Oculus Quest can function as a PC VR headset with the Oculus Link feature. This means that you can play Steam VR and Oculus Rift S games on your Quest headset. In this guide, we will show you how to setup Oculus Link with the Oculus Quest 2 step by step.
To download and install the Oculus app on your computer: Go to www.oculus.com/setup and click Download Oculus Rift Software. Open the Oculus app and click Install Now. Follow the on-screen instructions to create an account and set up your Rift S or Rift.
Sidequest is a desktop app for Mac/Windows/Linux which allows you to browse and install content on your Quest via sideloading. Follow the steps below to install it on your computer and set it up for use with your Quest.
The Sling TV app for Oculus Quest is identical to the one on Oculus Go and comes with a basic point-and-click interface. Navigating around channels is a no-frills VR experience, but it gets the.
Copyright 2019 UVR Media LLC. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Beat saber is crazy good! To play Oculus Rift.
We’ll also go over the advantages of connecting your Oculus Quest to your PC
Oculus Quest or Rift S Headset. Compatible USB or HDMI Camera. Compatible Gaming PC. Wireless Router (recommended 5GHz) Software (MRC) Mixed Reality Capture Tool (OBS) Open Broadcaster Software.
We go through all of those details and other tips and tricks below.
If you have any trouble trying to setup Oculus Link, comment down at the bottom of this guide, and we can help you out.
RELATED: Check out everything we know so far about the Oculus Quest 2, which will include Oculus Link improvements!
Oculus Link Requirements
A VR-ready PC
Not all PCs are compatible with the Oculus Link, even if they are “VR Ready” PCs. In order to connect your Oculus Quest headset to your PC, you’ll need the following computer specs:
Oculus On Mac
Windows 10
At least 8 GB of RAM
A spare USB 3.0 port
A CPU for VR that is equivalent or greater than the Intel i5-4590 or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
A graphics card for VR great than the NVidia GeForce 1080.
We have a list of gaming PCs for VR here. Any of these are able to run Oculus Link and any PC VR games you want!
Oculus Link Cable
The original requirements for the Oculus Link cable was a USB 3.0 one that met the following requirements:
Length: 5-Meter Headset Cable
Type: Full featured USB active optical cable. USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C.
Signal Requirements: USB 3.2 Gen 1 Signaling 5 Gbps USB 2
Infrared Signal Loss Tolerances: <500mV VBUS @ 3000mA; <250mV GND @ 3000mA
Power Supply: 3A
Bandwidth: 5 Gbps
Support for SuperSpeed USB ports
Oculus sells an official Oculus Quest Link cable on their website so that there is no confusion.
If your Oculus PC software is up to date, it now allows Oculus Link to work with USB 2.0 cables. This includes the charging cable that comes with the Quest. That means that you don’t have to buy any additional hardware to make this work – other than the gaming PC!
A recent update by Oculus now allows a USB-C to USB-C or USB-C to USB-A 2.0 cable. The C-to-C version is what comes with the Oculus Quest for charging.
The Oculus Quest 2 only comes with a 1 meter charging cable, which means that it cannot be used for Link play.
Another highly rated third-party cable to setup Oculus Link is this one from JYSW. It has over 200 5-star reviews on Amazon from Oculus users who are happy with its quality.
You can buy the official and third party Oculus Link cable directly from Amazon below.
Oculus Link Virtual Reality Headset Cable for Quest 2 and Quest - 16FT (5M) - PC VR
This premium fiber-optic cable delivers exceptional performance for PC VR gaming on your Quest and Quest 2 while simultaneously powering the headset
Oculus Link connects Oculus Quest and Quest 2 to a gaming PC, giving you access to a wide range of Oculus Rift apps and games
Optimal length reaches 16 feet (5M), providing a best-in-class experience with flexible, lightweight durability
Oculus Home
Oculus Home is the PC software that lets you search, download, and play PC VR games. It’s also required to complete the Oculus Link setup on your Oculus Quest.
You can play Steam VR games on your Oculus Quest as well, which can be setup after you have Link ready to go. Once everything is setup, you will be able to play Oculus Rift S games on your Oculus Quest using your computer. You can also download new games to your Oculus Home via the Oculus app on your phone.
11.0 Firmware
Your Oculus Quest firmware must be on at least version 11.0 or higher to support and setup Oculus Link. Since the firmware version is up to version 17 or higher now, this shouldn’t be a problem for most players.If you don’t like to update your firmware though, you’ll want to make sure before you follow the Oculus Link setup below.
If you meet the minimum requirements, then you can setup Oculus Link with your Oculus Quest! Quest 2 owners will be good to go right out of the box.
