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[kingfey]

https://www.roadtovr.com/report-meta-quest-pc-vr-cloud-gaming-test/

Meta may be ramping up internal testing for its own first-party cloud gaming service which could let its latest standalone VR headset, Quest 2, play PC VR games without needing your own VR-ready computer.

Mention of the ‘Avalanche’ cloud PC VR streaming function was allegedly uncovered in v24 of the Quest firmware, which released in late 2020. It wasn’t until this April that data miner and Reddit user ‘Samulia’ dug into the firmware to find the following string, as reported by Tech analyst and YouTuber Brad Lynch:

AVALANCHE_CLOUD_GAMING_INFRA_ENABLED (“oculus_systemuxculus_avalanche_cloud_gaming_infra_enabled”)

Samulia is also known for having extracted the Meta logo before it was officially unveiled in February, and a host of info scraped from successive firmware releases alluding to the company’s next VR headset, Project Cambria.

Lynch, known for the YouTube channel SadlyItsBradley, now alleges to have discussed the cloud PC VR streaming with someone who managed to gain access, and was able to remotely play a game of Asgard’s Wrath (2020), an Oculus PC exclusive, on Quest 2.



The screenshot above shows the in-headset Quest UI sporting a feature ostensibly inaccessible to normal users, with a launch button inside the ‘Experimental Features’ section that says: “Enable Avalanche (Alpha) – Start an Avalanche session”.

Furthermore, Lynch says that according to the user, the quality was “not very good,” although this might be chalked up to the fact that they’re based in United Kingdom and had to connect to a PC in the United States.

We’re unable to verify the authenticity of that information, however Meta may be carving out its own exclusive nook for Quest cloud gaming. In the past, Meta has taken steps to disallow cloud gaming apps from both its official Quest Store and App Lab, Meta’s app outlet featuring less stringent content submission guidelines. You can only download third-party cloud gaming services, like PlutoSphere, through sideloading tools such as SideQuest.

This might suggest Meta is currently looking to make its own PC VR cloud gaming service, much like it’s done in the past with its own flatscreen cloud gaming over the last two years. Notably, the flatscreen cloud gaming project is currently headed by former Oculus exec Jason Rubin, who is acutely aware of the inherent limitations of standalone headsets when it comes to packing in high-quality content. As of July 2021, Rubin also now heads all gaming content at Meta, including AR/VR production and Instant and Cloud Play Platform inside the Facebook app.

In an quarterly earnings in late 2020, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the intersection of Facebook’s cloud gaming and VR initiatives:

“Over the longer term, I think the VR piece will obviously come into [our gaming strategy] as well. Some of the cloud gaming stuff that we’re doing will, of course, be useful for VR as well, and we’re building a big community around that on Oculus. But [our cloud gaming service]… I do think will be a very exciting growth opportunity and ability to offer a lot of innovation over the coming years,” Zuckerberg said.

We’re hoping to learn more about Meta’s VR cloud gaming plans as well as its first upcoming mixed reality headset, Project Cambria, at the company’s annual Connect conference later in the year.

 

[KuraiShidosha]

VR is in such a weird place. The hardware is there and getting better and better each year, but software is lagging behind hard. Not enough quality content is coming out which drowns out any hype for new hardware. That and the physical limitations of performance and bandwidth really put a hamper on my expectations for future growth in the medium. Such a shame.

 

[ParaSeoul]

Cloud VR sounds like a horrible experience.

 

[Spyxos]

I love my Rift S, but after Half-Life: Alyx and Lone Echo 2 there is absolutely nothing that i want to play...

 

[CrustyBritches]

Good way of keeping the Quest 2 relevant even after newer iterations release. They'll need a lot of datacenters and powerful enough hardware to run 120-240Hz server side frame rate to keep latency down.

 

[Daytonabot]

Fuck Meta. I'd quit gaming before I gave them a penny.

 

[Romulus]

VR is in such a weird place. The hardware is there and getting better and better each year, but software is lagging behind hard. Not enough quality content is coming out which drowns out any hype for new hardware. That and the physical limitations of performance and bandwidth really put a hamper on my expectations for future growth in the medium. Such a shame.

Mods have made it better for me. The quality of mods and being able to play stuff like RE3 and RDR2 is amazing.

 

[reksveks]

Sure I have seen/heard this idea before from Phil Spencer but might be going crazy.
Thinking of the following which isn't the same really

“As it relates to VR specifically, the best experience that I’ve seen is Quest 2. And I just think its untethered ease of use in its capability just doesn’t to me require it being connected to an Xbox in any way,” Spencer said. “So when I look at a scenario like that, I think of XCloud, I think of the Xbox Live community, I think of other things of how could we bring content to a screen like that.

https://uploadvr.com/phil-spencer-quest-2/

I might have misunderstood it to this thing that Meta is doing.

