A new emulator may finally make it easy to not only play Quest exclusives on PC for better performance, but on any PC VR headset out there.
The News
Called Venture, the Quest emulator is designed to be easy, which means no mucking with GitHub repos like with Android XR Bridge or Refract, two similar projects that have been in the wild for about a month now.
With Venture, users can download an executable for Windows, sign into their Meta account, download games to a local PC, and play with any OpenXR supported PC VR headset.
Behind the scenes, Venture says it’s using OpenGL ES through Google’s an open-source graphics abstraction library (ANGLE), allowing games to render on your PC’s GPU.
Older Oculus VR games work without modifying the games themselves, as Venture supports games built on the legacy Oculus VrApi, allowing them to run through OpenXR. That includes older 32-bit ARM titles too, not just newer 64-bit games.
To boot, Venture is currently amassing a list of games certified to work, which thus far includes:
- Asgard’s Wrath 2
- Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR
- Bait!
- Batman: Arkham Shadow
- Beat Saber
- Cactus Cowboy – Plants at War
- Cooking Simulator VR
- Elixir
- Epic Roller Coasters
- First Contact
- HITMAN 3 VR: Reloaded
- Job Simulator
- Marvel’s Deadpool VR
- Marvel’s Iron Man VR
- Moss
- Moss: Book II
- North Star
- Puzzling Places
- Resident Evil 4
- The Climb 2
- The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
- V-Speedway
- Vader Immortal: Episode I
- Vader Immortal: Episode II
- Vader Immortal: Episode III
There’s no recommended specs available for PCs yet, although Venture says using an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and Nvidia RTX 5090, rendering at 2,800 × 2,856 per eye, it’s capable of beating the competition by a fair margin across a number of games.
If you’re interested in learning more before downloading, Venture also runs a Discord channel (invite link).
My Take
Meta’s walled garden doesn’t seem to have much of a gardener anymore now that the company is basically no longer funding big games, so why does it need a wall at all? That’s one question you might ask yourself.
That said, I’m not advocating you download Venture right now because I am not entirely certain that 1) this won’t completely bork your computer, 2) it won’t break Meta’s ToS, or 3) won’t expose your personal information in some unintended way.
The fact remains you that Venture asks you to sign into your personal Meta, which could expose your account to security risks; there’s no guarantee that Meta won’t ban your Quest account either, which essentially puts all of the games you bought down the drain. So emulate at your own risk.
