Yes! You can play SteamVR games on the Oculus Quest 2.
Since the Quest 2 is designed as a stand alone device though there are some hoops
we need to jump through first in order to play games like Half Life Alyx for example.
Since you're watching this video I assume you already know that this is going to require
that you pair your Quest 2 with your gaming PC. If you didn't know that... well now you know;
and if you don't have a gaming PC... I'm sorry but you're outta luck.
Now in order to play Steam VR games on your Quest 2 there's a pretty strict order
of operations you're going to need to follow. You're first going to need to enable Oculus Link
or Oculus Air Link on both your Quest 2 and your PC.
If you don't know how to do this I've placed a link to a different tutorial
video with step by step instructions on how to enable both Oculus Link
and Oculus Air Link in the cards and in the video description if you need some help with that.
If you're just hearing about Oculus Link and Air Link right now the short explanation is
Oculus Link allows you to pair the Quest 2 to your PC using a high speed USB 3 cable and
Air Link allows you to pair with your PC wirelessly using your home networks 5GHz WiFi.
Again if you need help getting these set up please check out my other video.
This video is focused on running SteamVR games on the Quest 2 so I'm assuming you already know
how to use Oculus Link or Air Link to get you to the Oculus PC interface which looks like this.
When it comes to playing PC VR games there are two types I've come across so far.
That being games that are VR exclusive titles which have been designed from the ground up for VR
like Half Life Alyx, Boneworks and many others and then traditional games that have had
VR support added to them like Assetto Corsa and Microsoft Flight Simulator.
VR exclusive titles I've found are much easier to run and have far
fewer quirks you need to learn how to navigate around; here's a quick example.
I've got my Quest 2 paired with my PC using Air Link and now I'm going to go over to the
right here on the Navigation bar... and click on Desktop.
You may only have one monitor connected to your PC so I don't think you'll have
to choose which monitor you want here but I have 2 so I'm going to choose monitor 2...
Let me just rearrange things a little bit here so I can show you what I'm doing...
ok... now I want to open Steam.
So I'm going to point and click on the Windows icon here on my desktop and then I'm going to
bring up the virtual keyboard by clicking on this keyboard icon here on the bottom right of the
window and I'm going to type in Steam... and hit enter.
You'll then go to your Steam Library and we need to Launch the Steam VR app.
One thing I forgot about... If you don't already have the
SteamVR app installed on your PC you're going to need to go to the Steam Store and
search for SteamVR and install it to your PC. It's totally free and you need it in order to
play any VR games you buy on Steam. Ok... back to the tutorial.
You'll then go to your Steam Library and now we need to Launch the Steam VR app.
As soon as you launch Steam VR you're supposed to be whisked away to the SteamVR interface
which looks like this. All too often though I find
myself in nothing more than this space. While it's pretty and all there's
nothing here to interact with. If this happens to you,
and it probably will, you'll want to press the menu button
on the left Touch controller which is the button with the 3 lines.
The Steam VR menu should then pop up and allow you to select what game you want to run.
In this case I'm going to select Half Life Alyx and the game will launch.
Since this game was built for VR from the ground up you can navigate the game menus in VR
and get straight into playing. It's great!
Now let's take a look at some games that had VR functionality added to them
at some point after they were originally released. The first one I'm going to take a look at here is
Assetto Corsa which is a racing game. This time around once we get SteamVR
running we're going to take the headset off, go to our PC and launch the game.
Since games like this support play on both a monitor and a VR headset you're going to need
to go into the game options and in the Video Settings switch the Rendering Mode to VR.
In Assetto Corsa I've found the setting that works the best with the
Quest 2 is this one, OpenVR early support. You can then cue up what you want to do...
for the purpose of this video I'm just going to go with what's here right now.
And now what I want to do is get my mouse cursor over the Start Engine button here
and then I'm going to put on my headset and get myself situated as if I were sitting in
the drivers seat of my car. I can then click on Start
Engine and that will load me into the race. In this game I've found it's kind of important
to have your head in the position it's going to be in when you're racing because once the track loads
up if your head is not in the correct position you're going to find yourself clipping through
your drivers body or the car or something. If this happens to you, you can re-center by
simply getting yourself positioned in your seat and then press CTRL and Spacebar on your keyboard
and that should get you back in the drivers seat. To start the race you then have to go back
to your mouse and use it to click on the steering wheel icon here to start the race.
I really wish they'd integrate VR controls into this so you don't have to go back and
forth to your keyboard and mouse but this is just some of the quirkiness I've found you
often have to deal with in games that weren't built for VR from the get go.
One other example I want to take a look at real quick is Microsoft Flight simulator.
Once again, once we have SteamVR running and we're in the SteamVR environment on our Quest 2
we need to take the headset off and go back to our PC and launch Flight Simulator.
You'll get your flight all set up... as for me...
I'm a total noob to this, so I'm still doing the Flight Training missions.
I'm going to cue up one of those and then click 'Fly'.
It should then load up your flight and the next thing you'll be prompted
to do is click on 'Ready to Fly'. You'll now see the cockpit view on
your PC monitor but if you put on the headset you will probably see something like this.
Before you can view Flight Simulator in VR you first need to switch over to VR Mode.
You can do this through the menu but I prefer to use the keyboard shortcut and press CTRL
and TAB at the same time on my keyboard. And that will toggle the game over to VR Mode.
As of the making of this video VR controllers are NOT supported in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
You have to fly with either your keyboard and mouse, an Xbox controller
or some kind of flight stick.
Talk about killing the immersion. Being able to view the game in VR
is cool BUT not being able to interact with the things you see around you is a huge let down.
Asobo Studio, the developer of Flight Simulator says they're working on implementing VR controls
but this has been the rumor since the beginning of 2021.
It's currently the beginning of September 2021 and VR controller support is still missing.
Anyway, this video isn't supposed to be a rant about missing features in games it's
supposed to be a help for those wanting to play SteamVR games on their Quest 2 or people having
trouble getting SteamVR games running on their Quest 2 and hopefully it has been helpful to you.
I know this is only a very small sample of games and potential hurdles to jump to get
SteamVR Games running on your Quest 2 but my hope is this will get you started and help you as you
figure out the different quirks in other games you may come across.
So yah... this is the end of the video. The part that no one watches.
But for those of you still here watching I have my Quest 2 playlist you can check out over there...
or down in the corner right there we'll see how well YouTube did at suggesting
some other video that you may or may not be interested in watching.