What Is Oculus Link, and How Do You Use It?

howtogeek.com:

Oculus Link transforms your Quest or Quest 2 headset into a PC VR headset, using high-performance PC hardware to render graphics instead of the standalone mobile hardware in the headset. Oculus Air Link offers the same, but without wires!

The Oculus Rift was the company’s first consumer VR headset and for a long time the most popular way to get high-end PC VR for a reasonable price. All models of the Rift, including the final Rift S, used multiple connections to attach to a computer.

This included a USB 3.0 for data such as the headset’s movement and to send audio to the headphone jack. Early Rift models used HDMI to receive video, but the Rift S uses DisplayPort instead. You also needed to connect at least one external tracking camera, which monitors infrared tracking lights on the Rift headset and controllers. This is where the precise depth data comes from.

This isn’t exactly a pick-up and plays design, but at the time it was far more elegant than older attempts at VR.

At first, the Rift and Quest headsets were two separate product lines, but then the engineers at Oculus figured out that the single USB-C port on the Quest could be used to tether it to a PC and Link together. For a long time this feature, dubbed. “Oculus Link” was listed as experimental in Quest’s Software. Once all the important bugs were ironed out, it’s become a standard part of Quest and Quest 2, while at the same time Oculus has discontinued the Oculus Rift S.

Oculus Link (now re-branded as “Meta“) is a special feature of the Quest and Quest 2 VR headsets that turn them into PC VR headsets. By using Oculus Link, you can play any PC VR games that work with the Oculus Rift. From the game’s perspective, you’re using a Rift device, with the Quest software