Playing high-end PC VR games on your Quest without a computer needed was always a dream,
but it’s here.
Cloud streaming services are now fast enough to stream VR games over the Internet directly
to your headset, and honestly, I didn’t expect it to work so well already because
there are a couple of issues when it comes to streaming VR games.
Like streaming artifacts, where the video quality just looks like sh**.
Or worse, high latency, where you move in real life, but it moves 1 second later in
the stream, which is good… if you want to get sick.
VR cloud streaming is tricky because there’s more data to be transferred than regular gaming.
That’s why there aren’t many around yet.
But we’ve got Shadow PC and now, PlutoSphere.
Both work, but it’s not perfect; there are pros and cons per platform.
Today, we’re taking a look at PlutoSphere, and if there’s interest, I’ll also make
a comparison with Shadow PC.
Leave me a comment if you’d like to see that.
PlutoSphere recently launched in Early Access on SideQuest.
Currently, they only support Quest 1 and 2 but will eventually support more devices.
I’ve been testing it out for the past few days.
So today, I wanted to share an early overview and discuss if it’s a viable option already.
I’ll show you actual streamed gameplay and, at the end, a guide on how to get started
yourself.
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So, PlutoSphere is a new cloud gaming service; essentially, they run VR games on a remote
server, and then they feed a stream directly onto your VR headset.
They provide you with a virtual desktop run on Amazon Web Services if you sign up.
Which looks like this, it’s essentially a new Windows PC where you can install anything
you need, like SteamVR, or Epic Games.
By logging into your accounts, you’ll get access to your own library of games.
The game is rendered and played on the remote PC, but you see and interact with everything
locally.
Audio, video, headset tracking, and controller input are all transferred via the Internet.
This means you can play PC VR games without requiring to own a PC yourself.
It’s like Netflix, but then for VR games, and, of course, that does come at a cost.
In Early Access, you can try out the service for free for a limited time each day with
the option to purchase more time.
However, at the time of making this video, Pluto temporarily disabled the free tokens
because bad people have been abusing it *F those people*
The team is now working on account verification, which is already here, but they want to test
it before they enable free tokens again but I don’t think it’ll take long anymore.
For now, this is the price No, not 600 dollars per hour, thankfully 😉. These
are Pluto Tokens.
In early access, you can get 600 Pluto tokens for around 1 dollar, and that’ll get you
1 hour of playtime.
The more tokens you buy at the same time, the more discount you’ll get.
Right now, it’s 40% off because of early access.
What’ll be at release, we don’t know yet.
So for now, if you’re a gaming addict like me, and you can game for 8 hours straight,
then it’ll set you back about 9 dollars for a day.
However, there is currently one huge limitation: no persistent storage.
This means your virtual PC will be emptied each time you are logged off for more than
30 minutes.
Default software like SteamVR stays installed, but you will have to reinstall your games
each time.
The team said they are doing it this way because storage is one of the most costly aspects
of cloud computing, so they are currently working on a cost-effective method.
Which is a win win for everyone but when this happens is unclear, though.
So while installing games, Half-Life: Alyx took me about 20 minutes, your tokens will
decrease.
This is not exactly consumer-friendly, but hey, it’s early access.
There are also some strict requirements too, you need at least 50 Mbps download speed and
a 5 GHz WiFi 6 router.
You also need a ping of less than 75ms to an AWS region.
My home setup seems to be on par, I measured my internet connection at around 500 Mbps
on my Quest, I have a beautiful WiFi 6 router right here, and my ping looks good.
At the end of this video, I’ll show you how to check and install everything (timestamps
are below) but for now, let’s dive into this service while looking at some gameplay
so you can decide for yourself whether it’s worth the time and money right now.
Now, you can see some Zenith gameplay here.
All my gameplay in this video was recorded using Quest’s native recording feature,
which means you see exactly what I’m seeing.
It’s pretty good; the game is entirely playable, image quality is sharp, and there are no streaming
artifacts.
Black bars do occasionally appear, but not a lot and the latency was low enough that
it was neglectable.
It pretty much matched my experience with Virtual Desktop on my PC.
If you want to change video settings, you can click on the blue bar at the left on your
virtual PC.
I tried 4K, but I found 1080p to be the most stable.
Input lag was around 20ms, which is noticeable if you move quickly.
But as you can see, I can play Beat Saber on Expert without any problems, and I think
that’s very, very cool.
Some of you may be more sensitive to input lag, but I don’t think you’ll mind if
you can handle Virtual Desktop.
I wouldn’t recommend it for competitive play, though.
Slower games like Zenith and Half-Life: Alyx should work perfectly.
However, I had constant stuttering with Half-Life: Alyx for some reason.
The PlutoSphere team told me that it is supposed to work, and I have seen others get decent
quality, but I tried low graphic settings, restarting, and it doesn’t seem to work
for me.
Maybe it was bad timing, as occasionally I get awful latency out of nowhere with all
games.
I think it depends on how many people are using the service, or maybe it’s a software
bug.
So right now, it’s a hit and miss.
This is something Pluto should definitely stabilize in the future.
Now, the specs.
Not common gaming hardware because they are mostly hardware used by servers; it’s also
not exactly sexy.
The GPU is like an NVIDIA GTX 1080 equivalent according to internet benchmarks.
But when it works, it WORKS, and it’s incredible.
It’s just not perfect yet.
There’s still a lot of work to be done.
So I think it’s mostly worth it for occasional use, only for those that don’t own a gaming
PC but still want to play triple-A games like Half-Life: Alyx.
