The PC Magazine review of the Vision Pro is the most comprehensive I’ve come across yet. It mentions that one of the apps available is a “flawlessly performing Steam Link.” In the next paragraph it says, “I could run 3DMark benchmarks and stream games from my Steam PC on it perfectly.”
As I know absolutely nothing about Steam or connecting VR headsets, I must naively ask if this implies that the Vision Pro might be capable of displaying a Steam-installed MFS already, without the need for hacking or porting Virtual Desktop or ALVR.
For MSFS Microsoft Store and Steam are just two different sales/distribution channels for exactly the same product. There is no difference in the operation of MSFS (not matter VR or 2D) distributed via MS Store vs. Steam (other than some sim folder location/naming). MSFS (no matter if distributed by MS Store or Steam) is working in VR via OpenXR.
The question for Apple Vision headset and streaming games: is this streaming to flat 2D window or streaming the VR game. I have only the experience with HP Reverb G2 and Pimax Crystal (wired PC VR headsets) I have no idea how PC VR works for wireless headsets like Quest.
The Apple Vision Pro is a fashion victim object, I suggest you try a real headset.
Everyone works very well.
1 Like
To be fair people have said that about pretty much every piece of Apple hardware launched to date. Yet they have an uncanny knack of making a huge success of things.
It does seem outrageously over priced though, even for an Apple product.
2 Likes
I don’t think it’s overpriced at all. It’s pretty insane tech. Yes it’s super expensive, but so is something like the Varjo XR4, and the Pro’s form factor beats it by a mile. Different use cases though. But I do understand why the AVP is so pricey. It will get cheaper.
I have to say that I generally dislike all Apple portable devices and Mac products, though I am a big fan of classic iPods, but I’m very impressed with the tech of the Apple vr goggles, though I understand that they really have not been designed with serious gaming in mind at all - which, to me at least, renders it nothing more than a toy.
1 Like
My assumption is, that it’s the native steam link app from the app store running on the AVP, that’s also available for iPhones. It would only stream games to a virtual monitor floating Infront of you.
For the Quest3 there is an actual official steamVR link (free on the quest store), with that you could stream MSFS in VR to the Q3.
1 Like
Thanks, IceMan. That’s the answer to my question.
1 Like
I mean that’s just my assumption, but probably the best explanation for the moment.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Valve would do the same thing for the AVP as they did for Quest 2/3 considering how open thy are to let other companies hardware into their ecosystem.
The other question would be if Apple would allow them to add a PCVR streaming app to the AVP store.
Some people have signed up for a dev account, built the new version of ALVR and been able to run it on the AVP to “play” steam VR applications such as VR Chat. But I haven’t found anyone who has used this version of ALVR to run MSFS on the AVP.
(Yes, it’s expensive which is why I don’t have one to be trying this myself.)
You can actually play it in virtual reality on the Apple Vision Pro. I’ve done it this morning.
If you go to the trouble of installing ALVR and then building a custom app it does, in fact, work decently well with MSFS.
I had a few flights this morning, and the headset, and the latest build is not even that buggy. Certain things are weird like having to restart the flight twice and not being able to bring up the VR menu, but it does work. But because even a 4090 isn’t enough to render this at native resolution, which is about 8k, and the max encoding is 6k, the Quest 3 via VD looks quite similar resolution, wise, although the colors and contrast are definitely much better in the Apple Vision Pro.
1 Like
Just to follow up the bills have gotten a lot better on the client side and I’m able to run steam VR games, including MSFS very consistently now. They even added hand tracked controller emulation.
It’s all quite impressive. I’d say it’s good enough to you on a regular basis over virtual desktop for flight simulator or racers although the frame rate is still higher on virtual desktop probably because the resolution is being more limited there.
I don’t recall the figure but I think I was running something like 4500x5000 per eye on the ALVR implementation even higher than that it was not usable and I’m getting about 30 to 45 a second in New York City (in MSFS) that way on a 4090.
1 Like