Geforce Now is now available for Meta Quest, and we tried it out
Geforce Now has officially launched on Meta Quest 3 and 3S, Pico 4 (Ultra) and Apple Vision Pro. We went hands-on with a Quest 3.
With Geforce Now, you can now stream flat games from PC stores like Steam from the Nvidia cloud to your headset and enjoy AAA titles on a virtual screen of any size.
The streaming service is available in many countries and supports more than 2,000 games. To play a title, you must have purchased it from one of the supported stores.
There are free and paid subscriptions to Geforce Now. Nvidia provided us with a one-month Ultimate subscription for this hands-on. The following impressions are based on Meta Quest 3.
Geforce Now: Xbox controller is mandatory
Geforce Now requires a high-speed Internet connection (35 Mbps for QHD resolution), Horizon OS version 72 or later, and an Xbox Wireless Gamepad.
I tried Geforce Now with these input devices:
- PS5's Dualsense wireless controller,
- a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and
- and a wireless controller for Xbox One.
The latter is the only fully supported way to play games, and I would strongly discourage trying it with the others (for now).
The Meta Quest 3 Touch Plus controllers are required for logging in, interacting with Geforce Now, and interacting with the virtual screen. Having to switch between the gamepad and the VR controller isn't an ideal solution and adds friction to the experience.
Nvidia recommends disabling the gaze cursor in the Quest 3 gamepad settings. You can find this and more useful information in Nvidia's support article.
Good image quality with the right settings
Geforce Now runs in the Meta Quest 3 browser, no app is required. Just go to the linked website and log in. Alternatively, you can head over to the official Geforce Now website, click on the Downloads category and scroll down to Meta Quest.
I wanted to access my Steam library and had to log in to Steam twice and link my Steam account to Geforce Now. Entering passwords in VR is still a pain, but once you have everything set up, you're ready to go the next time.
After successfully logging in, I was able to access and launch supported games using the Xbox Wireless Controller. Make sure the titles you want to play are optimized for Xbox controller control, or you may experience problems.
I tried No Man's Sky for my testing. After a few adjustments in the Geforce Now settings (see below for tips), my first impression was very good. The latency is perfectly fine for a single player game and the image quality is great. I was able to set all graphics settings to Ultra and enable DLSS, but the resolution of the Geforce Now streaming to Quest is currently limited to 2560 x 1440 pixels.
Of course, the Meta Quest can't compete with a 4K OLED TV. The resolution and contrast of the LCD screens are not good enough. The advantage of Meta Quest is that you can make the screen as big as you want, place it anywhere in the room or even on the ceiling, to play while lying down. However, if you enlarge the screen too much, the image becomes less sharp and detailed.
I think that Apple Vision Pro will benefit much more from Geforce Now thanks to the higher-quality displays.
A good VR start for Geforce Now
Geforce Now has impressed me. My computer is no longer up to date, and I won't be buying a new one any time soon. For a monthly fee, Geforce Now delivers the performance of an RTX 4080 to my home, or rather, to my headset. I hope that Nvidia will also add support for mouse and keyboard at some point, then this offer will become even more interesting for me.
I would also like to see a more elegant solution from Meta for interacting with the windows. Switching between the gamepad and the VR controller to make screen adjustments is a bit cumbersome.
Finally, two tips for the best image quality and graphics. Make sure to activate the following in the Geforce Now settings:
- Streaming Quality: Custom instead of Balanced. You can then set the maxium bit rate, resolution, and frame rate.
- In-Game Graphics Settings: You must activate this option if you want to set the graphics settings in the game itself.
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