Congrats. Your award is well deserved. I tested Steam Link with No Man's Sky and the image looked bad, the quality was closer to the Potato mode from Virtual Desktop. I tried to increase the Steam resolution to 150% and it didn't help much and it tanked the FPS and it wasn't using any reprojection. Then I tested with Virtual Desktop on High settings and it looks beautiful with steady 72 FPS using the SSW (Spacewarp). So Virtual Desktop is the winner for me. I prefer the best possible image quality and I don't mind the barely noticeable reprojection. It seems that Steam Link is designed to give you real FPS at the expense of image resolution with zero reprojection, while Virtual Desktop is designed for the best possible image quality/resolution at the expense of lower FPS+reprojection. I'll continue using Virtual Desktop, and I hope this adds extra fire to Guy Godin's motivation to improve Virtual Desktop even further.
My 3060 is horrid just in the menu part.... So you're saying run it through VR Desktop....?? I wanna play Half Life but I don't think my Rig will run it... I'm linked in and all... But haven't purchased any stream VR titles
@@MrParis215 I think your 3060 is too weak for No Man's Sky. I have a 3070 GPU (~50% better than 3060 according to userbenchmark), and I can barely run it on High at 72 FPS with reprojection, your GPU might run it on Potato mode with very bad graphics or medium with a lot of reprojection. I've heard that Half Life Alyx is well optimized so you might be able to play it without issues, but probably on medium.
@@MrParis215You also need to make sure that your PC is connected to the router with an ethernet cable, your router is 5G, and you're playing close to the router. You should see +1000mbps speed in the Virtual Desktop's welcome screen on the Quest.
I tried Steamlink yesterday and for the first time I was able to run NMS in enhanced mode and it was super smooth. I will still use VD for playing flat screen games on my Quest 3 as Iove the giant screen and being able to clearly see my keyboard in pass through.
Thanks, Benjo. I've been using Virtual desktop for the past 3 months, but i always find, for me personally, latency issues. I've just downloaded the Steam link and played kayak Vr on my 4080 laptop and put it in cinematic mode with 90hz and it's under 8ms. I am amazed. All thanks to you. 🎉😁
Congratulations again Ben! You definitely earned that win! Thank you for this video. When you have more time, can you do an in depth comparison of VD and Steam.
Tried this with red dead redemption 2 and works flawlessly. If Steam can just add a SBS mode into this we could pair with reshades VR shader , I would be so happy.
I was testing Half Life Alyx with Steam Link and it was pretty nice, but I had a few random visual floor glitches (black voids) while walking around. Seamed mostly smooth, but a few micro stutters here and there... it's pretty good already and I'm sure it'll only get better!
CONGRATULATIONS MATE! Well deserved. Always informative, witty, charming , relatable and down-to-earth! Thank you for being and keeping Real BB! Love to ya bruv!
I decided to subscribe... You presented this so simply I just had to play a bit of Alyx myself... Blown away with the wireless performance! Thank you good sir! (Q3)
Congrats on your award, well deserved:) and thank you for checking out all the various methods of wireless PC VR on Quest 2/3. On that point: I wonder what you think of the D-Link VR Air Bridge… seems like a alternative way of playing wireless VR when you don’t have a good networking infrastructure at home. Anyway, keep up the great content!
Could you do a video that benchmarks the performance you get in Steam Link vs Virtual Desktop? So many impressions and videos within the community just simply state that 'it feels good, but not as good as Virtual Desktop', or vice versa, or 'I don't feel the latency at all', but that's really vague.
I used VD for Steam VR and there is definetly a noticable improvement for me. I had here and there some microfreezes while playing steam games. This has been gone with Steam Link. The only thing thats not working anymore is Beat Saber over the Steam Link Connection. Its stuck on the Next up screen and nothing happens.
You get a major, massive boost with VD using VDXR, which in a simple form, emulates Oculus and allows you to run games without even needing Oculus or SteamVR open. Otherwise, it will be near identical to running SteamVR thru VD itself, or Link.
