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Oculus Quest ALVR/Virtual Desktop Streaming Guide - Not Perfect But pretty Awesome

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
This is a revised first post. To take advantage of The Oculus Quest wireless capabilities and improved visuals streaming content from your PC to the headset is a viable option IF you have a decent 5Ghz wireless router and a wired PC connection. For the most part this can replace natively playing games on the Rift. It also means some games which release on the Quest like Sairento and Vader Immortal which are watered down to suit the hardware can be played using the PC version with superior visuals. I have played many games now like this and whilst there are some visual distortions at times the overall experience is on par with playing natively on the Rift. However this is largely dependant on your wireless connection and what interference you might have around you.

To get it working:

-Download the ALVR Alpha 4  using the instructions on this page - https://github.com/polygraphene/ALVR
- Alternatively you can install Virtual Desktop from the Oculus Store
-Then I used this app to side-load the ALVR Apk onto quest. You can also use it to install Virtual Desktop Streaming Apphttps://github.com/the-expanse/SideQuest
-Once up and running using ALVR I found the server would not connect to the quest properly so I had to disable windows firewall on my Private Network setting in Windows 10 there might be another workaround so you don't have to do this each time. You don't need to do this with Virtual Desktop App.
-Start ALVR or Virtual Desktop Streaming client on PC
-Make sure you up the resolution option to 150% in video settings in ALVR. You can edit settings in Virtual Desktop inside the Quest accordingly.
-Launch the ALVR/Virtual Desktop App on your Quest (ALVR us located in 'Unknown Sources' in Library).
-Once successfully connected ALVR will automatically launch Steam VR. Virtual Desktop you will need to launch Steam VR yourself. Once loaded you will enter Steam VR Home if you have that enabled. If not then hold the left TOUCH menu button and Steam Dash will load. You can then boot your games from there. Alternatively, you can boot apps and other games using Revive from the desktop.
-If you need to adjust the floor height just go to Steam VR settings and run the room tutorial - select Standing Room and follow the instructions from there or use Advance Settings Floor Fix in OVR if you have that enabled.

PLAY GAMES

Be aware that some games perform better than others and some games might need to have the ALVR resolution reduced back down to 100% to avoid stuttering. Also be mindful that games which require fast precise movements such as Beat Sabre might not be as effective due to the latency. I also find that games which present more confined spaces such as The Lab, or Job Sim, Sairento look better than those with longer draw distances. The decoder seems to have issues with longer draw-distances. 

Virtual Desktop seems to present a smoother playing experience with a slightly lower screen resolution. For some, this might be a worthy trade-off.  Virtual Desktop also has better controller compatibility. This means some games that don't work so well on ALVR will run much better.

EXTRAS:

-In some games where there is a longer draw distance like Skyrim VR or Fallout 4 VR, The Forest you might see lots of blur and fogginess. You can increase the Bitrate and Buffer Size in ALVR. I set mine to 50Mbps instead of the default 30 and 500Kb Buffer instead of the default 200Kb. This improved the visual artefacts quite a bit for me but might not eliminate the compression artefacts fully.

-Additionally if your PC is powerful enough you can increase the Super-Sampling in Steam VR/ Oculus Tray Tool for each game for even better visuals.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.
73 REPLIES 73

FlakMagnet
Adventurer
I wouldn't be surprised if someone is currently working on a USB version of this. I know it would tether the Quest to the PC, but the quality should be excellent with very little latency. That would be perfect for sims and anything else that doesn't require  you to thrash about like a lunatic 🙂

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
OK peeps wired the PC using Ethernet and wireless to Quest. I haven't really messed with any supersampling in Steam VR so I assume I can get the basic visuals better. I'm pretty blown away. They weren't wrong. This is friggin awesome.  Due to my Pimax 8K not having any motion controllers yet I have just been playing gamepad games for now. However with the Quest I can bust out some old favourites and golly gosh they actually work very well.

The Lab looks and plays pretty much the same I played castle defense and the space shooting game (forgets the name)  without any issues at all, Space Pirate Trainer looks as good as the Quest version so screw that non-cross buy if you bought the game via Steam. Really impressed so far, wired is the way to go here. Google Earth plays well. I can see why Oculus don't want to develop this themselves just yet. It's too good and will lose sales of games for developers. I played a bit of Skyrim VR which worked great but looked like pants for some reason. The settings must be all messed up. 

The only negative so far is you get these drops every so often where the screen goes  alittle fuzzy for a few moments, then it corrects itself. 

