If you’ve been wanting to play the spacefaring No Man’s Sky in VR on an Oculus Quest, you may be disappointed to discover that there’s no native support for the game and, given its size and technical complexity, things aren’t looking too hopeful on that front. But that alone certainly isn’t a reason to give up and walk away. Some players have taken it upon themselves to jury-rig their own concoctive streaming solutions to beam No Man’s Sky VR directly from their home PCs to their fully cable-free Oculus Quest standalone VR headsets.
Reddit user JayMoeHD claims that this method of experiencing No Man’s Sky VR is “just playable enough” to make them want a Rift S or Vive to experience the game natively, which is understandable and a clear sign that while doing this is possible, it’s probably not feasible for the vast majority of system setups out there. But, and I repeat, it is possible to get No Man’s Sky VR up and running and entirely playable on a Quest.
JayMoeHD says that they are using an Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER and shooting the gameplay signal out from a 5G hotspot. It’s doubtful that either of those things are going to be available or straightforward to the average user. Even so, JayMoeHD warns via Reddit, “I had a lot of issues on a planet with lots of floating orb-like objects being rendered, and I crashed out of [Virtual Desktop] when landing on the Anomaly.”
Regardless of the warnings, the following instructions may just help you push No Man’s Sky VR to your Oculus Quest headset. Here we go:
No Man’s Sky VR Oculus Quest Method: VRidge
First, follow this page for instructions on installing VRidge, the app that bridges your PC’s wifi signal to your Oculus Quest’s sensors. Currently, there are three ways to get VRidge running on your Quest unit.
Option #1 is automatic installation, option #2 is SideQuest installation, and option #3 is manual installation.
Quoted directly from the instruction page, here are the steps (in order) for each setup method:
Automated installation (Windows 10 only)
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Enable Developer Mode on your Oculus Quest by following all steps in THIS ARTICLE.
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Connect Oculus Quest to PC via USB
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Launch “Windows Powershell” as an Administrator, then copy and paste whole script from our repository HERE. It will automatically perform necessary downloads and installations.
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You might have to enable USB debugging on your Oculus Quest, just put it on your head and select “confirm” with your Oculus Quest controller
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After enabling USB debugging run the script again
Installation via SideQuest Launcher
SideQuest launcher not only contains a big library of Oculus Quest apps not available on official Oculus Quest store but also lets you easily install sideloaded apps. To install VRidge via SideQuest simply visit THIS link and click ‘Install Now’. If you haven’t used SideQuest before then visit THIS link which explains the setup process.
Manual installation
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Enable Developer Mode on your Oculus Quest by following all steps in THIS ARTICLE.
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Download VRidge for Oculus Quest apk from HERE
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Download Android ADB tool from HERE
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Unzip ADB Platform tools
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Open Platform tools folder and move VridgeQuest4 file there
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Inside the Platform tools folder press SHIFT + right mouse button and select “Open PowerShell” (you can also navigate into this folder using Windows command).
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Connect your Oculus Quest to your PC and type following command (without quotation marks) to test if ADB recognized it “.\adb devices”
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To install VRidge type following command (without quotation marks) “.\adb install -g VridgeQuest4.apk”
You will also need the RiftCat software, which costs $15 to use for longer than the limited trial edition allows, which is somewhere in the ballpark of several minutes. You’ll want to launch VRidge (found in ‘Unknown Sources’ on your Oculus Quest) and then launch RiftCat in that order.
Next, launch SteamVR from the RiftCat menu and you should be good to go as long as you also don’t also have any other PC VR headsets plugged in.
While not particularly related to No Man’s Sky VR, this video of UploadVR’s David Jagneaux playing Skyrim VR on an Oculus Quest with VRidge should give an idea of how flexible this software is:
Still getting any issues after setup? Reddit user JayMoeHD says to “Try a new game, disable multiplayer, disable AA, and lower your graphics settings.”
No Man’s Sky VR is available on Steam with support for all major headsets at an MSRP of $60.