Valve Just Made It Way Easier To Play Steam VR Games on a Quest 3
No more Air Link or Virtual Desktop running in the background.
You can now officially play genre-defining PC VR games like Half-Life: Alyx and Phasmophobia on a Quest 3 mixed reality headset without any workarounds.
Valve just announced Steam Link compatibility for Meta’s headsets, including the Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest Pro. That means you can wirelessly stream Steam VR games directly from your PC to those headsets instead of using third-party apps or Meta’s Air Link app.
EASY SETUP
If you’ve already got Steam VR games to work on your Quest 3 via Virtual Desktop or Meta’s Air Link app, setting up Steam Link should make a lot of sense. Valve says you just have to connect your Meta headset to the same Wi-Fi network as your PC, which should have Steam and Steam VR installed.
Once you download and open the Steam Link app on your Meta headset, it’ll guide you through wirelessly connecting the headset and PC. You’re ready to go after that. The only requirements are that your PC must be connected to a router via a wired connection, has at least an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 GPU, runs Windows 10, and has a 5GHz Wi-Fi connection. For the best experience with the least amount of latency, Valve recommends either Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E, a PC with at least 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070.
If you haven’t played Half-Life: Alyx yet, this is a great excuse.
More VR Games to Play on Quest
Steam Link for Quest headsets is a free app so you can go ahead and boot it up on your Meta headset now. Since it’s just been released, we’re not sure of the performance yet compared to either Virtual Desktop or Air Link. Steam Link is a more direct solution than those two workarounds, so it should mean a smoother gaming experience.
Still, the official Steam Link is very welcome for Quest headsets and expands access to PC VR games without having to connect via a USB-C cable to a PC. If you’ve been itching to play Steam VR games on your headset with wireless freedom, this should be the easist way.
Of course, all of this has us wondering if and when Valve will release a follow-up to its Index headset. Since this extra compatibility only benefits Quest headset users, it’s not much of an indication. However, we could also read this as Valve staying on top of all things VR. Still, Valve has a bit of a reputation for keeping its customers waiting.
