[HN Gopher] Steam Frame
___________________________________________________________________
Steam Frame
Author : Philpax
Score : 1810 points
Date : 2025-11-12 17:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (store.steampowered.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (store.steampowered.com)
| jsheard wrote:
| Frame is obviously the main headline here, but they've also
| launching a new SteamOS mini-PC and a new controller.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamcontroller
|
| No prices listed for any of them yet, as far as I can tell.
| marcosscriven wrote:
| Real shame it's only 60Hz at 4k. There's a gap for good
| 120Hz@4k streaming.
|
| Hoping the next Apple TV will do it.
|
| Edit - updated specs claim it can do this, but it's limited to
| HDMI 2.0
| jsheard wrote:
| (rewriting this comment because the spec sheet has seemingly
| been updated)
|
| Looks like it can do 4k 120hz, but since it's limited to HDMI
| 2.0 it will have to rely on 4:2:0 chroma subsampling to get
| there. Unfortunately the lack of HDMI 2.1 might be down to
| politics, the RDNA3 GPU they're using _should_ support it in
| hardware, but the HDMI Forum has blocked AMD from releasing
| an open source HDMI 2.1 implementation.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hdmi-forum-to-amd-
| no...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| ... but isn't it using a wireless dongle to connect to the
| headset to the PC so HDMI doesn't get involved?
|
| It seems to me the wireless is pretty important. I have an
| MQ3 and I have the link cable. For software development I
| pretty much have to plug the MQ3 into my PC and it is not
| so bad to wander around the living room looking in a Mars
| boulder from all sides and such.
|
| For games and apps that involve moving around, particularly
| things like _Beat Saber_ or _Supernatural_ the standalone
| headset has a huge advantage of having no cable. If I have
| a choice between buying a game on Steam or the MQ3 store I
| 'm likely to buy the MQ3 game because of the convenience
| and freedom of standalone. A really good wireless link
| changes that.
| jsheard wrote:
| > but isn't it using a wireless dongle to connect to the
| headset to the PC so HDMI doesn't get involved?
|
| I'm talking about the Steam Machine here. In theory you
| could pipe 4k120 to the headset assuming there's enough
| wireless bandwidth, yeah.
| OGWhales wrote:
| It seems it supports DP 1.4 as well, so perhaps you could
| get an adapter if your display only supports HDMI 2.1
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| I'm not sure that would work. From what I can tell, the
| adapters are basically dumb straight through cables, they
| aren't converting anything. And it's the actual GPU
| that's outputting a HDMI signal over the Displayport
| connector, which the adapter than rewires in to a HDMI
| shaped connector.
| cesarb wrote:
| > And it's the actual GPU that's outputting a HDMI signal
| over the Displayport connector, which the adapter than
| rewires in to a HDMI shaped connector.
|
| There are two kinds of DP to HDMI adapters. The passive
| ones are like you said, they need special support on the
| GPU (these ports are usually labelled as DP++), IIRC they
| only do some voltage level shifting. The active ones work
| on any DP port (they don't need AFAIK any special support
| on the GPU), and they do the full protocol conversion.
| baq wrote:
| Caveat: the good active ones aren't exactly cheap.
| OGWhales wrote:
| I was able to use this adapter to get my 2070s
| DisplayPort output to send 4k120hz to my TV, which only
| has HDMI ports.
|
| Club 3D active adapter:
| https://www.amazon.com/Club-3D-DisplayPort1-4-Adapter-
| CAC-10...
| LtdJorge wrote:
| It will, I'm doing DP to HDMI 4:4:4 4K@120Hz (and
| expecting HDR in the near future) from an RX 7900XTX to
| an LG C3 on Linux.
|
| I'm using the Club3D active adapter, which is the only
| one I found in reviews to reliably work. And it does, 0
| problems whatsoever.
| skeaker wrote:
| Where are you getting this number? I'm not seeing it on the
| specs page.
| marcosscriven wrote:
| This is for the steam machine, not the headset. Mentioned
| in the CPU & GPU section.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| it's confusing rn because on the steam machine post people
| are commenting on the frame and vice-versa here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903404
| srjek wrote:
| So, in the specs for the mini-pc, it claims the video out can
| do 4K @ 120Hz (even faster if displayport). I assume the 4K @
| 60Hz you saw is from the "4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR" line.
|
| I reckon it can probably stream at 4K@120 if it can game at
| half that.
| marcosscriven wrote:
| Interesting. I also saw HDMI 2.0 - I guess it's technically
| possible but with subsampling?
| constantcrying wrote:
| This is not true, from the specs:
|
| HDMI 2.0
|
| Up to 4K @ 120Hz
|
| Supports HDR, FreeSync, and CEC
|
| I have zero doubts the device can do 4k @ 120Hz streaming
| Hardware wise. In the end it is just a normal Linux desktop.
| torginus wrote:
| Considering how much they talk about Foveated rendering, I
| think it might not be constrained by the traditional
| limitations of screens - instead of sending a fixed
| resolution image at whatever frequency, it'll send a tiny but
| highly detailed image where your eyes are focusing, with the
| rest being considerably lower resolution.
|
| Or that's what I think I may be completely wrong.
| phantasmish wrote:
| Oh _hell_ yes. There was a leak of specs (via a benchmarking
| database) of an upcoming machine from Valve and I had my
| fingers crossed that it was a mini PC and not some VR thingy,
| saw this thread, and was sad for a moment before I spotted this
| post.
|
| 6x as powerful as the Steam deck (that I use plugged in anyway
| 98% of the time--I'd have bought a Steam Deck 2, but I'm glad I
| get the option to put money toward more performance instead of
| battery and screen that I don't use) is great. Not a lot of
| games I want to play won't run well at least at 1080p with
| specs like that.
| torginus wrote:
| Snapdragon doesn't really have a good history of supporting
| proper desktop games. Windows for ARM had kinda bad
| compatibility. It seems the aim is to have most games just be
| playable like with the Deck. Fingers crossed but I have some
| reservations.
| phantasmish wrote:
| Their new mini PC isn't ARM (the Frame is, though), it's
| AMD hardware like the Steam Deck. Appears to be x86, should
| play basically anything in my library at 1080p or higher as
| long as it works under SteamOS.
| torginus wrote:
| I know but the Frame supports regular x86 games as well
| in standalone mode.
| klohto wrote:
| you run FEX, not direct ARM games
| torginus wrote:
| That doesn't magically fix the Qualcomm GPU or the
| drivers.
| klohto wrote:
| I don't think you will be on latest nightly. LTS are good
| and stable, if FEX is targeting those specs I don't see a
| stability issue.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| The GPU is fine and the drivers Valve are using, if their
| past hardware is any indication, will be open source.
| Doesn't magically fix them, but it does allow for Valve
| to fix them.
| surajrmal wrote:
| If valve can convince Qualcomm to open source their GPU
| drivers I will eat a banana peel. They would need to
| write a new one from scratch (or reuse freedreno, but
| those are going to have performance issues).
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Not the first time Valve funded the development of FOSS
| drivers. They've already done so with Intel's Vulkan
| stack on Linux, AMD (AMDGPU) and Nvidia (NVK).
|
| SteamOS's core functionality leans heavily on Mesa and
| there's been a lot of commits for the Adreno 750 lately,
| mostly coming from Linaro.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It kinda does. Qualcomm's DirectX drivers were the big
| issue, and Valve is using Mesa instead.
| andoando wrote:
| What is the draw of the Steam machine though? They say the
| price is comparable to similarly specced PC. So why not just
| buy/build any mini PC? There's plenty of options for that
| baggachipz wrote:
| A good while back I abandoned PC gaming because I was sick
| of driver issues, compatibility, and always having to
| update hardware to play the next game. Instead, I embraced
| consoles and haven't considered PC gaming since then. This,
| however, has me reconsidering that. I want it to "just
| work". When I want to play games, I don't want to deal with
| all of that other crap. I'm old, ain't nobody got time for
| that.
| theshackleford wrote:
| It's wild how experiences can vary so wildly. That's the
| nature of PC's though I suppose that you are trying to
| avoid.
|
| I've had no driver or compatibility issues in longer than
| I can remember. Maybe Vista?
|
| I also rarely upgrade because playing at console level
| settings means I can easily get effectively the same
| lifetime out of my hardware. Though I do tend to upgrade
| a little earlier than console users still leaning a bit
| more towards the enthusiast side.
| barrkel wrote:
| I guess you abandoned PC gaming some time in the early
| 2000s?
| rtkwe wrote:
| I'm quite confused too, that doesn't align with my
| experience in the last couple years as well. There's
| notably been a few very good and long lived video cards
| and also as time goes on there's an ever deepening
| library of older games that can be played with very
| affordable cards.
|
| I'm wondering when and with what hardware they had that
| bad experience.
| kakacik wrote:
| Drivers are not an issue for quite some time (but its
| always good to have latest nvidia ones for example for
| optimizations focused on given game).
|
| But its trivial to run into some .NET or Visual C++
| redistributable hell when you just get a cryptic error
| during starting and thats it. Just check internet. I have
| roughly 20 of them installed currently (why the heck?)
| and earlier versions would happily get installed over
| already-installed version of same for example as part of
| game installation process, not a stellar workmanship on
| MS side. Whats wrong with having latest being backward
| compatible with all of previous ones, like ie Java
| achieved 25 years ago?
|
| Talking about fully updated windows 10 and say official
| steam distros of the games.
| baggachipz wrote:
| > Drivers are not an issue for quite some time
|
| > its trivial to run into some .NET or Visual C++
| redistributable hell when you just get a cryptic error
| during starting and thats it. Just check internet.
|
| Thanks for making my point for me.
| niek_pas wrote:
| I'm guessing you have a very positive experience with
| gaming PCs; I wish I could say the same. My Windows PC:
| - Randomly BSODs because of (I think) a buggy Focusrite
| audio interface driver (that I can't fix and Focusrite
| refuses to) - Regularly 'forgets' I have an RX 5600
| XT GPU and defaults to the integrated graphics, forcing
| me to go into the 1995 'Device Manager' to reset it
| - Occasionally just... stops playing audio? -
| Occasionally has its icons disappear from the taskbar
| - Regularly refuses to close applications, making me go
| into the Task Manager to force-quit them.
|
| These are just the issues I can think of off the top of
| my head. I've been playing PC games for like 15 years and
| this is just par for the course for my experience.
| armonster wrote:
| I also had frequent BSOD issues because of a Focusrite
| audio interface, lol. I've since thrown it out and gotten
| an alternative brand product and have never had the
| issues again.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Definitely an outlier. Windows has generally been very
| very solid since about Windows 7. Certainly since Windows
| 10.
|
| Linux is still quite far behind in terms of desktop
| stability in my experience. But I guess if Valve fully
| controls the hardware they can avoid janky driver issues
| (it sounds like suspend will work reliably!), so this
| might actually make a good desktop Linux option.
| nilkn wrote:
| I can't speak for the other poster, but I actually
| recently "abandoned" PC gaming. For me, it wasn't a
| deliberate decision but more of a change in behavior that
| occurred over time. I suspect the key event was picking
| up a PS5 Pro. For me, it's the first console that's felt
| powerful enough to scratch a similar itch as PC gaming --
| except I could just plug it into our Atmos-equipped "home
| theater" set up and have it not only work flawlessly but
| be easily accessible to everyone, not just me. Since
| picking it up, between the PS5 Pro and handheld gaming
| devices, I just have not played a game on my gaming PC a
| single time and am currently planning on retiring it as a
| result.
|
| There may be a connection here with age and the type of
| games I play too. I'm in my mid-30s now and am not
| interested in competitive twitch shooters like Call of
| Duty. In many cases, the games I've been interested in
| have actually been PS5 exclusives or were a mostly
| equivalent experience on PS5 Pro vs. PC or were actually
| arguably _better_ on PS5 Pro (e.g., Jedi Survivor). In
| some cases, like with Doom: The Dark Ages, I 've been
| surprised at how much I enjoyed something I previously
| would've only considered playing on PC -- the PS5 Pro
| version still manages to offer both 60 FPS and ray
| tracing. In other cases, like Diablo IV, I started
| playing on PC but gradually over time my playtime
| naturally transitioned almost entirely to PS5 Pro. The
| last time I played Diablo IV on my PC, which has a 4090,
| I was shocked at how unstable and stutter-filled the game
| was with ray tracing enabled, whereas it's comparatively
| much more stable on PS5 Pro while still offering ray
| tracing (albeit at 30 FPS -- but I've come to prefer
| stability > raw FPS in all but the most latency-sensitive
| games).
|
| One benefit of this approach if you live with someone
| else or have a family, etc., is that investments in your
| setup can be experienced by everyone, even non-gamers.
| For instance, rather than spending thousands of dollars
| on a gaming PC that only I would use, I've instead been
| in the market for an upgraded and larger TV for the "home
| theater", which everyone can use both for gaming and non-
| gaming purposes.
|
| Something else very cool but still quite niche and poorly
| understood, even amongst tech circles, is that it's
| possible to stream PS5 games into the Vision Pro. There
| are a few ways of doing this, but my preferred method has
| been using an app called Portal. This is a truly unique
| experience because of the Vision Pro's combination of
| high-end displays and quality full-color passthrough /
| mixed reality. You can essentially get a 4K 120"+ curved
| screen floating in space in the middle of your room at
| perfect eye level, with zero glare regardless of any
| lighting conditions in the room, while still using your
| surround sound system for audio. The only downside is
| that streaming does introduce some input latency. I
| wouldn't play Doom this way, but something like Astro Bot
| is just phenomenal. This all works flawlessly out of the
| box with no configuration.
| andoando wrote:
| I mean I just don't see the difference between this and
| getting any PC and slapping SteamOS on it.
| kevinqi wrote:
| probably the "slapping steamOS" part of that
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's not currently a way to officially put SteamOS on
| Steam* hardware. Plenty of people have done it but
| there's the usual compatibility issues where the image is
| built for the very specific hardware Valve installs it on
| so there's often wake from sleep and fan control issues.
| All solvable but it's not the level of turn key of even a
| mainline linux distro.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Too late to edit and I think it's clear from context but
| I meant non-Steam* hardware.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Some people really don't want to spend time exchanging
| parts when the memory they buy turns out to be incompatible
| or that the GPU doesn't fit the sleek mITX case. There's a
| lot of research to ensure all parts are compatible and
| optimal when building a PC - for some it's time that could
| be better spent on using the PC instead of building one.
| andoando wrote:
| You can still buy prebuilt though and slap SteamOS on it
| and youre there.
|
| Dont get me wrong this looks very a nice product, but its
| nothing revolutionary.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The hardware is not, but the implications are pretty
| close (major gaming company is pushing a first party
| product of open hardware + open software with a linux
| box). It is _literally_ the year of linux desktop.
| mjrpes wrote:
| This thing is meant for a living room media center. A
| prebuilt PC with discrete GPU is a much bigger profile
| (and probably cost). You could say, fine, go buy a small
| Mini PC. But a system with the current best AMD Strix
| 890m GPU not only is expensive at $700-1000, but would
| only have half the performance of the Steam Box if its
| conjectured performance is similar to an RX 7600.
| remir wrote:
| It's a console basically. It comes ready to play without
| much maintenance needed from the user.
| baq wrote:
| One can argue consoles are pcs that the manufacturers try
| super hard to not allow you to root them.
|
| This steam machine here is a PC with steam preinstalled
| for a console-like setup and direct boot to your game
| library - but it's still a pc.
|
| The point is, computers are computers I guess ;)
| rbits wrote:
| It's tiny. It runs SteamOS which is built to be used with a
| controller on a TV. And it will probably be a performance
| target for many developers.
|
| But I think the biggest feature might be the quick suspend
| and resume. Every modern console has that, but not PCs. You
| can try to put a computer to sleep, but many games won't
| like that.
| baq wrote:
| My Windows desktop doesn't like that. It wakes instantly,
| no idea why.
|
| Not to mention windows laptops waking up in bags or
| backpacks in the middle of the night seemingly for the
| only purpose of burning themselves up.
| foresto wrote:
| As someone who has been building my PCs for decades, I have
| to admit seeing some appeal here:
|
| It's apparently small, quiet, capable, and easy.
|
| I'll keep building my own, but most people don't, and the
| value of saved time and reduced hassle should not be
| underestimated.
|
| If comparing this device to other pre-built systems,
| consider that this one is likely to be a first class target
| for game developers, while others are not.
| archagon wrote:
| I love SFF PCs, but you can't get the same density as a
| manufacturer doing a fully bespoke design. Just look at
| those innards: no space is wasted.
| baq wrote:
| Yeah the heatsink filling the whole silicon-less volume
| is... something.
| notatoad wrote:
| i've spent plenty of time building custom PCs, but life
| changes and that's really not something i have any interest
| in doing any more.
|
| there's plenty of people who just want to play games
| without researching what CPU and video card to buy.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| The experience of using a custom build is terrible.
|
| The best experience you can get atm is to use Steams big
| picture mode, and that doesn't give you pause/resume, and
| you will sometimes need to use keyb & mouse to solve
| issues, plus you need to manage the whole OS yourself etc.
|
| Valves SteamOS which already runs on the Steam Deck gives
| you all the QoL that you expect out of a console. Pause /
| resume with power button press, complete control via
| controller, fully managed OS.
|
| What's missing are "in experience" native apps like
| Netflix/AppleTV/etc. as well as support for certain games
| which are blocked on anti-cheat.
|
| My wife is a research scientist who uses linux with her day
| job, but she isn't interested in dealing with any nonsense
| when she's relaxing at the end of the day. The Steam Deck
| has been a wonder for her - suddenly she's playing the same
| games as me with none of the hassle. The Steam Machine will
| suddenly open a bunch of my friends and family up to PC
| games as well.
|
| It won't be long until you can put SteamOS on any machine
| you make yourself, but the Steam Machine will serve as
| reference and "default" hardware for the majority.
| spopejoy wrote:
| PC gaming on the couch at last
| Steltek wrote:
| Lots of companies tried to recreate the Steam Deck and
| quite frankly, they're just not as good as the original.
|
| SteamOS is a super controller-friendly desktop that would
| be right at home in a living room. Like the Deck, the Steam
| Machine could become a target profile for developers.
| JBiserkov wrote:
| A bit of topic, but I was wondering how much bigger is the
| steam machine compared to the mac mini m4, since that's what I
| have and is my frame of reference. Obviously comparing apples
| to oranges and only talking about physical volume, not
| features, compatibility, price, personal preferences, etc.
|
| Mac Mini m4: 127 x 127 x 50 mm = 0.8 L
|
| Steam Machine: 156 x 162 x 152 = 3.8 L
|
| That's 4.76 times more volume.
| latexr wrote:
| > Obviously comparing apples to oranges
|
| Or is it "comparing apples to steam engines"?
| TuringTest wrote:
| Given that Valve are the ones who released _the Orange Box_
| , methinks the original comparison is valid
| bakies wrote:
| It's only a little bigger than Mac Studio.
|
| 9.5 x 19.7 x 19.7 cm = 3,687 cm3
|
| and half the size of my SFFPC @ 8.3L
| komali2 wrote:
| I am incredibly excited for the new controller. The og steam
| controller for me was unmatched as a controller, I could never
| play any first person game on anything else other than mouse
| and keyboard, not to mention it allows playing rts or point and
| clicks from the couch.
|
| When they cancelled production I bought 8.
| tosmatos wrote:
| The controller looks pretty cool for sure, my biggest fear is
| the dpad though. I hope they go for a clicky feel like on the
| latest xbox controllers, and not the mushy feel you've got on
| the Dualshock 5 or even the 8BitDo Pro 2, which, for me,
| really is the only think missing from those. I'm more of a
| "Dpad in the top left" kind of guy, but I want it to be
| clicky like on the Xbox controllers :( We'll see!
| thefz wrote:
| > Frame is obviously the main headline here
|
| Why? VR headsets are a dying fad of the 2020s. Way more excited
| for SteamOS on ARM.
| russelg wrote:
| ... which likely wouldn't have happened if they didn't want a
| computer inside their VR headset. The steam machine is x86
| considering it's an AMD processor.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm unreasonably excited on all things Steam nowadays. I still
| like my PS5. And the PSVR2 is quite amazing for the games it has.
| But Steam has been amazing in getting back into games for me in
| ways that I did not anticipate.
| reactordev wrote:
| These links open Steam app on my phone and crash immediately.
| archi42 wrote:
| Same here. Also happens when navigating there from within the
| all.
|
| Open the website in your browser instead.
| reactordev wrote:
| Crashes in the browser as well. Good job Valve.
| Ciantic wrote:
| What the, this link also crashes KDE Plasma, when opening this
| link with Google Chrome. I had to reboot two times, just
| clicking this frame link.
|
| Both times, first journalctl entry in the crash time is:
|
| [drm:__nv_drm_gem_nvkms_map [nvidia_drm]] _ERROR_ [nvidia-drm]
| [GPU ID 0x00000100] Failed to map NvKmsKapiMemory
| 0x0000000070a84e8b
|
| Then KWIN dump etc.
|
| Reminding me to buy AMD next.
| reactordev wrote:
| This is due to a video that has drm encoding and the browser
| trying to decode it. The drm blob contains the codec keys in
| our driver and the browser is supposed to negotiate this. It
| fails. At least on Nvidia for you. It fails for me on safari
| on iOS.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| DRM in context of that log message is Direct Rendering
| Manager which is a Linux subsystem for handling GPUs; it's
| unrelated to Digital Rights/Restrictions Management and
| there are no DRM-encumbered videos on that page.
| skeaker wrote:
| This being a whole system that will allow you to put whatever
| software you want onto it makes me think that it might actually
| succeed at being what the Vision Pro wanted to be.
| taeric wrote:
| Well, that and being squarely focused on gaming.
|
| I also trust the Steam ecosystem far more than I probably
| should...
| crooked-v wrote:
| Vision Pro wants to be an iPad on your face. The hardware's
| just not good enough (in the sense of general manufacturing
| capabilities, not lack of investment from Apple) to make that
| an enticing product yet.
