Want to play Beat Saber on Oculus Go or other low-end VR devices? There’s a way, though we wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.
VRidge Controller is the latest release from RiftCat, a company best known for its PC VR streaming app. The $4.99 download turns your Android smartphone into a three degrees of freedom (3DOF) pointer-based controller similar to a Go or Daydream remote. That means you can flick your wrist to slash a sword in Skyrim, for example, but not reach out to thrust it forwards or anything of that sort. Many PC VR games would still be unplayable.
Beat Saber Oculus Go? It’s Possible… But Not Very Good
You can connect two phones to the service, though, allowing you to play apps like Beat Saber, or just pair one phone with an existing motion controller. Here’s us playing it with the help of Oculus Go; the controller on the right is the standard Go remote and the one on the left is a first generation Google Pixel. It’s a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster of VR.
As you can see, once I’d turned off many of the options I was able to have a little fun playing. My phone controller was very jittery (RiftCat says quality varies depending on the phone) and I couldn’t realign them. I had to turn obstacles off because I couldn’t move my head and I had to turn failing off because, well, it was really hard even on Easy difficulty. I can imagine it being slightly better on Vive Focus with 6DOF head tracking, but not dramatically so.
How It Works
But here’s the catch; the app only works through streaming with VRidge on another phone or standalone VR headset. You couldn’t use this as a replacement controller for your Rift, for example. So if you have a VR PC but no PC VR or standalone headset, jumping into Beat Saber would require three phones for inferior 3DOF controls. It’s not exactly sounding like a great alternative to buying a headset anymore, is it?
It does make slightly more sense if you have a standalone device and want to sample what’s available on PC. Still, without 6DOF tracking in either the headset or the controllers, it’s bound to be pretty awkward.
To get it to work you’ll need to download the standard VRidge software on your platform of choice. Then you have to connect the first device for streaming and then to phone connects to that. Once it’s connected your phone will turn into a surrogate motion controller. The touch screen will include buttons staple VR interactions like gripping objects, pulling triggers and accessing menus.
RiftCat told me that it is considering making the application separate for use with other headsets in the future. For an app that started life as an easy workaround to buying a PC VR headset, though, this is all starting to get a bit complex. We’ll just keep waiting for that rumored Oculus Quest port, thanks.
