Can Oculus Quest Play Steam Games

Virtual reality is one of the best ways to play your favorite games. By putting on the Oculus Quest VR headset you can become more immersed in your gaming experience without having to leave the comfort of your own home. With so many VR headsets geared towards consoles and their games, this does leave PC gamers wondering if the Oculus Quest can play Steam games?

The good news is that yes, the Oculus Quest can indeed play Steam games! There are a few steps to follow first to properly connect your VR headset to your PC, but you should be able to play all of your favorite Steam games with no issues at all.

Today we’re going to cover the Oculus Quest VR headset and how you can connect it to your Steam account so that you can play all of your favorite games.

It can often feel like PC gamers are more of an afterthought when some of the fancy console gaming gadgets are released. However, the good news is that the Oculus Quest VR headset can be connected to Steam so that you can play all of your favorite games. So you can have the more immersive experience that you’re looking for without having to fork out thousands of dollars.

What’s really great about the Steam platform is that they have developed specific support for VR headsets called SteamVR. So as long as you have this installed on your Oculus Quest, you should be able to play all of the games that you’ve got stored on Steam. The SteamVR feature allows you to access your whole library of games.

The Oculus Quest VR headset uses a feature called Oculus Link to allow you to use your Steam games. First things first, you will need to ensure that your PC or laptop is compatible with the Oculus Link software, otherwise you won’t be able to use it. If you’ve been able to use a previous VR headset with your PC chances are that you’ll be fine, but it’s worth checking just in case.

Your PC or laptop will need to have at least an Intel i5-4590 or Ryzen 5 1500X processor to work. It will also need a decent graphics card, such as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 20XX, GeForce GTX 1650 Super or higher, Nvidia Titan Z, or Titan X. If you opted for an AMD graphics card, it should be either an AMD 400/500/5000 series, or a Vega series. You will need to be running Windows 10 as your operating system, have at least 8GB of memory, and have a USB 3 port available.

Not sure what hardware you’ve got in your PC? Check out the system information in the start menu. This should be able to give you all the relevant information to make sure that your PC can handle the Oculus Link technology.

First, take your high quality USB cable ready to connect your PC and your Oculus Quest VR headset but don’t plug it in just yet. You will need a cable that’s at least 10 feet long so that you have plenty of space to move. If you have a longer cable such as 15 feet, this will be even better. However, the USB charging cable that came with your Oculus Quest should do the job just fine.

Next, you will need to ensure that you have all of the relevant software installed. Install and open the desktop app for your Oculus Quest on your computer. You will need to ensure that you have Steam installed in the Oculus Quest app, and that you have logged into your account. Next, you’ll want to install SteamVR so that you can access your full library of games.

Now you can plug your USB cable into the USB port of your Oculus Quest. Plug in the other end to your PC. Turn on your VR headset, then put it on. You should then see a prompt in your headset asking to access your data. You can use your controller to click ‘deny’, which should prompt another request to enable the Oculus Link feature. Select ‘enable’ and voila! You’ll now be connected to your PC and able to stream SteamVR to your Oculus Quest.

Not thrilled with the idea of having to use a USB cable in order to use the Oculus Link technology? There is a way that you can wirelessly connect your Oculus Quest to SteamVR, however, it’s not the most reliable of methods. Some gamers find it can be on the buggy side. However, if you’ve got your heart set on a truly wireless experience, you can give it a go and see what you think for yourself.

You will need to download the AVLR app which will then connect your Oculus Quest to your PC. This can run on your PC, which will then install a custom driver to allow you to use SteamVR. It does this by running a server which your Oculus Quest will connect to.

The next time you launch your Oculus Quest, it will connect to this server, and allow you to stream the video content of your games. The movements of the VR headset as well as your controller input will be sent to this server, which will appear just like any other VR headset in SteamVR.

Voila! You’ll be able to connect to SteamVR for a wireless experience. It’s worth noting that if you find the app to be buggy, you can always relent and use the USB cable instead.