VR Trifecta: Oculus Quest, Virtual Desktop and SteamVR

If you’re a happy Oculus Quest owner that just can’t wait to play PC VR games via the Oculus Link cable coming later this month — you don’t have to wait. Start playing PC VR games right now without a cable over your own wifi network.

Note: This article is depreciated — even though the information within is still good, you should go here to get a true guide to installation.

The Oculus Quest is a great piece of stand-alone VR hardware. No PC, no wires, no limits. Well, that’s not exactly true, now is it? You’re limited to only experiences that have been ported over to the Quest headset.

There are hundreds of other experiences that exist on SteamVR, Oculus Rift … but currently you cannot play them on your Quest (the aforementioned Quest Link cable promises this — but you lose your un-tethered freedom).

Maybe you own a Rift already and have thousands of dollars in SteamVR and Oculus Store games you would love to play on your Quest.

Bring on Virtual Desktop

Virtual Desktop is a two-part application; a sideloaded APK file for your Quest along with a special streaming client for your Windows computer.

As a Quest owner, you probably have seen Virtual Desktop available on the Oculus Store — and you still have to own that app for this magic to work ($20) — but the version of Virtual Desktop we need must be installed manually via sideloading.