NVIDIA has announced that its GeForce NOW cloud gaming service will soon run on virtual and mixed reality headsets, including Apple Vision Pro.
The graphics giant said that GeForce NOW is adding support for several headsets, including Apple’s Vision Pro spatial computer, Meta’s latest Quest 3 and Quest 3S headsets, and Pico’s virtual and mixed-reality devices, when the v2.0.70 update rolls out later this month. The company didn’t provide a clearer timeframe. NVIDIA is catching up with Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service, which is already available on the Quest devices. GeForce NOW has the title of being the first game streaming service officially available on Apple’s Vision Pro.
Cloud gaming uses the power of the internet and servers equipped with powerful hardware to offload all processing to the cloud, delivering gameplay to connected clients via video streams. The approach allows devices that don’t have powerful GPUs to run the latest games, although network latency can be a problem in some networks and areas.
NVIDIA also said GeForce NOW will support “gamepad-compatible titles” on headsets. As you know, Vision Pro uses eye tracking and hand gestures for interactions. Though Vision Pro doesn’t ship with any motion controllers, you can easily pair gaming controllers from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to the headset. Vision Pro could soon soon support true VR gaming controllers like Sony’s PlayStation VR2, according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg.
GeForce NOW on the Vision Pro, Quest, and Pico devices includes “all the bells and whistles of NVIDIA technologies, including ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS,” the company confirmed. GeForce NOW members on the Performance and Ultimate subscriptions can “tap into RTX and DLSS technologies in supported games” for even better visuals.
NVIDIA said that owners of the aforementioned headsets will be able to play cloud games by visiting the GeForce NOW website using a supported browser after the update drops. For Vision Pro owners, this means playing streaming games in a special visionOS Environment on a virtual 100-foot screen.
GeForce NOW is available on other Apple devices like iPhones and iPads through a mobile version of Safari, but the installation experience leaves a lot to be desired because each cloud game must first be added to your library as a Progressive Web App (PWA). Curiously, NVIDIA hasn’t bothered to release native GeForce NOW apps for Apple’s platforms even though Apple now allows game-streaming apps in the App Store.
NVIDIA offers multiple GeForce NOW subscription tiers with different levels of graphics quality. The Performance tier offers eight virtual CPUs, GeForce RTX graphics with 1440p resolution, and 6-hour session lengths for $10/month or $50 for six months. Contrast this with the Ultimate tier ($20/month or $100 for six months), which doubles the number of virtual CPUs, brings GeForce RTX 4080 graphics at 4K resolution, boosts session lengths to eight hours, and enables support for DLSS 3, NVIDIA Reflex, and Cloud G-Sync. Subscriptions bring other perks, like priority queuing and access to more games. There’s also a free, ad-supported tier for those who want to try the service before subscribing.
Source: NVIDIA