One of the best features of the Oculus Quest and Quest 2 is that they can be manually connected to your gaming PC via USB, so you can play more demanding VR games that can’t normally be run on headsets. This is great if you want a way to play games like Half-Life: Alyx, but the obvious downside is that you are now physically connected to a PC – too much for the wireless freedom the Quest platform advertises.
Since then, the developers at Virtual Desktop – and more recently Oculus itself – have figured out how to stream the visual feed from your PC to your VR headset while quickly syncing all your movements over Wi-Fi. Both options give you the best of both worlds: they let you play the games you want without connecting a cable to your computer.
Oculus’ method, called Air Link, now comes as a free feature with the headset (if you’re using v28 software), a $20 app is required to use Virtual Desktop. Both options have their benefits, so we’ll walk you through setting up each one.
First up is the Oculus Air Link.
Installing and activating Oculus Air Link
In late April 2021, Oculus released firmware v28, which includes 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’s screen to access the system settings.
- Scroll all the way down and click to find the “About” section. While you’re there, make sure the version number is 28 or higher.
Now you need to enable this feature in the Oculus app on your PC. First, make sure the app is updated to v28, like headphones.
- Click “Settings” in the left navigation panel.
- Go to the “General” tab and scroll all the way down to see the version number.
- Click the “Beta” tab in the settings menu in the Oculus PC app. This is where you should find Air Link, at least until it leaves beta.
- Toggle the switch to turn on Air Link. This FAQ on the Oculus site it should show the most up-to-date information for these steps.
Turn on Air Link on your Quest headset
Now that your software is updated and this feature is enabled on your host, you can enable it from the headset. To do this:
- Plug the headset back in and reopen the system settings.
- Find “Experimental Features”. Air Link will be placed in that menu (at least as long as Oculus considers it an experiment). Tap the toggle switch to enable it.
Activate Air Link to play games
The Oculus app for PC must remain open for your headset to connect over Wi-Fi.
- For the best possible experience, position it physically within sight of your Wi-Fi router (or as close as possible). Then plug your headphones back in and click system settings once more.
- The first option on the left side of the menu will say “Quick Actions”. Click this.
- On the right side of this menu pane, you should see a large button for Air Link. 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 when you’re successfully connected, you’ll be taken to Oculus’ desktop interface, which looks a little different from the Quest interface.
If you need to make quick adjustments to the Air Link’s 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 is one or the menu that lets you do it (shown below).
Alternatively, purchase the Virtual Desktop app for Quest
The Virtual Desktop app also lets you access your PC through the lens of the Quest VR headset. You can use it for games as we will do here, but you can watch movies stored on your PC in a variety of different virtual environments or just surf the web. There is a Quest-exclusive version of the app that you can purchase here for $20.. (Make sure it says Quest compatible under the buy button.)
Compared to using Air Link, Virtual Desktop does not completely remove you from the Quest interface. You can keep pressing the Oculus button on the right Touchpad to see the Quest universal menu. Still, it allows for much more tweaking than Air Link currently does. You can tweak numerous settings to find the perfect performance for your setup, and it even has some extra tweaks like letting you choose the type of virtual environment the app will open. There is an apartment, a computer room, an auditorium, and the vast expanse of deep space, to name a few examples.
If you want a truly special experience or Air Link doesn’t work that well for you, get Virtual Desktop as an alternative.
Download Virtual Desktop Streamer
There is one more app you can download for your PC: Virtual Desktop Publisher. It’s free and made by the people who made the Virtual Desktop app you buy in Quest or Quest 2. This app is required to stream PC content to your headset over Wi-Fi.
- After this app is downloaded and installed, you need to enter your Oculus username in the Streamer window.
- If you don’t know this, you can find it by opening the Oculus app on your mobile device, going to “Settings” and then tapping the field that shows your name and email address. The name that will be displayed next to your avatar is your username.
- After entering this press “Save”
- This is the last step! However, keep in mind that it is very important to have the Virtual Desktop Streamer application open so that your headset can communicate with your PC.
Open Virtual Desktop on your Quest headset
You should see your PC boot up in the list of available devices you can connect to from the Virtual Desktop app on your Quest or Quest 2.
Once connected, the Options button (equivalent to the left Touch controller’s Oculus button) is mapped to open the top-level menu for Virtual Desktop, as shown in the image below. From there, clicking “Games” will reveal every game installed on your PC. You can launch each one from there and your PC will take care of all the hard work of opening the necessary applications.
If you are not satisfied with the visual quality of each game, you can customize some settings that affect latency, refresh rate and more. Note that if your PC is powerful, you’ll likely get a clearer, smoother picture. Your wireless router also plays a big role in providing a smooth experience.
Streaming VR over Wi-Fi is definitely not a perfect solution. I’m playing just feet away from a Wi-Fi 6 ready router that connects directly to my computer via an ethernet switch, but I’m still experiencing the occasional point of lag and slightly blurry vision. Despite enough tweaking to the Virtual Desktop app (for infrequently used tech items, turning off Wi-Fi never hurts), I think you’ll have a good time.
Update on April 30, 09:16 ET: This post has been updated with steps to setup Air Link for Oculus Quest and Quest 2.
Correction: The original article mistakenly suggested that internet speed plays a role in your ability to use this wireless solution to play your VR games. Everything is taken care of locally. They also erroneously stated that due to a faulty USB-C port on the author’s PC, the USB-C cable included with every Quest 2 cannot be used to complete this how-to. A reader stated that this would work, and the author confirmed using the cable with an OTG adapter. We are sorry for these errors.