Hey everyone!
Cas here, and welcome to another VR tech tips.
On Friday, because our community is so great at hacking and forcing the update out, Oculus
decided to officially release Air Link early.
So many of us, including me, got the update, finally.
Over the weekend, I have tested it and compared it with Virtual Desktop.
Today, I wanted to share my results and show you a side-by-side comparison.
These are my first impressions as I haven’t spent enough time yet.
But I wanted to post this now because I learned some interesting things.
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For those entirely out of the loop, let me quickly explain what it is.
Oculus Air Link is a wireless way to play PC VR games on Quest 2.
It’s like Oculus Link except without the cable.
So you can play Rift exclusives like Asgard’s Wrath or SteamVR games like Half-Life: Alyx
on your Oculus Quest 2 wirelessly.
You do still need a VR-ready PC, as that is where you stream it from.
Unfortunately, this does not work with Quest 1; although there have been sounds, people
have been able to force it out on Quest 1.
I’ll research this and keep you updated.
Oculus Air Link is part of the latest update on Quest 2-only, version 28.
It’s a bit of an infamous version now because it also comes with many other significant
updates.
I’ll cover these topics in a different video later, so stay tuned for that.
But you can guess why everyone wants this update like NOW.
However, Oculus likes to roll out updates gradually, and for some reason, this one seems
to be the slowest one ever.
So, don’t fret if you don’t have it yet; many people still don’t.
But the end of this video, I’ll give you some tips on how to try and force the update
out.
Before we dive into the comparison with Virtual Desktop, let me show you how to use it.
1.
For this to work, you need the PC version of the Oculus Home app.
You can download this from oculus.com/setup 2.
Then over here at the ‘Download Software’ button, you can download and install the PC
app. 3.
If you have it, launch it, and go to ‘Settings,’ Beta.
Air Link should be here.
You can enable it by toggling it on.
4.
If it isn’t, go back to General, scroll down and make sure you are on v28.
Now, in your Oculus Quest 2 headset.
Make sure you are on v28 here, too, because then you can go to Experimental Features,
and over there, you should see Air Link as well.
Enable it here, too, by toggling it on.
Remember that even if you are on v28, you may not have the features enabled yet.
This is because not only the update but also the features are rolling out gradually.
You might have to wait or try out my tips later in the video.
Then go to the ‘Quick Actions’ menu, still in the ‘Settings,’ and over here, you
should now see Oculus Air Link, too, plus your PC name.
If you click on it now, it will launch it.
Basically, this switches you to tethered PC mode, like Oculus Link, except wirelessly.
Everything will now run on your PC as if you are running a PC VR headset.
Even the “Hold home button to reset” doesn’t work anymore.
But you -can- check out your desktop by going to the Oculus Virtual Desktop menu here.
If you need to do something on your Quest again, then you have to turn off Oculus Air
Link from the Oculus Home PC menu at the left here at ‘Quit.’
Over here, you can also set your bitrate.
Dynamic automatically selects the best bitrate based on your setup.
At ‘Fixed,’ you can set your bitrate manually.
Okay, we’re going to dive into the comparison in just a bit.
But before that, I wanted to let you know how I tested it and on what hardware.
Because your mileage may vary if you have other hardware.
So these are my PC specs…
I will put links down below too if you’re interested.
I also have a WiFi 6 router, the TP-Link Archer AX6000.
It is about 2 to 3 meters from my play space and I’ve made it an access point with its
own seperate 5ghz WiFi network.
My Quest 2 is connected to that.
My PC is connected to this router with a network cable.
For my comparison, I have set the bitrate of both Air Link and VD to the same bitrate:
140 Mbps as that’s the highest bitrate I could get on Virtual Desktop.
All right, I’m going to show you a side-by-side comparison of my gameplay with Oculus Air
Link and Virtual Desktop.
I’ve recorded everything natively on the Quest.
So you should see the stream as I see it, and while I show you this, I’ll share my
impressions.
When doing these tests, I specifically looked at image quality, video and controller latency,
tracking accuracy, and input lag.
Many of these things, it’s tough to record and show what it was like exactly, but I’ll
do my best to explain it.
So, I’ve played different games on SteamVR, but for all my tests, I always try out Beat
Saber on Expert mode.
Not expert plus as I suck too much for that.
But as you can see, both track fine.
What I’ve noticed so far is a difference in image quality.
Virtual Desktop seems to have a darker, higher contrast color profile than Oculus Air Link.
Whichever one you prefer, that’s going to be personal preference.
That’s just colors, though.
Compression artifacts are also noticeable, which isn’t strange since I’m playing
on a bitrate of 140 Mbps.
