How to use your Oculus Quest 2 to play any PC VR game wirelessly

One of the best features of

Oculus Quest and Quest 2

is that they can be manually tethered via USB to your gaming PC so you can play more demanding VR games that otherwise couldn't be run natively on headsets. It's great if you want a way to play games like

Half-Life: Alyx

,

but the obvious downside is that you're now physically tethered to a PC - so much for the wireless freedom heralded by the Quest platform.

Since then, Virtual Desktop developers — and,

more recently, Oculus itself

- both figured out how to stream your PC's visual feed to your VR headset while quickly syncing all your movements over Wi-Fi. Either option will give you the best of both worlds: allowing you to play games you want without being connected by a cable to your computer.

Oculus' method, called Air Link, is now an add-on feature with the headset (if using v28 software), while using Virtual Desktop requires a $20 app. Both options have advantages, we we will therefore explain how to configure each of them.

The first is Oculus Air Link.

Install and activate Oculus Air Link

At the end of April 2021, Oculus released the

software v28

containing Air Link, a feature that enables wireless PC streaming. To check if your Quest is running the correct software:

Click the gear icon at the bottom of the headset screen to access system settings

Scroll all the way down to find the "About" section and click on it. Once there, make sure the version number is 28 or higher.

Now you need to enable the feature in the Oculus app on your PC. First, make sure the app is updated to v28 like the headset.

Click on “Settings” in the left navigation panel.

Go to the "General" tab and scroll all the way down to see the version number.

In the settings menu of the Oculus PC app, click on the "Beta" tab. This is where you should find Air Link, at least until it leaves beta.

Toggle the switch to enable Air Link.This

Oculus Site FAQs

should display the most recent information for these steps.

Open the settings, go to the beta tab, then enable Air Link.

Activate Air Link in your Quest headset

Now that your software is updated and the feature has been enabled on your host PC, you can enable it in the headset. To do this:

Put the headset back on and reopen system settings.

Look for “Experimental Features”. Air Link will be tucked away in this menu (at least as long as Oculus considers it an experience). Tap the toggle switch to turn it on.

Activate Air Link to play a game

The Oculus PC app must remain open for your headset to connect to it over Wi-Fi.

Physically place yourself in line of sight (or as close as possible) to your Wi-Fi router for the best possible experience. Then put your headset back on and click into its system settings once more.

The first option on the left side of the menu will say “Quick Actions”. Click on it.

You should see a big button for Air Link on the right side of this menu pane. Click on it.

After clicking on Air Link, the next prompt will ask you to choose from a list of devices to connect to. Find your computer, and once you have successfully connected, you will be pushed to the Air Link desktop interface. 'Oculus, which looks a bit different from the Quest interface.

If you need to quickly adjust the Air Link bitrate to optimize performance (or if you want to stop using Air Link and return to the Quest interface), the leftmost option at the bottom of your field of view will display a menu (shown below) that allows you to do either.

This is what the Air Link menu looks like in the Oculus Home interface for PC.

You can also purchase the Virtual Desktop app for Quest

The Virtual Desktop app also lets you access your PC through the lens of a Quest VR headset. You can use it for games, as we'll do here, but you can also watch movies you have stored on your PC in a variety of different virtual environments, or just browsing the Internet.

There is a Quest-specific version of the app that you can buy here for $20.

.(Make sure it says Quest compatible under the buy button.)

Compared to using Air Link, Virtual Desktop doesn't take you completely out of the Quest interface. You can still press the Oculus button on the right touch controller to see the Quest universal menu. Still, it allows adjustment much thinner than Air Link currently does. You can tweak a myriad of settings to find the perfect performance for your setup, and it even has some additional tweaks, like letting you choose the type of virtual environment in which the application will start. There is an apartment, a computer room, an auditorium, and the vast expanse of deep space, to name a few.

Get Virtual Desktop if you really want a personalized experience, or as an alternative if Air Link isn't working very well for you.

Virtual desktop running on the Quest 2.

Download Virtual Desktop Streamer

There is one more application to download for your PC:

Virtual Desktop Streamer

.It's free and made by the same people who made the Virtual Desktop app you bought on the Quest or Quest 2. This app is needed to stream PC content to your headset over Wi-Fi.

Once this app has been downloaded and installed, you will need to enter your Oculus username in the Streamer window

If you don't know it by heart, you can find it by opening the Oculus app on mobile, going to "Settings", then tapping on the area that shows your name and email address. will show next to your avatar is your username.

Having trouble finding your Oculus username? Tap on your full name in the Settings menu to see this view pictured above.

After that is entered, press "Save"

This is the last step! But remember that it is crucial to open the Virtual Desktop Streamer app for your headset to communicate with your PC.

This is what the Virtual Desktop Streamer application looks like. It's very simple.

Open Virtual Desktop on your Quest headset

You should see your PC appear in the list of available devices to connect to from the Virtual Desktop app on your Quest or Quest 2.

Once you're logged in, the Options button (the left touch controller equivalent of the Oculus button) is mapped to open the top-level menu for Virtual Desktop, as shown in the image below. From there, clicking on “Games” will reveal all the games installed on your PC. You can just start each one from there, and your PC will do all the hard work to open the necessary applications.

All VR-ready games installed on your PC will appear in Virtual Desktop.

If you are not satisfied with the visual fidelity of each game, you are free to customize some settings that affect latency, refresh rate, etc. Note that you will probably get a clearer and smoother image if your PC is powerful.Your wireless router also plays an important role in providing a smooth experience.

Streaming VR over Wi-Fi is definitely not a perfect solution. I'm playing a few feet away from a Wi-Fi 6 enabled router that's wired directly to my PC via an Ethernet switch, but I still experience the occasional lag and a slightly blurry image. Although with enough tweaks on the Virtual Desktop app (turning off Wi-Fi on rarely used tech never hurts), I think you'll have a great time.

Related

Facebook is turning VR into a platform – but some indie developers fear its power

Updated April 30 at 9:16 a.m. ET:

Updated this article with Air Link setup steps for Oculus Quest and Quest 2.

Correction:

The original article incorrectly suggested that internet speed plays a role in your ability to use this wireless solution to play your VR games. Everything is handled locally. Also, due to port malfunction USB-C on the author's PC, they incorrectly stated that the USB-C cable that comes with every Quest 2 could not be used to complete this tutorial. A reader pointed out that it would work, and the author l confirmed using the cable with an OTG adapter. We regret these errors.