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Steam Frame

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Frame

#101

Post by torginus »

phantasmish wrote: post #72
torginus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I know but the Frame supports regular x86 games as well in standalone mode.

Re: Steam Frame

#102

Post by cube2222 »

monocasa wrote: post #99
modeless wrote: post #60

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 bro…

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 op…

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#103

Post by Philpax »

stetrain wrote: post #43
skeaker wrote: post #10

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.

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.

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.)

Re: Steam Frame

#104

Post by omneity »

monocasa wrote: post #99
modeless wrote: post #60

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 bro…

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 op…

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#105

Post by klohto »

torginus wrote: post #101
phantasmish wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know but the Frame supports regular x86 games as well in standalone mode.

you run FEX, not direct ARM games

Re: Steam Frame

#106

Post by Fernicia »

modeless wrote: post #89
xeonmc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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.

Couldn't you get around that by having a "zoom" feature on a very large but distant monitor?

Re: Steam Frame

#107

Post by cortesoft »

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#108

Post by slg »

t-writescode wrote: post #57
xandrius wrote: post #46

Kind of weird using AA batteries, I'd imagine something else would be better suited for this?

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.

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#109

Post by aljgz »

vunderba wrote: post #83
Insanity wrote: post #70

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…

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.

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

Re: Steam Frame

#110

Post by monocasa »

cube2222 wrote: post #102
monocasa wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 op…

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.

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.
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