Oculus Quest/Go ALVR (Air-Light VR) Streaming Tutorial

Yes you read that right. You can play Steam VR and Rift games on your Oculus Quest and Oculus GO completely for free with no extra hardware to buy and the amazing free streaming software called Air-Light VR or “ALVR” as it’s commonly referred to.

It does require a VR capable PC and a few minutes of your time since their are quite a few steps to get it working but it is completely worth it to play all those great new VR games and the best part is ALVR is an open-source project so it is completely free to download on GitHub and use as long as you want as opposed to the popular Riftcat “V-Ridge” software https://riftcat.com/vridge which cost a one time payment of USD $14.99 in order to unluck unlimited play and in my opinion ALVR has a considerably less amount of lag and seems to work much more flawlessly with SteamVR then Riftcat and now offers 6DOM (Degrees of Movement) with the touch controllers. Without further hesitation or tech gab onward to the tutorial.

Before we begin I would like to point out that in order to use ALVR and stream your VR games from your PC you will need to know how to sideload apps (APK files just like on Android devices the Oculus Quest uses APK files to load the apps you use on your headset). In order to do this you will need either a USB-C to USB cable or adapter or a USB-C port on your PC just like the charge cable that came with your Quest headset it communicates with your computer through a USB-C connection. I’m not going to include a guide on how to sideload apps on to your headset in this tutorial but here is a a great video tutorial by one of my favorite youtubers RaMarcus. It’s a great easy to follow video guide and covers everything you need to know about sideloading. I may add a separate tutorial on sideloading in the following days as a part of a guide on how to play android games on your Oculus Quest using the headset and touch controllers, for now however, I am just going to link RaMarcus’ excellent guide which covers everything you need to know on a fantastic new software called “SideQuest” that makes sideloading much easier then the previous lengthy cmd prompt method and includes all the links to the drivers and software that you will need to get started.

Oculus Quest ALVR Streaming

Things you will need in this tutorial:

• Oculus Quest (64GB or 128GB)

• Moderate Mid-Range VR Ready PC 
  
• 5Ghz or Better Wireless Router

• USB-C Cable/Adaptor/USB-C PC Port

• ALVR Desktop App & ALVR APK File Latest Release (Links below)

https://github.com/polygraphene/ALVR/releases/tag/v2.4.0-alpha5

First: In order to use SteamVR you’ll need to create a Steam account and download the SteamVR app found under “Tools” in the Steam Client and in order  to use Oculus, you’ll need an Oculus or Facebook account respectively. When it requires you to connect a Rift headset just skip ahead.

Second: Visit the official Github page for ALVR  and download the latest release (currently ” v2.4.0-alpha5“) download the setup file for the desktop software and the apk file for the Oculus Quest headset.

Third: Just locate the setup file from the location you downloaded it to and run the exe setup file to install the desktop application onto your computer, then install the mobile app onto your headset via the apk file you downloaded.

I am not going to list the steps to do this as it is covered in the video tutorial I linked above on sideloading apps on to to the headset via the SideQuest application and it will be covered in a later tutorial on sideloading, however I will include a short guide here on installing the adb drivers as it is the part most users have had the most complications with.

Installing the ADB Drivers

Connect your PC to the same wireless router that you’ll be using for the Quest via WiFi or as with most streaming situations; an Ethernet cable. Your headset MUST be connected to the internet for this next step.

Four: Log in to your Oculus account and go to the dashboard by visiting https://dashboard.oculus.com. 

Click Manage on the left column, then on the right; you need to click “Create New Organization” and you can name it whatever you want. Save it, then on your the Oculus mobile app on your smartphone go to “Settings“. Select your Oculus Quest headset, connect to your WiFi router and directly underneath it select “More Settings“. Here you have the option to toggle on “Developer Mode” for your headset so go ahead and turn on Developer Mode.

Go to https://developer.oculus.com/downloads/package/oculus-go-adb-drivers/ and download the ADB drivers for the Oculus Quest headset and extract them to a folder on your hard drive and install them to your computer. If for some reason you have trouble installing the drivers there is an alternate installer package here; https://androidmtk.com/download-15-seconds-adb-installer and is the method most users have had the most success with for ease of use.

Alternate Installer Guide

Download the adb drivers by visiting https://androidmtk.com/download-15-seconds-adb-installer and clicking on the download link. Extract the file to a folder on your hard drive and double click on the exe setup file to install the drivers to your PC. It is very straight forward with on screen instructions in cmd prompt and all you basically have to do is just type “Y” for yes to each prompt and press enter. The entire process takes about 10 to 15 seconds total and you may close the cmd prompt when completed successfully. You may now follow the guide for sideloading apps to your headset and install the mobile app apk file to your Quest headset via a USB-C cable and following the SideQuest tutorial. Once you have the app installed unplug your headset from the PC and continue to step four.

Five: Turn on the Quest headset and put it on, with the touch controller navigate to the “Home” menu and under the libraries tab on the left column look for the tab “Unknown Sources” and select it. Now scroll down the menu and select the “ALVR” app to start the application. If you don’t see the unknown sources tab or the ALVR app restart your headset to refresh the app list. Once the application loads you will be prompted to start the desktop application. Run the desktop app by double clicking its respective icon or starting it from your apps menu on your computer.

The app should start with the “Server” tab selected and you should see the “Connect” button directly beside it on the right. ( If for some reason you see the words “Wrong Version” where Connect should be it simply means you installed a different version of the desktop app then the mobile app and can easily be fixed by installing the same versions of both the application releases.) Click Connect and it should say the Quest headset is connected. Select the tab labeled “Video” and set the Codec to H264, using the slider change the Bitrate to about 20Mbs, the resolution should be set to 150%. You can select the sound tab and uncheck “Stream Sound” if you do NOT want the sound streamed through your headset. Nothing else needs to be changed so simply click “Start Server“. Select the “Server” tab and check that your latency is no higher then 80ms. If it is higher then 80ms return to the Video tab and reduce the resolution and bitrate until it matches the 80ms limit.

Final Steps: Now SteamVR Home will start and you will need to complete the room setup process in order to start playing VR games. If you have a large area to play in then the “Room Scale” option is for you and if you have a smaller area you are playing in then choose the “Standing Only” option. I have found that the Room Scale process sometimes crashes ALVR and has a very bad lag issue when setting up the play area so it is advised to just choose Standing Only regardless of your play area. Once the process is completed simply start the VR game you want to play and use the following methods for the device version you wish to play.

• HTC Vive: SteamVR Home Client
• Oculus Rift/Rift S: Install Revive https://github.com/LibreVR/Revive then you will be able to launch any Oculus Rift/Rift S title using the SteamVR Home client after the installation completes.

Some games require that you have the Base Station sensors in order to function properly in this case simply create a Virtual Base Station inside the ALVR desktop app by clicking on the Other tab and checking the option Fake Base Station.

If you need to update either of the applications when new ones are released you will need to uninstall the old ones and and repeat the same process to install the new ones as was covered in this guide.

If you like my tutorial please follow my blog and come back often for more guides and gaming and technology news & reviews.

Happy Streaming!