Oculus Quest 2 officially supports wireless PC VR with Air Link

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Oculus Quest 2 officially supports wireless PC VR with Air Link

The best thing about Oculus Quest 2 is that it allows you to play games without tethering, while you frolic around in Beat Saber, without worrying about tripping over cables or having to pull the cable out of your PC. However, this only works natively with games installed on the headset; if you want to play PC VR games like "Half-Life," you'll need to connect a cable to the Oculus Quest 2 or play "Beat Saber": the Alyx If you want to play PC VR games like "Half-Life", you need to connect a USB cable or pay $20 for a third-party solution like Virtual Desktop.

That is about to change with Air Link, a new feature announced in the latest Oculus blog post. Air Link, part of the v28 software update being released this month, is "a completely wireless way to play PC VR content on Quest 2 using WiFi," and will be available in experimental mode of choice.

This month, when the v28 update rolls out for you at a completely random time, just as Oculus does, you can enable Air Link in the Settings>Beta section of the Oculus program on your PC, then in the headset's Settings>Experimental section and then need to turn it off to go back to the USB cable.

As with Virtual Desktop, for best performance, you need a top-of-the-line router, a wired connection from there to your PC, and standing near the router while playing. Says Oculus, "We will work to improve Air Link over time, including performance, visual quality, and the ability to perform in less than ideal wireless scenarios."

Oculus also announced native support for 120Hz display refresh rates, as Facebook Reality Labs Vice President Andrew Bosworth suggested in February. (The Quest 2 refresh rate jumped from 72Hz to 90Hz in November.) This will be another option in the Experimental panel, and Oculus notes that "no apps support 120Hz yet, but those who turn on this setting will experience 120Hz performance in apps that choose to support it in the future." 120Hz support will be provided later for Oculus Link.

The next update also has some new features for Infinite Office, such as the ability to pair physical keyboards via Bluetooth; the Logitech K830 is the first model to support this, and it will be expanded to more keyboards in the future. Another experimental feature allows users to place a virtual desk in their home environment, juxtaposing the actual desk with a real one. Says Oculus, "With this feature, you can use your desk as a separate seating area and access work tools like a browser." In addition to integrating with your real environment, the boundaries of your virtual desk are automatically stored and detected.

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