| stetrain wrote:
| This isn't likely to be a compelling spatial computer.
|
| The pass-through video is monochrome and the screens have about
| 40% of the pixels compared to the Vision Pro.
|
| The Samsung Galaxy XR is much closer to being a Vision Pro
| competitor.
|
| The Steam Frame is very focused on playing games locally and
| streamed from a PC.
| Philpax wrote:
| I'd be willing to take the L on the hardware in order to be
| able to actually run the software I care about. (I own a
| Vision Pro and barely use it because the pejorative
| description of "an iPad on your face" is more accurate than I
| would like to admit.)
| stetrain wrote:
| I don't know exactly how open the Android XR system on the
| Galaxy XR is, but it is likely better than the Vison Pro in
| that regard.
| skeaker wrote:
| Monochrome is rough, but I think pixel count is a few orders
| of magnitude less important than being able to actually use
| the damn thing. The Vision Pro has been out for over a year
| and I haven't seen a single notable application that takes
| advantage of the hardware, and it seems that that's largely
| in part due to it being nigh impossible to develop and run
| software on it.
| wayeq wrote:
| > This isn't likely to be a compelling spatial computer.
|
| neither is the Apple Vision Pro
| mavamaarten wrote:
| I would agree, but I'm a bit sad about the resolution. I either
| want a mediocre resolution for cheap, or a can-do-it-all
| machine with great resolution for more money. I'm fearful that
| because of its great computing specs it's going to be
| expensive, but it's not going to be good enough for me visually
| to be used a lot.
|
| I mean, I have a Quest 2 and it'd be a step up but not a huge
| one. I've seen the Apple Vision and that did wow me. The vision
| is just in a weird corner inside a closed ecosystem and a tech
| demo for apple. No thanks. Valve will absolutely do that ten
| times better. But will it be visually so much better than a
| quest 2? I doubt it.
| ark4n wrote:
| That mini pc... one more nail in the coffin of the xbox hardware
| business. Ouch.
| 30minAdayHN wrote:
| I bought all my sim racing setup for my xbox. It was short-
| sighted but optimized for a quick decision. Now I feel like I'm
| stuck with it and can't upgrade the setup forward. Everytime I
| see these comments, it's one more nail in my wallet :)
| rowanG077 wrote:
| This explains why alyssa rosenzweig (from asahi linux) was paid
| for so long by Valve. She worked on FEX.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| What's fex? I wasn't able to google search it (didn't try too
| hard admittedly)
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| https://fex-emu.com/
| Tankenstein wrote:
| x86 to arm compatibility layer they are using to run windows
| games on the machine/frame
| tym0 wrote:
| Steam Machine is x86_64
| dathinab wrote:
| The VR headset isn't and it's cable of both running games
| standalone and displaying games through the dongle from
| whatever PC you run.
| srjek wrote:
| Steam Frame is running SteamOS on ARM, and is capable of playing
| games standalone, which implies ARM support in Steam. Through
| granted, it could be in a limited form.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| They'll need that either way if they want to get back onto
| macOS, even if it's separate binaries and not a translation
| layer. At this point I think Steam basically doesn't work on
| Mac? Since the x64 Macs are legacy and the new ones are aarch64
| preisschild wrote:
| I doubt fex-emu works on macos.
|
| But isnt that what Rosetta2 is for on mac anyway?
| iamcreasy wrote:
| Rosetta2 will be discontinued.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| It technically works since ARM macs can still run x86
| binaries. But it's so slow and buggy, and the selection of
| playable games so slim that there is almost no point.
| jagermo wrote:
| they are porting FEX to Proton, and according to the VRUpload
| article linked it has "shockingly little performance impact".
| This could be fun.
|
| https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX
| fallingmeat wrote:
| any idea on price?
| jagermo wrote:
| "below the index", according to the UploadVR article linked. So
| below 1000 USD
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| The whole "foveated streaming" sounds absolutely fascinating. If
| they can actually pull off doing it accurately in _real time_ ,
| that would be incredible. I can't even imagine the technical work
| behind the scenes to make it all work.
|
| I'd really like to know what the experience is like of using it,
| both for games and something like video.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| There is a LTT video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU3ru09HTng
|
| Linus says he cannot tell it is actually foveated streaming.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I believe in Linus very little. I'll keep my eyes peeled to
| see what others say. It's certainly possible though, Valve
| has the chops to pull it off.
| stetrain wrote:
| Norm from Tested said the same in his video.
|
| https://youtu.be/b7q2CS8HDHU
| potatolicious wrote:
| The Verge reports similarly - can't tell foveated
| streaming. Seems like Valve really cracked the code with
| this one.
| nabakin wrote:
| I don't think a lot of people realize how big of a deal
| this is. You used to have to choose between wireless and
| slow or wired and fast. Now you can have both wireless
| and fast. It's insane.
| stetrain wrote:
| Yep, that basically guarantees this as a purchase for me.
| It's basically a Quest 3 with some improvements, an open
| non-Meta OS, and the various WiFi and Streaming app
| issues fixed to make it nearly as good as a wired
| headset.
| nabakin wrote:
| I haven't bought a VR headset since the Oculus Rift CV1,
| but this might do it for me
| ehnto wrote:
| If you are lucky enough to have wired as an option
| anyway, especially in linux this has been shaky. But with
| Steam continuing to push into linux and VR I have no
| doubt this will change quickly.
| birdman3131 wrote:
| Thats not what he said. What he said was even rapidly moving
| his eyes around he could not spot the lower resolution part.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| If you are going to be pedantic then at least do it right.
| Because that's also not what he said. He said that no
| matter how fast he moved his eyes he wasn't able to catch
| it.
| archon810 wrote:
| Same with Dave2D https://youtu.be/356rZ8IBCps.
| stetrain wrote:
| How is that meaningfully different than not being able to
| tell that it's foveated?
| nabakin wrote:
| Also mentions 1-2ms latency on a modern GPU
| pixelpoet wrote:
| There's an awesome shader on shadertoy that illustrates just
| how extreme the fovea focus is:
| https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dsXzM
|
| Linus the shrill/yappy poodle and his channel are less than
| worthless IMO.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| When you full screen this, it's crazy how tiny the area that
| spins is. For me it's like an inch or inch and a half on a 32
| inch 4k display at a normal seated position.
|
| (If I move my head closer it gets larger, further and it gets
| smaller)
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Imagine if we could hook this into game rendering as well.
| Have super high resolution models, textures, shadows, etc
| near where the player is looking, and use lower LoDs
| elsewhere.
|
| It could really push the boundaries of detail and efficiency,
| if we could somehow do it real-time for something that
| complex. (Streaming video sounds a lot easier)
| scld wrote:
| Game rendering is what they're talking about here. John
| Carmack has talked about this a bunch if you'd like to seed
| a google search.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Not quite: you can use it for games rendering, but with a
| Wifi adapter you more importantly want to use it for the
| video signal, and only transfer highres in the area
| you're looking at. A 4k game (2048*2048*2 screens) is
| 25gbit uncompressed at 100fps, which would stress even
| Wifi-7. With foveated rendering you can probably get that
| down to 8gbit easy.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| Not just stress WiFi 7, even if the theoretical limit is
| 23Gbps, you're not getting anywhere close to that sending
| to just one device.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Valve is applying it to the streamed view from the
| computer to reduce the bandwidth requirements it's not
| actually doing foveated rendering in the game itself
| because not all games support it.
|
| Foveated streaming is just a bandwidth hack and doesn't
| reduce the graphic requirements on the host computer the
| same way foveated rendering does.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Foveated rendering is already a thing. But since it needs
| to be coded for in the game, it's not really being used on
| PC games. Games designed for Playstation with the PS VR 2
| in mind do use foveated rendering since they know their
| games are being played with hardware that provides eye
| tracking.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| As a lover of ray/path tracing I'm obligated to point out:
| rasterisation gets its efficiency by amortising the cost of
| per-triangle setup over many pixels. This more or less
| forces you to do fixed-resolution rendering; it's very
| efficient at this, which is why even today with hardware
| RT, rasterisation remains the fastest and most power-
| efficient way to do visibility processing (under certain
| conditions). However, this efficiency starts to drop off as
| soon as you want to do things like stencil reflections, and
| especially shadow maps, to say nothing of global
| illumination.
|
| While there are some recent'ish extensions to do variable-
| rate shading in rasterisation[0], this isn't variable-rate
| visibility determination (well, you can do stochastic
| rasterisation[1], but it's not implemented in hardware),
| and with ray tracing you can do as fine-grained
| distribution of rays as you like.
|
| TL;DR for foveated rendering, ray tracing is the efficiency
| king, not rasterisation. But don't worry, ray tracing will
| eventually replace all rasterisation anyway :)
|
| [0] https://developer.nvidia.com/vrworks/graphics/variabler
| atesh...
|
| [1] https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/20
| 10-06...
| Taterr wrote:
| I think you could do foveated rendering efficiently with
| rasterization if you "simply" render twice at 2 different
| resolutions. A low resolution render over the entire FOV,
| and a higher resolution render in the fovea region. You
| would have overlap but overall it should be less pixels
| rendered.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I believe the standard way is to downgrade the sampling
| density outside the area you're looking, see https://docs
| .vulkan.org/samples/latest/samples/extensions/fr... .
| Optimally you could attach multiple buffers with
| different resolutions covering different parts of
| clipspace, saving vram bandwidth. Sadly this is not
| supported currently to my knowledge, so you have to write
| to a single giant buffer with lower sample resolution
| outside the detail area, and then just downsample it for
| the coarse layer.
| globular-toast wrote:
| That's foveated rendering. Foveated streaming, which is
| newly presented here, is a more general approach which can
| apply to any video signal, be it from a game, movie or
| desktop environment.
|
| They are complementary things. Foveated rendering means
| your GPU has to do less work which means higher frame rates
| for the same resolution/quality settings. Foveated
| streaming is more about just being able get video data
| across from the rendering device to the headset. You need
| both things to get great results as either rendering or
| video transport could be a bottleneck.
| ehnto wrote:
| That's quite harsh, and definitely not accurate.
| globular-toast wrote:
| That's crazy. I feel dumb for initial thinking it was somehow
| doing eye tracking to achieve this, despite having no such
| hardware installed.
|
| I would be curious to see a similar thing that includes
| flashing. Anecdotally, my peripheral vision seems to be
| highly sensitive to flashing/strobing even if it is evidently
| poor at seeing fine details. Make me think compression in the
| time domain (e.g. reducing frame rate) will be less
| effective. But I wonder if the flashing would "wake up" the
| peripheral vision to changes it can't normally detect.
|
| Not sure what the random jab at Linus is about.
| jackwilsdon wrote:
| It is doing eye tracking for the foveated rendering - it
| has 2 cameras inside the visor for it.
| x187463 wrote:
| They're referring to the shadertoy linked above. The
| illusion simulates foveated rendering on your device
| without eye tracking.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| It's normal to be "more sensitive" to brightness
| differences in the peripheral areas compared to the fovea.
| The fovea has more color receptors, in the other areas,
| there are comparatively more monochromatic receptors
| (brightness). The general density of the fovea is also much
| larger.
| modeless wrote:
| Foveated streaming should be much easier to implement than
| foveated rendering. Just encode two streams, a low res one and
| a high res one, and move the high res one around.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| I'm super curious how they will implement it, if it's a general
| api in steam vr that headsets like the Bigscreen Beyond could
| use or if it's more tailored towards the Frame. I hope it's the
| first as to me it sounds like all you need is eye input and the
| two streams, the rest could be done by steam-vr.
| ynx wrote:
| If you use a Quest Pro and use Steam Link with a WiFi 6E access
| point, that should accurately represent the experience of using
| it.
|
| It's close to imperceptible in normal usage.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| I'm disappointed it seems to have dropped lighthouse tracking
| with the previous Valve Index. Especially because with the Valve
| Knuckles controllers are my favorite with how they strap to your
| hand.
| Diti wrote:
| Not to mention the insane precision (I believe it's something
| like 1 or 2 mm).
| starkrights wrote:
| Per the LTT video [0], the new Steam Frame controllers will
| have a (separately purchasable) accessory pack which includes a
| knuckles-like strap. Supposedly the controllers have enough
| capacitive-sensing ("on every input surface, and on the grips")
| for knuckles-like five finger tracking.
|
| Linus says "just like" the valve knuckles a couple times, but
| who knows how they'll feel comparatively. I've personally never
| used the knuckles, but they seem like they'd have a different
| enough feel from these to maybe make a difference.
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/dU3ru09HTng?t=246 - timestampped @
| controller section.
| ehnto wrote:
| These new controllers look just like the Quest 3 controllers.
| Ergonomically I really like them, and they have capacitive
| touch for most surfaces as well.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| This is my main concern with the new headset.. hopefully they
| have a way to support lighthouse.. maybe as an "upgrade" to the
| tracking if you already have a lighthouse setup. I play a game
| called VTOLVR and it's atrocious on the quest with inside-out
| tracking, because the game VERY often has you looking in a
| direction where your arm is behind your back or behind your leg
| (from the VR's perspective) and it completely loses tracking..
| literally killing you in game sometimes. Think "looking up and
| behind you for threats" while your hand is in the
| throttle/stick for a combat plane.
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| It does have IR tracking, so presumably it could be made
| compatible with lighthouses, but if they don't make it
| compatible (and currently the page makes no mention of it) I
| don't know how well it could track objects out of frame
| considering the cameras are still mounted on the headset.
|
| The controllers also have gyros, but from what I've read dead
| reckoning from gyros small enough for mobile devices really
| isn't reliable for extended periods.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| The controllers won't have lighthouse tracking though. The
| IR tracking is the headset tracking the controller's IR
| LEDs, which the Index controllers do not have. It might be
| possible to have the headset IR track the lighthouses, and
| then use the old Index controllers, which also track the
| lighthouses.
|
| There's also tools to calibrate the different tracking
| methods together, but that seems less than ideal.
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| Good catch, I just saw IR tracking on the page and didn't
| investigate further. I can't wait to see some teardowns
| (physical and firmware) of the device, then we can get a
| better look at what it is truly capable of.
|
| Though it wouldn't help the controllers, perhaps the
| expansion port on the headset could be used for a
| lighthouse-compatible tracker? (One can dream...)
| craftkiller wrote:
| Excited to see that it uses LCDs instead of OLED! One of the
| things holding me back from head-mounted displays is the short
| lifespan / burn-in issues of OLED. Also loving the replaceable
| batteries on the controller.
| marcosscriven wrote:
| Personally I much prefer OLED, especially for VR, and haven't
| had any burn in issues with OLED in any form for years.
| craftkiller wrote:
| Even modern OLED experience burn-in (despite them announcing
| every year that "this time we solved the burn-in issue!"):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whuHuM9h88M
|
| VR is particularly bad for this because, on OLED, higher
| brightness = greater burn-in and VR headsets generally
| significantly over-drive their tiny displays.
|
| Naturally the solution to all of this is MicroLED which will
| have the benefits of OLED without the downsides. But until
| then, the only device I'm using OLED for is my phone (and
| only because I no longer have a choice).
| 0x457 wrote:
| > Even modern OLED experience burn-in (despite them
| announcing every year that "this time we solved the burn-in
| issue!"):
|
| Yes, but it's not degrading as fast as OLED haters makes
| you think. I spent days playing the same games (so HUD is
| in the static place) on multiple OLED screens I owned for
| years. No noticeable burn-in and still looks better than my
| only IPS screen.
| AndroTux wrote:
| OLED only burns in if the content is static for hours. If your
| head is that stable while using VR, I give you $5.
| craftkiller wrote:
| Do your VR games not have static HUDs / UIs? It has been a
| long time since I picked up a VR game since I no longer have
| the room.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| Not really, most HUDs are fixed to thigns like your hands,
| guns, etc. or don't exist at all.
|
| Static objects in your view are VERY nauseating (at least
| in my experience).
| rft wrote:
| I have seen different options of "HUDs" in VR games, not
| all are actually "heads up". Adding them to the proper
| context sometimes makes more sense than having them
| floating in mid air like in pancake view. Examples I have
| seen are 1) ammo count on the weapon directly, 2) score and
| score board to the side or projected onto the "floor", 3)
| attached to cockpit elements in space/flight sims and 4)
| somewhat affected by physics so they rubber band a bit with
| movements. I can't come up with an example of fully static
| HUD elements, but I am sure I have seen some.
|
| And even if fully static contents were a problem, I guess
| the foveated streaming would introduce enough noise to
| counter burn-in.
| t-writescode wrote:
| OLED is always burning in as a feature of it. It's just much
| less noticeable when it's: * cooled
| aggressively * constantly changing colors (more even
| wear)
|
| But it is still always losing durability in a steady way.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| I used colorcontrol to enter the service menu of my LG C2
| and disable all anti-burn-in features. No auto dimming, no
| auto picture level, no anti-logo, etc. The only one I kept
| is pixel shift because it's only noticeable if you're
| looking at the edge of the screen when it moves, it's a
| tiny movement. I skip the "pixel cleaning" prompt every
| time it wants me to wait. When I'm gaming in HDR, I use
| filters to increase the exposure to get the maximum
| brightness range of the panel. Been using it like that for
| ~8hrs/day for over 2 years now. Zero detectable hint of
| burn-in.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| If you want a different anecdote, I have a LG C1 that got
| burn in after a year of use, playing FFXIV. I can see a
| blue outline of where my minimap and hotbars are. HUD
| burn-in. The only thing I disabled was the dimming
| feature, because it's outright annoying to use, where
| every time i'd scroll it'd make the text on a page
| illegiblly dark. (Dark mode pages, white text becomes
| dark gray while scrolling then back to white when
| stopped... sometimes not!). I moved that TV to the living
| room and got a non oled samsung instead which is what I
| use now.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I'm just not convinced it's really much of an issues now-a-
| days. We have an OLED in our main space and it's on nearly all
| day (I like keeping sound on while I work from home).
|
| Zero sense of burn in.
| Pfhortune wrote:
| At last! I really enjoyed my time with the Oculus Quest 2, but
| could not stomach having Meta in my house/on my network. I sold
| it and resolved to either wait until I could get a good deal on
| an Index or Valve came around with something new, and now I can
| look forward to VR again!
| woile wrote:
| Is the steam controller registering as a joystick _and_ a mouse?
| It could be amazing to manage my current media center! As I
| cannot make KDE detect my current controller as a mouse
| mmis1000 wrote:
| It seems the controller on steamdeck on windows detects as such
| when steam or whatever companion program is not running.
| Although in this state. You can only right click or left click
| by pressing against the pad itself.
|
| Although on Linux side. As far as i remembered, it's up to how
| kernel driver developer to map the device input into different
| class. It would be up to valve to decide what to do in this
| case.
| baq wrote:
| > You can only right click or left click by pressing against
| the pad itself
|
| The original steam controller's LT and RT work as mouse
| buttons in mouse mode, too. Source: have 3 steam controllers
| ehnto wrote:
| Funnily enough, the Frame is running KDE Plasma so I bet it
| works pretty well.
| theoldgreybeard wrote:
| Wow was absolutely not expecting this. I need this.
| dev0p wrote:
| WHAT'S THE PRICE
|
| GABEN
|
| GABEN DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING WHAT IS THE PRICEEEEEEEE
| boriskourt wrote:
| And like the Steam Deck it will never be available in my region
| :) So much for globalization!
| xandrius wrote:
| Kind of weird using AA batteries, I'd imagine something else
| would be better suited for this?
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| I swapped all my AA and AAA batteries for Enelooops. The
| cheaper white ones are the best for most applications.
| archon810 wrote:
| I'm frustrated by the error rate on my Eneloops over the
| years. I have dozens of them and I swear every other time I
| recharge them, one more starts blinking and refuses to
| recharge.
|
| Also I would recommend switching to the IKEA rechargeable
| batteries which are supposedly the same thing except cheaper.
| t-writescode wrote:
| AA means they don't have to handle battery replacements; and
| it's not too-too hard to get rechargeable batteries.
|
| I would prefer batteries in machine, too; but this does have
| some sustainability and repairability (by not needing it)
| advantages.