Underneath our setup guide, learn more about the Oculus Link cable and check out some common troubleshooting questions and answers too.
What is Oculus Link?
Users love the Oculus Quest headset because it is completely wireless. It runs off of an internal processor and you can take it on the go wherever you want.
However, the internal Snapdragon processor is not nearly as strong as a real VR gaming PC. In fact, some tests suggest that the Quest 1 is almost 5 times less powerful than a typical gaming PC and Quest 2 50% less powerful.
When you setup Oculus Link, it gives you the ability to run all of those awesome PC virtual reality games again. You use your Quest display and controllers, but the games are powered by your PC.
Plus, the selection of VR games available for PC in the Oculus Home store or Steam VR is far greater than the Quest. So by setting up Oculus Link, you’ve just multiplied the number of games to check out. Like Roblox VR or any of the awesome multiplayer VR games we’ve featured before.
With the basics out of the way, let’s show you how to setup Oculus Link.
How To Setup Oculus Link With The Oculus Quest 2
In this guide, we’ll show you how to setup Oculus Link with the Oculus Quest so that you can connect your Quest to your PC and play PCVR games on the headset.
Total Time:10 minutes
Oculus Quest Mac App Installer
Download and Install Oculus Home
The first step is to download and install the Oculus desktop software from Oculus. Visit Oculus official website via https://www.oculus.com/setup/, click on the Download Software button. After downloading the Oculus Link software, install the software on your PC like you would any other program.
Go to the Devices Page
Launch the Oculus desktop app and setup your account if you don’t have one yet. Then, select Devices from the left had side menu. Old app versions mac.
Select the Oculus Quest
Select Quest from the list of headsets displayed on your PC and continue.
Connect and Enable Oculus Link
After selecting Quest, the next thing is to connect your Quest to your PC. First, turn on your Oculus Quest. Then, plug one side of your USB-C cable into your headset and the other end into a USB port on your PC.
Conformation of Connection
Once the headset is connected, Oculus home will give you a green light – showing you that your headset is connected.
Confirm that Oculus Link is Enabled
Mac onscreen keyboard app. Put on your Oculus Quest to confirm whether Oculus Link has been enabled.
Set the VR Download Directory
Lastly, Oculus Home on your PC will ask you where to set your default content directory. Since some PCVR games are quite large, don’t set this to your main system disk if possible.
And that’s it! You’ve setup Oculus Link with the Oculus Quest and are ready to start playing PCVR games through your Quest VR headset. You can check out and download games to your PC via your computer or from the Oculus app on your phone.
Mail app mac forwarding. Below is some extra information for you to check out about the Oculus Link cable. Underneath that, we have some troubleshooting tips and help.
USB 2.0 vs 3.0
The obvious question is whether you have any performance drop when you use a USB 2.0 cable for Oculus Link instead of 3.0. Data transfer in a USB cable is dependent on two main factors:
Speed
USB 2.0 supports a maximum transfer speed of 480mbps, while USB 3.0 supports 5gbps. While this sounds like a large difference, Oculus Quest only requires a recommended 150mbps of data transfer.
So for the speed at which data transmits to and from the gaming PC to the VR headsets, either standard is fine.
Duplex
USB 2.0 cables are half duplex. This means that data can only ever transmit in one direction at a time. This means from the host (gaming PC) to the slave (Oculus Quest) or vice versa. Each side must wait until they’ve received data before they are able to send data in return.
These sounds complicated, but it happens millions of times per second.USB 3.0 cables are full duplex. This means that your gaming PC and Oculus Quest can transmit data to each other at the exact same time.
Oculus Link 3.0 cables use full duplex communications. This means that data is sent from your headset controller to the PC while your PCVR video is fed to the headset at the exact same time. Since 2.0 cables can’t do this, you can expect some additional latency while playing.
Oculus Link 3.0 cables use full duplex communications. This means that data is sent from your headset controller to the PC while your PCVR video is fed to the headset at the exact same time. Since 2.0 cables can’t do this, you can expect some additional latency while playing.
Oculus Link Alternative
The main alternative to Oculus Link is Virtual Desktop. VD for the Oculus Quest has an extra mod available via SideQuest that lets you play PCVR games wirelessly on your Quest.
To get setup, you simply have to install Virtual Desktop, the VD mod from SideQuest, and configure a wireless network connection from your computer to your Quest. If you set things up right, you can play wirelessly with little or no latency. Even the Oculus touch controllers work seamlessly with VD too.
Oculus Quest Mac Pro
We have a full setup guide for Virtual Desktop on the Oculus Quest which goes through everything!
