alvr-org/ALVR

What it does

ALVR (Air Light VR) streams VR games rendered on a PC to a standalone headset over Wi-Fi, so a Quest, Pico, Vive Focus or Apple Vision Pro can act as a wireless display and tracker for SteamVR content. The repository is a maintained fork of the original ALVR project and provides both a PC-side launcher/dashboard and headset apps, rather than a proprietary cloud service. The launcher is available for Windows and Linux, and native headset apps are distributed through stores such as Apple's App Store and Meta's store.

What you need

• A supported standalone headset listed in the compatibility table (Quest 1/2/3/3S/Pro, Pico Neo 3/4/4 Ultra, Vive Focus 3/Vision/XR Elite, Play For Dream and others). Some targets, including Android/Monado, are marked as partially supported, and Lynx R1 support was temporarily removed after version 20.14.1.
• SteamVR on the PC.
• Windows 10/11 or Linux; macOS and Windows XP/7/8 are not supported. Windows users can also get the PC app through Steam.
• An NVIDIA GPU with NVENC, an AMD GPU with AMF VCE, or an Intel GPU with VPL support and current drivers. On hybrid-graphics laptops, assign the dedicated GPU to both ALVR and SteamVR.
• A recommended 802.11ac 5 GHz Wi-Fi link for the headset and wired Ethernet for the PC, with both on the same router. Routed setups are covered in the network documentation.

Getting started

1. Choose the matching launcher package: Windows or Linux.
2. Install the headset app from the relevant store or sideload it as described by the project.
3. Start SteamVR and the ALVR dashboard on the PC, then connect the headset over the same network.
4. Follow the installation guide for the exact pairing and firewall steps, and the configuration recommendations for streaming settings.

The README does not reproduce the complete pairing procedure inline; the official installation guide is the source of truth for those steps.

Constraints and operation

ALVR depends on SteamVR and PC-side GPU encoding, so it is not a standalone headset runtime. Network quality and router configuration directly affect usability; the project recommends a 5 GHz Wi-Fi connection and wired PC networking. On Windows, the dashboard's Installation tab includes a firewall-rule removal action used during uninstallation. Linux has its own compatibility notes in the Linux troubleshooting page. The project is MIT-licensed, and the README states that the apps do not directly collect personal data.

Builds from source follow the build guide. Troubleshooting material is split between the general troubleshooting page and platform-specific notes.

HotRepo's take

On the Rust daily list for 2026-11-10, ALVR recorded 9 new stars and ranked 9th in that language list, with 8,073 stars and 765 forks overall. That is a modest single-day movement, so the snapshot supports a stable, established project rather than a breakout trend. No all-language daily rank or discussion thread is available in the record, and the project has no star-curve samples, so there is no basis here for a growth trajectory claim.