculus to become an alternative route for apps and games that have been declined or otherwise or just want to test cutting edge features. I think there has been a lot of discussion around games being declined and I would love if SideQuest could provide a more positive spin for Oculus and Facebook in those scenarios. I guess i see it as a stepping stone to a application for the full oculus store down the line.”
Virtual Desktop is available alongside other wireless streaming solutions ALVR and Riftcat but I haven’t tried those yet so I can’t compare them. To get SideQuest to work you have to follow typical sideloading instructions which require you to tell Oculus you’re a developer and install some additional Android and Oculus-related development software. You need to own the version of Virtual Desktop from the Oculus store for the patch from SideQuest to work.
“This was the most requested feature and users loved it,” Godin wrote in a message to me. “I didn’t want to remove a feature they enjoyed so this was the best way to keep it available for them. I would have preferred if it didn’t require them to side-load as this is a bit complicated but unfortunately Oculus left me no choice.”
This afternoon I spent some time in Virtual Desktop on Oculus Quest with the SideQuest patch and was able to run Google Earth VR, Blocks and the Museum of Other Realities — three apps which are showcases for the power of VR but aren’t present on the low-powered Oculus Quest.
While all three apps technically “worked” with slow movements there is significant lag that can make active gameplay uncomfortable and potentially unplayable for some. These three apps, for example, seem to make pretty good case for why the feature is a useful addition to Quest even if there are performance constraints. I tried the SteamVR version of Beat Saber streaming this way, though, and I couldn’t get through songs I normally would on the native Quest version of Beat Saber.
“We accept experiences vary, but this feature compromised comfort, safety, & quality to different levels for different users,” Rubin wrote.
