Connecting an Oculus Quest 2 to a Nintendo Switch sounds like a dream combo. After all, who wouldn't be excited by the thought of playing Zelda, or Mario Kart, or Animal Crossing, in VR? But the question is, can you actually make this dream combo happen? Or is it like trying to make a Call of Duty game without people then cheating?
In this article, we'll let you know whether or not this is something you can actually do, and if so, how you then go about it. Ready? Let's get started. Here's what we know about connecting Oculus Quest to Nintendo Switch.
Can you connect Oculus Quest 2 to the Switch?
Officially, there is no way to pair up the Oculus Quest with the Nintendo Switch. The Quest has much more in common with PC than it does Switch from a developmental perspective. This means that compatibility immediately becomes an issue.
There are also factors like IP rights. Nintendo is renowned for guarding their property like Smaug protects the gold. And they show little interest in making their games available via other platforms. If you want to play Nintendo Games, you can only play them through Nintendo. And even though they don't really have much by way of a VR offering themselves, they are yet to create any kind of relationship with a VR specialist, such as Oculus.
But is that the end of the story? There may well be one way to connect a Nintendo Switch and an Oculus Quest headset. We'll cover that now.
Read more: Oculus Quest 2 not pairing to phone - how to fix the connection error
How to connect Oculus Quest to Nintendo Switch
We've previously looked at whether or not you can access Steam games via Nintendo Switch. In that instance, once again there was no way to do it officially. But, where there's a will there's a way. And if you can bring Steam games onto the Switch (albeit with caveats) maybe you can do something similar with a Quest. Right? Right?
Well, sort of. The only way we've seen that makes it even remotely possible to play Nintendo Switch games via VR, involves a bit of work. A blog post from the good people at bigscreenVR.com (albeit from 2017) explains how to make this happen. You need a capture card, a powerful PC, and broadcasting software. They used Open Broadcast Studio, which is available for both PC and Mac. Once you have all the necessary equipment:
- Open OBS, and click the + button to add an input source
- Select the Video capture card and press OK
- In Video Settings, match the resolution to your Nintendo Switch, so 720p60
- Press OK twice, then turn on your console
- Within a few minutes, you'll hopefully be able to see your Nintendo Switch in OBS. You can resize it to fit the whole screen
- Once this is done, you can don your Quest, open Bigscreen via Steam, and launch it through VR
- With your mouse, right-click the preview in OBS and select Fullscreen Projector
- In theory, this should allow you to see your console through Bigscreen
In their blog, they do suggest that you may need to play with the settings, as it can be prone to tearing. They recommend choosing the Deinterlacing options to see if that makes a difference.
Ultimately, there are a lot of moving parts to this. You are sending information from your Switch to a capture card, to your PC, and to your VR headset. So it is unlikely to be completely seamless at the first go. But with a little perseverance, you may find that you have a passable way to connect your Oculus Quest to Nintendo Switch.