Oculus Air Link allows you to stream your VR games to your headset wirelessly

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When it comes to the Oculus Quest 2, you can either play your games while wired in to your PC, or you can experience games in a slightly scaled-down form natively on the headset itself, without any wires. This new update, though, lets you play your PC-powered games, wirelessly. Facebook teased the Oculus Air Link, which works similarly to in-home streaming, as you'll be using your computer to run the game, but it'll be streamed directly to the Quest 2 over WiFi. Right now, Air Link is in an experimental form, and will available soon, through the Oculus application.

We know gamers want to use Link without a wire—to experience the full freedom of movement offered by Quest 2 while playing the high-end titles that can only run on a gaming PC. That’s why we’ve been working on a new streaming technology called Oculus Air Link—a completely wireless way to play PC VR content on Quest 2 using WiFi, built on the successful Oculus Link streaming pipeline.

It's recommended that you have a 5Ghz wireless network, in addition to being within around 20 feet of your router, in order to get the best possible quality. This feature will be added in the v28 update for both the Oculus Quest 2's software and the Oculus PC program, which currently has no set release date beyond "soon". A more solid timeframe will likely be revealed in the Oculus Gaming Showcase next week. That same update will also add 120Hz support for the Quest 2 headset, an increase from the current 90Hz, allowing you to play games at a higher refresh rate, when plugged into your PC through Oculus Link.

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jeffyTheHomebrewer

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You can sideload anything very easily

If you mean the not legal stuff

Probably shouldn’t go into detail here


If you mean to hack it or something
Well there’s been rumors since the month of launch that there’s been a way to hack it
But the group who made it are
Very secretive about it
Yeah, I meant to hack it. I mean, EVERY device that runs Android at its core that I've ever had has always had some kind of recovery-download thing. Only exception being my Fire TV Cube, and my Chromecast with Google TV, but I know there's a way to get those to download an image somehow! Even my Nest Hub has a recovery thing where it'll accept an image! Sure, it runs some version of "Cast OS" and not Android, but if you look in the open source licences, you'll see that lotsa stuff in it is from the Android Open Source Foundation. As I was saying, holding volume down while applying power will make it try to download an image via the hidden Micro USB port. Now, I haven't opened mine, but other people have opened theirs! So if you have the Quest 2, maybe try holding the volume down button and power? (If there's a home button on the headset, try holding that too!)
 
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Mama Looigi

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Yeah, I meant to hack it. I mean, EVERY device that runs Android at its core that I've ever had has always had some kind of recovery-download thing. Only exception being my Fire TV Cube, and my Chromecast with Google TV, but I know there's a way to get those to download an image somehow! Even my Nest Hub has a recovery thing where it'll accept an image! Sure, it runs some version of "Cast OS" and not Android, but if you look in the open source licences, you'll see that lotsa stuff in it is from the Android Open Source Foundation. As I was saying, holding volume down while applying power will make it try to download an image via the hidden Micro USB port. Now, I haven't opened mine, but other people have opened theirs! So if you have the Quest 2, maybe try holding the volume down button and power? (If there's a home button on the headset, try holding that too!)
As far as I’m aware, holding those buttons just force restarts the headset
 

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As far as I’m aware, holding those buttons just force restarts the headset
No, VOL - and power opens a recovery menu. If you rebooted, then you held it too long. Just power all the way off, hold vol-, then press and hold power, until you see the oculus logo, then let go. Put it into update mode, or whatever, and send the update.zip with adb.
For content, there is also side-quest. I put Mame4Droid on my headset, and I may have put Retroarch on it as well...

 
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jeffyTheHomebrewer

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No, VOL - and power opens a recovery menu. If you rebooted, then you held it too long. Just power all the way off, hold vol-, then press and hold power, until you see the oculus logo, then let go. Put it into update mode, or whatever, and send the update.zip with adb.
For content, there is also side-quest. I put Mame4Droid on my headset, and I may have put Retroarch on it as well...


Yeah! That's what I meant! Push a custom Android image so that we can use it without needing a facebook account!
 

Kioku

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but that doesn't include games purchaced from the Oculus store, only SteamVR and a few niche titles that use openVR...

I was able to play games purchased from the Oculus store through VD. Played Population One and a couple others just fine.
 

shaunj66

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Just tried this out and can happily confirm it blows Virtual Desktop out of the water. Both visual clarity and latency feel noticeably better on Airlink. It's actually quite incredible and continues to make the Quest 2 the defacto VR experience.
 
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Just tried this out and can happily confirm it blows Virtual Desktop out of the water. Both visual clarity and latency feel noticeably better on Airlink. It's actually quite incredible and continues to make the Quest 2 the defacto VR experience.
did you compare it with the LATEST virtual desktop? It's possible it might be a beta version, but VD had already been updated for 120hz. Air link, however, is hardly enabled for anybody yet. It's a next week thing. And also is still limited to 90hz in home, unless you play around with the debugger.
 
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shaunj66

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did you compare it with the LATEST virtual desktop? It's possible it might be a beta version, but VD had already been updated for 120hz. Air link, however, is hardly enabled for anybody yet. It's a next week thing. And also is still limited to 90hz in home, unless you play around with the debugger.
I don't have the hardware for 120hz to be a concern. But yes I did compare the latest version and Airlink is miles better.
 

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