Live data from Hacker News

Steam Frame

store.steampowered.com

331–340 of 717 posts

Re: Steam Frame

#331
post #206

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

It's doable. But you need 8k per eye to read text comfortable. But what would you use for input?

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#332

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.

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! £30 down the drain, thanks Zuck. I guess I can't complain too much given that I got it for free.

I bought an Oculus Go last year for € 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...

Re: Steam Frame

#333

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.

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…

I am currently writing this from an xreal one pro. I think it fits what you are asking for.

Re: Steam Frame

#334
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

Re: Steam Frame

#335

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.

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…

There you go https://www.sightful.com/

Re: Steam Frame

#336

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…

And foveated streaming has a 1-2ms wireless latency on modern GPUs according to LTT. Insane.

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#337

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.

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?

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.

Re: Steam Frame

#338

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…

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?

Re: Steam Frame

#339

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! 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.

Re: Steam Frame

#340
post #123

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 consum…

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.
Post reply on HN