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| The (now original) Steam controller used AA batteries as
| well. I can't say it was my favorite feature but I did
| appreciate that it made "battery replacements" a cinch.
| slg wrote:
| You're right that it's "not too-too hard" to get them, but
| it's also "not too-too easy" to actually use them in
| comparison just plugging a USB-C cable into the device. The
| process you will have to go through to recharge this will
| become incredibly annoying for something that will eat
| through batteries as quickly as a VR headset. Think of all
| the criticisms Apple has received over the years due to the
| Magic Mouses charging port being on the bottom and that only
| needs a charge every couple months, this will need to be
| charged after a few hours of use.
| Tade0 wrote:
| There are 1.5V AA li-ion batteries on the market. I bought
| a few to power children's toys and they have comparable
| capacity to alkaline batteries. At high currents they
| actually perform better.
|
| Cost is about 10x that of their non-rechargeable brethren,
| but obviously there's return on that investment.
| slg wrote:
| I wasn't denying their existence. I was comparing the
| process of opening your device, taking out the batteries,
| finding their proprietary charger or hooking each
| individual battery up to a USB cable depending on the
| specific variety of battery, and them putting them back
| into your device is more annoying than just plugging the
| device into one of the half dozen USB-C chargers we all
| have scattered around our homes.
|
| I doubt this would be a dealbreaker for most people, but
| it's a choice that will provide a consistent small
| annoyance for users.
| cruano wrote:
| True, but you can just swap in a spare set of charged
| batteries and you are back online instantly.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| Why would I want to go the route of having to plug in the
| controllers and not be able to use them while I charge
| them versus just swapping in a set of spare, charged
| batteries? Rechargeable AAs have been around for decades!
| It's the same setup my quest 1 and 2 have, and it has
| never failed me, I got 4 batteries total, 2 in the
| charger, 2 in the headset, I swap them around when they
| eventually (after a looooong time) run out.
| Tade0 wrote:
| To me the greater annoyance would be to have to wait
| until the device charges, should it lose power mid-game.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The controller is the only part that uses AA. The
| computer/headset portion uses USB-C recharging.
|
| I would hazard a guess that the battery in the controller
| will have a life measured in weeks if not months.
| stetrain wrote:
| > this will need to be charged after a few hours of use.
|
| I think you're mixing up the controller and headset
| batteries. The controllers use AA batteries and should last
| for potentially months of use.
|
| The headset itself uses a rechargeable 21.6 Wh Li-ion
| battery with 45W charging over USB-C.
| slg wrote:
| Thanks for the correction. Still annoying, but obviously
| less so.
| t-writescode wrote:
| AA's are only used for the controllers and they've got a
| claimed 40 hours of battery life on those AAs.
| lopis wrote:
| Batteries in machine leads to having to wait 30 minutes for
| them to charge. Replaceable rechargeable batteries means you
| can instantly get a full new set. This is ideal
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Makes me happy. Instant swap when you run out of power.
|
| I just buy rechargeable batteries and keep a charger nearby.
| When batteries die, they come out and straight into the
| charger. Always ready to go.
| greycol wrote:
| I expect it does help with MRP and weight as well as making
| them more robust with no usbc drive to be worked free
| (especially if people try playing cabled up as inevitably
| happens when controllers run out of power halfway through
| playing). I'd expect there will be third party options to
| replace the cover/battery exactly how your thinking with a nice
| dock to put them down in for people who prefer it.
|
| Realistically though if the cover for the battery is nice to
| remove/insert then it wouldn't surprise me if having a battery
| charging station and hot pairs of batteries to swap out is
| actually the nicer usability option vs cording or dock downtime
| (if you leave them sitting on the couch with a low charge then
| need to charge halfway through).
| hadlock wrote:
| User replaceable batteries are... fine? Expected; preferred
| even? 40 hours on a single charge is more than adequate, imo,
| and if the controllers were too light that might actually
| bother some players.
| xandrius wrote:
| Nothing against user-replaceable batteries, just that they
| use AA batteries. I was expecting something a bit more long
| lasting and rechargeable via USB.
| imtringued wrote:
| https://www.reichelt.com/de/en/shop/product/lithium-
| ion_batt...
|
| I'm not trying to sell you on these in particular, it's
| just that I am struggling to find "non-German" results. Go
| search for them on ebay or a local store.
| xandrius wrote:
| Those are cool but it does seem like they are forced to
| have that form factor to fit in most existing devices.
|
| While a brand new device could employ something more apt?
| Even say something larger which can store more energy,
| dunno. It just feel off to still have AA batteries (which
| are generally not rechargeable) in a new product in 2025
| which is not targeted to elderlies.
| hadlock wrote:
| Maybe I'm just old but I bought some Eneloop rechargable
| batteries in 2008 and then some more Amazon branded
| rechargable batteries in like 2015 and a single charger
| and they've been powering devices consistently for over a
| decade. Half of my toddler's toys run on AA or AAA
| batteries. Calling them old fashioned feels like
| complaining the form factor of a 12 oz/330ml soda can is
| old; technically you're right but it's been around for 50
| years because it works exceptionally well.
|
| >AA batteries (which are generally not rechargeable)
|
| I can't recall the last time I saw single use batteries
| in use, except maybe in a brand new remote control
| bundled with a TV, which was quickly swapped for
| rechargable. I don't even think of this most months, from
| where I'm siting I can see my battery chager and there's
| two sets of AA and a set of AAA sitting on there fully
| charged, ready to go. I think I paid $12 for the charger
| in 2008, very low barrier to entry.
| kalaksi wrote:
| I was actually glad they went with AA batteries for the
| controllers. They are easily replaced, of course, and I already
| have a charger on a shelf with AA/AAA batteries always ready to
| go. I tend to avoid internal batteries if I can also so that I
| don't have to manage them so much or wait for charging. Had my
| DS4 controller internal battery go bad after a year probably
| because the battery got deeply discharged a few times. Not
| buying that again.
| jfoster wrote:
| I think it's a lot better. Rechargeable batteries built into a
| device degrade over time. The vast majority of people will
| discard a device as a result of battery degradation.
| blashyrk wrote:
| Why? You can use rechargeable AA batteries and if you want you
| can swap them out and basically never have downtime for
| charging. Also all embedded batteries degrade over time which
| is a non issue here
| xandrius wrote:
| Why not replaceable batteries which are not AA? Like any li-
| on batteries.
|
| Also if the stand is also a charger then the hot-swap is
| mostly a non-issue. Playing with this for more than X hours
| should not be the default usage.
| AaronAPU wrote:
| The only really incredible VR experience I have had so far was
| Half-life Alyx. Is there anything that tier or even better these
| days?
| JulesRosser wrote:
| Driving Sims, PavlovVR was a must play for a counterstrike
| shooter with great modding scene. Of course Skyrim VR, it's
| unplayable without mods but with voice recognition and QOL mods
| it's incredible,
| gruturo wrote:
| I have close to 150 hours in Skyrim VR. What makes it
| unplayable without mods?
| tianreyma wrote:
| On my own system I've played a lot of modded Beat Saber.
| Arizona Sunshine was good but not very long. Other than that
| mostly just mini game type things like The Lab.
|
| One of my friends also has a KAT Walk C2 and I've played Skyrim
| VR on that. It takes a bit to get used to but it's a lot of
| fun.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| There are some games yes but in my opinion right now the best
| VR experiences are simulators. Assetto Corsa, iRacing, DCS,
| MSFS etc.
|
| I bought a Bigscreen Beyond 2 + 5090 gpu basically just to play
| DCS (Digital Combat Simulator, a flight sim with full fidelity
| figher jets that you can even fly in PvP multiplayer) and it's
| the coolest thing VR has to offer for me. All my relatives and
| friends who tried it were stunned too.
| riskable wrote:
| Beat Saber is the ultimate VR game, IMHO. It's what enabled me
| to create this masterpiece:
|
| https://replay.beatleader.com/?scoreId=20010657
|
| :D
| beAbU wrote:
| Well done, that must've been really fun to watch from an
| outsider perspective, unlike almost all other vr games in a
| social setting!
| riskable wrote:
| People forget that Beat Saber replays are _performances_!
| Do some dancing, all you ACC robots! :D
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I totally agree with you, I'm actually doing another Alyx run
| after only playing it on my Index. It actually please extremely
| well on the Quest 3 with the Steam Link app. Seamless.
|
| This guy on X gave me some suggestions of top tier VR games:
|
| Hubris, Into The Radius, Wanderer, Blade & Sorcery, RE4 Remake,
| Modded Skyrim VR, Modded Minecraft, Vertigo 2, Arken Age, Half
| Life 1 & 2 VR, UNDERDOGS, Hitman VR, Pixel Ripped Series,
| Walking Dead, Propagation Paradise Hotel
| ehnto wrote:
| Hitman is amazing insofar as the worlds are so well realised
| and the gameplay is excellent. But the controls are a bit
| pants, and I had an issue on Quest three where it was
| applying a foveated rendering but the mask was off (and the
| quest 3 doesn't have eye tracking). So it was blurry within
| my field of view, and sharp just next to it.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Various random and unexpected indie games exist. Like the
| Indie community has fully embraced VR and it is full of
| unique and experimental and awesome and garbage games.
|
| Euro and American Truck Simulator still have VR support and
| it's more fun and satisfying than it should be.
|
| Load up Google Earth VR, plop yourself in front of your
| childhood home and feel more than you expected.
|
| If you like modern air combat: VTOL VR and DCS. If you like
| WW2 fighter combat, IL-2 Sturmovik.
|
| Hotdogs Horseshoes and Handgrenades for the ultimate American
| Freedom simulator.
|
| Project Wingman for Ace Combat 7 in VR. Star Wars Squadrons
| is fully playable in VR. War thunder has VR
|
| BeamNG has unofficial VR
|
| Rec Room if you want to get absolutely schooled by 13 year
| olds at laser tag and paintball and other games.
|
| Hyperbolica is an exploring and puzzle game about non-
| euclidean space, where walking in a straight line doesn't
| work like you expect and apparently it has VR
|
| Pulsar Lost Colony is a game about being a star trek captain
| with your friends and also can be played without VR.
|
| Phasmaphobia is a game about getting the shit scared out of
| you and you can do it in VR if you do not fear death
|
| An upcoming game about "Be an artemis astronaut". There was
| also one to explore a Google Earth style of the ISS. Also
| Kerbal Space Program at one time had a VR mod.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of the "I Expect You To Die" series. They're
| basically a series of small escape rooms. The game's designed
| to be played seated.
|
| You play James Bond, except that for various silly reasons you
| find yourself stationary, and you have psychic powers to reach
| far away stuff because, again, stationary. "They've trapped
| Bond in a bathysphere!" "You're in a car in a jet ful of
| poisonous gas that's going to explode!" Each level will kill
| you quickly and hilariously over and over until you figure out
| a sequence of steps to survive.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Driving sims with the right setup are truly breathtaking gaming
| experiences. For driving, especially, even things like the
| weight of a headset almost add to the experience since in the
| real thing you are wearing a helmet. But it is a way to have a
| legit, e-sports level gaming experience with real-to-life
| controls with total VR immersion.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I once played a custom Japanese Highway map in Assetto Corsa
| made for nighttime cruising and was a little high and I
| forgot what reality was.
|
| I used to do a lot of GoKarting at a local course before the
| Pandemic, and VR racing is the single most immersive video
| game experience that you can have. The only thing you are
| missing is the physical exertion and G-Forces. Even the feel
| of the helmet and reduced field of view is emulated by the
| headset. Even cheap wheels have force feedback, and you can
| feel the weight shifting around. You can intuitively glance
| around for situational awareness. If you have experience, you
| will naturally fall into the _look at where you want to go_
| style of skid recovery, and you will feel the tires about to
| skid and feel in the wheel when they line back up with your
| vector of motion. It all transfers so well, even real race
| car drivers enjoy it.
|
| You can feel your body freak out when you hit a wall at
| 200mph because you misjudged the distance because you're not
| a real racecar driver.
|
| Driving an open cockpit car like an old F1 car is insane. You
| feel like you are just hanging out in the open air. I guess
| we didn't have survival instincts back then.
|
| If you have a few thousand extra dollars, you can even fix
| the lack of physical exertion and G-Forces!
|
| Shooting games are super fun too because it feels rewarding
| to be good at actually aiming, rather than stupid mouse
| twitches I have never been that good at. Also because Pavlov
| VR mods let me play Halo 1 Blood Gulch for real and that's
| magic.
|
| VR Chat is also a pretty incredible experience. When the
| pandemic first hit, I actually spent several weekends
| clubbing in VR Chat clubs.
| ehnto wrote:
| I have driven on tracks in real life and then the same
| track in VR, and all the spatial cues map perfectly. It's
| so close to "the same thing" that I really don't mind
| driving in VR more and then only paying for the occasional
| real life track day.
|
| My partner also likes that I can't actually die in VR,
| though sometimes I still close my eyes just before an
| impact.
| ehnto wrote:
| Agreed, if you have all the sim racing equipment already
| adding in VR brings you basically "there". The sim rig is a
| rabbit hole of immersive technologies of its own, but even
| just a basic wheel and pedal plus a headset will get you an
| incredible experience.
|
| I believe sim flight people would have the same opinions on
| that side of simming too. It's a uniquely ideal situation for
| VR. Seated with full tactile controls.
| cruano wrote:
| On the PlayStation VR 2, there is Resident Evil 4 and 8. I'd
| never cared for those games until I tried them in VR. I'd argue
| is more like a good game with decent VR support rather than a
| good "VR" game though. That's also the case for things like
| Hitman, No Man's Sky, Metro Awakening and such.
|
| And then there are the racing sims. I find these are such an
| immersive experience it reaches an uncanny-valley type feeling
| for me, where my body is expecting G-forces that never come, or
| gets confused with the steering wheel not being the exact same
| size as my eyes are seeing. It's great though, and definitely
| recommended if you enjoy cars at all.
| foresto wrote:
| I've heard that Elite Dangerous is nice in VR.
| cholantesh wrote:
| I wish the answer was Thief: Legacy of Shadow but considering
| the war crime that was Eidos Montreal's previous outing on the
| franchise, I doubt it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Is this built by HTC, like the Vive is/was? Either way, RIP HTC.
| vadansky wrote:
| >2160 x 2160 LCD (per eye)
|
| Here's hoping it will be like the Deck and we get Frame OLED in a
| year or so.
| archi42 wrote:
| Last time I read up on OLED in VR, it was said that pancake
| lenses dissipate too much light. Might be dated of course, and
| iirc there is now at least one OLED+pancake HMD on the market.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Several. Vision Pro, Galaxy XR, and Meganex 8K, and more
| coming like Crystal Super / Dream Air.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| I have the Bigscreen Beyond 2 which is OLED + pancake fine.
| But only if you have the perfect light seal that the BSB face
| gasket ensures. Your eyes just adjust to it and I never
| thought about it while using it. The upside of having perfect
| blacks is sooooo worth it in my opinion. Flight sims in VR at
| night are an amazing experience
| charcircuit wrote:
| That is micro OLED and is more expensive than regular OLED.
| torginus wrote:
| Whoo - first party support - including a graphics stack on ARM!
|
| I hope this means the GPU and drivers is advanced enough to run
| fully featured modern video games.
|
| Windows for ARM was kinda sunk by the fact that the GPU wasn't
| compatible enough due to the crappy drivers and outdated GPU
| uArch optimized for mobile games.
|
| I'm still kinda on the fence about VR, but I hope ARM + Linux
| succeeds in a big way and this'll make a truly handheld Steam
| Deck possible.
| modeless wrote:
| Foveated streaming! That's a great idea. Foveated rendering is
| complicated to implement with current rendering APIs in a way
| that actually improves performance, but foveated streaming seems
| like a much easier win that applies to all content automatically.
| And the dedicated 6 GHz dongle should do a much better job at
| streaming than typical wifi routers.
|
| > Just like any SteamOS device, install your own apps, open a
| browser, do what you want: It's your PC.
|
| It's an ARM Linux PC that presumably gives you root access, in
| addition to being a VR headset. And it has an SD card slot for
| storage expansion. Very cool, should be very hackable. Very
| unlike every other standalone VR headset.
|
| > 2160 x 2160 LCD (per eye) 72-144Hz refresh rate
|
| Roughly equivalent resolution to Quest 3 and less than Vision
| Pro. This won't be suitable as a monitor replacement for general
| desktop use. But the price is hopefully low. I'd love to see a
| high-end option with higher resolution displays in the future,
| good enough for monitor replacement.
|
| > Monochrome passthrough
|
| So AR is not a focus here, which makes sense. However:
|
| > User accessible front expansion port w/ Dual high speed camera
| interface (8 lanes @ 2.5Gbps MIPI) / PCIe Gen 4 interface
| (1-lane)
|
| Full color AR could be done as an optional expansion pack. And I
| can imagine people might come up with other fun things to put in
| there. Mouth tracking?
|
| One thing I don't see here is optional tracking pucks for
| tracking objects or full body tracking. That's something the
| SteamVR Lighthouse tracking ecosystem had, and the Pico
| standalone headset also has it.
|
| More detail from the LTT video: Apparently it can run Android
| APKs too? Quest compatibility layer maybe? There's an optional
| accessory kit that adds a top strap (I'm surprised it isn't
| standard) and palm straps that enable using the controllers in
| the style of the Valve Index's "knuckles" controllers.
| xeonmc wrote:
| > Roughly equivalent resolution to Quest 3 and less than Vision
| Pro. This won't be suitable as a monitor replacement for
| general desktop use. But the price is hopefully low.
|
| Question, what is the criteria for deciding this to be the
| case? Could you not just move your face closer to the virtual
| screen to see finer details?
| modeless wrote:
| Not only would it be a chore to constantly lean in closer to
| different parts of your monitor to see full detail, but
| looking at close-up objects in VR exacerbates the vergence-
| accommodation mismatch issue, which causes eye strain. You
| would need varifocal lenses to fix this, which have only been
| demonstrated in prototypes so far.
| Fernicia wrote:
| Couldn't you get around that by having a "zoom" feature on
| a very large but distant monitor?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Yes. You can make a low-resolution monitor (like
| 800x600px, once upon a time a usable resolution) and/or
| provide zoom and panning controls
|
| I've tried that combination in an earlier iteration of
| Lenovo's smart glasses, and it technically works. But the
| experience you get is not fun or productive. If you need
| to do it (say to work on confidential documents in
| public) you can do it, but it's not something you'd do in
| a normal setup
| rtkwe wrote:
| For a small taste of what using that might be like turn
| on screen magnification on your existing computers. It's
| technically usable but not particularly productive or
| pleasant to use if you don't /have/ to use it.
| potatolicious wrote:
| Yes but that can create major motion sickness issues -
| motion that does not correspond top the user's actual
| physical movements create a dissonance that is expressed
| as motion sickness for a large portion of the population.
|
| This is the main reason many VR games don't let you just
| walk around and opt for teleportation-based movement
| systems - your avatar moving while your body doesn't can
| be quite physically uncomfortable.
|
| There are ways of minimizing this - for example some VR
| games give you "tunnel vision" by blacking out peripheral
| vision while the movement is happening. But overall
| there's a _lot_ of ergo considerations here and no
| perfect solution. The equivalent for a virtual desktop
| might be to limit the size of the window while the user
| is zooming /panning.
| whycome wrote:
| This all sounds a bit like the "better horse" framing.
| Maybe richer content shouldn't be consumed as primarily a
| virtualized page. Maybe mixing font sizes and over sized
| text can be a standard in itself.
| potatolicious wrote:
| There's no precise criteria but the usual measure is ppd
| (pixels per degree) and it needs to be high enough such that
| detailed content (such as text) displayed at a reasonable
| size is clearly legible without eye strain.
|
| > _" Could you not just move your face closer to the virtual
| screen to see finer details?"_
|
| Sure, but then you have the problem of, say, using an IMAX
| screen as your computer monitor. The level of head motion
| required to consume screen content (i.e., a ton of large head
| movements) would make the device very uncomfortable quite
| quickly.
|
| The Vision Pro has about ~35ppd and generally people seems to
| think it hits the bar for monitor replacement. Meta Quest 3
| has ~25ppd and generally people seem to think it does not.
| The Steam Frame is specs-wise much closer to Quest 3 than
| Vision Pro.
|
| There are _some_ software things you can do to increase
| legibility of details like text, but ultimately you do need
| physical pixels.
| giobox wrote:
| Even the vision pro at 35ppd simply isn't close to the PPD
| you can get from a good desktop monitor (we can calculate
| PPD for desktop monitors too, using size and viewing
| distance).
|
| Apple's "retina" HiDPI monitors typically have PPD well
| beyond 35 at ordinary viewing distances, even a 1080p 24
| inch monitor on your desk can exceed this.
|
| For me personally, 35ppd feels about the _minimum_ I would
| accept for emulating a monitor for text work in a VR
| headset, but it 's still not good enough for me to even
| begin thinking about using it to replace any of my
| monitors.
|
| > https://phrogz.net/tmp/ScreenDensityCalculator.html
| potatolicious wrote:
| Oh yeah for sure. Most people seem to accept that 35ppd
| is "good enough" but not actually at-par with a high
| quality high-dpi monitor.
|
| I agree with you - I would personally consider 35ppd to
| be the _floor_ for usability for this purpose. It 's good
| in a pinch (need a nice workstation setup in a hotel
| room?) but I would not currently consider any extant
| hardware as full-time replacements for a good monitor.
| andybak wrote:
| Most people in what age group?
|
| I'm 53 and the Quest 3 is perfectly good as a monitor
| replacement.
| froggit wrote:
| Are you saying ppd requirements for comfortable usage
| vary with age?
| andybak wrote:
| They vary with quality of eyesight which usually
| correlates with age.
| gruturo wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. Due to my vision not being perfect
| even after correction, a Quest 3 is entirely sufficient.
| pdpi wrote:
| I keep hearing this argument, and it baffles me. I find
| that, as I age and my vision gets worse, I need
| progressively finer text rendering. Using same-size
| displays (27") at the same distance, with text the same
| physical size on screen, 1440p gives me a much worse
| reading experience than 4k with 2x scaling.
| whycome wrote:
| We get by with lower resolution monitors with lower pixel
| density all the time.
| giobox wrote:
| I'm not sure most of us do anymore - see my 1080p/24 inch
| example.
|
| No one who has bought almost any MacBook in the last 10
| years or so has had PPD this low either.
|
| One can get by with almost anything in a pinch, it
| doesn't mean its desirable.
|
| Pixel density != PPD either, although increasing it can
| certainly help PPD. Lower density desktop displays
| routinely have higher PPD than most VR headsets - viewing
| distance matters!
| big_toast wrote:
| I think part of getting by with a lower PPD is the IRL
| pixels are fixed and have hard boundaries that OS
| affordances have co-evolved with.
|
| (pixel alignment via lots of rectangular things -
| windows, buttons; text rendering w/ that in mind; "pixel
| perfect" historical design philosophy)
|
| The VR PPD is in arbitrary orientations which will lead
| to more aliasing. MacOS kinda killed their low-dpi
| experience via bad aliasing as they moved to the hi-dpi
| regime. Now we have svg-like rendering instead of screen-
| pixel-aligned baked rasterized UIs.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think there is a missing number here: angular
| resolution of human eyeballs is believed to be ~60
| ppd(some believes it's more like 90).
| jayd16 wrote:
| It's just about what pixel per degree will get you close to
| the modern irl setup. Obviously it's enough for 80 char
| consoles but you'd need to dip into large fonts for a
| desktop.
| rtkwe wrote:
| I did the math on this site and I'd have to hunch less than
| a foot from the screen to hit 35 PPD on my work provided
| Thinkpad X1 Carbon with a 14" 1920x1200 screen. My usual
| distance is nearly double that so my ppd normally is more
| like 70 ppd, roughly.
