Welcome to My Tech Gear, and welcome to another Tech Tip Tuesday! Today I'll be taking you through
a step-by-step guide on how to get your oculus quest 1 or 2 set up to run pc based vr games,
and in the process, introduce you to a whole new world of high fidelity virtual reality.
I'll be going through 3 easy steps to setup your quest to work with the oculus rift store
so you can play PC VR Rift games on your quest, and I'll be taking you through the 3 additional
steps needed to get your quest running VR games from the Steam gaming platform.
This introduces you to a whole other platform of high quality VR games such as Medal of Honor and
Half-Life:Alyx, and I thoroughly recommend getting this set up. So let's jump straight into it.
So before we go any further, if you do enjoy the video please don't forget to like and share it,
and if you're not subscribed yet then hit that subscribe button down below,
and that notification bell, so you're notified about new videos as and when I post them. It
really helps me grow this channel so that I can keep making videos like this for you. Thanks!
So why should you do this when the quest is a standalone VR headset already?
Well as great as the quest is, experiencing VR from a PC will introduce you to a far higher
fidelity of games. This will allow you to also access games from the Steam platform,
so you'll have a wider range of games to play, and so you also aren't held captive by oculus
as the only platform from which you can buy games. Set up itself is actually pretty easy,
and takes just 3 main steps. Get a PC. Get a USB cable. Install some software. That's it!
So the first issue we need to address is this, the PC. As the pc will now be running the VR
games rather than your headset, your headset is basically now just a display, you're going
to need a PC capable of running VR games. Oculus have released what it regards as the minimum spec
for this, which is over here. Now I did go into this in a little bit of detail in my 'most asked
questions' video. So feel free to pop over to that one and watch that video first if you want. Card's
up there if you want to go and watch that, and I'll put a link in the description down below.
Long story short, you'll need a PC with at least 8GB RAM,
windows 10 and an Intel i5 or a Ryzen 5 CPU or higher. So for graphics cards,
if you already have a pc, then you should be fine with an nvidia 1660, or equivalent, or higher.
Now you can go lower according to those specs, but you're really touching the edge of the
limits of what a PC can handle, and PCVR games are just going to get more and more intense as
time goes on. So you do want to give yourself some longevity in the card that you own.
If you're looking at upgrading your pc, or you're looking at buying a pc now, then certainly I'd
recommend any pc based on the new nvidia 30 series graphics cards. I recently bought an MSI
Ventus 2x 3060Ti graphics card for my pc, which is behind me, and I've been super impressed with its
performance for VR. For around $400, it's a great card. If you'd like to see the review for that
then I'll put the link up above there once I've done it, and also in the description down below.
So in order to attach the quest to the PC you will need a USB-C cable to connect the two. Now you can
use the cable that came with the quest, assuming your pc has a USB-C port, but it's not really long
enough, and certainly the quest 2 only came with a one meter cable and that's way too short! Now
you could use them just for setting up though but please don't play a game with them because you're
gonna break something. Now my recommendation is to get a 5m USB-C cable. You could get a 3m one,
but I find that anything shorter than 5m and your movement will be limited due to the cable length.
This matches the spec of the official oculus link cable which is also 5m. The official
cable will set you back a cool $79 though so it's certainly not cheap. However it will give you one
of the most reliable cables to use. There are alternatives in the market though that
you can get for roughly half this price. Whilst technically any USB cable that matches the USB
2.0 spec should work, I would recommend getting one that matches 3.1 spec or higher as you want
data and power to go through the cable, and also give you the highest chance of being able to
handle some of the high graphical data games that you're going to be playing. Make sure you get the
right connectors for both the quest and your pc. So you'll need a cable with a USB-C plug on one
end to plug into your quest, and either a USB-C or a USB-A plug to plug into your pc, depending
on which port you've got available. Again, aim for USB 3.0 or higher ports where you can.
They're typically colored blue on the inside of the socket on a pc to help you easily identify
them. You can also get USB-C to USB-A adapters if you need to convert existing cables you might
have. I'll place some links to alternative cables you can purchase in the description down below,
which are roughly half the price of the oculus cable if you want to go down that route.
So once we've got the cable set up, and we've got the PC, we're now into software. Now the official
oculus quest app needs to be installed on your PC in order for the VR games to run on your PC
and show up on your quest. So you need to go to 'oculus.com/setup' and download the oculus link
software. This is what allows you to play the PC VR games on your headset. Once it's downloaded,
double-click on the file and follow the instructions to install the app. The first time
you run it, it will take you through a first time setup process, and it's pretty simple to follow.
Once the app is open, select 'add new headset' and select either the original oculus quest or oculus
quest 2, depending on which one you have. You'll be taken through a simple setup process once
that's all set up. You can now download and play your first PC VR game inside the quest itself.
When it's connected, you'll notice that your lobby changes. It's not the typical quest home screen.
So you're now in the oculus PC VR lobby, and so the menus will start to look a little bit
different, which is the indication that you're all set up and you're actually in PC VR. Buying
games and running them is now exactly the same as if you're buying a normal game in the quest
store. The only difference now is that you are buying games that are PC based VR games.
Be careful here, as any game you buy will only run from the PC. So don't
go and buy Beat Saber on the PC and expect to be able to play it stand alone on the quest,
because it won't work. For Beat Saber you will need to buy it twice.
There are some games however that are cross-buy. So if you buy them on one platform you'll get
it for free on the other. However, that list is somewhat limited. I'll put a link
in the description down below that will take you to that list.
So that's it! That's all the steps you need to get oculus PCVR games working with your quest headset!
If however you want access to even more games then Steam is the place to be.