I made the mistake of buying most of my games on Oculus before they became Meta and forgot that PC exists. My Rift never worked very well with Steam on my old PC. This might be a good reason to re-visit Steam VR as it seems nobody has called Meta to tell them PC still exists, or maybe somebody called and they got the Meta customer service bot. 🤷
Something i immediately noticed is the latency. It does absolutely makes sense why as steam link directly connect to the pc via the Remote play steam protocol instead of the virtual desktop layer then the injection and encryption, then steam vr, but that's allow for people who got use to the 25-40ms latency in virtual desktop from h264 to Av1 10 bit to actually get a very high rez and smooth experience while steam vr is pretty much multisampling video at the standalone quest 3 rez (forgot the valure but it's less than the lenses or what u can get with air link/VD) with an AMD or Nvidia H264 codec. So steam link is basically now the best way to play any fast pace game. Like beat saber or stride etc especially if u can get by the slightly lower overhaul quality and some compression artefact, with the fact that u could still use VD for any other games or just flat screen game and dont forget the Oculus pc library that u cant use with steam Link. I think its rn the best free option for pc vr if you primarily use steam, but is an extremely good option even if you still have VD to still use steam link for your fast pace game. As a Titanfall former competitive player, i can make the difference when on steam link the latency go from 12 to 16 ms, so you can't imagine even after 2 years of Virtual desktop, how i felt the difference in latency on the quest 3 from the 40ms lock on VD and the 12 to 18 on steam link. It was literally a game changer for me
Weird. I just gave it a crack on the Quest 2 and didn't notice a drop in edge to edge clarity in comparison to VD or Airlink. I only checked out Tetris Effect though.
@@tobiasmyers3505 I really looked for aggressive foveated rendering after seeing it mentioned in videos by Tyriel Wood and Blunty. Still don't really see it. After using Steam Link longer I have had other issues though. After using it I have to restart steam before it will detect my PC. It won't allow me to set the encoded video size above 1024 (just resets to 1024). If I manually increase the per-eye render resolution to 100% instead of auto and don't move my head, I start getting weird contrasting spiral patterns outside of a central rectangle. This was in everything from Compound through to VRchat, Pavlov and Into The Radius. Still needs some work.
Valve seems to have a good handle on writing quality software. It seems that Alan Wake may be a bit heavy to render and stream simultaneously, especially at a high resolution. Maybe it's possible to have a better experience by dropping the resolution a bit?
Congrats! I was watching on Jay's livestream and actually predicted you for it before it started. Well earned. Also I think I'll stick to VD just because Guy Godin is a legend who will literally handle a lot of support issues himself
Congratulations! For future reference, you can buy McFlurry's and store them in the freezer. So when you celebrate more awards, you can do so without ever leaving the house.
I tried out a Quest 3, I was not expecting it to be much better than the Quest 2. I was wrong, the Quest 2 has issues with halo from white text on black or Grey backgrounds. The resolution of the quest 2 is actually pretty good If you can push all of it but the lenses the blur the small sweet spot it's a problem
It seems to work pretty well for most games, but I did encounter a few problems. FS2020 loads in the flatscreen version of the game, and even when you try to turn on VR in the settings, it says there's no VR headset connected. No Man's Sky was working until I tried changing the graphics settings and then I got a popup saying Steam Link disconnected from my PC, and when I checked my monitor No Man's Sky was still running, so I know the game didn't crash, Steam Link just did. I'm sure it'll get better, but it's clearly got a few bugs that need to be worked out.
I totally missed Steamlink launch and just gave it a try now and made a comparison with Airlink(Q2) in RE2 (DLSS Quality) in exactly same resolution and honestly there is no competition. Airlink is noticeably sharper and also brighter for some reason. Overall entire image looks better and game runs better due to FOV tangent multiplier that can be applied in Airlink. I have prescription lenses and with 85% I don't lose any image from visible field. Link sharpening on Quality preset make a huge difference when using DLSS as the normal preset makes upscalling more aparent. Steamlink sharpening is similar to Normal preset in link. Maxing out Bitrate and encode resolution in Steamlink didn't seem to make much of a difference.