It needs to be much higher than that to eliminate all the artifacts.
So yes, on both, I see the compression.
It is just like when Oculus Link just came out.
It’s not bad, it’s playable, but it’s not as beautiful as having a tethered PC VR
headset.
In this department, I think Virtual Desktop handles it better.
But let’s talk about video latency and this one is interesting, I was particularly looking
at which of the two seemed the most stable, so more consistent and less stutters.
And on games that my PC can handle, like Beat Saber and Population One, it was hard to notice
much of a difference between them.
It was similar.
I do notice a difference when I play a resource-heavy game, like Half-Life: Alyx.
On VD, I see stuttering when I move around.
On Oculus Air Link, this is suprisingly smooth.
I’m guessing this is due to ASW, short for Asynchronous SpaceWarp.
Simply put, this is a method that can smooth the frame rate when it drops.
ASW works on Oculus Air Link, you can enable it via the Oculus Debug Tool, but it should
be on automatically.
VD does not have access to this, unfortunately.
Altho, I’m not sure if it’s really ASW that is helping with the stuttering.
If anyone knows, let me know below.
I love to learn.
Funny enough, I didn’t notice these stutters before in VD, but I guess I do now because
I was switching back and forth so much.
So yes, difference is there, but not so big to make it bothersome.
Both platforms have a bit of video latency; how high this is will depend on your setup,
but they’re pretty much the same when comparing.
One quick tip, if you get extreme latency on Air Link, make sure you have the Oculus
Debug Tool set to default settings.
Here are my settings for your reference.
Especially, the ‘Encode Bitrate’ is important, set it to 0.
I had this set on 500 for Oculus Link before, and Air Link did not like that at all 😉
Headset and controller tracking and latency are good on both.
I really don’t notice much of a difference here.
Everything is playable.
As you can see.
But there is some kind of strange input lag on Oculus Air Link.
Air Link seems to handle pressing buttons slower than Virtual Desktop.
I especially notice there’s something up with the trigger button; sometimes it doesn’t
register at all, which just seems like a bug to me that I hope they’ll fix soon.
This doesn’t bother me much as it’s a very small delay, but it is enough for me
to notice it, and I can imagine this to be annoying in competitive games.
So, I do need to do more testing to form my final conclusions on this.
As I don’t think I’ve spent enough time on it yet over the weekend.
But for now, both experiences are good and playable.
But both have their pros and cons.
One is free.
Oculus Air Link is free.
So if you haven’t bought VD yet, I would, for sure, try out Oculus Air Link first.
I mean, if that works for you, that’s nice.
Virtual Desktop has its own benefits, though.
They are ahead of Oculus Air Link in features.
Something I expected as the developer has been optimizing it for a longer time.
There’s much more customization possible on VD to make it better for your system.
Oculus Air Link is still experimental, so it will probably take a while before it’s
on par with VD in this aspect.
Plus, VD does have a major benefit right now.
It supports 120Hz mode already, while Oculus Air Link does not support it yet, and well,
it makes a difference.
So I think 20 bucks is still worth it for VD.
I think it’s nice to have both options as both have their pros and cons.
Now, I have to say my setup conditions aren’t perfect since I’ve pretty much left all
settings at default, and I haven’t looked into making my setup better yet.
I am planning on figuring this out and sharing what I learn.
So stay tuned for that!
Now, before we move to the outro, I promised some tips on how to get Oculus Air Link if
you haven’t gotten it yet.
Oculus Air Link is rolling out gradually, separate from the update.
So even if you have v28, it could be that you do not see it yet.
On the Oculus PC software, if you are not on v28, you can opt-in to the Public Test
Channel to get it.
This didn’t work before, but it works now since Oculus enabled Air Link.
When you are on v28 and still do not see Air Link, try logging in and out for the settings
to refresh.
You can do that by going to Settings > Account, then Log out at the bottom.
On Oculus Quest 2, if you are on v28.
And the options don’t show up; then you can go to Settings > Experimental Features
and click on Reset here.
It will restart your Oculus Quest 2, and then Air Link should show up.
If you don’t have v28 yet, you can manually update it on Quest.
There’s a link in the description on how to do it.
Or you can wait until it comes automatically, which it will.
If all doesn’t work, restart your PC and Quest 2, just in case.
This small thing could already help.
That’s it for now.
Let me know your experiences with Air Link & Virtual Desktop.
Let us know if you have any tips on how to improve Oculus Air Link below.
So everyone can get some more tips!
And I might shout you out in my next video.
If you have questions, you can of course, drop them below too.
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