|
| https://phrogz.net/tmp/ScreenDensityCalculator.html#find:di
| s...
| monocasa wrote:
| Foveated streaming is wild to me. Saccades are commonly as low
| as 20-30ms when reading text, so guaranteeing that latency over
| 2.4Ghz seems Sisyphean.
|
| I wonder if they have an ML model doing partial upscaling until
| the eyetracking state is propagated and the full resolution
| image under the new fovea position is available. It also makes
| me wonder if there's some way to do neural compression of the
| peripheral vision optimized for a nice balance between
| peripheral vision and hints in the embedding to allow for nicer
| upscaling.
| cube2222 wrote:
| They're doing it over 6GHz, if I understand correctly, which
| with a dedicated router gets you to a reasonable latency with
| reasonable quality even without foveated rendering (with e.g.
| a Quest 3).
|
| With foveated rendering I expect this to be a breeze.
| monocasa wrote:
| Even 5.8Ghz is getting congested. There's a dedicated
| router in this case (a USB fob), but you still have to
| share spectrum with the other devices. And at the 160Mhz
| symbol rate mode on WiFi6, you only have one channel in the
| 5.8GHz spectrum that needs to be shared.
| esseph wrote:
| Not so much of an issue when neighbors with paper thin
| walls see that 6ghz as a -87 signal
|
| That said, in the US it is 1200MHz aka 5.925 GHz to 7.125
| GHz.
| monocasa wrote:
| More of an issue when your phone's wifi or your partner
| watching a show while you game is eating into that one
| channel in bursts, particularly since the dedicated fob
| means that it's essentially another network conflicting
| with the regular WiFI rather than deeply collaborating
| for better real time guarantees (not that arbitrary wifi
| routers would even support real time scheduling).
|
| MIMO helps here to separate the spectrum use by targeted
| physical location, but it's not perfect by any means.
| cube2222 wrote:
| IMO there is not much reason to use WiFi 6 for almost
| anything else. I have a WiFi 6 router set up for my Quest
| 3 for PC streaming, and everything else sits on its 5GHz
| network. And since it doesn't really go through walls, I
| think this is a non-issue?
|
| The Frame itself here is a good example actually - using
| 6GHz for video streaming and 5GHz for wifi, on separate
| radios.
|
| My main issue with the Quest in practice was that when I
| started moving my head quickly (which happens when
| playing faster-paced games) I would get lag spikes. I did
| some tuning on the bitrate / beam-forming / router
| positioning to get to an acceptable place, but I expect /
| hope that here the foveated streaming will solve these
| issues easily.
| monocasa wrote:
| The thing is that I'd expect foveated rendering to
| increase latency issues, not help them like it does for
| bandwidth concerns. During a lag spike you're now looking
| at an extremely down sampled image instead of what in non
| foveated rendering had been just as high quality.
|
| Now I also wonder if an ML model could also work to help
| predict fovea location based on screen content and recent
| eye trackng data. If the eyes are reading a paragraph,
| you have a pretty good idea where they're going to go
| next for instance. That way a latency spike that delays
| eye tracking updates can be hidden too.
| cube2222 wrote:
| My understanding is that the foveated rendering would
| reduce bandwidth requirements enough that latency spikes
| become effectively non-existent.
|
| We'll see in practice - so far all hands-on reviewers
| said the foveated rendering worked great, with one trying
| to break it (move eyes quickly left right up down from
| edge to edge) and not being able to - the foveated
| rendering always being faster.
|
| I agree latency spikes would be really annoying if they
| end up being like you suggest.
| monocasa wrote:
| Enough bandwidth to absolve any latency issues over a
| wireless connection is not really a thing for a low
| latency use case like foveated rendering.
|
| What do you do when another device on the main wifi
| network decides to eat 50ms of time in the channel you
| use for the eye tracking data return path?
| cube2222 wrote:
| I believe all communication with the dongle is on 6GHz -
| both the video and the return metadata.
|
| So again, you just make sure the 6GHz band in the room is
| dedicated to the Frame and its dongle.
|
| The 5GHz is for WiFi.
| ncallaway wrote:
| On the LTT video he also said that Valve had claimed to
| have tested with a small number of devices in the same
| room, but hadn't tried out larger scenarios like tens of
| devices.
|
| My guess based on that is you likely dont need to totally
| clear 6GHz in the room the Frame is in, but rather just
| make sure its relatively clear.
|
| We'll know more once it ships and we can see people try
| it out and try and abuse the radio a bit.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Pretty funny to me that you're backseat engineering Valve
| on this one. If it didn't have a net benefit they
| wouldn't have announced it as a feature yet lmao
| monocasa wrote:
| I'm not saying it doesn't work; I'm asking what special
| sauce they've added to make it work, and noting that
| despite the replies I've gotten, foveated streaming
| doesn't help latency, and in fact makes the effects of
| latency spikes worse.
| esseph wrote:
| MU-MIMO is very nice.
| mastax wrote:
| Why are you assuming the fob would use the same WiFi
| channel as your regular 6GHz network? That would be
| extremely poor channel selection.
| cyberax wrote:
| The One Big Beautiful Bill fixed that. Now a large part
| of this spectrum will be sold out for non-WiFi use.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| Oh goody! I hope some of it can be used for DRM encrypted
| TV broadcasts too.
| esseph wrote:
| Different spectrum. They're grabbing old radar ranges.
|
| Also talking about adding more spectrum to the existing
| ISM 6GHz band.
| cyberax wrote:
| Here's the overview: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2025/06/senate-gop-budge...
| zamadatix wrote:
| You're talking about "Wi-Fi 6" not "6 GHz Wi-Fi".
|
| "6 GHz Wi-Fi" means Wi-Fi 6E (or newer) with a frequency
| range of 5.925-7.125 GHz, giving 7 non-overlapping 160
| MHz channels (which is not the same thing as the symbol
| rate, it's just the channel bandwidth component of that).
| As another bonus, these frequencies penetrate walls even
| less than 5 GHz does.
|
| I live on the 3rd floor of a large apartment complex. 5
| GHz Wi-Fi is so congested that I can get better
| performance on 2.4 in a rural area, especially accounting
| for DFS troubles in 5 GHz. 6 GHz is open enough I have a
| non-conflicting 160 MHz channel assigned to my AP (and
| has no DFS troubles).
|
| Interestingly, the headset supports Wi-Fi 7 but the
| adapter only supports Wi-Fi 6E.
| omneity wrote:
| It was hard for me to believe as well but streaming games
| wirelessly on a Quest 2 was totally possible and surprisingly
| latency-free once I upgraded to wifi 6 (few years ago)
|
| It works a lot better than you'd expect at face value.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| I worked on a foveated video streaming system for 3D video
| back in 2008, and we used eye tracking and extrapolated a
| pretty simple motion vector for eyes and ignored saccades
| entirely. It worked well, you really don't notice the lower
| detail in the periphery and with a slightly over-sized high
| resolution focal area you can detect a change in gaze
| direction before the user's focus exits the high resolution
| area.
|
| Anyway that was ages ago and we did it with like three
| people, some duct tape and a GPU, so I expect that it should
| work really well on modern equipment if they've put the
| effort into it.
| monocasa wrote:
| Foveated rendering very clearly works well with a dedicated
| connection, wiht predictable latency. My question was more
| about the latency spikes inherent in a ISM general use band
| combined with foveated rendering, which would make the
| effects of the latency spikes even worse.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The real trick is not over complicating things. The goal is
| to have high fidelity rendering where the eye is currently
| focusing so to solve for saccades you just build a small
| buffer area around the idealized minimum high res center and
| the saccades will safely stay inside that area within the
| ability of the system to react to the larger overall
| movements.
|
| Picture demonstrating the large area that foveated rendering
| actually covers as high or mid res: https://www.reddit.com/r/
| oculus/comments/66nfap/made_a_pic_t...
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| At 100fps (mid range of the framerate), you need to deliver a
| new frame every 10ms anyway, so a 20ms saccade doesn't seem
| like it would be a problem. If you can't get new frames to
| users in 30ms, blur will be the least of your problems, when
| they turn their head, they'll be on the floor vomiting.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| They use a 6 Ghz dongle
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Saccades are commonly as low as 20-30ms when reading text
|
| What sort of resolution are one's eyes actually resolving
| during saccades? I seem to recall that there is at the very
| least a frequency reduction mechanism in play during saccades
| yencabulator wrote:
| _During_ a saccade you are blind. Your brain receives no
| optical input. The problem is measuring /predicting where
| the eye will aim next and getting a sharp enough image in
| place over there by the time the movement ends and the
| saccade stabilizes.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Yeah. I'd love to understand how they tackle saccades. To be
| fair they do mention they're on 6ghz - not sure if they
| support 2.4 although I doubt the frequency of the data radio
| matters here.
| shwaj wrote:
| I would guess that the "foveated" region that they stream
| is larger than the human fovea, large enough to contain the
| saccades movement (with some good-enough probability).
| cedws wrote:
| Why hasn't Meta tried this given the huge amount of R&D they've
| put into VR and they had _literally John Carmack_ on the team
| in the past?
| modeless wrote:
| They prioritized cost, so they omitted eye tracking hardware.
| They've also bet more on standalone apps rather than
| streaming from a PC. These are reasonable tradeoffs. The next
| Quest may add eye tracking, who knows. Quest Pro had it but
| was discontinued for being too expensive.
|
| We'll have to wait on pricing for Steam Frame, but I don't
| expect them to match Meta's subsidies, so I'm betting on this
| being more expensive than Quest. I also think that streaming
| from a gaming PC will remain more of a niche thing despite
| Valve's focus on it here, and people will find a lot of use
| for the x86/Windows emulation feature to play games from
| their Steam library directly on the headset.
| robotnikman wrote:
| It will be interesting to see how the X86 emulation plays
| out. In the Verge review of the headset they mentioned
| stutters when playing on the headset due to having to
| 'recompile x86 game code on the fly', but they may offer
| precompiled versions which can be downloaded ahead of time,
| similar to the precompiled shaders the Steam Deck
| downloads.
|
| If they get everything working well I'm guessing we could
| see an ARM powered Steam Deck in the future.
|
| Despite the fact it uses a Qualcomm chip, I'm curious on
| whether it retains the ability to load alternative OS's
| like other Steam hardware.
| girvo wrote:
| > Despite the fact it uses a Qualcomm chip, I'm curious
| on whether it retains the ability to load alternative
| OS's like other Steam hardware.
|
| I think it should: we have Linux support/custom operating
| systems on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 devices right now today,
| and the 8 Gen 3 has upstream support already AFAIK
|
| https://rocknix.org/devices/ayn/odin2/
| jayd16 wrote:
| What do you mean? What part have they not tried?
| cube2222 wrote:
| If you mean foveated streaming - It's available on the Quest
| Pro with Steam Link.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Roughly equivalent resolution to Quest 3 and less than Vision
| Pro. This won't be suitable as a monitor replacement for
| general desktop use.
|
| The real limiting factor is more likely to be having a large
| headset on your face for an extended period of time, combined
| with a battery that isn't meant for all-day use. The resolution
| is fine. We went decades with low resolution monitors. Just
| zoom in or bring it closer.
| krzyk wrote:
| 2k X 2k doesn't sound low res it is like full HD, but with
| twice vertical. My monitor is 1080p.
|
| Never tried VR set, so I don't know if that translates
| similarly.
| potatolicious wrote:
| Your 2K monitor occupies something like a 20-degree field
| of view from a normal sitting position/distance. The 2K
| resolution in a VR headset covers the entire field of view.
|
| So effectively your 1080p monitor has ~6x the pixel density
| of the VR headset.
| krzyk wrote:
| Thank you for explaining, it makes sense now.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The problem is that 2k square is spread across the whole
| FOV of the headset so when it's replicating a monitor
| unless it's ridiculously close to your face a lot of those
| pixels are 'wasted' in comparison to a monitor with similar
| stats.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Totally true, but unlike a real monitor you can drag a
| virtual monitor close to your face without changing the
| focal distance, meaning it's no harder on your eyes.
| (Although it is harder on your neck.)
| rtkwe wrote:
| To get the same pixel per degree as my work laptop I'd
| have to put it's virtual replacement screen 11 (virtual)
| inches from my face and that's probably the lowest PPD
| screen in my normal life unless I get a bad desk at work
| that day. Just pasting them inches from your nose is not
| a great solution, you can already do that with a good set
| of monitor arms and there's a reason almost no one does
| it.
| bluescrn wrote:
| VR does need a _lot_ of resolution when trying to display
| text.
|
| Can get away with less for games where text is minimized (or
| very large)
| refulgentis wrote:
| Whether or not we used to walk to school uphill both ways,
| that won't make the resolution fine.
|
| To your point, I'd use my Vision Pro plugged in all day if it
| was half the weight. As it stands, its just too much nonsense
| when I have an ultrawide. If I were 20 year old me I'd never
| get a monitor (20 year old me also told his gf iPad 1 would
| be a good laptop for school, so,)
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| One problem is that in most settings a real monitor is just
| a better experience for multiple reasons. And in a tight
| setting like an airplane where VR monitors might be nice,
| the touch controls become more problematic. "Pardon me! I
| was trying to drag my screen around!"
| Andrex wrote:
| > (20 year old me also told his gf iPad 1 would be a good
| laptop for school, so,)
|
| Yikes. How'd that relationship end up? Haha.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Lol, I laughed then 20 seconds later started taking this
| literally: I think that was July, it had been two years,
| and it was over by November (presumably due to my other
| excellent qualities!) (all joking aside, for younger
| members in our audience, it was sweet and she was around
| in my life for at least another decade)
| wat10000 wrote:
| The battery isn't an issue if you're stationary, you can plug
| it in.
|
| The resolution is a major problem. Old-school monitors used
| old-school OSes that did rendering suitable for the displays
| of the time. For example, anti-aliased text was not typically
| used for a long time. This meant that text on screen was
| blocky, but _sharp_. Very readable. You can 't do this on a
| VR headset, because the pixels on your virtual screen don't
| precisely correspond with the pixels in the headset's
| displays. It's inevitably scaled and shifted, making it
| blurry.
|
| There's also the issue that these things have to compete with
| what's available _now_. I use my Vision Pro as a monitor
| replacement sometimes. But it 'll never be a full-time
| replacement, because the modern 4k displays I have are
| substantially clearer. And that's a headset with ~2x the
| resolution of this one.
| cesarb wrote:
| > There's also the issue that these things have to compete
| with what's available _now_. [...] But it 'll never be a
| full-time replacement, because the modern 4k displays I
| have are substantially clearer.
|
| What's available _now_ might vary from person to person. I
| 'm using a normal-sized 1080p monitor, and this desk
| doesn't have space for a second monitor. That's what a VR
| headset would have to compete against _for me_ ; just
| having several virtual monitors might be enough of an
| advantage, even if their resolution is slightly lower.
|
| (Also, I have used old-school VGA CRT monitors; as could be
| easily seen when switching to a LCD monitor with digital
| DVI input, text on a VGA CRT was not exactly sharp.)
| bottlepalm wrote:
| The weight on your face is half that of Quest 3, they put the
| rest of the weight on the back which perfectly balances it on
| your head. It's going to be super comfortable.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yeah, already many people use something like the Bobovr
| alternative headstrap for the Quest3 that has an additional
| battery pack in the back, which helps balancing the device
| in the front.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| Which doubles the weight on your head, which increases
| the inertia you feel when moving around playing active
| games. The Frame is half the weight on your face, so
| active games are going to be a lot more comfortable.
| dagmx wrote:
| Foveated streaming is cool. FWIW the Vision Pro does that for
| their Mac virtual display as well, and it works really well to
| pump a lot more pixels through.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I think it works really well to pump the same amount of
| pixels, just focusing them on the more important parts.
| Psillisp wrote:
| Always PIP, Pump Important Pixels
| dagmx wrote:
| It lets you pump more pixels in a given bandwidth window.
|
| People are conflating rendering (which is not what I'm
| talking about) with transmission (which is what I'm talking
| about).
|
| Lowering the quality outside the in focus sections lets
| them reduce the encoding time and bandwidth required to
| transmit the frame over.
| anvuong wrote:
| It's the same amount of pixels though, just with reduced
| bitrate for unfocused regions so you save time in encoding,
| transmitting, and decoding, essentially reducing latency.
|
| For foveated rendering, the amount of rendered pixels are
| actually reduced.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| That depends on the specifics of the encode/decode pipeline
| for the streamed frames. Could be the blurry part actually
| is lower res _and_ lower bitrate until it 's decoded, then
| upscaled and put together with the high res part. I'm not
| saying they do that, but it's an option.
| dagmx wrote:
| It's the same number of pixels rendered but it lets you
| reduce the amount of data sent , thereby allowing you to
| send more pixels than you would have been able to otherwise
| vlovich123 wrote:
| At least when we implemented this in the first version of
| Oculus Link, the way it worked is that it was distorted
| (AADT [1]) to a deformed texture before compression and
| then rectilinear regenerated after compression as a cheap
| and simple way to emulate fixed foveated rendering. So it's
| not that there's some kind of adaptive bitrate which
| applies less bits outside the fovea region but achieves a
| similar result by giving it fewer pixels in the resulting
| image being compressed; doing adaptive bitrate would work
| too (and maybe even better) but encoders (especially HW
| accelerated ones) don't support that.
|
| Foveated streaming is presumably the next iteration of this
| where the eye tracking gives you better information about
| where to apply this distortion, although I'm genuinely
| curious how they manage to make this work well - eye
| tracking is generally high latency but the eye moves very
| very quickly (maybe HW and SW has improved but they allude
| to this problem so I'm curious if their argument about
| using this at a low frequency really improves meaningfully
| vs more static techniques)
|
| [1] https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/how-does-
| oculus-lin...
| vablings wrote:
| Although your eye moves very quickly your brain has a
| delay in processing the completely new frame you switched
| to. It's very hard to look left and right with your eyes
| and read something quickly changing on both sides
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > Mouth tracking?
|
| What a vile thought in the context of the steam... catalogue.
| rtkwe wrote:
| They're probably thinking of it in comparison to the Apple
| Pro which attempts to do some facial tracking of the bottom
| of your face to inform their 'Personas', it notably still
| fails quite badly on bearded people where it can't see the
| bottom half of the face well.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I gathered as much, but still.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| I'm guessing it's main use case will be VR chat syncing
| mouths to avatars.
| riskable wrote:
| The porn industry disagrees.
| Andrex wrote:
| If the porn industry likes it, it's bad?
|
| Guess we have to get rid of physical home media.
|
| And the internet.
|
| It was a good run I guess.
| willis936 wrote:
| Funny enough the Digital Foundry folks put a Gabe quote about
| tongue input in their most recent podcast.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9zfExb5vCU&t=1h32m44s
| nabakin wrote:
| And foveated streaming has a 1-2ms _wireless_ latency on modern
| GPUs according to LTT. Insane.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Wow, that's just 1 frame of latency at 60 fps.
|
| Edit: Nevermind, I'm dumb. 1/60th of a second is 16
| milliseconds, not 1.6 milliseconds.
| bspammer wrote:
| Much less than, 1 frame is 16ms
| sph wrote:
| 60 fps is 16.67 ms per frame.
| redrblackr wrote:
| No, thats between 0.06 and 0.12 frame latency on 60fps.
| It's not even a frame on 144Hz (1s/144[?]7ms)
| tshaddox wrote:
| That's pretty quick. I've heard that in ideal circumstances
| Wi-Fi 6 can get close to 5ms and Wi-Fi 7 can get down to 2ms.
|
| I's impressive if they're really able to get below 2ms
| motion-to-photon latency, given that modern consumer headsets
| with on-device compute are also right at that same 2ms mark.
| archon810 wrote:
| Have a look at this video by Dave2D. In his hands-on, he was
| very impressed with foveated streaming
| https://youtu.be/356rZ8IBCps.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I guess there's a market for this but I'm personally
| disappointed that they've gone with the "cram a computer into
| the headset" route. I'd much rather have a simpler, more
| compact dumb device like the Bigscreen Beyond 2, which in
| exchange should prove much lighter and more comfortable to wear
| for long time periods.
|
| The bulk and added component cost of the "all in one"
| PC/headset models is just unnecessary if you already have a
| gaming PC.
| modeless wrote:
| You can get a Beyond if that's what you want. It's an amazing
| device, and will be far more comfortable and higher
| resolution than this one. Valve has supported Bigscreen in
| integrating Lighthouse tracking, and I hope that they
| continue that support by somehow allowing them to integrate
| the inside-out tracking they've developed for this device in
| the next version of the Beyond.
| preisschild wrote:
| That would probably add a lot of extra weight and it would
| need to make the device bigger.
| modeless wrote:
| I don't think it would be too bad. Cameras are tiny. The
| processing would still happen on the PC, and you could
| delete the lighthouse tracking sensors. I guess the
| hardest part would be sending that much camera data back
| to the PC over the cable.
| zonkerdonker wrote:
| Its worse than that. Cameras (plus DToF if you want
| tracking in the dark), imus, gyros, and necessarily
| onboard compute/SOC to handle processing that data.
| Shipping it all off to a remote computer and then making
| the round trip creates an untenable amount of lag. Thats
| not even accounting for controller and hand tracking.
|
| And once you have the pipeline and computation power to
| enable inside out tracking all on device, adding an OS is
| essentially free.
| preisschild wrote:
| I agree. Hopefully Bigscreen continues making hardware. I
| still have the original bigscreen beyond and im very happy
| with it besides the glare.
| jijijijij wrote:
| How is Linux support?
| olejorgenb wrote:
| From the review section:
|
| Nikos Q: Linux Desktop support? A: Hi,
|
| Linux is not officially supported but can absolutely work
| with the Beyond 2. I'd suggest joining the Bigscreen
| Beyond Discord server for more information
|
| Thanks By Bigscreen Support Team
|
| ---
|
| Rant: they have disabled selected text for the reviews
| for some inexplicable reason.