 

[Mr.ODST]

Really wanna try Resident Evil 4 VR and Half Life Alyx can you play then on a Meta Quest 2?

 

[MikeM]

“Cloud gaming…”

Me:

 

[M1chl]

It make sense tho, when you listen to early Carmack VR speeches, how he talks about how it takes less time to contact someone on the other side of the world than show stuff on screen from GPU (already rended frame)

 

[CrustyBritches]

Last year when I still had ShadowPC I didn't some VR streaming vids...


^I had to lower the settings and disable the background lighting in Beat Saber to get good enough latency and eliminate macroblocking in order to get a good Ex+ experience.


^Forgive this gameplay, I was using a mini MOGA controller connected via BT and I had exclusively played on Wolverine Ultimate pad with back buttons for Eternal on PC.

Worked surprising well compared to what you might expect.

Cas and Cherry VR did a video just today where she didn't have to disable background/stage lighting. Covered ShadowPC and PlutoVR. I had never heard of PlutoVR so I signed up and hopefully will try it out this weekend.


The future is now.

 

[rofif]

airlinkis terrible and we need real PC VR again.
It's a huge shame they are no selling Rift S again.
In fact, CV1 had fantastic comfort, oled and headphones (best ever in vr still I think, it was koss 60ohm driver). Rift S had the ease of connection and fantastic tracking.
All we ever needed was combination of cv1 and rift S.
Quests are such a hassle to use with pc

 

[SeasonedInTheAbyss]

I would much rather prefer they open up and let us use our PC's to render via cable/wifi the same way SteamVR works now with the oculus only apps. Nobody wins with any exclusive shit in the market right now and it needs to grow with open standards to gather more users. It's a really fun tech when applied right and needs more people to see it and have fun with it.

 

[mxbison]

Really wanna try Resident Evil 4 VR and Half Life Alyx can you play then on a Meta Quest 2?

Yes but for Half Life Alyx you'll also need a decent gaming PC.

 

[Goalus]

Cloud VR sounds like a horrible experience.

If VR glasses are supposed to shrink in size, cloud VR is inevitable.
Good on Meta to have recognized that, it will only benefit them in the long run if they are building the technology this early.

 

[ReBurn]

I'd try it. Most of my cloud gaming experiences have been positive.

 

[Deft Beck]

Really can't wait for cloud VR users to start clogging up VRChat more than the Quest users already are.

 

[ParaSeoul]

If VR glasses are supposed to shrink in size, cloud VR is inevitable.
Good on Meta to have recognized that, it will only benefit them in the long run if they are building the technology this early.

 

[kingfey]

Consoles were bits. What is your point here?

 

[ParaSeoul]

Consoles were bits.

 

[kingfey]

Didn't you see the early console games?

It took time for them to reach where they are.

 

[CrustyBritches]

airlinkis terrible and we need real PC VR again.
It's a huge shame they are no selling Rift S again.
In fact, CV1 had fantastic comfort, oled and headphones (best ever in vr still I think, it was koss 60ohm driver). Rift S had the ease of connection and fantastic tracking.
All we ever needed was combination of cv1 and rift S.
Quests are such a hassle to use with pc

Quest 2 takes 10min to setup on PC. Wireless works fantastic on Quest 2+PC. Maybe you should troubleshoot your network.

 

[rofif]

Quest 2 takes 10min to setup on PC. Wireless works fantastic on Quest 2+PC. Maybe you should troubleshoot your network.

it's not me. My friend. When I had quest 1 it worked good with vr desktop.
He uses quest 2, 3080pc and so on, wifi6 400$ routers or even usb link... but he plays simracing. So it is really demanding for bitrate.
But generally the problems are there. It's quest software running on steam software or openvr. It's a crapshoot more than not.
REcently he wanted to show me some iracing and it just ran at 15fps while day before he had great fps. turns out oculus software got some bug

 

[BlueHawk357]

Do you still have to have a PC for Meta? My son keeps asking for one but I really don’t want another PC. Thanks

 

[CrustyBritches]

it's not me. My friend. When I had quest 1 it worked good with vr desktop.
He uses quest 2, 3080pc and so on, wifi6 400$ routers or even usb link... but he plays simracing. So it is really demanding for bitrate.
But generally the problems are there. It's quest software running on steam software or openvr. It's a crapshoot more than not.
REcently he wanted to show me some iracing and it just ran at 15fps while day before he had great fps. turns out oculus software got some bug

Yeah, I find Virtual Desktop to be better than Air Link.

So for iRacing with bugged software it doesn't work good. That's a very specific circumstance. Just use a cable for iRacing. Seems like an easy fix.

Do you still have to have a PC for Meta? My son keeps asking for one but I really don’t want another PC. Thanks

Quest 2 is standalone, but you can also connect it to a PC for PCVR.

