Meta is actively working on bringing cloud VR gaming to Meta Quest. The long-rumored ‘Avalanche’ app briefly appeared on the Quest Store in October with old Oculus Rift games like Lone Echo and Asgard’s Wrath before Meta removed the app.
Also called Avalanche or Project Razor, this third-party streaming service was first leaked in 2022 and has since surfaced in code and experimental settings menus, before the recent leak was spotted by UploadVR’s David Heaney.
Meta has banned third-party cloud streaming apps like Plutosphere from the Quest Store, as it did with Virtual Desktop before Air Link launched. Meta clearly plans to launch cloud streaming on Quest when it’s ready for consumers, enabling higher graphics than the Snapdragon XR2 on the Quest 3 and Quest 3S can handle natively.
In my case, I’m not sure I’ll see Avalanche as anything more than a fun, high-latency novelty to try briefly, unless Meta uses this service to go beyond years-old Oculus Rift games.
Meta and Microsoft have brought flat-screen Xbox games to Quest via cloud streaming, but I want the partnership to go further. Avalanche would become much more appealing if the Quest streamed VR ports of AAA video games, fulfilling the promise that the PSVR 2 couldn’t deliver.
We first heard rumors that Oculus would bring AAA games to Quest in 2020: Facebook VP of gaming Josh Rubin discussed streaming games “from a computer, over your Wi-Fi, to your face,” but also mentioned the “incredible amount of challenges that need to be overcome to get there.”
That same year, an “Oculus Avalanche” code sequence was first noticed in the Quest v24 firmware in 2020, although it took until 2022 for the reference to be understood.
Then, VR analyst Brad Lynch unveiled Project Razor while leaking the Quest 3 in 2022, describing it as a “partnership between Meta and US-based ISP/MNOs, i.e. Verizon, AT&T, etc., to help drive connectivity improvements build.”
Playtesters could try out Lone Echo and Beat Saber – both available on the latest Avalanche leak – as a “streamed XR performance baseline” from a “Meta edge network.” Next, they would test “Cloud Link over 5G Mobile Networks” using AWS Wavelength.
Ultimately, Meta wants to create “cloud-first content” that “would otherwise be impossible” to run on Quest 3 or Quest 4. It’s similar to how the Nintendo Switch streams games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Hitman 3, which the hardware can’t do. lever.
It’s unclear whether Meta will rely more on traditional internet streaming or 5G connectivity for the final service. Just before launch, Quest 3 FCC documents suggested that Meta had tested a “5G scan” from a 10GHz 5G mmWave radio to the headset.
Meta’s official spec sheet for the Quest 3 doesn’t mention 5G, just Wi-Fi 6E; we assume the Quest 3S has the same standards.
In either case, the challenge for Meta will be the inevitable latency and high ping that comes with cloud streaming, depending on everything from the speed of your internet connection to your distance from Meta servers.
In traditional gaming you can of course adjust for input lag, but any delay between your body/controller movement and avatar actions in VR leads to confusion and nausea, something I experienced firsthand when testing Plutosphere in 2022. Meta should use edge computing to counter this in some way.
We also don’t know how much Meta will charge for this service. Since it already has Quest Plus for a basic library of free games, it could easily launch a Quest Plus Ultimate service where you pay extra for streaming.
PC VR games have historically sold poorly compared to Quest games. Even after Oculus Link Cables unlocked PC VR on Quest, people either didn’t have the required hardware or found Link too annoying and glitchy and preferred the convenient wireless trade-off.
Meta Avalanche could unlock the early history of wired-only VR experiences that only a handful of SteamVR gamers play today. But since most VR developers have moved primarily to Quest ports, there aren’t that many to get excited about.
I’d like to stream SteamVR games on Quest, like Half-Life Alyx, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Star Wars: Squadrons, without stealing my partner’s PC setup. However, these only work via a third-party app; I doubt Meta could bring these games to its official Quest Plus or Avalanche platform.
When I first reviewed the PSVR 2, I assumed and hoped that it would continue to deliver AAA VR ports like Resident Evil 8 and Gran Turismo 7. Instead, Sony largely abandoned it, never recapturing those glorious early days of VR when you had a headset and gaming ports like Skyrim and No Man’s Sky.
Meta is my last hope for PC-less AAA VR ports, but the public failure of projects like GTA: San Andreas VR proves it can’t do this alone.
My dream is that Meta and Microsoft work together to pick up Slack and start streaming VR ports of the most popular first-person titles on Quest.
Meta is already planning to sell a limited edition Xbox-themed Quest with cloud gaming and Horizon OS headsets from third-party developers. It’s not That It’s highly likely that Microsoft, which killed Hololens 2 and is reportedly considering an Android-powered MR headset that streams Windows via the cloud, could rely on Meta as a VR gaming partner, directly or indirectly.
Imagine Microsoft leasing Minecraft, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Forza, and/or Halo to officially port to VR (while keeping the gameplay the same). They could officially run through the Xbox Cloud Gaming app on Quest headsets, using their own network or Meta’s upcoming Cloud Link.
Or Microsoft could make its own Horizon OS headset with Xbox gaming VR ports as an exclusive and still offer the best Quest Store games.
I have no idea what legal and financial hurdles Microsoft and Meta would have to jump through to make a partnership like this work; Microsoft could easily decide to stick with its own system, while Meta sticks with Oculus Rift games and future AAA “cloud-first” games made by its studio.
All I know is that most Quest gamers don’t need crazy graphical fidelity, otherwise games like Gorilla Tag wouldn’t be so insanely popular. What would make Meta Quest cloud gaming popular isn’t Asgard’s Wrath or Lone Echo, as great as those games are; it’s Minecraft.
Since Minecraft: Bedrock Edition will finally lose VR support in 2025, it’s high time we get an official, updated port from Microsoft on Quest.