Its also possible to mirror your desktop with the steam link app en start applications outside of steam, i'm running f1 23 in vr just by starting the EA app in windows and it just works perfect!
It would be good if Virtual desktop added frame generation to flat screen games like Guy has for VR. Maybe no there is competition it will be something he thinks of. Either way AMD is going to bring that out soon anyway. Well done for the award again fella 👍
The important setting is the resolution you put in SteamvVR, with a 4090 try it at 400 or 500% And it is much better with the Quest Pro, with eye tracking you don't see the foveated encoding at all, what a piece of software!
Congratz on VR Content Creator of the year and so well deserved. The valve steam vr wireless for me 0 till 2% haptics only in beatsaber and synthriders . Still testing others. I stick with virtual desktop or just link cable
Thanks for this, we've been dreading setting up Steam on the Quest and I got it setup before the video was done and finally had Alyx running, thank you so fucking much. Just subbed
I personally found that i got a worse experience using steam link vr than i do using the standard airlink setup. I had some stuttering and image quality would degrade occasionally compared to airlink where its very solid and consistent. Worth noting as well that when using steam link to stream games to my TV i also have similar issues whereas an app like Moonlight is flawless.
Do you find the Quest Pro controllers great for using on a Quest 2/3? Are they better than the Quest 2/3 controllers? I'm glad you won VR Creator of the Year! I've been watching your VR content throughout the year and often share your videos with friends.
I've got the pro controllers and personally I love them. There are pros and cons for both controllers. I think I'm in the minority here but I personally don't like the quest 3 controllers so pro controllers were a must for me.
Tons of atmosphere, powerful weapons with small magazines and sluggish reload mechanics, brutal melee combat, methodic and slow gameplay, great sound design... Hunt would be perfect in VR!
Hunt showdown in VR would mean I’d never leave my house again, ever. Hunt is so underrated, a real class act, I mostly play that if flatscreening. VR is another level of immersion, but most of its games are utter dross. Hunt VR - omg, the dream ticket.
steam link, literally solved my problem with wirless pcvr, i had 2.5ghz wifi and pc with ethernet cable, it wont work with oculus airlink or virtual desktop, but with steam link it just works perfectly, no delay, weird view glitching or lag, no cable anymore before i had some problems with disconecting every long period but after an update steam just show a message and reconecting automatically again afer 3 seconds and it happends even less, and thats solved it basically, now i can play pcvr wirless with no delay using a 2.5 wifi, it dont disconect and just works... it just come up and make pcvr much better i dint use the metrics thing for seeing the ms yet but testing with my own view and comparing with my pc, it has no visible delay, and feels fine when playing, its amazing, is not blurry also idk what kind of magic is this or maybe the others methods are just bad in stability prob if i had a much better wifi virtual desktop can give better resolution mode but i dont see my steam link having a bad resolution tho comparing to cable link i was playing contractors showdown and i can see the ppl at a vry long range without using any scope u can add any vr game u have locally to steamvr btw now i had 2 months using steam link almost since its launch, i barely use oculus link cable now, for some pcvr games that are just for seat for flat screen pc games on my quest i use immersed it conects wirlessly, and really fast, looks good and give up to 5 screens, even virtual ones using steam link or virtual desktop for that i imagine it vry messy idk
We need native, wired to PC, mouse and keyboard support with Quest 3 pass-through enabled ability. The ability to simple use the Quest as a large screen with low latency and our USB gsming mice and keyboards in flat screen competitive games at 120hz. You'd think that would be natively supported but it isn't. To Meta, PC compatibility is a lazy afterthought. We're lucky they even have to basic link options now.
I never used virtual desktop but as someone who comes from air link I like steam link more, It feels less laggy and in a game like blade in sorcery I get this graphical glitch I called texture stretching but steam link gets rid of it, I haven't tried beat saber for a more faster type game cause I broke mine but other games I've played steam link is awesome
Just FYI, the Win11 display setting called "Optimizations for windowed games" might help out if some games aren't working quite right in VR. Not a guarantee, of course, but that has been the case some times.
