Oculus Quest 2’s new Air Link mode was recently activated, but the question remains … is it good?
As it turns out, the answer is “mostly”. The Oculus Quest 2 is a great little headset, but not as powerful as a PC. So there will always be titles that are only intended for the PC. Half Life: Alyx, for example, is a great game, but cutting it down so it can run on a Quest 2 would be a mammoth undertaking and would likely rob it of some of its appeal.
Until Air Link debuted, the solution was to purchase a USB-C cable and plug the headset into your PC. Sure, you’d be tied to your PC so you would feel the cord every now and then, but you could play any VR game that supports Oculus Rift (Oculus’ wired headset) or Steam VR.
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Air Link behaves in much the same way, except that the connection is made via WiFi. This means there is no need to knock a cord against your ankles. Setting up is a breeze: Open the Oculus software on your PC and activate Air LInk in the settings. When you want to connect, go to the settings section of your actual Quest 2 headset and activate it there. Confirm the dialog box and you are good to go. It really is that simple. In the end, you’ll either be using your Quest controllers or a standard controller, but this will vary from game to game.
Tech-wise, Air Link is still in beta so you might run into small issues. You may need to lift your headset to grab your PC’s mouse, at least if this is your first time trying to run an app. However, this is also the case with a cable. Before, you could buy Virtual Desktop and get the same effect with it, but I found Air Link set up and started up was a lot easier.
So what’s the catch? What are the problems that “mostly” led to this? The first is that since AirLink connects over WiFi, it drains your battery faster than using the Quest 2 in standalone mode. The Quest 2 was supposed to have two to three hours of battery life, but it was forty-five minutes before I received a warning that the Quest 2 was 40% charged. If you connected your Quest 2 with a cable, it may still not charge. However, since it charges through the PC, it will take longer before you have to turn off your headset.
The second problem is that the quality depends on the speed of your WiFi connection. Air Link works by pushing the output from your PC to your headset, much like Google Stadia does. I got a connection speed of 100 Mbit / s between my PC and Quest, which, although not the maximum speed of 200 Mbit / s, gave me excellent image quality. That doesn’t mean you need a 100Mbps internet connection. However, if your router cannot handle 100 Mbps transmission, you will experience a loss of quality.
Third, not every single game works perfectly. I’ve tried fourteen VR titles and all but one worked fine. However, the one that wasn’t working properly was Skyrim VR, which I was dying to play. I kept getting ghosting issues that, oddly enough, didn’t affect Fallout 4 VR, even though I was using practically the same engine.
The problems went away when I plugged a cable into my headset, but nothing else, trying to change settings and so on, made the ghosting disappear. The only solution was simply to play Skyrim VR with a cable between my headset and my PC. It was still an improvement on playing on PSVR, which tends to lose tracking when you turn around.
So Air Link works well most of the time. Should you buy an Oculus Quest 2 only to believe that you will be able to run every single PC game wirelessly? No, because for now at least you’re going to come across the weird title that doesn’t work as expected. Since Air Link doesn’t cost an extra penny to use, it’s a welcome bonus. I will definitely use it. That makes the Oculus Quest 2, a device we said was “without a doubt the best VR headset money can buy,” just a little more versatile.
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