Meta testing “Highwind” in Horizon Link PTC, hints at Quest Link “2.0” protocol overhaul

Something interesting turned up in the Meta Horizon Link Public Test Channel (PTC). Members of the Bnuuy Solutions & Community Discord spotted Meta quietly pushing a new component called “Highwind” to PTC builds, and based on what’s been found so far, it looks like a full protocol rebuild for Quest Link and Air Link rather than just a UI change.

Two new files showed up on the Windows side under Program Files > Meta Horizon > Support > oculus-highwind: highwind_service.exe and HighwindCrashpadHandler.exe. Highwind also runs as a separate process alongside the existing OVRServer, which is different from how the current Link setup works. And a string found in the code actually refers to the existing Quest/Air Link system as “Link 1.0,” which pretty much confirms what people were suspecting.

If Highwind is indeed a new protocol, that’s a bigger deal than most Link updates. Quest Link and Air Link have had a rough run, with users regularly reporting stuttering, latency spikes, and compression issues over the years.

In fact, just earlier this year, many users ran into Quest Link throwing an “isn’t working correctly” error out of nowhere, and back in October, a Meta Quest update broke USB Link entirely for a chunk of users.

A Reddit thread picking up the Highwind discovery quickly filled with users hoping it would finally address these long-standing problems.

It’s worth noting that Meta’s PTC is an early access program, so nothing here is final. Features tested in PTC sometimes ship differently, or get delayed. But the fact that Highwind is a separate service with its own crash handler suggests this isn’t a small patch.

This comes after Meta has already been making quiet PCVR improvements. A previous PTC build added PCVR game titles directly to the Horizon OS library, cutting out the old Rift interface that hadn’t really been touched in years. Highwind looks like the bigger follow-up to that, going after the actual streaming and connection side of PCVR.

Meta hasn’t said anything publicly about Highwind yet. If you’re on PTC, the files are already on your PC.

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