I experience an issue with it. I could not open game menus, it keeped bringing the steam overlay. so cant change game options in most games that uses the 3 bars button as ''start'' buton. congrats for your VR Content creator of the year !! you deserve it.
Congrats mate! Steam Link works surprisingly well. Pity it doesn't have direct access to your Rift library. You can access most of these with Revive, but that can sometimes be a little hit and miss, esp. with controller bindings. Also, for games/sims like msfs and Hubris that need OpenXR to run you need to make SteamVR your default OpenXR runtime. I have had VD for +4yrs and still use it once in a while, esp. after updates. I still prefer Air Link but this is really just a personal preference thing since VD also works very well. Thanks for your interesting and informative vids mate and best cheers from Australia.
VD on the Quest Store is better than Steam Link from my own testing, yes it's a paid app but it does more than Steam Link can such as playing your Rift games and virtual cinema so I'd say it's worth the money.
@@acurisur Ya, I think both VD and Air Link are currently still better. I prefer Air Link but VD also works very well, and many find it a little more foolproof to setup and use. Def worth having though.
At first: congratz for winnig. I think you earned it. Concerning Steam link: I didnt share this good exp by now. Absolutle high end setup incl wifi6e radix axe6600. Microstutters with HL:A, Mirage: Kayak VR not working at all. Furthermore i think the biggest advantage or Air Link is that it runs oculus RT natively. So it is great for playing games that are made for oculus rt. I don't see, how steam link can replace this. My first points of critic are things, that valve can (and hopefully will) fix, but the point of having a native oculus rt. - look at Borderlands 2 VR i.e. is completely unplayable with vd, because you will change weapons everytime you want to turn left or right. Air Link works great there.. no, it will never replace air link.
Wireless has its limits, Quest 3's XR2 USBC controller might be crap but its still double the bandwidth of what you will get from a 6e wireless connection. Whenever i run wireless i have to crank the refresh and supersampling down to prevent tearing
One massive downside on the steamvr link is, that it is only sharp in the center of the view. around the border it gets really blurry. And sharpness around the borders is actually a selling point of the quest 3 and its pancake lenses.
Steam link has changed my perspective on the Quest 2, airlink was ok but not close to the wireless adapter on my Vive pro. This is awesome, probably going to retire my Vive and pick up a Quest 3, very impressive.
Can you please make a video on you home Internet setup? Like what router you are using, your ISP. How you have everything linked and running smoothly to play wireless VR. Your settings for everything too. Thanks!
Congrats on the award my friend! You defo earned it ;) PS: Steam-Link is absolutely insanely good! (From what I was able to compare vs Oculus Link!) Virtual Desktop is awesome!!!! And now we have both VD and SteamLink! Absolutely phenomenal!
Gratz on the win! And this is rocking dude. EXACTLY what I wanted! Plug (or wireless) and play!!! :DDD Finally!!! Well done Steam!!! :DDD Er, just so you know, if you connect through air link or cable, Bigscreen plays anything on your pc - playing Wipeout on a ps emulator on a cinema screen? Or MAME? It should be illegal! ;P
They need to have oculus controller support for all games. Half-life worked..but some just don’t work. Some apps like Beat Saber don’t even open through this new app, although it works fine starting within oculus app and then steam vr…so it’s very buggy.
We now make smart phone screens that can bend and fold. Why has noone made a screen that wraps around your eyes? I feel like you could achieve 100%FOV with screens the size of swimming goggles that bend from temple to temple or even around each eye.
🤣😂 People have the cash for a PC and VR headset but they can't afford the $20 (even less on sale atm) for Virtual Desktop?! Thanks for the video. I just gave myself a Quest 2 for Xmas. At $195 USD new, it was finally what I'd consider a good deal. It's my first VR headset and I wasn't going to spend more than double on a Quest 3 just to have it end up an expensive doorstop. I'll probably get VD on sale now just so I can compare it to Steam Link. Why would anyone want to do flat screen gaming in VR? Just use your monitor...