 

[RoadHazard]

I don't understand how that could work with acceptable latency (which needs to be EXTREMELY low for VR to work well).

 

[RoadHazard]

Really wanna try Resident Evil 4 VR and Half Life Alyx can you play then on a Meta Quest 2?

RE4VR is ONLY on Quest 2, there's no PC version. So yes. Alyx on the other hand is only on PC. It can be streamed to a Quest 2 if you have a good PC and good enough WiFi (or you want to deal with a cable). It can't be played natively on the Quest.

 

[kingfey]

I don't understand how that could work with acceptable latency (which needs to be EXTREMELY low for VR to work well).

Games are more important right now than latency. Latency can be fixed later, but without games, it would end up like stadia.

Also isnt VR at infancy? People can tolerate these issues, unlike consoles/pc.

 

[RoadHazard]

Games are more important right now than latency. Latency can be fixed later, but without games, it would end up like stadia.

Also isnt VR at infancy? People can tolerate these issues, unlike consoles/pc.

VR with high latency would put people right off it, it would be an awful experience. So I completely disagree.

 

[kingfey]

VR with high latency would put people right off it, it would be an awful experience. So I completely disagree.

Considering what VR has, Does that really offer a bad experience?

 

[RoadHazard]

Considering what VR has, Does that really offer a bad experience?

I don't understand the question. Any perceptible delay kills immersion, and often makes people sick (because what they're seeing doesn't match what their other senses tell them). So yes, that would be an awful experience, even if the games themselves were better. Current VR is great with very low latency, and there already are a lot of great VR games (just very few high budget AAA games).

 

[Apocryphon]

Latency has to be significant. I can't see this being a good solution at all.

 

[CrustyBritches]

Just tried out PlutoVR. I couldn't get the Sideloaded native client to work, so I used Virtual Desktop. Played pretty good. There were a occasional hitches, but Beat Saber at Ex+ is a hard test for a VR streaming service.

 

[reksveks]

From the latest Bradleyvr video.

 

[hlm666]

From the latest Bradleyvr video.

If they can get streamed vr working over 5g without making people sick this asshole might actually pull off this subscription vr thing. Cheap hmd with only enough compute to run the tracking/decoding/screen should help reduce the battery/soc size/weight and get form factors even smaller than the pro and hook their users into a monthly sub to access the cloud. Only apple will probably pose a threat and i'm not too fussed with either one being the dominant force in VR.

 

[reksveks]

 

[Frank Horrigan]

We can't get cloud streaming working on a stationary piece of kit running ps4 games without latency, backed by one of the largest companies in the world.

And after that was a total flop, we're now just jumping straight into cloud streaming vr? A tech that is super sensitive to lag, let alone the 1 second+ lag we saw with stadia?

I look forward to the youtube videos of journalists telling me how well it works while puking their fucking guts up.

Reviewers b like:

 

[Resenge]

We can't get cloud streaming working on a stationary piece of kit running ps4 games without latency, backed by one of the largest companies in the world.

And after that was a total flop, we're now just jumping straight into cloud streaming vr? A tech that is super sensitive to lag, let alone the 1 second+ lag we saw with stadia?

I look forward to the youtube videos of journalists telling me how well it works while puking their fucking guts up.

Reviewers b like:

I agree that cloud streaming is a ways off from being a viable alternative but local streaming is viable. I have a few tethered headsets, Rift, Vive but never use them as I personally feel the untethered streaming with Virtual Desktop on my Quests is good enough and feels better. It's quicker, easier to setup and being able to put my headset on anywhere in my house to play PCVR is awesome.

I do not know what magic the Virtual Desktop dev is doing to make it feel so good but Meta should employ this guy because he knows his shit.

 

[RoadHazard]

I agree that cloud streaming is a ways off from being a viable alternative but local streaming is viable. I have a few tethered headsets, Rift, Vive but never use them as I personally feel the untethered streaming with Virtual Desktop on my Quests is good enough and feels better. It's quicker, easier to setup and being able to put my headset on anywhere in my house to play PCVR is awesome.

I do not know what magic the Virtual Desktop dev is doing to make it feel so good but Meta should employ this guy because he knows his shit.

Quest already has the same thing built in since quite long ago (Air Link).

 

[hlm666]

We can't get cloud streaming working on a stationary piece of kit running ps4 games without latency, backed by one of the largest companies in the world.

And after that was a total flop, we're now just jumping straight into cloud streaming vr? A tech that is super sensitive to lag, let alone the 1 second+ lag we saw with stadia?

I look forward to the youtube videos of journalists telling me how well it works while puking their fucking guts up.

Reviewers b like:

It's not as far out as you might think, if small startups are doing this already apple and meta have the resources to push it mainstream alot quicker.