If you haven't tried this then you really need to. Now all I need to work out is how much SS I can push to improve the visuals.






System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

I need to try this.

@trankiiilty mentioned in another thread that your PC needs to be wired for a good experience with ALVR as wifi is half duplex (so thanks for that pointer).

I'll need to get a decent set of powerline sockets as my last set buzzed like crazy.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Oh you do, it's simply an incredible feat to be playing these games on the Quest wire free without all the kerfuffle of wireless adapters etc. For the record my download speed at the moment is like 165.90 mbps and upload 172.56 so it handles it very well. I can't wait to hear some more impressions from people here. But it has to be stated wireless PC to wireless Quest isn't the right way to do this. I can say this now in hindsight.

Another tip. If your connection and hardware can handle it. Massive improvement in visuals bumping up the SS option in ALVR to 150%. Now we're talking! A little less stable but certainly worth it.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

atkinsonline
Expert Protege


I need to try this.

@trankiiilty mentioned in another thread that your PC needs to be wired for a good experience with ALVR as wifi is half duplex (so thanks for that pointer).

I'll need to get a decent set of powerline sockets as my last set buzzed like crazy.



Are the powerlines to connect your PC to your wireless router? I assume that’s what you’re saying. 

babybasher
Protege


Oh you do, it's simply an incredible feat to be playing these games on the Quest wire free without all the kerfuffle of wireless adapters etc. For the record my download speed at the moment is like 165.90 mbps and upload 172.56 so it handles it very well. I can't wait to hear some more impressions from people here. But it has to be stated wireless PC to wireless Quest isn't the right way to do this. I can say this now in hindsight.

Another tip. If your connection and hardware can handle it. Massive improvement in visuals bumping up the SS option in ALVR to 150%. Now we're talking! A little less stable but certainly worth it.


I recently played around with ALVR too.  I see you started off with wireless in your PC.  5Ghz comes at all sorts of speeds.  What router are you using, and what wireless card in your computer?  The latency you mentioned is about what I get too.

I have an AC2900 speed router.  My computers wifi card is AC1750 rated and connects to the router at 1300Mbps speeds (Quest connects at 780-866Mbps).  I don't think I've run into any streaming issues, or Im just too forgiving atm,  Seems solid as.  Did connecting your PC with ethernet make a considerable difference for you?  My only issues with it are the controller issues in apps. ie, rec room the angle of guns is wrong (I've heard thats a problem in other apps too).





I need to try this.

@trankiiilty mentioned in another thread that your PC needs to be wired for a good experience with ALVR as wifi is half duplex (so thanks for that pointer).

I'll need to get a decent set of powerline sockets as my last set buzzed like crazy.



Are the powerlines to connect your PC to your wireless router? I assume that’s what you’re saying. 


Yep, router has to be in the living room where the phone master socket is. PC is in my study so I used to use powerlines for wired LAN between the two but wifi has improved over the last few years (and included on motherboards these days) so that's been good enough.

If wifi is half-duplex though (should that be simplex?) then wired is the way to go for ALVR. I had a pair of expensive and highly recommended adaptors previously but after 12 months or so they started buzzing noticeably so hopefully they've improved since then.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
I ditched the mobo in-built wifi and tried a USB version which fared better. However, the switch to wired made all the difference. I can't stress that enough. Wireless no matter how the reported speed limits will usually suffer from interference. Because the Quest is wifi as well you want to limit that as much as possible.

Was playing RAW Data. Batman Arkham VR, Apex Construct all working very well. Yes the controller orientation can be off, but I think there are ways to change this. I've just suffered it though.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

atkinsonline
Expert Protege






I need to try this.

@trankiiilty mentioned in another thread that your PC needs to be wired for a good experience with ALVR as wifi is half duplex (so thanks for that pointer).

I'll need to get a decent set of powerline sockets as my last set buzzed like crazy.



Are the powerlines to connect your PC to your wireless router? I assume that’s what you’re saying. 


Yep, router has to be in the living room where the phone master socket is. PC is in my study so I used to use powerlines for wired LAN between the two but wifi has improved over the last few years (and included on motherboards these days) so that's been good enough.



I'm in the same situation and used to use powerlines. I tried a few with variable results.  I work from home so need something reliable and fast. Eventually, I bit the bullet and had cat 6 cable fitted from ground floor to top floor where the PC sits and I usually use VR.  Made an amazing difference to the speed and is totally reliable.