Valve have released Steam Link so that you
can play PC VR games on your Quest headset, from your PC wirelessly, and for free! Now I know we've already got Air Link,
but well this one's actually good! So what's it like to set
up, or how do you set it up> What's it like to use? And how does it compare to
Virtual Desktop and Air Link? We're going to cover all of that. So, welcome to My Tech Gear. Let's get into it! Setting it up couldn't be easier. First you need to go to your PC and install Steam. If you haven't done that already go to
“steampowered.com” and go and install it. Once you've installed it open it
up on your PC. Go into the store and look for “SteamVR” and then install that. Now before you go any further make sure you
go back into the Steam store and check out some VR games that you want to go buy because
otherwise you'll have nothing to play once you connect. There's a whole wealth of
VR games that you can get. I definitely recommend checking out Half-Life: Alyx.
That's pretty much the de facto standard VR game that everyone should play for
PC VR. There are other games as well. There's No Man’s Sky. There's Skyrim VR. So just have a look around. Get
some games that you want to play. Once you've got your games all installed and
ready to go then it's over to your headset. Go into the store on your headset and
search for “Steam Link” and install that. Now make sure that the Steam app
is running on your PC and then launch Steam Link on your headset. Now
providing that your PC and your headset are on the same wireless network
it will automatically find your PC. Click on that and it's going to give you
a one time code. You need to take that code and type it into the app on your PC
and that will automatically pair the two. Once that's done it's going to take you straight
into the Steam lobby with all the games that you've previously installed and ready to play.
Just click on one of those and you're away! There are definitely some tips that I can give you to make sure you get the
best out of your PC VR Gaming. First up the settings in the Steam Link app. Now
I would probably leave most of those alone and just leave them in Auto. The only one I would
probably change would be the encoding size. Just bump that up a bit to around 1280. You'll
notice then you get less foviated rendering, so that's pixelation around the outside
of your screen. If you do find yourself stuttering on your network when you game
you can always pump it back down again. There are definitely a couple of settings in
the Steam app on your PC that I would check. Do make sure in the Steam app on your PC that
“SteamVR” is selected as the VR runtime and not Oculus because that can cause some issues.
Also make sure that you enable remote play. Next up is your router, or your router. Do make sure that it is Wi-Fi 6 or at least a 5
GHz one. It doesn't have to be super flash. I've just got a mesh one in my house, which is a TP
Link one, and that's been fine. I would say if you do use a mesh Network in your house then make
sure that you lock your headset to one node so it doesn't sort of roam around your house because
that definitely affects the quality of the signal. Now whilst they do recommend that you play
this with a line of sight to your router, so you're in the same room as where your
router is, well I'm not going to do that because I don't think that's what most
people do. I think most people end up with a setup where the router is in a
separate room to where they play. So that's what we're going to do when we
play this, and we'll see how it goes. So I'm now going to compare Air Link, Steam
Link and Virtual Desktop against each other to see how they perform. Now the router is
in a room next door and I'm going to play in here so it's a fairly realistic setting
for what I think most people have got. First up, Air Link. Turn on Air Link. Click on
my PC and select launch. Now that was quick! So that's pretty good. So we're now just going
to go straight into Steam VR, and we're into Steam VR. Going have to wait for it to load. What
was that? That's a bit of a stutter! Quest link, or Air Link definitely isn't the best.
It does tend to stutter a little bit, or can do. Seems okay now. So we're just going to
jump straight into a game and do Half-life Alyx. So we're now in Half-Life: Alyx. He's seen better days! Hello Half-Life: Alyx is awesome. Not for the
faint of heart, but it's a cool game all up. For a really quick test if
I just wander around here. Over onto the racetrack. Racetrack? It's a train track! And there goes Air Link! This is why… What's, what's, what's going on?! This is why Air Link definitely is,
I think, the worst out of the three. So this is the only settings that you've
got you can change. The dynamic or the Air Link bit rate to either dynamic
or fixed. It's the only real change, or the only re settings that
you can change in the app. So now we're going to test Steam Link. So go straight into your apps, scroll down to
where Steam Link is, and then click on start. It automatically finds your PC pretty quick. Click on connect and we are now straight
into the Steam VR home lounge. Is it me or does it seem clearer? I think it's
clearer? It doesn't look as jagged as it did on Air Link. So we're just going to play Half-Life:
Alyx, and we're straight into the same game. So what I'm looking for here is the
quality of the bit rate. Quality of the image. So I'm not seeing sort of any
foveated rendering, not really too much. He's still not looking great! Hi dude! We're not getting any of that weird glitching
like we got with Air Link. Looking pretty stable. If you go into the VR settings which are here
you've got a lot more configuration options than you did over Air Link. So you can set the refresh
rate of the screen, the render resolution. Steam Link allows you to set the different sizes. So
encoding size I've bumped up to 1280 up here if you need to, otherwise you just leave it on auto
if you're quite happy with the screen as it is. So now we're going to try Virtual Desktop. So I've just gone into the study and I've started the Virtual Desktop streaming app on my PC.
Now from your headset, head into your store, heading into your library scroll down
and start the Virtual Desktop app. That's now automatically finding my PC
and it's automatically connected. So I just press the menu button on the left
hand controller and I can go straight into games. Now it lists out all the games
that are not only on the Steam store but also on the Oculus Rift app that's
on my PC as well so you don't have to go into the Steam VR Lobby you can
launch your games straight from here. So it's going to be interesting with
you watching this video. Can you see a difference in video quality between Air Link, Steam Link and Virtual Desktop? I don't know
if it's just me but this seems brighter! A lot brighter! I don't see some of that sort of
pixelated foveated rendering on the outside that I saw with Steam
Link, although you can change that by changing the encoding size which I
mentioned earlier. It seems clearer. Go up and see our friend Bob! Hey Bob! So Bob's still there. He's not going
anywhere. Could do with a manicure though! I think it's safe to say that Air Link is
definitely the weakest out of the three. Configuration options for Virtual Desktop
are huge as well. If you go down to settings here you've got lots of settings around auto
connecting, which is what happened to me earlier. You can set Dynamic lighting and your
audio size, or how loud your audio is. You've got your Environmental Quality. You've got your frame bit rate
down here of 90 frames per second. You set the bit rate. That's the
only option that you had on Air Link. And you've got even more options here. You go down to streaming. You can set the graphics quality
and it's got guides as to which one's going to be best for your graphics
card. Now I've got an RTX 3060 ti so I'm sitting somewhere in between there and the
medium setting for me was more than fine. You can set the VR bit rate you can
set how sharp you want it to be. You can enable VR pass through as well. There’s synchronous space warp which gives a
better connection than just a standard view. There's just lots of configuration options. For me, Virtual Desktop is still the
most robust, flexible, configurable, wireless way to connect to your PC. It just
does so much more than Steam Link does. However, Steam Link is free! So I would say start with Steam Link and if that works for you then you're good. If
not then go and get Virtual Desktop. As for Air Link, which is the official way that Meta allows you to play wireless
PC VR games, I would say avoid it. If you want to check out some other ways of being able to connect your Quest headset to
your PC then check the link up here. Thanks for watching this video. If you have enjoyed it please
don't forget to like and share it. Consider subscribing if you're not. And as always… See you in the next one!
