Steam Link Quest App released

[Ravenger]

Steam have released a Steam Link Quest app that can stream both Steam VR games and Steam 2D games to your headset.

Valve Launches Steam Link PC VR Streaming App For Quest

Valve just launched a free Steam Link app on the Quest Store that can stream SteamVR games from your PC.

www.uploadvr.com

I've tried this and it does work well at the lower settings, but has inconsistent jerky frame times when maxed out at the highest settings, despite FPS VR showing that the GPU and CPU times are all in the green.

Some experimentation to be done there. It's great there's more competition here, and I also think this is probably a test for the new Steam VR headset that's on its way at some point.

 

[Ravenger]

I’m struggling to see the benefit when you can do all that with virtual desktop

Sure, and Virtual Desktop can do more, but it's a paid app.

Also I'm sure this is also to help test wireless VR for the Deckard headset, which will probably include eyetracking.

 

[Ravenger]

Except as with Airlink and Virtual Desktop it doesn't "just work" for everyone, at least not as good for me as those other methods yet.

I'll be interested to find out how to fix the stuttering as that's the main issue for me. Looks rubbish on default settings and stutters continuously on max, without stressing the GPU. Looks like an encode/decode issue.

Airlink at 350mbit looks great and "just works" for me, plus the haptic feedback is great and my mic works, which isn't the case with Steam Link.

I'm sure Steam Link will mature to be probably the best way to play Steam VR games though.

 

[Ravenger]

Is there a way to use it with a cable?

The fact that it seems to facilitate dynamic foveated rendering (if you have a Quest Pro or similar) for all Steam Apps looks like a real win to me.

No, Meta aren't giving Devs the access to the usb functionality the Devs need to do this.

 

[Ravenger]

I still can't get this to run smoothly at an acceptable resolution.

 

[Ravenger]

Experimented a bit more with this tonight. Valve don't recommend setting the encode resolution too high, so I dropped it a bit but was still getting stutters. Then I set the encode resolution to auto but left the bit-rate on 350.

This gave relatively smooth performance with a decent image quality, but I still feel Airlink is sharper, more vibrant and brighter. Steam Link was too dark.

 

[Ravenger]

I verified my SteamVR files and it updated a couple of files, and I also ensured Steam VR was the default openxr client. I'm now getting a bit better experience. It's not as jittery as before and looks a bit sharper, so it's actually usable now.

 

[Ravenger]

The latest version seems much improved - far smoother for me. There still appear to be some micro stutters but it's completely usable now and looks pretty sharp on the Quest Pro with the eye-tracked encoding.

I couldn't get the face tracking to work in VR chat though, so I couldn't test the tongue tracking.

 

[Ravenger]

Steam Link works 'ok' for me, but I get far better image quality on Oculus Link.

For some reason I can't get Steam Link looking as sharp without getting stuttering.