| jijijijij wrote:
| Lol, doesn't sound confidence inspiring. "More info in
| Discord" is such a non-starter.
|
| I wish Valve every bit of success, if they deliver an
| open platform people can own and hack.
| preisschild wrote:
| its using SteamVR, so it should work
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I'm personally quite hyped to see the first commercially
| available Linux-based standalone VR headset announced. This
| thing is quite a bit lighter than any of the existing "cram a
| computer in" solutions.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Yeah, this is exactly what I've been waiting for for quite
| a long time. I'm very excited.
| fsiefken wrote:
| Strictly speaking the mobile Oculus/Meta Go/Quest headsets
| were linux/android based, you can run Termux terminal with
| Fedora/Ubuntu on them and use an Android VNC/X app to run
| the 2D graphical part. But I share your SteamOS
| enthousiasm.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| They crammed a computer into the headset, but UNLIKE Meta's
| offerings, this is indeed an actual computer you can run
| linux on. Perhaps even do standard computer stuff inside the
| headset like text editing, Blender modeling, or more.
| rbits wrote:
| I was worried about the built in computer as well, but then I
| found out it's only 185g. It is 78g more than the Bigscreen
| Beyond 2, but it's still pretty light.
| tfyoung wrote:
| There's always going to be a computer in it to drive it. It's
| just a matter of how generalised it is and how much
| weight/power consumption it's adding.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's nice to have some local processing for tracking and
| latency mitigation. Cost from there to full computer on
| headset is marginal, so you might as well do that.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| As a current and frequent user of this form factor (Pico 4,
| with the top strap, which the Steam Frame will also have as
| an option, over Virtual Desktop) I can assure you that it's
| quite comfortable over long periods of time (several hours).
| Of course it will ultimately depend on the specific design
| decisions made for this headset, but this all looks really
| good to me.
|
| Full color passthrough would have been nice though. Not
| necessarily for XR, but because it's actually quite useful to
| be able to switch to a view of the world around you with very
| low friction when using the headset.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| It's super light compared to Quest 3, half the weight on your
| face, the rest is on the back which balances the headset. Big
| Screen Beyond isn't wireless and has a narrower field of
| view.
| bigiain wrote:
| > Foveated streaming! That's a great idea.
|
| Back when I was in Uni, so late 80s or early 90s, my dad was
| Project Manager on an Air Force project for a new F-111 flight
| simulator, when Australia upgraded the avionics on their F-111
| fighter/bombers.
|
| The sim cockpit had a spherical dome screen and a pair of
| Silicon Graphics Reality Engines. One of them projected an
| image across the entire screen at a relatively low resolution.
| The other projector was on a turret that pan/tilted with the
| pilot's helmet, and projected a high resolution image but only
| in a perhaps 1.5m circle directly in from of where the helmet
| was aimed.
|
| It was super fun being the project manager's kid, and getting
| to "play with it" on weekends sometimes. You could see what was
| happening while wearing the helmet and sitting in the seat if
| you tried - mostly ny intentionally pointing your eyes in a
| different direction to your head - but when you were "flying
| around" it was totally believable, and it _looked_ like
| everything was high resolution. It was also fun watching other
| people fly it, and being able to see where they were looking,
| and where they weren't looking and the enemy was speaking up on
| them.
| zeroq wrote:
| I'll share a childhood story as well.
|
| Somewhere between '93 and '95 my father took me abroad to
| Germany and we visited a gaming venue. It was packed with
| typical arcade machines, games where you sit in a cart
| holding a pistol and you shoot things on the screen while
| cart was moving all over the place simulating bumpy ride,
| etc.
|
| But the highlight was a full 3D experience shooter. You got
| yourself into a tiny ring, 3D headset and a single puck hold
| in hand. Rotate the puck and you move. Push the button and
| you shoot. Look around with your head. Most memorable part -
| you could duck to avoid shots! Game itself, as I remember it,
| was full wireframe, akin to Q3DM17 (the longest yard) minus
| jump pads, but the layout was kind of similar. Player was
| holding a dart gun - you had a single shot and you had to
| wait until the projectile decayed or connected with other
| player.
|
| I'm not entirely sure if the game was multiplayer or not.
|
| I often come back to that memory because shortly after within
| that time frame my father took me to a computer fair where I
| had the opportunity to play doom/hexen with VFX1 (or whatever
| it was called) and it was supposed to revolutionize the world
| the way AI is suppose to do it now.
|
| Then there was a P5 glove with jaw dropping demo videos of
| endless possibilities of 3D modelling with your hands,
| navigating a mech like you were actually inside, etc.
|
| It never came.
| m463 wrote:
| Maybe something like this?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product)
|
| I think I played with the 1000CS or similar in a bar or
| arcade at some point in early 90's
| zeroq wrote:
| Yes!
|
| The booth depicted on the 1000CS image looks exactly how
| I recall it, and the screenshot looks very similar to how
| I remember the game (minus dragon, and mine was fully
| wireframe), but the map layout looks very similar. It has
| this Q3DM17 vibe I was talking about.
|
| Isn't this crazy, that we had this tech in ~'91 and it's
| still not just there yet?
|
| On similar note - around that time, mid 90s, my father
| also took my to CEBIT. One building was almost fully
| occupied by Intel or IBM and they had different sections
| dedicated to all sorts of cool stuff. One of I won't
| forget was straight out of Minority Report, only many
| years earlier.
|
| They had a whole section dedicated to showcasing a "smart
| watch". Imagine Casio G-Shock but with Linux. You could
| navigate options by twisting your wrist (up or down the
| menu) and you would press the screen or button to select
| an option.
|
| They had different scenarios built in form of an
| amusement park - from restaurant where you would walk in
| with your watch - it would talk to the relay at the door
| and download menu for you just so you could twist your
| wrist to select your meal and order it without a human
| interaction and... leave without interaction as well,
| because the relay at the door would charge you based on
| your prior selection.
|
| Or - and that was straight out of Minority Report - a
| scenario of an airport, where you would disembark at your
| location and walk past a big screen that would talk to
| your watch and display travel information for you,
| prompting question if you'd like to order a taxi to your
| destination, based on your data.
| intrasight wrote:
| > Isn't this crazy, that we had this tech in ~'91 and
| it's still not just there yet?
|
| Not really, because feeding us ads and AI slop attracted
| all the talent.
| m463 wrote:
| I remember a guy I know went to japan/asia around 1985ish
| and came back with a watch. It had hands, but also a
| small LCD display. You could draw numbers on the face
| with your finger, like 6 then X then 3 then = and the LCD
| would show the values, and finally 18
|
| This is completely uninteresting now, but this was 40
| years ago
|
| EDIT: I think Casio AT-552
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aQHnyZdgF4
| somenameforme wrote:
| It was a really interesting and weird time growing up
| when Japan was the king of tech. I had a friend who's dad
| was often over there and bringing all sorts of weird
| stuff back. There was this NES/Famicon game where you
| played with a sort of gyroscope. I have no idea how you
| were supposed to play the game, but found the gyroscope
| endlessly fascinating. Then of course there were the
| pirated cartridges with 100 in 1 type games. Oh then we
| found the box full of his dad's "special" games. Ah, good
| times.
| vardump wrote:
| Special games? I thought NES was controlled by Nintendo?
| somenameforme wrote:
| There were some licensed games in Japan that they'd never
| release in the West, and also a relatively large scene
| for unlicensed/'bootleg' games. Fun slightly related
| factoid - the Game Genie was an unlicensed hardware mod
| and they actually got sued by Nintendo, and won.
|
| I somehow suspect in modern times they'd have lost.
| whstl wrote:
| Oh wow, I also played with this one in what might have
| been a COMDEX, in the 90s.
|
| I remember the game was a commercially available shooter
| though, but the machine was exactly the same, with the
| blue highlights.
| somenameforme wrote:
| That sounds like you're describing dactyl nightmare. [1] I
| played a version where you were attacking pterodactyls
| instead of other players, but it was more or less
| identical. That experience is what led me to believe that
| VR would eventually take over. I still, more or less,
| believe it even though it's yet to happen.
|
| I think the big barrier remains price and experiences that
| are focusing more on visual fidelity over gameplay. An even
| bigger problem with high end visual fidelity tends to
| result in motion sickness and other side effects in a
| substantial chunk of people. But I'm sticking to my guns
| there - one day VR will win.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBkP2to1P_c
| zeroq wrote:
| It is precisely that! My version was wireframe and I
| can't recall the dragon, but everything else is exactly
| like I remembered it!
|
| For me this serves as an example.
|
| Few years later VFX1 was the hype, years later Occulus,
| etc.
|
| But 3D graphics in general - as seen in video games - are
| similar, minus recent lumen, it's still stuff from
| graphics gems from 80-90s, just on silicone.
|
| Same thing is happening now to some degree with AI.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Nah, people spend 700 on consoles, the biggest barriers
| is comfort.
|
| As long as the headsets are heavy, I won't get one, no
| matter how great the graphics are or how good the game is
| rkomorn wrote:
| And even more so for people with corrective lenses and/or
| weird eye behaviors.
|
| Didn't stop me from getting two different Oculus headsets
| (and some custom corrective lense inserts) but
| ultimately, comfort is what made me give up.
| gilfoy wrote:
| Bigscreen Beyond 2 is 107g
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| I played that game in Berlin in the late 90s. There were
| four such pods, iirc, and you could see the other players.
| The frame rate was about 5 frames per second, so it was
| borderline unplayable, but it was fun nevertheless.
|
| Later, I found out that it was a game called "Dactyl
| Nightmare" that ran on Amiga hardware:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product)
| brador wrote:
| >It never came.
|
| Everything you described and more is available from modern
| home Vr devices you can purchase right now.
|
| Mecha, planes, skyrim, cinema screens. In VR, with custom
| controllers or a regular controller if you want that. Go
| try it! It's out and it's cheap and it's awesome. Set IPD
| FIRST.
| m463 wrote:
| I remember there was a flight simulator project that had
| something like that, or even it was that.
|
| it was called ESPRIT, which I believe was eye slaved
| programmed retinal insertion technique.
| usefulcat wrote:
| That's reality cool. My first job out of college was
| implementing an image generator for the simulator for the
| landing signal officer on the USS Nimitz, also using SGI
| hardware. I would have loved to have seen the final product
| in person but sadly never had the chance.
| regularfry wrote:
| I use a 1920x1080 headset as a monitor replacement. It's
| absolutely fine. 2160x2160 will be more than workable as long
| as the tracking is on point.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I once lived in a place that had a bathroom with mirrors that
| faced each other. I think I convinced myself that not only is
| my attention to detail more concentrated at the center, but
| that my response time was also fastest there (can anyone
| confirm that?).
|
| So this gets me thinking. What would it feel like to correct
| for that effect? Could you use the same technique to
| essentially play the further parts early, so it all comes in at
| once?
|
| Kinda a hair brained idea, I know, but we have the technology,
| and I'm curious.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Peripheral vision is extremely good at spotting movement at
| low resolution and moving the eye to look at it.
|
| I don't know if it's faster, but it's a non-trivial part of
| the experience.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Yea, I've heard and noticed that as well (thought about
| adding a note about it to my original comment). But what
| I'm curious about is the timing. What I suspect is that
| peripherals are more sensitive to motion, but still lag
| slightly behind the center of focus. I'm not sure if it's
| dependent on how actively you are trying to focus. I'd love
| to learn more about this, but I didn't find anything when I
| looked online a bit.
| consp wrote:
| It's good enough to see flickering on crt monitors at
| 50-60hz for some people.
| yencabulator wrote:
| I can see the spinning color wheels inside cheaper
| projectors as rapidly-changing rainbow lights leaking out
| of their ventilation grilles, but only with peripheral
| vision and mostly only if I'm moving my head at the same
| time.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| How the hell would foveated streaming even work, it seems
| physically impossible. Tracking where your eye is looking then
| sending that information to a server, it processing it and then
| streaming that back seems impossible.
| utopiah wrote:
| Eye tracking hardware and software specifically focus on low
| latency, e.g. FPGA close to the sensor. The resulting packets
| they send is also ridiculously small (e.g 2 numbers as x,y
| positions of the pupils) so ... I can see that happening.
|
| Sure eyes move very VERY fast but if you do relatively small
| compute on dedicated hardware it can also go quite fast while
| remaining affordable.
| imtringued wrote:
| It just needs to be less impossible than not doing it. I.e.
| sending a full frame of information must be an even more
| impossible problem.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| The data you're sending out is just the position and motion
| vectors of the pupils. And you probably only need about 16
| bits for each of these numbers for 2 eyes. So the equivalent
| of two floating point numbers along a particular channel or
| 32 bits at minimum. Any lag can be compensated for by simply
| interpolating the motion vectors.
|
| It actually makes a lot of sense!
| KolibriFly wrote:
| Yet this is shaping up to be one of the most interesting VR
| releases
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Foveated streaming! That 's a great idea._
|
| It would be interesting to see0 how that behaves when presented
| with weird eyes like mine or worse. Mine often don't always
| point the same way and which one I'm actually looking through
| can be somewhat arbitrary from one moment to the next...
|
| Though the flapping between eyes is usually in the presence of
| changes, however minor, in required focal distance, so maybe it
| wouldn't happen as much inside a VR headset.
|
| ----
|
| [0] Sorry not sorry.
| jagermo wrote:
| > Very cool, should be very hackable. Very unlike every other
| standalone VR headset. That might be the reason I'm going to
| buy it. I want to support this and Steam has done a lot to get
| gaming on linux going.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > 2160 x 2160 LCD (per eye) 72-144Hz refresh rate
|
| I question that we could not create a special purpose video
| codec that handles this without trickery. The "per eye" part
| sounds spooky at first, but how much information is typically
| different between these frames? The mutual information is
| probably 90%+ in most VR games.
|
| If we were to enhance something like x264 to encode the 2nd
| display as a residual of the 1st display, this could become
| much more feasible from a channel capacity standpoint. Video
| codecs already employ a lot of tricks to make adjacent frames
| that are nearly identical occupy negligible space.
|
| This seems very similar (identical?) to the problem of
| efficiently encoding a 3d movie:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2D_plus_Delta
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiview_Video_Coding
| starkrights wrote:
| I'm entirely unfamiliar with the vr rendering space, so all I
| have to go on is what (I think) your comment implies.
|
| Is the current state of VR rendering really just rendering
| and transporting two videostreams independent of eachother?
| Surely there has to be at least some academic prior-art on
| the subject, no?
| chaostheory wrote:
| > But the price is hopefully low.
|
| The main value of Meta VR and AR products is the massive price
| subsidy which is needed because the brand has been destroyed
| for all generations older than Alpha.
|
| The current price estimate for the Steam Frame is $1200 vs
| Quest 3 at $600 which is still a very reasonable price given
| the technology, tariffs, and lack of ad invading privacy
| coolspot wrote:
| Quest 3 is $499 and Quest 3S is $299 in the US
| pierrec wrote:
| The death of VR has been greatly exaggerated. The only thing that
| died is the hype, and the hype will not be missed. It's just nice
| to have so much less bullshit.
| lopis wrote:
| Meta and Apple smothered VR almost to death. Valve is coming to
| set VR free.
| SparkBomb wrote:
| They have been trying to make VR thing since the 90s. It has
| never reached mass appeal and never will.
|
| I can't wear one of those headset (I get severe motion
| sickness).
| lostmsu wrote:
| Will the eye tracking data be directly available to developers?
|
| Also, can I hack the OS? Specifically interested in direct VR
| rendering (other headsets don't allow to bypass compositor).
| Melonai wrote:
| Pretty sure the OS is just the same old Steam-flavored Linux
| distro "SteamOS" with ARM support and some new graphics
| pipeline stuff for the VR portion, though we don't know until
| it's actually out.
|
| Though Valve has put a focus on developer ease and very low
| software lockdown in the recent years with their hardware, so
| I'd say the chances on direct rendering are quite good!
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Wondering what window/desktop manager will valve ship with
| the new steam frame. Is there even a desktop/window manager
| work with 3d space currently? Will that be a mod of kde or
| something?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Is there even a desktop/window manager work with 3d space
| currently?
|
| The best known is perhaps
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass but
| there's many others, at varying stages of development. It
| will be interesting to see if custom OS/UX development is
| made available for this device. We'd also need quite a bit
| of custom development to make the OS comprehensively usable
| with gamepad-like controllers alone (no mouse or keyboard
| required). The existing work on "10-ft." media center
| interfaces can provide a useful starting point for this but
| it's far from covering all possible uses.
| marknutter wrote:
| So it connects to your PC via Wifi? I could use this anywhere in
| my house as far away from my computer as I want?
| starkrights wrote:
| I think it depends on whether or not you have good 6ghz
| connectivity. The headset comes with a 6ghz usb dongle
| pluggable to your rendering PC for locales without a 6ghz
| router or good 6ghz penetration, but due to 6ghz lack of wall-
| penetrating capability, that's probably going to be more/less
| line-of-sight. The LTT video [0] does explicitly mention the
| ability to use either mode of connection though- over your
| existing wifi network, or via their 6ghz dongle. It's somewhat
| unclear if the headset would function over a non 6ghz
| connection (regardless of quality- supposedly 2.4/5ghz VR-over-
| wifi is pretty rough due to channel congestion and maybe
| bandwidth limits)
|
| The headset is also capable of being its own renderer, ie, it
| can do 'mobile' vr games (android apks like on the quest, eg).
| That functionality wouldn't need a connection to your PC at
| all.
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/dU3ru09HTng?t=445 - timestamped at
| wireless segment
| Mashimo wrote:
| I thought 6Ghz is not allowed world wide? For example
| Germany?
|
| Are you sure it's not just wifi6?
| fulafel wrote:
| Germany allowed it in 2021 or so.
|
| The biggest variation is above 6 GHz: most of the world
| allows 5.9-6.4 but reserves 6.5-7 GHz for cellular or
| haven't decided yet if it'll be for wifi or cellular.
| There's a nice map on https://6ghz.info/
| Mashimo wrote:
| Ah, thanks for sharing.
| ranger207 wrote:
| It's both standalone and streaming. It comes with a 6GHz Wifi
| dongle; 6GHz has low penetration so using it in different rooms
| is iffy. But if you have a good 6GHz mesh setup it might work?
| 0x457 wrote:
| > But if you have a good 6GHz mesh setup it might work?
|
| That's my experience streaming games to steam deck. I have
| central 2.4/5/6Ghz AP and 6Ghz-only APs in other rooms. Any
| sort of wireless streaming at my place is snappy.
| Insanity wrote:
| This is going to be an instant buy for me, and my first VR device
| ever. I've used the previous Steam VR headset over at a friends'
| place many times, but never bit the bullet to get one myself.
|
| The fact that this can run standalone, doesn't have a bunch of
| wires dangling from it, and is pretty much a fully working Linux
| box makes this am almost on-brainer for me.
|
| I do _hope_ the price is reasonable though, if it ends up being
| like Apple VR I might not buy into it immediately, but I'm hoping
| for a reasonable $1000 max price.
| vunderba wrote:
| I can't imagine it exceeding ~1k USD - they've got to at least
| keep it reasonably competitive with the Meta Quest which is
| around half that.
| aljgz wrote:
| Meta Quest 2 owner here, with all the damage to UX after
| Oculus was acquired by Meta, I'll lean towards something from
| steam, even with a 2-3x price tag.
|
| I don't think I'm the norm, but probably neither an exception
| hadlock wrote:
| I realize this might not be the case for everyone, but for
| me, $600 premium is easily worth it to "jailbreak" the meta
| game store. Steam was here for ~25 years and I expect it to
| be around in another 25 years. My Quest 1, an absolute
| Dinosaur of the VR world now, 2019, barely works at this
| point, is out of support and Meta still haven't open sourced
| the firmware for it.
| egoisticalgoat wrote:
| Seconding this, I love my Quest 1 but at this point it's
| looking more and more like it'll turn into a brick at some
| point. The Frame looks like the next best non-meta
| alternative, and a damn good one at that.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| I imagine there are a non-negligible amount of us here who
| looked at the Apple Vision Pro with interest, despite its
| $3,500+ price tag, only to find out it can't meaningfully be
| used as a standalone development device.
|
| Only question is if 2160px is enough.
| daemonologist wrote:
| I'm also very interested in this use case, however I
| suspect 2160 square is going to be great for gaming but
| insufficient for serious work. It's very comparable to the
| Quest 3 (lenses too), which is kind of on the level of a
| giant 1080p monitor.
| ehnto wrote:
| I somewhat agree except that you can still make the
| screen however big you want, and the pixel density is the
| same across the new area.
|
| Clarity has been totally fine for work reading text on,
| if I were inclined to code in VR that would totally work
| for me.
| elxr wrote:
| If the lenses are good, it's enough. Just have to up the
| font size a bit and give up some information density
| compared to, say, a 16-17 inch laptop.
|
| The Quest 3 is already close to good enough to spend decent
| chunks of time in reading text. Just have breaks every 30m
| to avoid mild strain.
|
| To me, the sweaty face issue is the main annoyance with
| working in these types of headsets.
| elxr wrote:
| > at least keep it reasonably competitive with the Meta Quest
|
| Having the headset also be a PC (and not essentially a phone
| OS) is worth a premium of >$250 at least. You can build
| desktop apps/games on this thing, it can (hopefully) do just
| about anything a normal PC can.
|
| The Quest is impressive in many ways, but it's a much
| narrower-use device. I don't think Valve's pricing needs to
| be in that same bracket to still sell.
| esskay wrote:
| They've cut some fairly shallow corners, like mono vs color
| cameras so I imagine getting it within a decent price range has
| been of high importance. I really doubt it'll be any thing
| close to $1k.
| wolfd wrote:
| I think it's possible that there's a technical reason for
| monochrome cameras. For example, to let in the maximum amount
| of IR light for tracking. Bayer filters reduce the amount of
| light getting in, so it might help the IR LEDs be visible on
| surrounding walls in the dark.
