Virtual Desktop is slated to be an Oculus Quest launch title later this month when the headset releases on May 21. For those unaware, Virtual Desktop is a VR application that allows you to stream your desktop to a virtual environment in VR. When paired with the portability of the Quest plus a good WiFi signal, that means you can remotely access your desktop PC inside a VR headset from anywhere.
Then all you’ve got to do is pair a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to your Quest and you’ve got a remote PC workstation in a virtual environment. Pair a bluetooth game controller as well and you can even play non-VR games through Virtual Desktop.
Virtual Desktop is already available on PC VR headsets and on Oculus Go, but the Quest version sounds like it will be wonderful from a specs and performance perspective. Guy Godin, the creator of Virtual Desktop, explains the difference between his app on Oculus Go and Oculus Quest in a series of tweets:
I also use 8K atlas textures. Oculus recommends 1024×1024 eye buffers on Go and 1280×1280 on Quest with 4k textures max. This gives you an idea how a native app can push the limits =)
— Guy Godin (@VRDesktop) May 4, 2019
My previous tweets were about the GPU on the Quest. The CPU offers an even bigger improvement compared to the Go. While running at the lowest CPU clock rate (0), Virtual Desktop doesn’t use more than 25% of the available horsepower pic.twitter.com/tVNnzQogf2
— Guy Godin (@VRDesktop) May 5, 2019
In another later tweet, Godin also specifically says that he is able to actually push “twice the number of pixels” on Quest as compared to Oculus Go, which speaks strongly towards the performance capability of the upcoming standalone VR headset.
We’ve got access to Virtual Desktop on Oculus Quest here at UploadVR and I can say that it’s pretty wonderful. The visual clarity is fantastic, you can easily read text, and it opens up exciting possibilities for the future of remote work. I can’t wait to try using it more often.
Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
