Which is Better? Air Link or Virtual Desktop?

Air Link VS Virtual Desktop 2022, Air Link Virtual Desktop comparison, Which is better Air Link or Virtual Desktop, What's the difference between Virtual Desktop and Air Link

For as long as I've owned my Oculus (Meta) Quest 2 I've been using Air Link to play PCVR games wirelessly and I think it's great! I've seen a lot of people online though saying their Air Link experience is less than ideal though. Ok, they say Air Link "sucks" and that another application called Virtual Desktop provided a vastly superior experience. I've always thought Air Link is great but at the same time wanted to give Virtual Desktop a try. Having now used both Air Link and Virtual Desktop I currently feel Air Link provides the better game play experience and in this video I detail why that is. Don't get me wrong Virtual Desktop is a great app. It has some really great features I totally prefer over Air Link's implementation and I talk about what those are in this video as well. I hope you enjoy the video.

If you appreciate the work I do here on the channel, I invite you to check out my Amazon store where you can purchase many of the cool products I feature in my videos -

Yes, these are affiliate links. The price of the products in my store remains the same, Amazon just pays me a small commission for sending business their way. Thanks for helping support the channel. :)

Wanna skip to a particular part of the video? Use the Chapters. :)

Chapters
0:00 – "Air Link SUCKS!"
0:27 – Chop, chop, chop! All I do is chop.
1:43 – Am I missing something?
2:49 – I seem to be backwards
3:00 – trust me, I believe you
3:44 – I actually do like Virtual Desktop
5:04 – things could have been different

#quest2, #airlink, #virtualdesktop, #oculus, #meta, #VR, #virtualreality,

[philthemustardtiger]

All the stuttering seems related to the "Guardian" system on Quest 2/Quest. Try disabling the guardian system in (settings, system, developer) and give that a try. Worked for me instantly. Also in my opinion Airlink does look clearer and implements sharpness better than VD, but I tend to use VD as it just seems more reliable, easier to connect, and tweaking the settings is a much better experience. Airlink also tends to interfere with audio input/output settings a lot which is frustrating. VD just works as it should every-time.

[minizep]

Airlink is better when you have a decent router. if you have a crappy router virtual desktop is better. simple

[brett_musgrove]

I would recommend everyone who has problems with their router try connecting directly to your PC via your pc's hotspot. I have my PC connected to my router via WiFi6 and I would connect my quest 2 to my PC through the router. It worked fine but if anyone else was doing anything intensive on the network would get stuttering and hitches which wasn't the best experience. Then realized could just connect directly to my PC via hotspot and it's so much better no more lag, better clarity, less latency almost to the point where it feels as if I'm wired directly to my PC with a link cable. I Would definitely recommend to anyone who has a WiFi6 network card and either can't connect their PC to their router with Ethernet or doesn't have a wifi 6 router give this a try.

[TheJamesShow]

I have tweaked both as much as I can, following all kinds of guides, and aside from changing the saturation and color slightly, of which i am not that interested in, Air link just works better for me, especially as some games still get a bit weird with the controls in virtual desk top for me for some reason. airlink just works, and works great. My pc setup is virtually exactly the same video card, processor and memory.

[motozero]

So I have an old 1080 and I5 4690k and VD is the best for me. 5g wireless on Airlink would lag, warp, eww. VD has yet to freaking so much as stutter. I'm at 80fps, but I am extremely pleased with VD. I'm really impressed with how much of an upgrade VD feels like.

[deadlyicecream]

I can't even connect to my pc with air link. I can see my pc in the headset, i can press pair.. but then it wont go any further, everything is updated

[rafalves]

My pc has a 1050ti (nvidia recommends 1060 for vr) and only virtual desktop works properly on it, with default settings. Playing on air link has a severe impact on performance with blurry vision and frame drops. When I bought half life alyx I felt like wasted my money until bought VD, finished the game a few days ago

[ericwagstaff]

I'm in the same boat. I have also noticed weird stutters that in lone echo 2 and HL Alyx. I'm running a 5950x and 3090. For months I just lived with it as I could not find anything that would solve those issues, until I switch to Air Link. Now it's butter smooth in both titles and others while seeming pushing higher with seemly more consistent FPS, according to the overlay. For now I have switch over to using Air Link as my go to for Quest 2 PCVR.

