Overview
How to use your Windows 10 PC to wirelessly stream your desktop to your Oculus Go or Oculus Quest.Running Bigscreen in “Remote Desktop” mode allows you to view all your PC content inside of your Oculus Go or Quest! Browse the web, watch videos, or even play a game!
Step 1 – Install Bigscreen on your PC
To start, you will need a moderately recent PC. While the minimum requirements for Bigscreen are listed as requiring an Intel i5-4590 equivalent or better with 8 GB of RAM, and a Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or better, you can probably get away with it if your computer doesn’t quite meet those requirements, but you still want to be as close as possible.
At the very least, you will want the following:
- An up to date copy of Windows 10
- A discrete GPU from Nvidia or AMD
Integrated Intel graphics chips have a high chance of not working with Bigscreen.
Please note that Bigscreen does not support Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 and trying to run it on those operating systems will not work. There is also no Mac support at this time, although that is something planned for the future.
You will need to install the Bigscreen program on your PC via Steam, or the Oculus Store.
- If you haven’t already, you can go here for the Steam installer.
- You can also get it from Oculus as well. There is no advantage to having it installed through Oculus over Steam, although if you have an Oculus Quest and plan to use Oculus Link, you will need the Oculus software installed anyway. You can get it from here[www.oculus.com].
Either will work, and if you already have one or the other installed, I would recommend sticking with that.
Next, you will want to install Bigscreen itself, either from Steam or Oculus[www.oculus.com] depending on which you went with.
Step 2 – Running Remote Desktop
Once you have Bigscreen installed, you will need to launch it in the special Remote Desktop mode.
To do this through Steam, hit the Play button from your library and choose the option to Play Remote Desktop streaming client.
If you are launching this through Oculus, you will want to click on the three dots below the Bigscreen app and select Start in Desktop Mode.
If this is the first time running Bigscreen on your computer, you will then see this screen asking you to create an account or login.
If you have already made an account on your mobile VR headset, please click the login button and use your existing account.
Once logged in, you will want to install the audio driver if you want to be able to hear your computer’s audio in your mobile headset. Simply click on the Audio Driver button and follow the instructions there. After that is completed, going to the audio driver section should show the following screen:
Step 3 – Connect to your Mobile VR Headset
In your Oculus Go or Oculus Quest headset, launch Bigscreen and then open up the Bigscreen menu.
Go to the My Room section and then choose the Hosting tab from the left panel. Next to “Privacy” change it to Private, Invite Only and hit Save.
Once it says the room was successfully changed, click on the Show Room ID button on the right panel and write that code in the appropriate field back on your PC in the Remote Desktop client.
You can click on the Remote Desktop button under Tools to configure the screen, including showing it on the big screen, as well as to enable 3D modes.
Tips & Troubleshooting
If you have the audio driver installed but aren’t hearing anything from your remote desktop, try pressing the Refresh Audio button on your remote desktop.
You can adjust the quality of your stream by clicking on the button next to Stream Resolution. The higher you have this set, the more bandwidth you will need.
- 480p – Approximately 0.5 Mbps per person in the room.
- 720p – Approximately 2.0 Mbps per person in the room.
- 1080p – Approximately 3.5 Mbps per person in the room.
At this time, the Remote Desktop does not support input streaming. This is a planned future feature.
For now, you will need to use input devices connected to the PC you are using. A wireless keyboard/mouse can work quite well.
- If possible, have the PC connected to the network using a wired connection.
- Similarly, having the Go or Quest on a 5 GHz Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) network is ideal.
- Ensure your copy of Windows 10 is up to date.
- You will also want to make sure your GPU drivers are up to date.
- If you have more than one monitor, Remote Desktop can only stream your primary monitor.
- Both the Remote Desktop and your mobile VR headset’s copy of Bigscreen will need to be on the same version of Bigscreen to connect. If you updated one recently, but not the other, that might cause connection failures.
- If you leave the room, or your headset goes to sleep, you may lose control of your remote desktop from within VR.
- There will always be some amount of latency, more than with PC VR, even with very good connections because you are essentially streaming your entire screen to potentially multiple remote people.
- If you have Oculus Link, you can run Bigscreen in the same way as you would use a Rift S. In that case, you should not be launching Bigscreen in Remote Desktop mode.