|
| Still hoping that you're right, though.
| lopis wrote:
| Not to mention this comes from a company that I respect and
| that has a proven record of trying to respect its users, unlike
| literally every other company making VR headsets. The fact that
| they are trying to making this an open device, and that the
| controllers have user-replaceable batteries is almost unheard
| of in any consumer device these days.
| piva00 wrote:
| Valve kinda shows how a well-managed private business ought
| to run: respect your customers, find a cash cow and use it
| for slowly expand into related markets to your niche, develop
| good products over a long period (SteamOS took many years to
| become something actually useful) without focusing on the
| mentality of hyper-growth, keep the stereotypical
| contemporary MBA thinking away, have a small but competent
| team.
|
| There are, of course, the issues with lootboxes but even
| there they've kept their hands much cleaner than any other
| game developer.
|
| It's a very well oiled machine, I had another VR headset
| ordered for sim racing, immediately canceled it when saw the
| Frame announcement because even if specs-wise it's a bit of a
| downgrade, I want to buy what Valve is selling.
| ehnto wrote:
| > There are, of course, the issues with lootboxes but even
| there they've kept their hands much cleaner than any other
| game developer.
|
| They do seem to get a pretty big pass on that. Wonder what
| it is about.
|
| Almost every other aspect of the company I find great, and
| I do wish they would release more games. Maybe Alyx 2 will
| come out with the headset? Could be what HLX has been this
| whole time, where people think it is HL3.
|
| On sim racing in VR, absolute game changer. I would never
| go back to screens, it's the perfect application for VR.
| Insanity wrote:
| I'm hoping for L4D3 in my lifetime lol. L4D2 is still my
| most played game of all time (~3000 hours in that game).
| I love it.
| msh wrote:
| Back4blood is more or less l4d3
| dns_snek wrote:
| That's sacrilege, that game doesn't even come close to
| the quality of Left 4 dead series and suffers from just
| about every problem that plagues so many modern games.
|
| Back 4 blood was just another "live service" game that
| stirred up hype, released in an extremely buggy state,
| poorly balanced, with terrible AI that was never fixed,
| without mod support or community servers. They cashed in
| on the initial surge of popularity, cashed in on the
| DLCs, and then it quickly died off because it didn't have
| any of the charm or reply value of the games they claimed
| to improve upon.
| daemonologist wrote:
| Word is they're aiming for less than the full Index kit (which
| was $1000), so good news there. I suspect it'll be fairly high
| up in that range though given the hardware.
|
| See "cheaper than index": https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-
| frame-official-announce...
| rbits wrote:
| Thanks for the article link. Nice quote from the article:
|
| > Unlike the Index controllers, Steam Frame Controllers don't
| have built-in hand grip straps. But Valve says it will sell
| them as an optional accessory for people who want them, a
| similar strategy to Meta.
|
| I was disappointed seeing no hand grip straps. I've never
| used a Valve Index but they seemed very useful. Very glad
| that they will still be available.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| As an Index controler and Pico user: The back straps are
| pretty much essential for any serious use; the controller
| purportedly includes finger tracking (capacitive) but you
| can't really open your hand without dropping the controller
| unless you have the strap.
|
| If as I currently intend I end up purchasing this device, I
| will definitely endeavour to obtain the controller straps
| as well as the top strap for the headset at the same time,
| and I recommend others do the same.
| koolala wrote:
| It also includes the spacer for wearing glasses.
| cloogshicer wrote:
| Genuine question, if you already own an Index, why would
| you also get this? Wireless functionality, or something
| else?
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| Wireless, weight, no lighthouses, standalone use, more
| polished rendering. It won't be prefect, but it'll be a
| heck of a lot better experience than what came before.
| andoando wrote:
| I bought the original Steam Index and pretty much never used it
| again cause its such a mess to have around. That plus the
| motion sickness. For applications where you're moving around in
| game though Id really want to try it again.
| RyJones wrote:
| from your keyboard to GabeN's ears. I've spent a lot of
| dollars supporting my local startup; it was mostly wasted.
| jjcm wrote:
| > The fact that this can run standalone
|
| Just make sure to wait for reviews on this front - it almost
| certainly can't run AAA games at the native resolution + fps.
| Likely it'll only be able to run lower req games on device.
| baq wrote:
| Can it run the terminal and vscode comfortably is what I'm
| very interested about. Not having high hopes due to it being
| only 2160px, but... a man can dream
| koolala wrote:
| We just need a terminal with stereo rendered distance field
| font.
| baq wrote:
| plug me into the matrix already so I can do without any
| screen at all
| riskable wrote:
| "I don't even see the code anymore... I see Steam,
| Proton, Fex..."
| alias_neo wrote:
| > Can it run the terminal and vscode comfortably is what
| I'm very interested about
|
| This. The combination of this being from Valve, and the
| fact it's highly likely to be an open Linux machine you can
| strap to your face, I'm looking to finally bite the bullet
| on a headset and the one thing I need to know is, can I use
| it for productivity, I'm used to working on 27"+ 4k
| monitors, _how much_ clarity am I going to sacrifice with
| this.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Sure, but there are already quite a few pretty nice looking
| games on Quest 3 running locally, so it can be done and
| should not be discounted as a gimmick.
|
| It has pretty important benefits - lowest possible latency &
| being able to just pick the headset any play anywhere.
| ehnto wrote:
| You're gonna love where VR is at right now. If you had been
| holding off until it's good enough, then I think you've timed
| it well. The Quest 3 from an experience point of view was the
| watershed headset for me, but the ecosystem being Meta makes it
| less good from a privacy and ownership point of view.
|
| But this headset solves the ecosystem aspect and brings that
| visual experience with it.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| At 2.5x fewer pixels vs the Vision Pro it doesn't make sense.
| That's 12 million pixels per eye vs 4.5 million pixels. Feels
| like a much more inferior product. The games aren't going to
| look great.
| 7bit wrote:
| Financially, it makes sense. I don't need the absolute best
| of everything. The Steam Frame already has a very solid and
| comparable display. The Vision Pro is the one that's
| absolutely insane - and the only one on the market with those
| specs
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yeah, Frame already seems to do all the right tradeoffs for
| an early 2026 VR headset - has resolution similar to the
| Quest 3 AND has eye tracking, enabling very nice and useful
| eye tracking based optimizations for both rendering and
| streaming.
|
| In comparison Meta might have cut down too much in Quest 3
| by omitting eye tracking.
| LukaD wrote:
| This looks really cool, but USB-A on the wireless adapter?
| Really?
| phantasmish wrote:
| Pretty sure the vast majority of device ports on plugged-in
| devices in my house are still USB-A. And the only non-
| phone/tablet devices I have that are C-only are Apple, I'm
| pretty sure. Everything else has at least one A port.
|
| It's only just getting to the point that if I search for USB
| peripherals (mice, flash sticks, whatever) in a non-Apple
| online computer hardware store without specifying I want USB-C,
| _some_ of the first page results _might_ be USB-C.
|
| USB-A appears poised to remain the safe choice that least-often
| demands your customer also buy an adapter for another couple
| years, minimum.
| krzyk wrote:
| It is my second laptop I got from my employer (replacement
| every few years) and it also has just usb c ports. I hate
| plugging in usb-a adapter. I would at least expect adapter
| included for usb c.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| I'st much less likely to break a usba dongle compare to usb c
| though.(the area is much mcuh bjgger) And I don't think the
| dongle really need the 40gb potential of a usbc port.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| I mean.. my X670E motherboard (a high end, modern mobo!) has
| only ONE usb-c port.. it has, in comparison, 3 usb-a 10gbps
| ports and another 4x usb-a 5gbps ports. Given the headset's
| main use case to be plugged in is for PC-VR game streaming, it
| makes sense that they'd go with USB-A. Maybe in a few years
| they can switch but right now most desktop mobos barely even
| have usb-c.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Some motherboard have a rear USB-C, but no internal front
| panel header.
|
| Desktop is so far behind on ports.
| newsclues wrote:
| Good engineering discussion from gamers nexus
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWUxObt1efQ
| cube2222 wrote:
| This is fantastic!
|
| A while ago I bought the Quest 3 and set it up with WiFi 6 for
| streaming games. It's a decent setup, but I only bought it cause
| I was tired of waiting for the "rumored new headset by Valve".
|
| And it seems everything on my wishlist is here:
|
| - foveated rendering based on eye tracking - this is excellent,
| and was I think only available in the Quest Pro until now
|
| - a dedicated wireless streaming dongle, with multiple radios on
| the headset - awesome, tuning WiFi 6 got me to a good-enough
| state, but I'm looking forward to a dedicated out-of-the-box
| solution
|
| - pancake lenses
|
| - inside-out tracking
|
| In general, having had the Valve Index previously, and then using
| the Quest 3, it's a night-and-day difference to play something
| like Alyx wireless. Much better clarity with pancake lenses, too.
|
| Main surprise here is their usage of a Snapdragon chip and not
| AMD, didn't expect this. I thought it would effectively be a
| steam deck hardware wise. Curious to see how well that works,
| esp. for standalone gaming. In practice though you'll likely want
| to be streaming any "pc-first" titles anyway.
| ge0n111 wrote:
| I think they made the right choice with Snapdragon chip... it
| will drop in and work as a dev kit for all the android
| toolchains that support quest3, devs will easily port quest3
| games etc... so it's basically a non-spyware quest3 which is
| what everyone wants at this point. Custom drivers on the wifi 6
| dongle are going to likely offer the best wireless experience,
| which again is what everyone wants.
|
| I'm curious how meta responds imo the only way to compete is on
| price/ease of use but i'm not interested in another quest the
| 'social features' are just an excuse to collect data.
| ehnto wrote:
| 100%, a non-spyware Quest 3 is what I wanted. The Q3 is a
| fantastic headset, easily the best amalgamation of features
| at the right level of performance. Very pragmatic.
|
| But Meta basically having access to my room in 3D, full
| audio, is not ideal. The very last company I want to invite
| into my home.
| vunderba wrote:
| From the spec sheet:
|
| _> Large FOV (up to 110 degrees)_
|
| Sigh. More than a decade later and we're still stuck at
| "submarine periscope" Field of view level. As somebody who's used
| the Pimax (~180-200 FOV), your definition of "large" may vary.
|
| _> Headstrap includes integrated dual audio drivers and and
| rechargeable battery on rear._
|
| Freaking thank you. Apple failed hard to learn the lesson of -
| it's not necessarily the weight that matters, it's the
| distribution of the weight.
| dzonga wrote:
| kudos to them for using AA batteries for the controller.
|
| will help the hardware last longer. cz non-removable lithium
| batteries suck.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Maybe, but I've seen more controllers destroyed by AA batteries
| that leaked and corroded the contacts than internal batteries
| that failed.
| jackvalentine wrote:
| It's good that we have decent NiMH batteries that I don't
| think leak like alkaline ones do (I've never seen one!).
|
| Lower voltages, but flatter discharge curve so pretty much
| everything works with them.
| foresto wrote:
| Let me guess: were they alkaline batteries, left in the
| device while not in use for several weeks or months?
| arduinomancer wrote:
| I've never seen that in my entire life
| foxandmouse wrote:
| Interesting they went with the 8 Gen 3 instead of something like
| the X Elite. From what I've seen, the 8 Gen 3 actually
| outperforms the Elite in emulation and running PC games. I wonder
| if that factored into the decision.
| aezart wrote:
| Wonder if/when prescription lenses will be available for it. I
| had to get some for my index since my glasses were too big to fit
| inside the headset.
| klipklop wrote:
| There will be.
| anonymars wrote:
| Deckard at last! https://isvalvedeckardout.com/
| skrebbel wrote:
| What a weird site. Am i getting it right that this "Deckard"
| was the code name for the Frame, it's out now, but the makers
| of the site went through all that trouble make a dotcom and a
| pedantic design but can't be bothered update it now that it is,
| indeed, out?
| drivers99 wrote:
| > it's out now
|
| It's not out, just announced.
| ethersteeds wrote:
| The timeline on the site you're critiquing says the project
| was confirmed in 2021. So they've been waiting a while.
|
| And it's _not_ out, it was "revealed" today with "early
| 2026" estimate for availability. No price yet.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware
| stetrain wrote:
| The site has been updated, it says "Announced on Steam -- not
| out yet."
|
| The headset isn't being released until early 2026.
| tym0 wrote:
| Now that they've ported Steam to Android with FEX + Proton [0]
| (what this is running), the question is will they release it for
| the rest of Android devices? There is a ton of Android gaming
| handhelds and people are already experimenting with things like
| Winlator [1] but having well supported way could be awesome.
|
| [0] https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX
|
| [1] https://github.com/brunodev85/winlator
| zzsshh wrote:
| Google has also agreed to officially open up to competing app
| stores from the next
| version(https://www.theverge.com/policy/813991/epic-google-
| proposed-...), so the time is ideal for this. Valve, if you're
| reading this, please release Steam for Android.
| robhlt wrote:
| It's running SteamOS according to the tech specs on the store
| page, not Android.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamframe
| SSLy wrote:
| this has nothing to do with Android
| TGower wrote:
| Unfortunately not, at least outside of the Linux VM shipping in
| new Android versions https://wiki.fex-
| emu.com/index.php/FAQ#Will_FEX-Emu_.28Linux...
| tym0 wrote:
| It appears I was wrong about Android. The fact that they said
| you could just install APKs on it made me think what they
| called SteamOS was just Android here but your link is clear
| that FEX doesn't run there.
|
| Guess they have yet another translation layer to run these
| APKs?
| rbits wrote:
| Probably Waydroid [1]. It's been around for a while and
| apparently works very well.
|
| [1] https://waydro.id
| cortesoft wrote:
| This looks fantastic. The only negative I see so far it is only
| monochrome passthrough. The full color passthrough on the Quest 3
| is pretty killer, it sucks to go backwards on that.
| Zarathruster wrote:
| I guess we're in a minority but I'm in full agreement. Color
| passthrough really felt like a game-changer, and I've long
| wished for a more open, non-Meta alternative. Guess we'll be
| waiting a bit longer
| mavamaarten wrote:
| I have a quest 2 where the passthrough is laughable. Would you
| really use it for anything other than getting a glimpse of the
| outside world? I sure don't, but that may be because of the
| shitty camera's. But I never saw the appeal of passthrough
| anyways, isn't the point of a VR headset to see a different
| reality? Like, not the real world?
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| with the galaxy xr, you don't have to choose. sometimes it's
| good to have windows in your reality, other times you can go
| to a fully immersive mode with different environments
| cortesoft wrote:
| I have both a quest 2 and quest 3 and you are right, the
| quest 2 is laughable. The quest 3 is WAY better, and is way
| closer to making it feel like you are just looking through
| glass (not quite, but on the way).
|
| Eh, I don't use it for augmented reality a TON, but there are
| some fun apps that my kids and I like to use that use the
| passthrough for augmented reality... one is a virtual
| aquarium thing where you can draw 'windows' on your wall that
| become a window to the ocean, with things swimming around. It
| is pretty cool.
|
| I mostly use it, though, for short term moving around things,
| like to pick up something in the real world or to figure out
| where I am. I guess that can work in monotone, but it really
| feels cool in full color.
| madsushi wrote:
| There's an expansion port on the front with a camera interface,
| so you could add on better AR cameras.
| lloda wrote:
| I think the passthrough is more useful when there's a VR OS to
| take advantage of it (map your real room/hands/kb/screen onto
| VR, let you pin stuff, etc.) and I'm not sure Valve is even
| planning to do that, or anyone is on the Linux side of things
| (?)
| bottlepalm wrote:
| It's so you can use it in a dimly lit room or even the dark.
| The Quest 3 doesn't work in either of those environments.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| They mention tracking the new Steam Controller, too.
|
| Which makes me wonder if they'll make a new Steam Deck that has
| the IR emitters in it, so the Frame could track the Deck?
|
| I wonder if the two working together could work well?
| slg wrote:
| It's interesting to see them putting more attention on playing
| traditional games with this. I have long thought that the most
| broadly viable use for VR headsets in gaming is giving users a
| big screen to play their regular games. There just doesn't
| actually appear to be much market for true VR games considering
| all the complicating factors like motion sickness or requiring a
| big play area. It reminds me of the Nintendo Wii. Taking turns
| playing Beat Saber with a few of your friends is fun just like
| Wii Sports was, but in the end people are going to spend a lot
| more time sitting on their couch to play something more
| traditional like Mario Kart.
| davedx wrote:
| It looks stunning, great design there
|
| There's a devkit... I'm disappointed, that's the Sony method? I
| actually tried to do dev for the Meta Quest 2 the other week and
| was disappointed there because it's my son's, and he can't sign
| up for a Meta dev account (age), so there's no way for me to do
| anything with it without factory resetting the thing. This is
| more disappointing though. Why can't I dev games for the consumer
| headset?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Have you tried adding a second user on the headset with your
| own account?
| davedx wrote:
| Yes that was the next thing I tried, but only the device
| "owner" can do development on it.
|
| The only solutions were
|
| 1) factory reset and take ownership of my son's device
|
| 2) buy another Quest
| TGower wrote:
| It sounds like the dev kit is more of a way to get devices out
| to devs before the full launch, I'm sure you can develop using
| the consumer hardware. The Adam Savage Tested video had
| interviews with the Valve team and it was pretty clear that
| "it's your computer" was a core part of the philosophy.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| I'm sure you can develop using the consumer hardware. I'm
| sure you can develop using the consumer hardware.
|
| > It depends though. Some console's devkit have memory or
| vram larger than consumer device. So it will allow un-
| optimized dev version of the softwares to run without crash.
| (And allow you to check what part goes wrong later instead of
| immediately fix it) Although you will need to test the
| production build on retail device eventually, it will make
| development easier.
| davedx wrote:
| Ah okay, a bit confusing wording there. I really think they
| should make that clearer...
| brazukadev wrote:
| Steam is becoming what Google or Apple was in the past but much
| better, I like it.
| poly2it wrote:
| A resolution of 2160@110deg is kind of low normally, effectively
| being around 20 pixels per degree. I wonder if they could pull
| off something like what the engineers behind the Simula VR
| headset did, where they shift the outer resolution to the centre
| of the lens, up to 35.5 PPD, higher than the Apple Vision Pro.
| Last I checked, it was difficult to find off-the-shelf VR
| displays suitable for pancake lenses with a resolution above
| 2160, so this might be the best option.
|
| https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/
| StumpChunkman wrote:
| Anybody know the limiting factor to providing lower IPDs on VR
| headsets? My wife had always struggled with this with an IPD in
| the 50s when we were exploring early gen VR headsets. The Frame
| bottoms out at 60.
| daemonologist wrote:
| As you lower the IPD you're scrunching the displays and optics
| closer and closer together and at some point you mechanically
| run out of room. You'd need to reduce the FOV or add mirrors or
| something to get the lenses to fit.
|
| There's probably also an element of it not being worth
| complicating the design to chase users in the long tail of
| IPDs. (My IPD is about 72, which is slightly outside the range
| on the _other_ end for this and most other headsets, despite it
| being less of a mechanical challenge.)
| skywal_l wrote:
| > Steam Frame Controllers: Powered by AA batteries (rated 40
| hours)
|
| Yes, I want to see standard batteries being used more. Too bad
| they didn't go with this on the Steam Controller.
| krzyk wrote:
| Why? It is a bummer to keep them, buy them when suddently they
| stop working, etc.
|
| While chargeable needs just a usb-c socket.
| akdev1l wrote:
| Devices with internal batteries basically have embedded
| expiration dates.
|
| Standard AAA or AA can be rechargeable so you don't need to
| keep buying more. I'd suggest buying like a 100 pack or
| something, they're not expensive.
| archon810 wrote:
| The ideal would be rechargeable AA battery support with a
| built-in USB-C that would natively support charging said AA
| battery.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| AA batteries have lots of different chemistries and they
| require different chargers or can't be charged at all.
| benoau wrote:
| You can also get a USB charger for them which is very
| convenient.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| At this point so many battery packs use the 2 double-a
| batteries side-by-side, I wish they just sold those as a
| usb-c rechargeable cartridge, that would make a lot of
| sense
| foresto wrote:
| Allow me to recommend low self-discharge NiMH batteries
| (Eneloop brand is excellent) and a good charger made for that
| chemistry.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I've seen mice with rechargeable AA batteries. Plugging in
| the mouse recharged the battery (the mouse is basically a
| battery charger). But you can also quickly swap them in and
| out if the cable is inconvenient. Best of both worlds.
| xmcqdpt2 wrote:
| Check this out
|
| https://addison-electronique.com/en/aaa-li-poly-
| rechargeable...
|
| Has technology gone too far
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I actually prefer rechargeable batteries.
|
| But rechargeable lithium batteries in AA form factor are cheap
| and cheerful. Even low quality ones will get 20 hours in that
| situation. So I have no more room to complain.
|
| Valve is weirdly good at making controllers efficient. The
| original steam controller could get 80 hours out of two AAs if
| you turn off rumble.
| nick49488171 wrote:
| 2160x2160 in each eye for the headset
| moffkalast wrote:
| 110 deg fov is a bit on the low side but I guess it'll have to
| do. I hate how 90% of VR headsets are designed to feel like you
| have binoculars strapped to your face, absolutely zero
| peripheral vision.
| hinkley wrote:
| One of the reasons I put off getting corrective lenses for a
| long time and kept trying to use contacts despite how
| horrible they make my eyeballs feel, is that I have an
| extremely wide peripheral vision. I can see my fingers wiggle
| behind the plane defined by my shoulders, I will react to
| motion out there.
|
| Having my FoV dumbed down to 90o sounds like hell, especially
| in a game where we are looking for opponents.
|
| Playing Doom on a widescreen monitor with the FoV
| modifications made it a lot less annoying. I want that even
| more today.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| > I can see my fingers wiggle behind the plane defined by
| my shoulders
|
| I am a bit confused: you can see your shoulders while you
| are looking forward?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > I am a bit confused: you can see your shoulders while
| you are looking forward?
