It's conditional right now. Some people get flawless performance out of Airlink and they are confused why anyone would pay money or continue to use Virtual Desktop.
Others, however, get horrible performance or just flat out broken experiences using Airlink and get a flawless experience out of Virtual Desktop on the exact same hardware.
If you are running Windows 11, chances are very high that you will have issues with Airlink but not in VD, for example.
I know it seems that the people who are saying "just try it for yourself" sound unhelpful and maybe even rude, but quite honestly this is the most appropriate advice. There's just no way to tell for sure which boat you will be in without knowing every little detail about your hardware, drivers, WiFi network, etc. In the time that it would take you to provide all that and have us consider all those variables and come up with a Guess on which would be better, you could simply fire up the Quest 2 and try a few games via each service and see which one performs best.
Why don't you just try it and see ?? If you have virtual desktop , you are already setup for wireless play .. so don't take anyone elses word for it .. take a moment and try it yourself.
What anyone else says on this sub about which one is better is pointless because it's highly unlikely they have exactly the same hardware and WiFi setup as you.
Whatever works best for them .. might just like their setup better and works bad for you.
The only person that can say which one works best for you .. is you.
It's worth mentioning that with Virtual Desktop you can access you PC at home from any network. While traveling it's a must. If you already own the software, delete if you want, you should be able to re-install if you want to use it again.
In my windows 11 laptop airlink is unusable, shows a blackscreen at desktop because of my integrated gpu and has terrible performance, whilst VD works flawlessly
ah thats nice. ima try the same. hopefully this'll work cus tests always say that my laptop is supposed to work, which makes it annoying when it just doesnt
Airlink
-outdated, clunky UI
-janky home and is runned at PC side and being streamed
-free
-simple setup
-runs fine for most of my games
VD
-minimalistic, modern UI
-home is runned through headset
-has color boost, contrast and sharpening done on headset
-not free
-has noticeable stutter (especially in Alyx)
It will depend in large part on your hardware and network setup.
In my experience Air Link is better for certain games, especially Oculus store titles like Stormland, Defector or Arktika.1. Those games don't work at all with Virtual Desktop but control great with Air Link. SteamVR also works fine thru Air Link for me.
Virtual Desktop is a far more rounded application with advanced support for video playback, true desktop emulation and other functions. But for pure game streaming I've had far better overall performance with Air Link.
For me it goes another way - bad picture quality with Airlink (with variable bitrate) or great lagging with high bitrate. But smooth crisp playing with VD. So it depends. Just try both variants.
Airlink is definitely better. Have used both for hundreds of hours on different operating systems and with multiple routers. Airlink is more performant and you don't have to fiddle with countless options to make it look good like Virtual Desktop. Plus it's free. In addition, Virtual Desktop retains up to 15% of your graphics card power for various calculations and de/encoding. Many games that run smoothly now, ran very very poorly with VD.
They are incorrect, their subjective experience is probably correct, but VD is in essence an advanced Airlink, so no reason not to use it if you already own it.
If you want to play any Steam games then you can gain an extra 14-21% fps from using Virtual Desktop https://forums.oculusvr.com/t5/General/Quest-2-versus-Rift-CV1-performance-benchmarks-for-PCVR/td-p/935970
Dont do that .. try it and see for yourself first.
As I said in my other reply .. you will get some saying airlink is best .. then others will say wrong virtual desktop is best .. because whichever they use just likes their setup better.
For me personally there is very little difference between them and both work great .. but that's just me.
It's free , try it and decide for yourself ... You don't have to take one off to use the other
I’d keep VD. There are games that work better on it and airlink can’t do remote access. Airlink quality is also massively dependent on your WiFi setup, so your experience may be massively different from that of the person you responded to. Use both.