 

[Frank Horrigan]

I agree that cloud streaming is a ways off from being a viable alternative but local streaming is viable. I have a few tethered headsets, Rift, Vive but never use them as I personally feel the untethered streaming with Virtual Desktop on my Quests is good enough and feels better. It's quicker, easier to setup and being able to put my headset on anywhere in my house to play PCVR is awesome.

I do not know what magic the Virtual Desktop dev is doing to make it feel so good but Meta should employ this guy because he knows his shit.

It's not as far out as you might think, if small startups are doing this already apple and meta have the resources to push it mainstream alot quicker.

I was told ouya was going to dominate the world
That the xsx and ps5 would be streaming consoles
And that stadia was going to put Microsoft Sony and Nintendo out of business.

Even half a second lag in VR means a reenactment of that scene from The Exorcist

 

[hlm666]

I was told ouya was going to dominate the world
That the xsx and ps5 would be streaming consoles
And that stadia was going to put Microsoft Sony and Nintendo out of business.

Even half a second lag in VR means a reenactment of that scene from The Exorcist

Good thing if you watched the video she was actually playing it via cloud streaming right now without the problems your mentioning, but hey skip the facts and go straight with the hyperbole. Good discussion, cheers.

 

[Three]

Good thing if you watched the video she was actually playing it via cloud streaming right now without the problems your mentioning, but hey skip the facts and go straight with the hyperbole. Good discussion, cheers.

She has developed her VR legs since she has a VR channel but she mentions lag and stuttering. Moving around in VR with lag and stuttering will be barf inducing for anybody new to it.

 

[Frank Horrigan]

Good thing if you watched the video she was actually playing it via cloud streaming right now without the problems your mentioning, but hey skip the facts and go straight with the hyperbole. Good discussion, cheers.

I appreciate the video and I'm not attacking you. It's just that Ive seen the same doctored videos with various products in games over the years that the list would hit the character limit of a post.

The star wars kinect demo
Milo kinect demo
Holo lens
Stadia
Ouya
Countless games including cyberpunk and witcher 3

I'll not believe streaming can be achieved in VR (which is harder to achieve than flat screen gaming) until I can see it and play it. Until then it's a pipe dream

 

[Resenge]

Quest already has the same thing built in since quite long ago (Air Link).

Sure, but I think VD does a better job for my setup at least.

I was told ouya was going to dominate the world
That the xsx and ps5 would be streaming consoles
And that stadia was going to put Microsoft Sony and Nintendo out of business.

Even half a second lag in VR means a reenactment of that scene from The Exorcist

Well if my personal experience is not enough, not that I expect it will change your mind but how about 627 pages of experiences?

Here

 

[Frank Horrigan]

Sure, but I think VD does a better job for my setup at least.


Well if my personal experience is not enough, not that I expect it will change your mind but how about 627 pages of experiences?

Here

I appreciate the effort, but it's still not proof. When I can play it in the real world on a standard 300mb wireless connection with no lag or latency, I'll happily say "hey, those cool guys in that vr thread were right, this is the tits!"

Until then, I can't believe it. I want to, but fool me once shame on you (the industry) fool me 543 times, shame on me.

 

[Resenge]

I appreciate the effort, but it's still not proof. When I can play it in the real world on a standard 300mb wireless connection with no lag or latency, I'll happily say "hey, those cool guys in that vr thread were right, this is the tits!"

Until then, I can't believe it. I want to, but fool me once shame on you (the industry) fool me 543 times, shame on me.

Im not talking about cloud streaming, this is local streaming, PC to Quest. I agree cloud streaming would suck.

 

[Frank Horrigan]

Im not talking about cloud streaming, this is local streaming, PC to Quest. I agree cloud streaming would suck.

My bad. Local streaming would work. Psvita to ps4 remote play worked damn well and the psvr is just a vita, so I could see that working.

Apologies if I have misunderstood the terminology. I assumed this was about cloud streaming to VR

 

[CrustyBritches]

We can't get cloud streaming working on a stationary piece of kit running ps4 games without latency, backed by one of the largest companies in the world.

And after that was a total flop, we're now just jumping straight into cloud streaming vr? A tech that is super sensitive to lag, let alone the 1 second+ lag we saw with stadia?

I look forward to the youtube videos of journalists telling me how well it works while puking their fucking guts up.

Reviewers b like:

Cloud streaming works amazing on GeForce Now. The 3080 Tier has lower input latency than consoles. You just need powerful enough hardware on the server side to generate high frame rate output.

Local wireless play has been great since the 120Hz update early last year.

Cloud VR can work, but it would require powerful hardware. IIRC ShadowPC and PlutoVR are running something around a 2060 Super. I've done a couple videos on cloud VR. There's one posted right on this page.