Casting, start to finish
How to cast a VR headset to a screen
Put the headset and a computer on the same Wi-Fi, open MinervaXR Cast on the headset and the Minerva Hub in the computer’s browser, and the headset appears there by itself. Press Cast. Once the person wearing it accepts, what they see appears on that computer, and from there on the room’s display. The picture goes straight from the headset to the browser; it does not pass through our servers.
What you need
- A Meta Quest headset with MinervaXR Cast, which is free and coming soon to the Meta Horizon Store. (A Pico headset works differently — see Casting a Pico headset.)
- A computer on the same Wi-Fi as the headset. That is the only connection between them — there is no capture card, no HDMI run and no dongle.
- An internet connection. The browser Hub uses it to introduce the headset and the computer to each other; the picture itself then goes straight between them.
- Nothing else: no account and no sign-in, on the headset or on the computer.
Casting a headset, step by step
- Get MinervaXR Cast on the headset — free, and coming soon to the Meta Horizon Store.
- Connect the headset to the same Wi-Fi as this computer.
- Open MinervaXR Cast, and open the Hub on this computer. The headset appears there by itself — nothing to type, no account, no sign-in. The browser gets its own private space the first time it opens the Hub and keeps it from then on.
Press Cast. The tile stays dark until the person wearing the headset accepts the screen-sharing message.
That message is Android’s, not ours: the wearer is asked to approve before anything can record the screen, and it asks again each time the application is started. No application can skip that prompt — ours included, and you should be sceptical of one that claims otherwise.
Shared headsets can be set up to skip that last step. A headset provisioned as a managed, single-purpose device can grant screen capture once, as part of setup, and then never ask again — including after it is powered off and back on. That is a property of how the device is provisioned, not something an application can grant itself. If you are running a bay of headsets that get handed from person to person, ask us to set it up that way.
Why it is fast
Speed here is not tuning. It is the path the picture takes.
- The video goes straight from the headset to your computer, peer-to-peer on your own network. It does not traverse a relay — ours or anyone else’s — so there is no journey to a data centre and back for every frame.
- Finding the headset is automatic. On the same Wi-Fi the headset introduces itself to the Hub, so nobody types an address or a code. The desktop app also sweeps its own subnet — roughly 2,285 addresses in about 9 seconds, repeating every 45 seconds.
- Nothing has to be plugged in or unplugged. No capture hardware sits in the path to add its own delay.
- With the desktop app, an offline network does not slow it down: that path never uses your internet connection.
The one honest exception: at the start of a cast the two devices exchange a short list of
their own network addresses, and that step asks a public address-discovery server
(stun.l.google.com:19302) what it sees. No video, and nothing about a session,
crosses it. The detail — including the fact that we deliberately do not run a media relay —
is on the Network & security page.
Casting a Pico headset
Minerva Pico headsets connect to the MinervaXR Hub desktop app. The headset runs the MinervaXR Hub app, and the steps have the same shape: open the app on the headset, put it on the same Wi-Fi as the computer, and it appears in the desktop app by itself — if the headset shows a list, choose that computer. Then press Cast.
Pico is also the configuration to specify if your site has to work with no internet access at all. Our software needs no route out on either device; what differs is the platform underneath — see the Quest note below.
Casting a Meta Quest headset
A Meta Quest uses MinervaXR Cast and the browser Hub — the steps at the top of this page. A Quest fleet enrolled in Meta’s managed services also carries Meta’s own network requirements for enrolment, device updates and the store, and those apply whoever wrote the application on the headset. The exact hostnames are listed on the Network & security page.
When the picture does not appear
| What you see | What to check |
|---|---|
| The headset is not in the list | Both devices on the same network, and that network allowing devices to reach each other. Guest and public WiFi profiles usually isolate clients from one another, which blocks every device-to-device product, not only this one. MinervaXR Cast has to be open on the headset. (The desktop app connects out to headsets on TCP 5259 and never needs a route in from outside; its discovery repeats every 45 seconds, so give it a sweep before assuming the worst.) |
| On a Mac, no headset ever appears | macOS asks before a browser may reach devices on your network. Allow it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network for the browser you use, then reload the Hub. |
| The prompt appears every time | That is the platform, not a fault — see the step above. Provisioned shared devices can be set up so it is granted once. |
| The picture is grey, or froze | The Hub watches for a cast that has stopped producing frames and rebuilds it without being asked. If several rebuilds in a row do not recover it, the Hub stops retrying and says so rather than flickering — stop the cast and start it again, and if it keeps happening, tell us. |
| Someone else already has it | A headset casts to one Hub at a time, deliberately: two instructors silently fighting over one headset is worse than being told. The Hub shows who holds it and offers to take it over. |
| Nothing happens at all | Check the headset is awake and MinervaXR Cast (MinervaXR Hub on a Pico) is the application running on it. A headset that has gone to sleep reconnects when it wakes. |
Where the picture goes
Straight to the computer showing it. The cast picture is peer-to-peer between the headset and that computer, encrypted on the browser path. It is not recorded by us, not uploaded, and not routed through anything of ours on the way.
The two pages that answer this properly are Network & security, written for the person who has to approve it, and Privacy, for what this website itself collects. Other common questions are answered on the FAQ.
Still stuck?
Write to contact@minervaxr.com and say what you saw. It reaches the people who build Minerva, not a ticket queue.
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