Oculus Link Not Working: FAQs
If you are having trouble trying to setup Oculus Link, we’ve compiled some questions and answers to some of the most popular questions on the internet.
Why does my Quest connect to my PC and then quickly crash?
Most often, this is because of incompatible specs on your gaming PC. To check this:
Go to your PC or laptop’s spec page and look up the GPU, CPU, Memory, operating system, and USB ports.
Compare these specs against the minimum requirements we started above.
Check your GPU against Oculus’ official table. If your GPU is not currently supported, you may be able to setup Oculus Link with your device, but is more likely to have performance issues with Oculus Link.
My computer won’t recognize Oculus Link when it’s connected.
Make sure that your operating system is up to date on your PC and Quest. Then, restart your computer and see if that fixes things.
I can’t see where to select the Oculus Quest in the Oculus PC software.
If you can’t see the option to add the Quest, log out of the PC software and log back in. Also, make sure you have the latest version installed.
I can’t see the “Enable Link” option on the Oculus Quest.
If you can’t see the “Enable Link” option under Settings on your Oculus Quest, turn the headset off completely and restart.
Can you setup Oculus Link with a Mac?
The Oculus PC software is only available for Windows. This means that you can’t get Oculus Link working with Mac natively.
However, some users have reported using Bootcamp to install a virtual version of Windows on their Mac. Then, you can install the Oculus software in Bootcamp and run Oculus Link if your Mac specs are good enough.
Were you able to setup Oculus Link with your Oculus Quest? If you have any questions, let us know below!
Recently I attended a conference where I needed to display a demonstration of what we were doing in VR on the Oculus Quest, the Quest has some great mechanisms for casting to a mobile phone or to a Chromecast device attached to a TV but when it comes to sharing to a laptop there isn’t really a good solution at the moment. Im sure that will all change when they bring out Oculus Link (for a wired connection anyway) but we needed something now.
After digging around on some forums and piecing some data together from youtube, forums and reddit I thought i would make a note of the end result here which enables you to use scrcpy, an android screen sharing utility, to share both with a wire but also wirelessly and also enables an easy way to capture video straight to the computer.
Initial Install and Setup
Enable developer mode on your Oculus Quest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PTFkLnJRLs)
Plug the USB-C cable into your computer and the Quest, this also works with USB to USB-C
If its your first time plugging into this computer you will need to accept the prompt within the device that allows you to access the device from the computer as per below and check the box to always allow if you want to skip this section in the future
For Windows download and unzip the latest build of scrcpy from https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/releases a direct link for the current version when writing this is here: https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/releases/download/v1.10/scrcpy-win64-v1.10.zip
For Mac the application is available in Homebrew. Install it using the following from a terminal window:
You will also need adb. you can install this by running the following from a terminal window:
Oculus Quest Mac App Emulator
Sharing the Screen connected via cable
Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) or and CD into the extracted folder from above
Run the following command:
Sharing the Screen connected wirelessly
You will still need a cable to make an initial connection and start the client on the Quest and then you can disconnect and use wirelessly, use the following steps to connect wirelessly:
Follow steps 1-4 above in the setup section
Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and CD into the extracted folder from above
While the device is connected via a cable run the following to find out what your Quests IP address is in the src section:
192.168.1.0/24dev wlan0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.198
Now run the following replacing the IP address below (192.168.1.198) as yours:
Disconnect the cable from the PC and with the device disconnected run the command to connect to the device as below
Sharing Window
If everything worked above a new window should appear showing the device screen, you can then maximize this for a better demo window.
Testing was done with variations of the scrcpy command but the above was found to be the best viewing size to enable a good demo.
Recording the screen
There is also a great way to capture the screen while mirroring, add the following command options to the end of the scrcpy command above to do this:
Oculus Quest Mac Os
To disable mirroring while recording:
Troubleshooting
Connection Issues
If you get a blank window or are unable to connect when device is plugged in you should be able to run the following command from the same folder above:
PS C:UsersalanDownloadsscrcpy-win64-v1.10> .adb.exe devices List of devices attached 1PASH9AF839266 device
Oculus Quest App Windows 10
The device should show above rather than:
PS C:UsersalanDownloadsscrcpy-win64-v1.10> .adb.exe devices List of devices attached 1PASH9AF839266 unauthorized
If you get the latter then make sure you have enabled developer mode and authorized the device as per step 1-3 above.
Target Machine refused connection when in wireless
If you receive a message like the following: “cannot connect to 192.168.1.198:5555: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it. (10061)”
Reconnect the Quest to the computer and go from Step 3 in the wireless connection steps above, this is caused because the client on the quest stopped, normally as you reset the device.