|
| I can just about see my shoulders when i look forward,
| I'd probably also say my field of vision to be "the plane
| of view defined by my shoulders".
| hinkley wrote:
| The normal human field of vision is about 190deg, which
| mine is just about. If you don't have a stoop that will
| catch the front edge of your shoulders. Fingers wiggling
| with your shoulders slightly overextended is just easier
| to see than a shoulder shrug.
|
| It's the amount of compute power that my brain allows for
| peripheral vision that's the only unusual thing. But it
| makes video games feel claustrophobic to an unpleasant
| degree.
| lynnharry wrote:
| Have you tried rimless glasses? I don't think you need eye
| sight correction for your peripheral vision.
| yencabulator wrote:
| It's not that they're "designed to feel like", it's that the
| technology for better than 110 degrees just isn't there yet.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| That's gonna be one expensive BeatSaber machine, but after having
| owned an Index (and really feeling how nice that headset was when
| I got my current Quest 2), there's no way I'm not gonna get one.
| vanadium1st wrote:
| Such a miss not having good full-color AR included. I'm a VR
| enthusiast with a Meta Quest 3, and it's a shame that this
| headset is better than the Quest in every way except the most
| important one.
|
| In my opinion, VR gaming never becomes more than a gimmick. It
| adds a questionable improvement in graphics and immersion at the
| incredibly high cost of excluding yourself from the real world.
| Right now it's not worth it, and I don't think it ever will be,
| no matter how good the graphics get. That's assuming they even
| solve the motion sickness problem, which doesn't seem solvable to
| me at this point.
|
| The motion controls in VR will also always be severely limited by
| the fact that you can't see your surroundings. You can't
| meaningfully move around or swing your arms fast in any realistic
| home environment when you're in full VR. You're constantly at
| risk of punching something or breaking something, or both. So the
| controls have to become really stiff and avoid requiring wide
| movement, at which point you might as well just push buttons on a
| gamepad.
|
| But AR is a completely different thing. No motion sickness, no
| risk in any movement, you can move around without silly
| threadmills, and no exclusion from the world. It's truly amazing.
| The AR boxing, pickleball, ping pong and golf are so much closer
| to real thing then to a videogame adaptation, even the shitty
| Quest graphics don't ruin the magic. Those AR experiences don't
| work on videogame rules and really deserve their own name and
| category - they're as different from gaming as books are from
| movies. If VR headsets don't die out, AR is going to be the thing
| that brings them to the mainstream. I just wish it had more
| attention, more apps, and more non-Meta mainstream platforms. Not
| this time, sadly.
| madsushi wrote:
| There's an expansion port on the front with a camera interface,
| so you could add on better AR cameras.
| modeless wrote:
| Valve is focused on making a device that works well with their
| existing game catalog. It's a Steam device first, and it needs
| to be inexpensive to compete with Quest (which is subsidized by
| Meta), so they need to prioritize which features get included.
| I wouldn't be surprised to see a first party AR camera
| attachment a while after launch. The expansion port seems
| specifically designed for this, with the inclusion of MIPI CSI
| lanes for two cameras.
| vanadium1st wrote:
| I get that there needed to be tradeoffs, I just disagree with
| this particular one. I could suggest many other ways to save
| ten bucks in hardware costs. Any other cost saving measure
| would still allow to play the same games, just with worse
| performance. But this choice cuts the stock device off from
| an entire class of apps - in my opinion the best of them all.
| mavamaarten wrote:
| I'm sure they did their market research. For me it's the
| exact opposite. Performance is absolutely key to me, and AR
| is just a fad in my eyes. All it does for me is give a
| glimpse into the real world if I'm about to bump into
| something. AR games are scarce and have never truly
| impressed me.
| delusional wrote:
| I don't think the greyscale camera is mainly a cost concern.
| I imagine the greyscale camera has better low light and noise
| performance, which is quite important for tracking.
|
| The big difference seems to be that this headset doesn't have
| AR cameras at all, but reuse the mapping camera for some
| light passthrough duty.
| modeless wrote:
| The headsets that have AR cameras don't use them for
| tracking AFAIK. They all have monochrome cameras for that.
| The AR cameras are an additional cost that is only used for
| AR.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I wonder if this will be a VR trojan horse.
|
| The Steam Deck was wildly popular for a non-Nintendo device.
| It's got Linux up to 3% of total Steam playtime. If this has
| a similar draw (play every game on Steam without having to
| buy a TV), maybe the install base of VR will grow to a point
| where it's more feasible to make games that support it.
|
| It also makes SteamVR relevant again in a world where Oculus
| has been eating a lot of the mindshare by releasing
| affordable headsets and buying the most successful game
| studios.
| modeless wrote:
| It will be more expensive than Quest 3s and so is unlikely
| to grow the VR market significantly beyond what Meta has
| achieved so far IMO. I'd love to be wrong.
| theshackleford wrote:
| I have little to no interest in AR and i'm glad they didnt
| waste more money or resources on it. I don't use it on my Q3
| and I wouldnt use it on this.
| mavamaarten wrote:
| Exactly. Performance is welcome for everyone. AR is, right
| now, a gimmick that would eat into performance if you kept
| the price point the same. Good choice by Valve imo.
| hadlock wrote:
| Apparently Valve was able to use a true cell phone chip and get
| more raw performance out of it by using lower res monochrome
| cameras, whereas qualcomm's AR-capable chips use up a lot of
| the wafer for processing color AR video and DSP. Given it's
| built to a budget, and I don't ever use AR, monochrome AR seems
| like an acceptable tradeoff.
| cruano wrote:
| > It adds a questionable improvement in graphics and immersion
| at the incredibly high cost of excluding yourself from the real
| world.
|
| That's a feature for a good number of games, if not most. For
| example, Resident Evil 4/8 in VR are by far the best horror
| experiences I've had, and part of it is that you stop seeing
| your living room while playing.
|
| > The motion controls in VR will also always be severely
| limited by the fact that you can't see your surroundings.
|
| There is zero chance that aiming with a controller is more
| intuitive than point-and-shoot. What I get from your comment is
| that the movement can be awkward which is absolutely true, but
| plenty of games have neat ways around that. And then there are
| games that require no actual movement, like racing games with a
| sim setup.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > You can't meaningfully move around or swing your arms fast in
| any realistic home environment when you're in full VR. You're
| constantly at risk of punching something or breaking something,
| or both.
|
| You clear the area within the boundaries, leave a little buffer
| space to the walls, and respect the boundary warnings in game.
| No problems. You do need a few square meters without any
| furniture to do this.
|
| Boxing and ping pong feel just as great in VR as they do in AR.
| It's more a matter of the level of immersion: AR works well for
| table tennis, but fantasy games are severely limited in what
| they can do. The most impressive experiences are always in VR -
| "flying in space" doesn't work while looking at your living
| room walls.
| koolala wrote:
| What pass-through apps are you using for all this? I tried
| pass-through pingpong but it didn't fit in my room so it
| clipped through the wall uncomfortably. There is AR golf?
| vanadium1st wrote:
| Home Sports is a collection of five sports that includes
| amazing AR pickleball and badminton, and a pretty good AR
| mini-golf. So I would recommend starting with it. But it does
| need quite a bit of space--about 2 x 1.5 m. I had to
| rearrange my room to make it fit.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| AR is a gimmick. VR has real games people spend many hours in.
| People don't want to see their boring surroundings unless it's
| to find the couch or a bag of chips.
|
| The real reason the Frame is monochrome AR is because the
| cameras are also used for IR tracking which is better in
| monochrome. You can use the Frame in the dark or a dimly lit
| room - Quest 3 you can't. For real VR users the trade off is
| worth it.
| 7bit wrote:
| Most important one is so subjective. I don't care for AR a bit
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Looks exciting! It would be amazing if the headset turns out to
| be useful for coding without a monitor. Say, in the park.
| z3t4 wrote:
| It's doable. But you need 8k per eye to read text comfortable.
| But what would you use for input?
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| A compact keyboard and an accelerometer based mouse
| replacement. All wireless of course. There are a few devices
| on the market that'd fit the bill.
| gdown wrote:
| Like a wii-mote kind of thing? Is there anything out that's
| good enough for general desktop usage? I'd be really
| interested if it's actually at a usable state.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| https://www.tapwithus.com/
| p1necone wrote:
| Being in the park kinda loses its lustre when you've got a
| headset strapped to your face - I'd prefer a laptop with a
| screen that's still visible in sunlight.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I'd prefer a laptop with a screen that's still visible in
| sunlight.
|
| I don't understand why Amazon worked so hard to replace their
| neutral gray Kindles with "Kindle PaperWhite".
|
| Paper, the material, is so white that trying to read it in
| sunlight will hurt your eyes. Why would you want a white
| reading surface instead of a gray one?
| danudey wrote:
| It's not actually paper-white, though, thankfully. It's
| more just 'not as dingy gray'
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| The main shtick of Kindle Paperwhite, aside of the obvious
| ability to read in the dark, is not how white it is but
| rather how it can remove shadows when outside or in
| brightly lit rooms. You don't really notice this effect
| until you disable backlight and suddenly can notice the
| shadows cast by your fingers.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > aside of the obvious ability to read in the dark
|
| My Kindle Keyboard came with a case that hooked into it
| to draw power for a nice, orange booklight. It was a much
| better reading-in-bed experience than the Kindle Oasis
| with its uniform glow. :(
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Yeah I'd go a sunglasses-like setup - preferably driven by my
| phone. But big tech companies have yet to take a shine to
| that use case.
| Mashimo wrote:
| > Say, in the park.
|
| But why not use a laptop?
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Little disappointing its not got colour passthrough. I am not
| convinced this generation of headsets will really be the ones
| that AR breaks through but still its a bit disappointing and has
| been useful with the latest Quest headsets. Other than that it
| looks fairly solid.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It was noted in some articles that the "expansion port" could
| hypothetically be used for a color passthrough module later.
| But I also read that the Index had a similar port and never did
| much of anything with it, so that may never happen.
|
| Definitely a cost measure to not include color passthrough, I'm
| not in the market to replace my Quest 3S but I'm very curious
| to see what price they hit with this.
|
| Nice that it has a microSD slot so you can buy the low storage
| on and not be stuck with 256 GB forever.
| AISnakeOil wrote:
| Valve just defeated Meta and Xbox in one go. nice.
| mottey wrote:
| If it all launches with Half-Life 3 that works seamlessly across
| all 3 Steam platforms then we're living in the best timeline...
| krior wrote:
| > then we're living in the best timeline...
|
| Needs to run GNU Hurd for that.
| Zambyte wrote:
| If we're going that route, it should really be Lisp :)
| ehnto wrote:
| I am beginning to wonder if the rumoured HLX is actuallya VR
| native experience, perhaps Alyx 2. All the leaks have pointed
| toward increased focus on systems like objects having physical
| properties that would really add to immersion in VR.
| robbiet480 wrote:
| Trying to decide if Steam Frame is going to be better than Apple
| Vision Pro + ALVR + lighthouses... AVP has higher resolution and
| OLED displays with higher PPD but obviously weighs a lot more.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| There was a lot of discussion about some work they've done to
| minimize compression artifacts... that's the biggest drawback
| for me in terms of ALVR + AVP... I suppose time will tell.
| mobiledev2014 wrote:
| I own the Index and Vision and haven't tried this yet. I was
| considering buying PSVR2 controllers since they're officially
| supported but maybe I shouldn't bother?
| circuit10 wrote:
| One of the most interesting parts of this to me that not many
| people are talking about is what their approach will be to making
| Steam games work on ARM...
|
| I assume they will have put a lot of work into an emulation layer
| (maybe an existing one like FEX) to make it usable similar to
| what they did with Proton? This could be really good for the
| Linux ARM ecosystem in general
| preisschild wrote:
| Apparently they are heavily funding FEX-emu now and are using
| that
| rbits wrote:
| Yes! Steam on ARM finally! I hope it works well
| arnaudsm wrote:
| This is the first standalone headset with an open ecosystem.
| That's a big deal.
|
| Meta Quests & Apple Visions require developer verification to run
| your own software, and provide no root access, which slowed down
| innovation significantly.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Not to mention Meta abandoned the Quest 1 very quickly. I
| bought a game when it came out and never got around to playing
| it (had kids). I tried to play it recently and it no longer
| even works! PS30 down the drain, thanks Zuck.
|
| I guess I can't complain too much given that I got it for free.
| throwaway89201 wrote:
| I bought an Oculus Go last year for EUR 30. Its support has
| been dropped for quite some time, and you can only activate
| developer mode and sideloading through an old version of the
| Meta Horizons app [1]. But if you do that, there are 71 GiBs
| of games to explore on the Internet Archive [2]. Some need
| patching to remove an online check to a server that no longer
| exists, but that is easy enough to do with a (regrettably
| Windows) tool someone published.
|
| The Go is not the best headset of course, but the games are a
| different style because of the 3DoF tracking without
| camera's. Somewhat slower paced and sitting down. A style I
| personally like more.
|
| You can also unlock the device to get root on it [3], which
| is quite neat, although there doesn't seem to be any homebrew
| scene at all. Not even the most bare-bones launcher that
| doesn't require a Meta login.
|
| [1] That doesn't even seem intentional, but it does mean that
| once the old version of the app can't communicate with Meta
| servers anymore, any uninitialized Go turns into a brick.
|
| [2] https://archive.org/details/gear-vr-oculus-go
|
| [3] https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/unlocking-
| oculus-go...
| wayeq wrote:
| > PS30 down the drain, thanks Zuck.
|
| I'm sure he put it to good use. Like 500ms worth of upkeep
| for one of his yachts.
| Razengan wrote:
| I just want a "dumb" headset that I can use as a portable
| private display for my laptop.
|
| That's it.
|
| I don't need 3D, I don't need VR, I don't need weirdass
| controllers trying to be special. Just give me a damn simple
| monitor the size of my eyes.
|
| Fuck off with your XR OSes and "vision" for XR, not even Apple
| could get it fully right, the people in charge everywhere are
| too out of touch and have no clue where the fuck to go after
| smartphones.
| krastanov wrote:
| I am currently writing this from an xreal one pro. I think it
| fits what you are asking for.
| iddan wrote:
| There you go https://www.sightful.com/
| ehnto wrote:
| Then this is actually much closer than previous headsets?
|
| There is a lot going on to render the desktop in a tracked 3D
| space, all that has to happen somewhere. If you're expecting
| to plug a HDMI cable into a headset and have a good time then
| I think you're underestimating how much work is being done.
|
| OpenVR and OpenXR are really great software layers that help
| that all work out.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| HUD glasses kind of suck since having a display oriented to
| your head is uncomfortable. Adding 3DOF tracking only
| partially solves that, so you go 6DOF to maximize
| optical/vestibular comfort. Now you're rendering a virtual
| display within a virtual environment, but look at all that
| wasted space! So add more virtual monitors! Now you need some
| mechanism to manage them, so you add that and now you have a
| windowing system... so why are you rendering virtual monitors
| with fixed space desktops when you can just be rendering the
| application windows themselves?
|
| The best portable private display for your laptop will
| inevitably be a 6DOF tracked headset with an XR native
| desktop.
| Razengan wrote:
| Yes sorry about my excessive use of French in the comment,
| I didn't mean it has to be a fixed 1:1 slab of the
| realspace screen, desktop app windows in XR space would be
| ideal, but none of the products seem to be able to get it
| all right yet.
|
| Apple's visionOS comes close but it's crippled by the
| trademark Apple overcontrolling.
| strix_varius wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. What you're describing has
| existed for years.
| Razengan wrote:
| Well maybe not compatible with MacBooks then, with just a
| USB-C plug-and-play experience? or I presumed it didn't
| exist
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| My Viture AR glasses are just a dumb display with an
| accelerometer, and work extremely well.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| sorry, maybe i missed it. But how do you know the ecosystem is
| open?
|
| from the link we don't know if the OS can be changed (might be
| locked like many Android phones) or if a connected machine is
| required to run their DRM/Steam. The drivers may also not be
| open source
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Even just have direct access to hardware apis is already a
| big win. On Oculus quest. The closest you can get is running
| with webxr. But webxr suffer from all those performance
| problem of web platforms. (And bug of meta softwares. The
| recent quest browser have bug that prevent you from disabling
| spatial audio, rendering it not usable for watch video at
| all)
| theknarf wrote:
| It said its running Steam OS, which is just Linux.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Android is also just Linux. But i cant install Debian on my
| phone
| wombarly wrote:
| SteamOS at its base is just Arch with Steam and some
| additional software installed.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| that doesn't in any way mean you can install an alternate
| OS. But i get your point that at least you can run Arch
| stuff. Isnt Arch ARM support unofficial? (its been ages
| since i tried) You dont hear of people running it on RPis
| for example
| mavamaarten wrote:
| Well. It doesn't say in any docs or specs, but for what
| it's worth, Valve's hardware has always been open like
| that. You're free to install windows on your steam deck,
| for example.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Well. It doesn't say in any docs or specs, but for what
| it's worth
|
| They do _hint_ that you can install a different OS on it:
|
| > Just like any SteamOS device, install your own apps,
| open a browser, do what you want: It's your PC.
|
| Every other SteamOS device does allow you to install
| whatever OS on the device, so seems Frame will be the
| same, judging by that landing page blurb.
| surajrmal wrote:
| They also explicitly mention os. I'm highly doubtful a
| product with a Qualcomm soc will support installing an
| alternative os.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-dev-
| public@li...
|
| They're being a little vague about it but this
| collaboration to improve Arch's build
| service/infrastructure is being done in part to faciliate
| support of multiple architectures.
|
| iirc it was in Tested coverage that Valve said the
| hardware supports other OSes. It'd be out of character
| for Valve not to allow for this.
| sensanaty wrote:
| If it's anything like the Deck, then the version of
| SteamOS on it won't be locked down in any way whatsoever.
| You can install Windows or any other distro you want on
| the Deck with 0 issues (other than regular ones you'd
| experience anyways on any regular computer, nothing to do
| with Valve locking anything down).
| surajrmal wrote:
| The steam deck was not arm. Unlike the steam machine
| page, the steam frame page does not insinuate you can put
| a custom OS on it. On top of custom drivers which are not
| necessarily upstreamed, qualcomm socs always require
| closed source userspace daemons which are coupled to the
| kernel.
| tete wrote:
| Android isn't "just Linux". It's a heavily modified
| kernel, it's often an even closed source bootloader in
| many cases and it's completely untrue for userspace,
| where it incorporates stuff from other OSs (BSDs, etc.).
| There are huge amounts of blobs.
|
| Yes, there technically is a Linux kernel, but if it's
| "just Linux" then macOS is "just FreeBSD", because grep
| -V tells you so, because it has dtrace, because you run
| (ran?) Docker with effectively FreeBSD's bhyve, etc.
|
| If you wanna spin it even further neither are Safari and
| Chrome or any other Webkit browsers just Konqueror
| because they took the layout engine code from KDE
| (KHTML).
|
| And you can totally install Debian and even OpenBSD, etc.
| on a Steam Deck and at least the advertisement seems to
| indicate it won't be all that different for the VR
| headset.
| surajrmal wrote:
| The problem is that you're talking about the Linux
| desktop ecosystem whereas the op could be talking about
| the kernel. Both are just Linux (and the fact we've not
| evolved our nomenclature to differentiate the two is
| surprising). Also, fwiw, the android kernel is no longer
| heavily modified. Most of the custom stuff has been
| upstreamed.
| oceansky wrote:
| I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're
| refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've
| recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is
| not an operating system unto itself, but rather another
| free component of a fully functioning GNU system made
| useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital
| system components comprising a full OS as defined by
| POSIX.
|
| Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU
| system every day, without realizing it. Through a
| peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is
| widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its
| users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system,
| developed by the GNU Project.
|
| There really is a Linux, and these people are using it,
| but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is
| the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the
| machine's resources to the other programs that you run.
| The kernel is an essential part of an operating system,
| but useless by itself; it can only function in the
| context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally
| used in combination with the GNU operating system: the
| whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or
| GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are
| really distributions of GNU/Linux!
| Andrex wrote:
| Great username for this type of comment.
| piperswe wrote:
| It's SteamOS and SteamVR - you can run arbitrary aarch64
| Linux binaries that talk to SteamVR and they should just work
| bullen wrote:
| Yep, I'm back into VR with this move, specially if the
| price is closer to $500 than $1000.
|
| Unless the lenses/displays are bad, but I figure we would
| have heard by now?