Steam is another PC game store that has a far wider selection of VR games,
and fortunately these games are also playable using the quest. So if you want to look into
the Steam store as well, then there's just 3 simple, easy to follow, steps needed for that,
which are, installing the Steam app on the PC, installing SteamVR on the PC,
and then running the SteamVR from the quest headset. So let's go through each of those.
So the first thing we need to do is install the Steam store app. So go to their website,
which is 'store.steampowered.com'. Download the app, and then install it. If you don't already
have a Steam account, then you will need to set one up when you first install the app.
Once it's installed, and your account is set up, then the first step is to check whether your PC
is VR ready. So run the Steam app that you just installed, and search for 'SteamVR'. In the search
results there will be a 'SteamVR Performance Test' app. Now you want to run that, and that will run
a sequence of tests on your PC to ensure that it's good enough to run your PC VR games.
The summary screen that comes up will let you know whether your system is good to go
or whether there are any components, like your CPU or your graphics card,
that might need upgrading. Assuming it's all green, then once it's complete, then search
for SteamVR again in the Steam store. There is a 'SteamVR' app, and you want to install that.
Once that's done you're all ready for it to run on your quest headset.
So now we just need to run SteamVR from your oculus quest headset. So with the oculus link
app running on your PC, and your quest already connected to the PC with the cable that we've got,
and yourself in that PC VR home screen on your quest headset,
you need to select 'Virtual Desktop' from the menu bar on the bottom. When you go into that,
you should find a 'SteamVR' shortcut on your desktop. That shortcut should have been installed
when you installed the SteamVR game on your PC previously. So you just need to
hold down your trigger button when you're pointing at that for about a second or two.
When you release the trigger, in the pop-up menu, select 'Open'. It will now run SteamVR,
and that's it! Once it loads, which can take a while, you will be in a different
home screen, which is the Steam home screen. This will display any games you have purchased on the
steam store in your quest headset. Select the one you want to play, and away you go!
So if this is the first time you've run this,
chances are you're looking at a blank screen because you haven't bought any apps yet. So,
go back to the Steam store app that you installed on your PC, find a game that you want buy,
download it, and the next time go back to your quest it will be there in your Steam home screen.
Now you may get a message pop-up in your quest headset that says you can't run an app
from 'unknown sources'. Now the SteamVR app is considered, by Oculus, to be an
'unknown source'. So in order to fix that, you need to go into the oculus app on your PC
and enable 'unknown sources'. The app will then run steamvr without issue.
So now that you've run SteamVR once, it will now appear in your apps drawer
in the oculus home screen, so it will be easy to launch going forwards, the second, third,
fourth time, because you won't need to keep going into the virtual desktop to run it.
One of the things that will surprise you will be the size of games. If you're used to maybe
2 or 3GB sizes of files on quest games, this is gonna blow you out of the water. PC VR games can
be big. So make sure you've got plenty of storage on your PC. Asgard's Wrath for instance is 135GB!
That's for one game! So get ready for a pretty big hard drive that's gonna have to sit in your PC.
Two of the biggest issues that are likely to be your stumbling block here for a smooth
graphical experience is gonna be a good graphics card and the USB cable.
For the graphics cards, try to get the best one that you can and if you're
still finding yourself with stuttering issues, start playing around with the graphics
settings in the game to see if that improves it.
The other issue can be around USB cables. So whilst the recommendation has been to get USB
3.1 gen2 cables, I've actually been able to run Half-Life:Alyx, at ultra graphical settings,
using a USB cable and USB extender which I just had lying around the house, no specific cable
was needed. The oculus app did issue a warning stating that it wasn't a USB 3 cable, but it
still worked fine, without any issues. No stutter and no dropped frames either, that I noticed.
Certainly when oculus link first came out it was super ropey and required certain USB cables,
but it's matured a lot over the last year and now games run on far more cables than they ever did.
So I'd actually recommend trying it out with whatever cables you happen to have lying around
the house. You might be surprised with what works. The USB extender that I got only cost
me a few dollars so it could be a really cheap way to get that cable length that you need.
It won't be able to provide data and power to your quest though whilst you play,
and it will be limited to a 72 hertz display rate, but it's a really cheap way to get up and running,
and so you don't need to go and get that ultimate cable straight away. I'll place
some links on where you can get these cables in the description down below.
A great way to test your USB cables is using the oculus link app on the PC. So with your quest on,
and linked to your PC, and the app running, in the app, go into 'Devices' and you'll see your device.
Next to that device will be either a green tick or an orange exclamation mark now that tells you
whether it's a USB 3 connection, which would be a green tick, or an orange exclamation mark if it's
not. So what you can do is if you just unplug the cable that's there, and try another cable,
the app will automatically test the next cable and either give you a green tick or an orange
information icon. So it's a really quick way of trying different cables out in different ports
on your pc and quickly seeing what works and what cables are better than others.
It is also worth checking the display rate in the oculus app. By default it
will be set to 72 Hertz, or 72 frames per second that your quest screen is updating,
even if you've got a USB 3 cable, because oculus recommends 72 hertz as the default.
If you've got a USB 3 cable though, so that green tick I was talking about,
you can increase it to 90 hertz. Now I've tried both, and the playability of both has been fine.
The latter is slightly smoother and you'll have varying levels of success depending on each game
as well. If you want to increase it to 90 hertz, in the display settings, you should have a
selection option and you can choose between 72, 80 or 90 hertz. But again, only with the USB 3 cable.
So that's it, you should now be all set up and ready to play your PC based VR games, using
your quest headset, on either the Oculus or the Steam platforms. I hope this guide was helpful.
Do let me know in the comments down below how you got on. Do you think that PCVR
is worth this or you're quite happy just playing on the quest stand alone? Are there killer games
you think everyone should be playing on PCVR? I do hope you enjoy the PC VR games, and as always...
See you next one!