[metalliholic]

I just got the Quest 3

Coming from the Rift S and I was so confused why everyone kept saying airlink sucked and I should get VD.

Airlink runs great and looks great. I do however have a wifi 6e router and it’s hard wired to my desktop.

I’m just happy I don’t need to spend another $20 😂

[alucard]

air link uses 2-3gb more vram because of gpu encoder. so users with 8gb vram or less experiencing stutters and stalls. with your gpu link and airlink will be better.

[kongvue]

Before I switched routers VD was much better than airlink. I was using a Tp- link AX3000 AX50. I took the dive because VD had existing stutters on Tp- links AX3000 AX50 series. Picked up the Asus AX1800 and it made the biggest difference. Fixed about 95% of the stutters I was getting. But the craziest thing was Airlink was actually better than VD afterwards. 99% of stutters was gone on airlink. Now I'm wondering if I needed to upgrade my GPU from a 6700xt to a 3080. Either way everything looks perfect and playing games is now very enjoyable without the stutters and graphics are clean and crisp.

[sgma-sx]

You had mentioned this on my live stream now I can physically see what you mean! I've been using VDT for so long now, that I had completely forgotten about air link. Well looks like it's time to go change that!

[Venoxium]

Airlink is good ***BUT*** every other update I have problems with Airlink. From it not wanting to connect to PC even after restarting the entire Oculus app and sometimes it just refuses after working 1 or 2 times. So I use Virtual Desktop for the most part because so far I've never had issues with it. I also don't have any stuttering in Virtual Desktop.

[Gamer_BTW]

My main issue with airlink is that I could never get it down below 50 ms latency. In VD I consistently have 30 ms latency or lower and that helps with my motion sickness. Though I'm not sure if this problem is noticeable by everyone considering how small 20 ms can be. I still find that when its higher it makes a nauseating experience worse.

[JetScreamer_YT]

Going from 8gig to 16gigs took care of my Air Link blues. Im using a 1660ti for video.

My buddy has a 1050ti, and it worked much better than I expected. Aircar ran nice at an appropriate framerate.

[krazysh]

With 80Mhz bandwidth you should be seeing 866Mbps or 1200Mbps (AC or AX respectively) for link speed at the top of the performance overlay, the fact that you aren't means you're either too far from your router or there are obstacles giving you a signal quality issues. pretty clearly visible on that overlay that something is wrong with the connection (Airlink has Dynamic Bitrate that drops your bitrate if you have a bad connection, Virtual Desktop's Automatic Bitrate is just a measure at startup measuring max throughput)

[HoshPak]

I have upgraded to an 3090 Ti, recently. Before that I was using VD as it has been recommended to me by so many people and on my older 1070 this would hold true.

Now, on the new GPU I discovered that AirLink is pushing higher FPS than VD pretty much consistently, but that comes at a higher overall CPU overhead since you will now also run the oculus runtime and steamVR simultaneously. Anyway, I'm surprised about the results.

Where VD shines however is gameplay of non-VR games in cinematic mode. Input latency and image clarity are superior to whatever steamVR offers with that virtual room while VD also offers a much larger variety of rooms and sceneries.

Both have their place in VR, IMHO. There's also those games that run terrible, no matter what hardware you own (looking at you, VRChat...) And there, VD with its synchronous space warp is a godsend. The asynchronous implementation AirLink is using just can't beat that.

Bottom line: AirLink wins as long as the FPS target is being hit without ASW. In any low FPS situation (be it low spec hardware or hard to drive games) Virtual Desktop is the way to go.

[AshtonCoolman]

I came to this video to understand why you don't use VirtualDesktop. You have a high end system and router but you're still stuttering. I'VE SEEN THIS BEFORE. On the PC streamer app side, do you have 'encrypt local traffic' enabled?

[nkVr]

For some reason, when I play on oculus air link, it keeps showing these random patterns every time I try to look around and it also lags a lot. I watched many tutorials on how to fix it but for some reason those didn't help. If any people can help me with this issue, I will be thankful.

[cluthz]

Seems like bitrate on VD is dropping, on ax you should not have max bandwidth at around 500mbs as it shows in your overlay. Also HEVC should give much better visual fidelity. Got nearly same specs as you, 3080TI and 5800X3d with 32GB 3600mhz cl16.