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Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

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Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#151

Post by bigyabai »

uejfiweun wrote: post #148
ncr100 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this is what you had in mind: Projected 2D views into a 3D "movie screen" environment is a feature of the Frame, per my understanding of their marketing, and of early reviewers' experiences. If you meant, "do they take 2D render frames from videogames and convert them into pseudo-3d or actual 3d where the user can tilt their head to see a different view INTO the 2D game's universe, e.g. see behind bushes…

I mean, you don't need to go THAT far, regular 3DTVs didn't have that capability. But the possibility is there for fixed-position 3D.

Stereoscopy is definitely possible, but it would be hard to hack it in without developer cooperation. I don't really see it happening for most flatscreen titles.

FWIW though, SteamVR already supports playing non-VR games on a "projected" display using any regular headset. It's not exclusive to the Frame, nor a future feature!

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#152

Post by jefftk »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81
zamalek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS. Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they sell games. These devices are merely another storefront. Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community. Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by [mostly] doing…

This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on occasion. When your competition is EA... it's not hard.

What's wrong with hats?

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#153

Post by [deleted] »

jsheard wrote: post #105
nananana9 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made the new refund policy worldwide, which they absolutely did not have to.

Sure, but I imagine they saw the dominoes falling and realized that the optics of going down kicking and screaming in endless battles against basic consumer rights would be exceptionally bad. If they hadn't fully conceded then the EU would have been up their ass too before long.

[deleted]

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#154

Post by technofiend »

bauble wrote: post #106
stavros wrote: post #4

I don't play games almost ever, but I'm going to buy all the products Valve releases soon, just to support their OSS efforts. They seem to be the only vendor that's opening stuff up, rather than locking it down.

I'm staring at the EOL of Windows 10, which I use on my game machine. I'll happily get one of the cubes for my next box. I'd like this to be the end of my Windows usage.

You did say "I'd like this to be the end of my Windows usage." Even so, if you're not ready to move tomorrow, you can give up some privacy for the next year and continue to get patches by logging in to Microsoft. Windows 10 LTSC is a possibility if you somehow qualify for a license, although there's no guarantee the latest Nvidia drivers will work on it, some version of them will, or you can punt and run Linux on your current PC until the steam cube comes out. Pick a Linux distribution you like and run Steam, or go down the rabbit hole of running native Steam OS.

I personally preferred Fedora for this but mostly because my employer is a redhat shop. It's not otherwise (as far as I know) any better or worse than any other distro for gaming.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#155

Post by koolala »

stavros wrote: post #126
bryanlarsen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The steam machine is a $350 server + a $300 GPU + a $200 controller. A good deal for $500-$700, but only if you want the GPU and controller.

The Steam Machine doesn't come with the Steam controller, though, as far as I know.

Two options with controller and without. Two options for memory 512gb and 2tb. 4 skews.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#156

Post by koolala »

uejfiweun wrote: post #149
PoignardAzur wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like VorpX?

I mean like an official Valve fork of VorpX that works just as well as Proton. I have not had the best experiences with VorpX. But it becomes a much easier problem if you have standardized hardware and software.

VorpX is closed source so not a fork. Seems like they could do things at the driver level.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#157

Post by [deleted] »

l11r wrote: post #71
rpmisms wrote: post #43

It's incredibly obvious that they're trying to make Steam Deck 2 ARM-based. That's the generational change Valve is waiting for. This is gonna be fantastic.

There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many times that they are not interested in minor performance improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).

[deleted]

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#158

Post by p1necone »

l11r wrote: post #71
rpmisms wrote: post #43

It's incredibly obvious that they're trying to make Steam Deck 2 ARM-based. That's the generational change Valve is waiting for. This is gonna be fantastic.

There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many times that they are not interested in minor performance improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).

Current gen ARM is pretty strong - for an example, the switch 2 runs on ARM and it's decently more powerful than the current steam deck.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#159

Post by MindSpunk »

koolala wrote: post #143
MindSpunk wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking games designed for desktop GPUs and running them on mobile GPUs with tile-based-deferred-rendering hardware will be a disaster. Mobile GPU designs will choke on modern games as they're designed around hardware features that mobile GPUs either don't have, or that run very slowly. Peak theoretical throughput for the GPUs you find in ARM SoCs is quite good compared to the power draw, but you will not get peak thr…

You don't have to use tile-based rendering on these chips anymore. They can directly draw to the entire screen.

You can, but the immediate mode path is slower and uses significantly more power. Mobile GPUs are not good at modern desktop game workflows where significant portions of the frame are compute shaders. They're generally very memory bandwidth starved, and general compute sidesteps most of the optimizations the hardware has made to work around this.

Re: Helping Valve to power up Steam devices

#160

Post by GuB-42 »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #81
zamalek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much credit to Valve for pushing that out as FOSS. Cynical: Valve doesn't sell hardware or operating systems, they sell games. These devices are merely another storefront. Optimistic: Valve has also figured out how to turn good will into a commodity. Blowing cash on Steam sales is a bit of a cultural centerpiece of the PC gaming community. Gabe has proven that you can make stupid amounts of money by [mostly] doing…

This is what I say a lot. Valve isn't even remotely close to having clean hands here. They invented loot crates. Hats. Etc. It's just that the bar is so INSANELY low - it's probably somewhere deep in the earth's core at this point - that valve looks like a fucking angel by being only VAGUELY greedy on occasion. When your competition is EA... it's not hard.

You don't become a billionaire by having your hands clean. But what set them appart to other companies is that they go out of their way not to be hostile to their users.

Loot boxes done well are not user hostile, players pay because they like them, and sure, it uses all the tricks from the gambling industry to get as most money as they can, but player don't feel scammed or considering it an obstacle to their goals. It is just an additional feature they may or may not use. Compare to say, locking part of the game behind a paid DLC, players don't like that, they feel forced. Same end goal, that is to make their money your money, but the latter is considered hostile.

And ads, Steam is full of ads, from recommendations to the store page showing up right as you launch steam. But they won't put a popup between you and your game. They show you the ads you want to see... And you buy games you wouldn't have bought otherwise.

And Steam has DRM, that's weak DRM, but effective at what it does, and importantly, if you bought the games legally, you won't even notice, contrary to some other company intrusive practices.

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