Alyx is about 12 hours long, so you could just rent this cloud service until you finish
the game.
That should set you back about 73 dollars, including buying the game
That price beats buying a 2000 dollar gaming PC, plus we all know how terrible it is to
get hardware right now.
This is amazing.
PlutoSphere opens up many possibilities and more options for people to get into PC VR
gaming.
Although, I would wait to buy into PlutoSphere until they’ve at least added persistent
storage, and I would check if the game you want to play is fully supported.
You can also wait until they re-add the free beta tokens, so you can test if it works for
your home setup first.
You can stay up to date on all this via their Discord which I’ll link below.
Before we end this video, here’s a guide on how to get started yourself.
In this guide, I’ll also assume you know how to sideload via SideQuest, if you don’t
know how, then check out my guide on it - the link is below, that said, everything in this
guide is also linked below for your convenience and now let’s get into it.
For PlutoSphere to work, you need to double check three things.
First, make sure you have a 5ghz WiFi 6 router and make sure your Quest headset is connected
to the right WiFi.
You can check by clicking the settings at the left corner and then choosing WiFi.
Then, your internet speed should be at least 50 Mbps, which you can simply check by opening
the Quest browser, then navigate to speedtest.net and start a test from there.
Last thing to check if whether you have a ping of at least 75ms to an AWS region.
You can test that, in Oculus Browser by going to the website cloudping.cloud/aws.
Wait until it finishes and uh, unfortunately, CloudFront does not count.
But if all has loaded and anything at the top is below 75ms like here on my screen,
then you should be good to go.
Now, I’m using my iPad here to show that it’s possible, but you can do it on a phone
or laptop as well.
So create an account PlutoSphere using the link here
If you use an adblocker, Pluto recommends turning it off for this site because it may
cause some trouble.
Once your account is created, login at the dashboard (link is below)
You’ll get to the main dashboard.
Here, make sure to verify your account which you do by entering your phone number then
entering the code you’ll receive by text.
Make sure you got some Pluto tokens.
If you don’t, you can buy some by clicking the “Get Tokens” button.
Make sure to fill out your Pluto username here.
Don’t forget!
Once you have some tokens, you should see it at the top right on your dashboard.
Go back to the Pluto dashboard and go ahead and click on the “Start” button.
Your virtual PC will be created including all necessary software to start using SteamVR
straight away.
This process can take about 10 to 15 minutes, you can check on its status here.
It should say “Booting up…” following by “Connecting…”
While you wait, let’s install the PlutoSphere app on your Quest.
So connect your Quest to your PC with a USB cable.
Launch SideQuest and make sure it’s connected.
Then in the search, look for PlutoSphere, download and install it on your Quest by clicking
on “Download app” button.
Wait until it finishes, which you can double check by going to “Currently Installed apps”
then search for “Plutosphere” here.
If you see this package name, then you got it!
Now, if you go back to your Pluto Dashboard and if the status now says “Connected”,
you’re ready to go!
Go ahead and click the button with the little computer icon on it.
Your virtual PC should launch in a separate browser tab, which should load within 30 seconds.
You’ll get a welcome message, which you can close.
The rest is just like any Windows PC.
Except at the left, if you click on the blue bar, you’ll get various options for your
virtual PC, like setting the video quality here.
Open Task Manager is also helpful and you can see your Ping here.
At the bottom of this menu you can also open the keyboard if you need to type.
Now, we just need to make sure we are logged into Steam or any gaming platform that you
use, so double check that by launching Steam.
There are shortcuts on the desktop.
Then also make sure SteamVR has launched, it needs to be launched for it to work inside
your headset.
Don’t forget to install the game you want to play too!
If you’re done, you can go ahead and put on your Quest headset.
Now inside VR, if it’s your first time launching PlutoSphere, make sure your Oculus Browser
is up-to-date by launching it once.
If you get a popup asking to update it, make sure to do that.
If nothing happens and the app just launches, then you’re ready to launch launch PlutoSphere.
Go to “Apps” > Click the dropdown and select “Unknown Sources”, and find PlutoSphere
here.
It’ll open your Oculus Browser and ask you to login with your Pluto account.
You only need to do that once.
After logging in, you should see the message “Registering Pluto Device…
Success”.
If nothing happens when you launch Pluto, then make sure that you don’t have any other
browsers installed on your Quest.
I’ve had Chromium installed for something before, which I had to uninstall via SideQuest
before this worked.
If you got the success message, go back to your App Library by using the Oculus Button
and run PlutoSphere again.
You’ll see a blackscreen and after a few moments, you should hear elevator music.
Then SteamVR should launch and you’re ready to goooo!
If you only hear music and the app closes, you most likely don’t have SteamVR launched
on your virtual PC.
If you do and it still doesn’t work, try restarting your virtual PC by using the “Stop”
button, wait until it shuts down, then use the “Start” button again to restart it.
If you do this within 30 min.
everything should still be saved in the storage.
Also try restarting your Quest headset as well, that usually helps for me.
That’s it!
So what do you think about the current state of cloud VR gaming?
Are you going to try it out, or will you sit out a few years until we get total lag-free
gaming on demand?
Oof, that’d be awesome when that happens.
Let me know in the comments below!
As cloud VR matures, even more, I’ll keep you updated on this channel.
So make sure to leave me a like as support, and if you want to do a little more, please
check out our new YouTube members tiers or Patreon.
It’ll keep us afloat.
A special thanks go to all our current Champions, especially these in Shining Armor.
As always, VR on!