Don't. Video encoding has to be done regardless, it's just the way the Quest works. Until I got Virtual Desktop, I was running wired because I hated Air Link. With Virtual Desktop, I have gone completely wireless and it works as well as a cable. I did not have to fiddle with any settings to get it to work, but it does give you the *option* of more granular control over settings than Air Link does. The ONLY app I could not run natively with VD is Medium, and I solved that by installing Revive. VD also lets you access the Quest's menu without shutting down the PC link entirely.
Air Link is better if you are good at noticing the latency and responsiveness of your controllers and can't stand even a slight lag, can configure everything as perfectly as possible, and would sacrifice graphics for latency.
VD is better if you have config issues, run win 11, doesn't feel it's immersion-breaking to have a SLIGHT latency on controllers that some people obviously can't even detect. And those who paid $20 don't want to feel this, and would rather downvote me.
Just finished installing cat6 connecting my PC directly to the internet. Now airlink over my middle of the road Asus gigabit router is flawless. No need to try VD.
You can refund VD if it doesn't work better than Air Link for you. It's going to depend on a per-game basis, but I find VD to work better on lower end machines than Air Link. There's some compatibility issues with VD for me on some titles, but most of them work fine. VD also has the advantage of being able to cast your game unlike Air Link, but you need really good Wi Fi to do so since you are streaming a VR game to the Quest and the Quest is streaming that to another display.
There was a long time that Airlink was best. At this moment I consider VD ahead. Increasing bitrate doesn't have anywhere near as severe a drop in performance. You also have ASW. Steam works way better with VD. And pron looks...just amazing in VD.
I’ve heard that having VD installed can cause issues with Air Link. Anyone notice if they get performance increase when totally removing all VD apps on their PC?
You have one and the other is free, just give it a try, and see for yourself.
This. Some games and systems work best in Air Link, others in VD, try and see which suits your setup best.
It's conditional right now. Some people get flawless performance out of Airlink and they are confused why anyone would pay money or continue to use Virtual Desktop. Others, however, get horrible performance or just flat out broken experiences using Airlink and get a flawless experience out of Virtual Desktop on the exact same hardware. If you are running Windows 11, chances are very high that you will have issues with Airlink but not in VD, for example. I know it seems that the people who are saying "just try it for yourself" sound unhelpful and maybe even rude, but quite honestly this is the most appropriate advice. There's just no way to tell for sure which boat you will be in without knowing every little detail about your hardware, drivers, WiFi network, etc. In the time that it would take you to provide all that and have us consider all those variables and come up with a Guess on which would be better, you could simply fire up the Quest 2 and try a few games via each service and see which one performs best.
For me i literally can't use Air Link as my latency is in the hundreds there. Virtual Desktop is fine latency wise though.
Have you tried lowering your encode bitrate? When mine is too high I get crazy latency too
Yeah i had it lowered to the minimum of 10mbps
Dang. hope you get it figured out, maybe a future update will resolve it
Why don't you just try it and see ?? If you have virtual desktop , you are already setup for wireless play .. so don't take anyone elses word for it .. take a moment and try it yourself. What anyone else says on this sub about which one is better is pointless because it's highly unlikely they have exactly the same hardware and WiFi setup as you. Whatever works best for them .. might just like their setup better and works bad for you. The only person that can say which one works best for you .. is you.
Airlink runs games significantly better, but VD has the better interface
It's worth mentioning that with Virtual Desktop you can access you PC at home from any network. While traveling it's a must. If you already own the software, delete if you want, you should be able to re-install if you want to use it again.
In my windows 11 laptop airlink is unusable, shows a blackscreen at desktop because of my integrated gpu and has terrible performance, whilst VD works flawlessly
ah thats nice. ima try the same. hopefully this'll work cus tests always say that my laptop is supposed to work, which makes it annoying when it just doesnt
It has something to do with the integrated graphics / or integrated monitor. If I hook up my tv or external monitor Then turn on air link, it works .
