How To Stream Xbox One Games Straight To Your Oculus Rift Today—No Fuss, No Fees

Plug and play your Xbox One games straight to your Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets today with these easy steps.

Last November, Microsoft announced via Xbox Wire that we would be able to stream our Xbox One library straight to the Oculus Rift virtual reality headgear via the Oculus Rift app—no fuss, no fees.

“At Xbox, we’re continuously exploring new ways for you to get the most out of your gaming experiences by providing the choice to play how you want, where you want and with whomever you want. With the launch of Windows 10 and the Xbox app, we first delivered the ability to stream your Xbox One games to your Windows 10 PC over your home network – and now, we’re bringing that experience to life, in partnership with Oculus, completely for free.”

This means that you can stream your games sitting on your Xbox One library directly to the Oculus Rift via your Windows 10 PC. So technically, Ars Technica notes, the Oculus Rift won’t turn Xbox One games into complete VR experiences. Instead, it streams the Xbox One game into the display inside your Oculus Rift through three different environments: Citadel, Retreat, and Dome. While we don’t have enough information about these three environments yet, we’ll be able to get a better understanding of these VR environments once the Xbox One Streaming to Oculus Rift app update goes live in a few hours.

So as we wait for a few more hours before the Xbox One Streaming to Oculus Rift app update lands this December 12, let’s try to understand how the Xbox One streaming will work.

Essentially, the new Xbox One Streaming to Oculus Rift app connects to your Xbox One via your home network or Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi. Once connected, the video output of the Xbox Game will stream directly to your Oculus Rift headset.

How about controls, you ask? Well, the Oculus Rift’s native controller, the Touch, is yet to release, so Xbox has teamed up with Oculus to offer an Xbox Wireless Controller included with every Rift purchase. This means that you’ll be able to interact with your Oculus Rift headset with an Xbox One wireless controller right out of the box.

The Oculus Rift works best on the Windows 10 that’s why a lot of newer laptops and PCs are shipping now with built-in Rift compatibility. If, however, your Windows 10 laptop is not yet Rift ready, you can head over to the Oculus Rift portal here to download the Rift compatibility tool for Windows.

Once your Windows 10 PC is Rift-ready, you’ll be able to stream all your Xbox One games via your PC with these easy steps via Xbox:

1. Plug the Xbox One controller into your PC via the USB port and wait for the drivers to install. Wait for your Xbox One controller to vibrate to signal that the link is complete.
2. Launch the Xbox app on the PC.
3. Create an Xbox Live account or sign into an existing account.
4. Turn on your Xbox One.
5. Make sure the PC and the Xbox One are in the same network.
6. On your Xbox One, navigate to Settings > Preferences > and tick “Allow game streaming to other devices.”
7. On the Xbox app on your PC, go to the left-hand navigation and click “Connect.”
8. Click “Stream” and let the magic happen.

Oculus Rift demands certain specs from your PC so make sure to comply with these recommended PC specifications for the best Xbox One streaming experience:

Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 290 equivalent or greater

CPU: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater

Memory: 8GB+ RAM

Video Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output

USB Ports: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port

OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer

If you haven’t picked up your Oculus Rift unit yet, you can do so via the Oculus Rift Online portal for $599. Touch controller is sold separately for $199 so for now, you can enjoy streaming Xbox One games to your Oculus Rift via the free Xbox One controller.

[Featured Image via betto rodrigues / Shutterstock.com]