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| from a cursory look . it seems SteamVR is intended to be
| used with their DRM platform and isn't open source. Maybe
| its a bit less limiting vs Meta's offering?
|
| i wouldnt characterize this as an "open ecosystem" though
| bullen wrote:
| The key takeaway is that you will rebuild the drivers
| less often:
|
| 1) The stack is mature now, we know what features can
| exist.
|
| 2) For me it's about having the same stack as on a 3588
| SBC, so I don't need to download many GB of Android
| software just to build/run the game.
|
| The distance to getting a open-source driver stack will
| probably be shorter because of these 2 things, meaning
| OpenVR/SteamVR being closed is less of a long term issue.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I'm confused. Why would you develop a game on a SBC
| (that's not powerful enough to do VR)? Why are you not
| just cross compiling?
|
| It's possible that you can have a full open source stack
| some day on these goggles.. but I don't think that's
| something that's obviously going to happen. SteamVR
| sounds like their version of GooglePlay Services
| bullen wrote:
| 3588 can do VR, just not Unity/Unreal VR. That is a
| problem with bloated engines not the 3588.
|
| All mainstream headsets get open-source drivers
| eventually: https://github.com/collabora/libsurvive
| utopiah wrote:
| > first standalone headset with an open ecosystem
|
| What about the Lynx XR1? Running Android sure but officially
| rooted (details https://lynx.miraheze.org/wiki/Rooting_Process
| ) and with Linux proper (details
| https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Lynx_R1_(lynx-r1) ) even
| though experimental.
| stanlarroque wrote:
| Yes we released our headset with root access and an open
| bootloader. We are going to announce our next headset in a
| couple of months :-)
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Sorry Stan, forgot about the Lynx, huge fan of your work!
| m4rtink wrote:
| Cool! Do you have a link for a store where I can buy it ?
| ;-)
| m4rtink wrote:
| There is but one issue with the Lynx XR1 - no one really got
| it. A few backers randomly got a few pieces but many others
| (including myself) are still waiting for their device to
| arrive (and will most likely wait for ever).
|
| This has a serious impact on the developer ecosystem - there
| are still a few people who got their devices and are doing
| interesting work, but with so few users actually having
| devices the community is too small for much progress to be
| expected.
|
| It's kinda similar to the old Jolla Tablet - it was a very
| interesting device (an x86 tablet running an open Linux
| distro in 2013!) but it ended up in too few hands due to
| funding issues & the amount of Sailfish OS apps actually
| supporting the tablet (eg. big screen, native x86 builds,
| etc.) reflected that.
| utopiah wrote:
| > many others (including myself) are still waiting for
| their device
|
| Sucks, sorry to hear that :(
| KolibriFly wrote:
| Valve giving users root access out of the box is huge. It puts
| the headset in the same category as a real PC
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Praise be to gaben
| jackhalford wrote:
| Nice to finally have a hackable headset on the market. I've been
| using the dji goggles for fpv flying because of vendor lock in. I
| wonder I could use these with OpenIPC to fly fpv with a fully
| open video stack.
| robocat wrote:
| I'm looking forward to seeing what hacks get done to the
| devices and what software is dreamed up.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Saw that the Steam Frame was wireless and lost interest. Wireless
| is always an extra complication that never improves things. I've
| learned lots about framing to hardwire my home network. Sure,
| make it an option, but I won't pay for latency, battery life,
| battery weight, cost, or pairing issues of wireless solutions.
| Give me (replaceable, standard) cables anyday!
|
| That said, there is hope, because if there is a wireless version
| and it takes off, it can't be hard to make a wired version.
| p1necone wrote:
| I agree with you for most things, but a VR headset is
| definitely something where the pros outweigh the cons vis a vis
| avoiding wires for me.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| It's also wired, and you could even take out the battery for
| the weight.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It doesn't improve quality and latency, but for VR it
| absolutely improves not dealing with a cable that you can't see
| and will tangle yourself up with if you turn either direction
| more than once
|
| Two notes on how Steam Frame is handling this
|
| - It's a standalone headset, less demanding games run directly
| on the Steam Frame and the wireless connection doesn't factor
| in to anything.
|
| - It makes two simultaneous wifi connections, one on 5 ghz for
| connecting to your wifi network / internet, and another on 6
| ghz for connecting to your streaming PC. They include an
| official 6 ghz USB dongle for the PC so you don't have to deal
| with finding which 3rd party option will work reliably.
| RGBCube wrote:
| Finally, a modern VR headset that doesn't hate you.
| jdprgm wrote:
| Annoying not to include price or release date.
|
| Considering the quest 3 came out 2 entire years ago this feels
| too close in terms of hardware instead of feeling like a next
| generation headset.
|
| Responses do seem fairly positive though. I wonder if this had
| been released as the quest 4 though would you all be reacting as
| positively?
| seabombs wrote:
| Brilliant, I'm anxiously awaiting Australian pricing details (and
| release dates...) but could definitely seeing myself getting one
| of these as my first VR device, and the controller looks great
| too.
|
| Being able to run games on device (and on ARM) is very cool, but
| I wonder if there is a cheaper/lighter/longer-battery-life
| version of this that is stream only? That's probably a better fit
| for me personally, I can't imagine not having a streaming device
| nearby when I would be using it.
|
| Also hate to be picky, but looks like the frame controllers pair
| directly to the headset so maybe can't be used on their own?
| Would be nice to use them standalone too.
| month13 wrote:
| I really hope it's not going to take years to be sold in
| Australia, like the Steam Deck took.
| ehnto wrote:
| The VR base stations and controllers were/are also hard to
| get.
| pcchristie wrote:
| I'm fairly sure/wishful thinking that the reason the last
| round of Valve hardware was very late/absent in Australia was
| because it was the time that the ACCC took Valve to court for
| its no refunds policy (and won). Now that Valve has rectified
| that and are in good standing in Australia, I'm hoping we see
| all this new hardware ASAP, alongside the rest of the world.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The dedicated communication dongle between the PC and the headset
| sounds like a real game changer.
|
| Right now getting fast enough and reliable wireless connection
| means either tweaking to death one's setup or spending car money
| on the entire setup. In particular normal people usually don't
| realize how crappy their wi-fi and assume it's all the same,
| which would end in blaming the poor perf on the headset.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Reminds me of Apple's AWDL, a similar workaround for crappy
| networks when the devices need a high speed low latency
| network. I do wonder if the headset here will do similar
| channel hoping tricks to join both the dongle's network and the
| normal wifi network.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| As I understand it it's two separate radio and stack to have
| continuous link to both.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| It will be strange to be playing on a big VR screen with your
| controller and it's colored and beautiful and everything around
| it is black and white.
|
| I wonder what their solution to that is. Virtual environments?
| sensanaty wrote:
| Probably a dumb question, I might've missed it in the description
| somewhere, but I assume the onboard PC is mostly to facilitate
| the streaming functionality, and it will stream from your main
| machine to the headset right?
|
| I'm very curious about the latency if that's the case. This might
| be the trigger for me to get into VR finally, but I'm worried
| that if there's noticeable lag in the stream that I'll basically
| cover myself in vomit from motion sickness lol
| boopmaster wrote:
| it supports standalone, may allow sideloading apks too, sounds
| more powerful than quest3 and also - no lag because the 6Ghz
| wifi doesn't go through the router, so long as you are close to
| the PCVR source - it's probably lag free. how did you do?
| ehnto wrote:
| The latency introduced by the network link will be tiny
| compared to most games total frame latency. I would prefer a
| cable link just so I don't have to worry about charging it
| ever, but I think the wireless link will be fine from a lag
| perspective.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I will buy. When is it out?
| skeaker wrote:
| If it's anything like the Deck, they will eventually announce a
| more tangible release date (right now it's early 2026) and then
| announce a date for preorders to open. For the Deck unless you
| got into the preorder queue within ~1 minute you had to wait
| several months for it to be delivered to you.
| senectus1 wrote:
| Not a single piece of footage with someone wearing glasses and
| the Steam Frame
|
| I guess we get screwed over again :-(
| ixwt wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. But the specs do mention "Eye Glasses Max
| Width 140mm"
| senectus1 wrote:
| oh i missed that. nice, I'm hopeful.
| vimredo wrote:
| The LTT video on the Steam Frame mentions an optional spacer
| for glasses and that Valve is working on getting prescription
| lenses for the Steam Frame.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I find it mind boggling that so many VR headsets cannot be used
| with glasses.
|
| Imagine an engineering team and developers working on the
| device. There must be a pretty large proportion of folks with
| glasses. Does the fact that they cannot use their own product
| not raise a flag in any way!?
|
| Anyway, for this particular model, others indicate that there
| may be an (optional?) spacer.
|
| "Optional" sounds kinda sucky. Someone buys the headset, has a
| friend over, and the friend can't use it because support for
| glasses is optional? It's not like glasses are a niche thing.
| iamcreasy wrote:
| Will SteamFrame ARM support paired with Alyssa Rosenzweig's work
| - large amount of Steam games are very close to be able to run on
| mac hardware, right?
| pornel wrote:
| Apple already has excellent x86 emulation. But Apple has
| locked-down GPU with a proprietary API that adds another
| unnecessary translation layer where it hurts more.
| zhynn wrote:
| Give it a try: https://fex-emu.com/
| famahar wrote:
| The main thing I dislike about VR is how uncomfortable it is on
| my head and how hard it is to adjust that comfort. Too much
| friction to enjoy. If I can just easily slip these on that would
| be perfect.
|
| I also never got used to the feeling of being completely detached
| from my own world. I know that's the point of VR, for it to be
| completely immersive but it felt very jarring not knowing what
| was going on around me.
| abtinf wrote:
| It is unfortunate that it doesn't have a strap that goes over the
| top of your head. It is extremely irritating that almost every
| headset does this, then charges extra for an actually usable
| strap that takes the pressure off of your face.
| ehnto wrote:
| Yeah I noticed that as well. There is no material that can defy
| the physics, top strap is the best.
| tripdout wrote:
| > Steam Frame is a PC: ... Just like any SteamOS device, install
| your own apps, open a browser, do what you want: It's your PC.
|
| Always glad to see this.
| thefunnyman wrote:
| I'm surprised no one is talking about the fact that the headset
| is ARM and that valve has been heavily contributing to the
| translation layer FEX.
|
| I love my steam deck, but lately find myself reaching for
| emulation handhelds like the Retroid Pocket 5 more due to smaller
| size, especially when I'm leaving the house. There's already
| projects like GameNative that try to hack steam onto these
| devices, but if valve offers an official client on Android and
| other arm devices that would be incredible.
|
| Edit: Some interesting insights in the FEX FAQ about why it's not
| a great fit for Android right now [0]. Interested to see if this
| ARM version of steamos is installable on other devices though.
| RP5 can already run alternatives like Rocknix
|
| [0] https://wiki.fex-emu.com/index.php/FAQ
| serf wrote:
| I would've never bet on an Arch being the one that won the gaming
| market, but here we are. Wild.
| ehnto wrote:
| I am running Endeavour OS an Arch based distro, and it has been
| almost hassle free for games. Even less hassle than windows
| since I didn'teven have to download and install GPU drivers.
| Games with anti-cheat sometimes won't run, but that's not the
| fault of the OS.
|
| I don't play just niche games either, AAA titles work too.
| Currently playing Arc Raiders without issue and that only just
| came out. Installed it via steam, started playing. 10 years ago
| I would never have seen this coming.
| ivanb wrote:
| It was so thoughtful of them to use IR tracking. Bed time gaming
| becomes much easier. I wonder if there was a choice between color
| passthrough and IR tracking and they chose the latter. Good
| choice!
| koolala wrote:
| Night vision computer goggles!
| bastawhiz wrote:
| It really cannot be understated how big of a deal this is. The
| tech here is impressive AND they're not trying to lock you in.
| Practically speaking it's the only VR headset that holds real-
| world appeal for the vast majority of gamers, because it plays
| the games they're already playing.
| quux0r wrote:
| I'm holding out hope that this could be utilized in a similar
| fashion to the Apple Vision Pro's Remote Desktop. I'd love the
| chance to work in a coffee shop or plane and not need to look
| down for prolonged periods of time. I'm hoping that that dongle
| is able to be used as video pass through.
| randyrand wrote:
| It's probably too low res. AVP is 3.4K, this is 2.1K spread
| over a wider FOV.
| fra wrote:
| Extremely impressive that they were able to ship inside-out
| tracking, pancake lenses, and eye tracking + foveated rendering.
| Each of these is a serious engineering challenge. Very few
| organizations could pull this off.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| It's not foveated rendering, it's foveated streaming
| martin82 wrote:
| People warn to not hold smartphones near the head for too long
| due to too strong signal strenghts...
|
| Is it not a concern to strap such a powerful defive that receives
| super strong signals right onto the head for hours??
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| No.
| jayd16 wrote:
| So are we getting a Steam Phone? If not, why not?
| yugioh3 wrote:
| i wonder if foveated streaming combined with foveated rendering
| could be used in the cloud gaming space?
|
| if latency is low enough, then you could get a super high
| fidelity experience on a thin client VR display with low cost
| rendering server side.
|
| Nvidia GeForce Now is already very impressive for streaming games
| at full field of view 4k.
|
| thin client VR gives you longer battery life, lighter devices,
| lower entry cost. and with a cloud gaming service rendering the
| game, an even lower barrier to entry
| karlkloss wrote:
| Steam does a lot of things right here, but also some things
| wrong, which is unfortunately a dealbreaker for me.
|
| I read the specs and got excited, until I read about the
| resolution. 2160x2160 is what I have now with the Pico 4, and
| while it's ok for entertainment, and acceptable for browsing and
| reading, it's far too low for professional work.
|
| Linux would have been great, but I can't justify spending money
| on a headset with exactly the same low resolution as my current
| one.
|
| Also, I've become used to color passthrough, and going back to
| monochrome would feel like a big regression.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| To be fair its obviously not meant for professional work
|
| Valve is a game company
| bottlepalm wrote:
| I don't think any VR headset is good for professional work due
| to the focal plane mismatch which causes eye strain with long
| term use. Unless you like using a computer with a screen 4 feet
| away. For most people that's pretty uncomfortable for
| productivity work.
| koolala wrote:
| LinuxVR on this + the Steam Machine will be awesome.
| rudimentary_phy wrote:
| I've actually just recently started using my Quest 3 again
| through virtual desktop. I found the sharpening feature to
| actually make text look good enough that I'm able to work in it
| for hours uninterrupted, mostly writing papers and coding.
|
| I'm super excited for this launch and for all the crazy open
| source builds, mods, and fun that are going to come from an open
| VR system (or at least that's my hope).
| barrenko wrote:
| I am unable to parse announcements such as for this Valve
| product. Could I use this as a thing through which to spawn
| multiple monitors and code / read papers?
| rudimentary_phy wrote:
| Definitely. There will be apps that will allow this (Virtual
| Desktop Classic is on steam already), and I foresee some neat
| things coming from its more open environment.
|
| On the other hand, it will be highly subjective. I have found
| that the sharpening algorithms they have put into apps like
| Virtual Desktop to be sufficient for me to read text with,
| but it will probably bother some people. The Quest 3 and
| Valve's will have very similar resolutions.
|
| And although it looks like this Valve product will actually
| be quite light, the weight could be another factor in its use
| over many hours.
|
| For some people, XR glasses with OLED screens might provide a
| better experience as well if you are looking solely for
| monitor or tv support. I kind of like going to an entirely
| new environment to work in for a while, so I appreciate the
| VR aspect, but if you are looking only for screen support, XR
| glasses may be the better choice (there are quite a few
| models, though, and I unfortunately don't know the market
| well enough to make suggestions on that).
| coopykins wrote:
| It's the first VR device I consider buying.
| ranguna wrote:
| This feels like a really great headset. It was going to be an
| instant buy for me until I realised it has LCDs instead of OLEDs.
| I'll wait for reviews. I don't really want to buy these if they
| release another OLED version down the line.
|
| Also, if this is arm and it has steam in it, that means we can
| finally run steam on arm, which means we can finally install
| steam "natively" on android Linux, specially now that we have the
| terminal app on android 16.
|
| Can't wait for graphical acceleration to be fully merged to the
| terminal app and we have Linux running on android with near
| native performance and steam.
| bottlepalm wrote:
| OLEDs have problems in VR with glare, persistence, refresh
| rate, power usage, heat, etc.. the LCDs in the Frame can hit
| 144 hertz - that's what you really want for VR gaming.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| Can the miniature OLEDs not go to 144Hz yet? Or is it because
| of power/heat density?
| heisnotanalien wrote:
| Yesss. I will never buy anything Meta so happy to see this.
| nottorp wrote:
| Stupid links insist on opening in the steam app on mobile. I do
| have it installed but my login expired years ago and I'm not
| renewing it.
|
| Guess I won't find out what this is about any time soon...
| hn111 wrote:
| Opening it in private tabs should help, at least on iOS.
| rifty wrote:
| It felt like the headset hardware had reached a sweet spot for
| the moment, but with this announcement the software situation is
| now also going to be reaching a similar place. Now we have a
| continuity of freedom with a PC OS on the headset away from home
| as well as the full mobility of a untethered headset display with
| the full power of a stationary PC at home. Can't wait to see what
| dev's do with this.
| KolibriFly wrote:
| Cool to see Valve committing to the ecosystem like this
| poulpy123 wrote:
| The IPD range is a bit on the lower side, which is unfortunate
| knowing it can make a VR headset unusable and that it is just a
| matter of design and not technology
| neves wrote:
| I use glasses. Can I use it?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| This will probably make me vomit as hard as any other vr headset
| i tried, right?
| divan wrote:
| Are there any real-world tests or reviews of foveated streaming
| in actual gameplay? I'm wondering how it holds up in fast
| shooters where you depend on tiny cues in your peripheral vision.
| Wouldn't the lower-resolution periphery make it harder to notice
| subtle movement?
| InterlooperX wrote:
| I am wondering about this "dedicated 6 GHz dongle". So, I am
| gathering that this thing, just like the quest will be able to
| run things locally but is also supposed to be able to stream pcvr
| stuff from a connected pc where steam is running.
|
| I would have thought they give you a wired connection for that.
| you know, like the quest. but with the option to do it wireless.
|
| My question would be: given that the wireless solution in the
| quest apparently is a peer-to-peer pairing of the headset and the
| pc through the local networks wireless router, just much of a
| difference will this dedicated 6GHz dongle make?
|
| Would I be kidding myself if I assumed using this dongle would
| give me the analog experience of when I am using a dedicated
| dongle to connect my xboy controller to my pc? I mean, I plug it
| in, the dongle automagically comes pre-paired with the headset, I
| start steam on pc, hit play on a VR title and I get to play right
| away? Because that is my current experience with my controller
| that is connected via a dedicated wireless dongle. I hated the
| bluetooth connection. But using this dongle is really making a
| difference here.
|
| So, I wonder just how "painless" this will all be with the new
| headset. I held out on buying a quest because the wireless
| connection through my router would not be possible simply because
| I cant change my router at the moment and while it is fine for
| everything i use it for, it would not be enough to stream the
| quest data. Therefore I would have always wanted a "wired"
| connection, simply because my router wouldnt be able to do it.
|
| Therefore I was a bit miffed when I learned that this new headset
| would not come with a wired option. But if this dongle can do
| everything a wired connection can do without having to go through
| my router then this would be absolutely game changing for me.
| nektro wrote:
| another slam dunk from Valve
| antonyh wrote:
| I have a Quest 2 that I don't care for, so it's caught me
| somewhat offguard how much I want this. The whole set please. I
| thought I'd just want the controller, but everything here looks
| exciting to me.
| storus wrote:
| OK, so it's Valve's version of HP Reverb G2 just released 5 years
| later. It doesn't even match the best Pimax/HTC, not to mention
| Apple's one.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| YouTube just happened to show me Gamers Nexus Lossless Scaling &
| Lossless Frame Generation video just now. [1]
|
| Which, I can't help but wonder. If this ran on the Frame... To
| aid in streaming from your desktop... In conjunction with
| Foveated Streaming...
|
| What's even more bonkers to me is the idea that this could really
| be baked in to the streaming, if you think about it.
|
| Server generates 100 beautiful frames in one second.
|
| The streaming hardware reminds the server that with the current
| network conditions, that it can only handle X bits per second.
|
| The Frame says, "Hey, here's where the eyes were looking, here's
| where they are looking, here's where they're projected to look."
|
| The Server knows how many actual frames it can send in a second.
|
| But the Server can run the same Lossless Scaling & Lossless Frame
| Generation that the client will run.
|
| The Server can then compare the predicted frames against the
| actual frames, and it can send the delta needed to correct the
| predictions. Especially in areas close to where the eyes are
| looking.
|
| The Client consumes the stream, predicts frames, applies the
| delta, and ends up with better framerate and quality...
|
| Can you do this all low latency, too? I suspect so.
|
| Add it all up, and this is pretty bonkers. I mean, it's kind of
| obvious that that's how streaming "should work," but I think I
| hadn't really put it all together yet in my mind. My mental model
| was too "off the shelf." It didn't include how much effort the
| client could do... And that the server could then also do, to
| help the client... It's really a beautiful pairing, when you
| think about it.
|
| What's really bonkers is that Steam could learn what final images
| are supposed to look like, for a given game, and train AI
| specifically for that game. Update the server and the client, and
| bam, everyone gets better quality. With zero developer
| interaction.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w_Hqngky0s
| WithinReason wrote:
| This would solve the problem of bandwidth which is not a
| problem (250MB/s is enough, Valve says)
| VikingCoder wrote:
| This immediately made me wonder about a Steam Machine driving
| multiple Steam Frames for multiplayer games.
|
| That could be super easy for a developer to make, all in one
| process, with no networking requirement for the game logic...
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Next question in my head...
|
| Can we use one Steam Machine to drive, say, 4 to 16 Steam Frames.
|
| Multiplayer gameplay, like Goldeneye. With the convenience that
| all of the state is in memory in one process, so there's no
| networking layer in the gameplay logic itself.
|
| And you can't peak at the other players' screens.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| GPU horsepower isn't there for that.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| It depends entirely on the game.
|
| For a AAA modern game, you're right - of course not.
|
| But remember, they're saying this thing is six times as
| powerful as the Steam Deck.
|
| That sounds like it might be able to handle 4 players running
| at about as good as on the Steam Deck.
|
| And that's ignoring the whole idea of the server running on
| the Steam Machine, and custom clients running on everyone's
| Steam Frames. That would give you even more compute power.
|
| I like the idea that the Steam Frame, in this "Living Room"
| scenario, doesn't even need to do network prediction. It just
| blasts game state to each of the clients.
|
| So what, there's multi-player games on the same TV, like
| Goldeneye 64.
|
| There's LAN games.
|
| And now there's maybe a new category... Living Room, Multi-
| Screen games?
| dcchambers wrote:
| This is so much more interesting than the Apple Vision Pro/Quest
| for one main reason: An open builder-friendly platform.
| yuters wrote:
| Wow this is perfect timing! I've dusted out my old Valve Index
| tuesday so my kids could try The Lab. It now shows a green pixels
| line on the right. Also the headset is too heavy for them and not
| easy to adjust, and I had to hold the cable so they don't trip
| over it. This new headset will be perfect for them.
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