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Steam Frame

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Frame

#321

Post by andoando »

eptcyka wrote: post #276
andoando wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#322

Post by thaumasiotes »

p1necone wrote: post #288
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #186

Looks exciting! It would be amazing if the headset turns out to be useful for coding without a monitor. Say, in the park.

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.

> 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?

Re: Steam Frame

#323

Post by bsimpson »

modeless wrote: post #236
vanadium1st wrote: post #185

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, an…

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…

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#324

Post by rbits »

daemonologist wrote: post #197
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…

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...

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#325

Post by sergiotapia »

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?

Re: Steam Frame

#326

Post by rbits »

circuit10 wrote: post #252

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

Yes! Steam on ARM finally! I hope it works well

Re: Steam Frame

#327

Post by hinkley »

moffkalast wrote: post #287
nick49488171 wrote: post #175

2160x2160 in each eye for the headset

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.

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#328

Post by rbits »

tym0 wrote: post #306
TGower wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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?

Probably Waydroid [1]. It's been around for a while and apparently works very well.

[1] https://waydro.id

Re: Steam Frame

#329

Post by cadamsdotcom »

p1necone wrote: post #288
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #186

Looks exciting! It would be amazing if the headset turns out to be useful for coding without a monitor. Say, in the park.

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.

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#330

Post by danudey »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #322
p1necone wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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?

It's not actually paper-white, though, thankfully. It's more just 'not as dingy gray'
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