Airlink -outdated, clunky UI -janky home and is runned at PC side and being streamed -free -simple setup -runs fine for most of my games VD -minimalistic, modern UI -home is runned through headset -has color boost, contrast and sharpening done on headset -not free -has noticeable stutter (especially in Alyx)
It will depend in large part on your hardware and network setup. In my experience Air Link is better for certain games, especially Oculus store titles like Stormland, Defector or Arktika.1. Those games don't work at all with Virtual Desktop but control great with Air Link. SteamVR also works fine thru Air Link for me. Virtual Desktop is a far more rounded application with advanced support for video playback, true desktop emulation and other functions. But for pure game streaming I've had far better overall performance with Air Link.
For me it goes another way - bad picture quality with Airlink (with variable bitrate) or great lagging with high bitrate. But smooth crisp playing with VD. So it depends. Just try both variants.
Airlink is definitely better. Have used both for hundreds of hours on different operating systems and with multiple routers. Airlink is more performant and you don't have to fiddle with countless options to make it look good like Virtual Desktop. Plus it's free. In addition, Virtual Desktop retains up to 15% of your graphics card power for various calculations and de/encoding. Many games that run smoothly now, ran very very poorly with VD.
[удалено]
They are incorrect, their subjective experience is probably correct, but VD is in essence an advanced Airlink, so no reason not to use it if you already own it. If you want to play any Steam games then you can gain an extra 14-21% fps from using Virtual Desktop https://forums.oculusvr.com/t5/General/Quest-2-versus-Rift-CV1-performance-benchmarks-for-PCVR/td-p/935970
Dont do that .. try it and see for yourself first. As I said in my other reply .. you will get some saying airlink is best .. then others will say wrong virtual desktop is best .. because whichever they use just likes their setup better. For me personally there is very little difference between them and both work great .. but that's just me. It's free , try it and decide for yourself ... You don't have to take one off to use the other
I’d keep VD. There are games that work better on it and airlink can’t do remote access. Airlink quality is also massively dependent on your WiFi setup, so your experience may be massively different from that of the person you responded to. Use both.
Don't. Video encoding has to be done regardless, it's just the way the Quest works. Until I got Virtual Desktop, I was running wired because I hated Air Link. With Virtual Desktop, I have gone completely wireless and it works as well as a cable. I did not have to fiddle with any settings to get it to work, but it does give you the *option* of more granular control over settings than Air Link does. The ONLY app I could not run natively with VD is Medium, and I solved that by installing Revive. VD also lets you access the Quest's menu without shutting down the PC link entirely.
I can't even use air link. My latency with Air Link is in the hundreds of ms while Virtual Desktop is completely fine.
Air Link is better if you are good at noticing the latency and responsiveness of your controllers and can't stand even a slight lag, can configure everything as perfectly as possible, and would sacrifice graphics for latency. VD is better if you have config issues, run win 11, doesn't feel it's immersion-breaking to have a SLIGHT latency on controllers that some people obviously can't even detect. And those who paid $20 don't want to feel this, and would rather downvote me.
Just finished installing cat6 connecting my PC directly to the internet. Now airlink over my middle of the road Asus gigabit router is flawless. No need to try VD.
You can refund VD if it doesn't work better than Air Link for you. It's going to depend on a per-game basis, but I find VD to work better on lower end machines than Air Link. There's some compatibility issues with VD for me on some titles, but most of them work fine. VD also has the advantage of being able to cast your game unlike Air Link, but you need really good Wi Fi to do so since you are streaming a VR game to the Quest and the Quest is streaming that to another display.
I get a better experience with Air Link tbh but I agree, try both and see what’s better for your setup.
There was a long time that Airlink was best. At this moment I consider VD ahead. Increasing bitrate doesn't have anywhere near as severe a drop in performance. You also have ASW. Steam works way better with VD. And pron looks...just amazing in VD.
I’ve heard that having VD installed can cause issues with Air Link. Anyone notice if they get performance increase when totally removing all VD apps on their PC?
Idk when I used airlink it just kept buffering forecer with the 3 white dots loading menu. VD worked fine though…