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Steam Frame starts at $1059

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#381

Post by month13 »

njovin wrote: post #47
sporp wrote: post #16

Half-Life Alyx is the greatest gaming experience I have ever had the pleasure to witness. I now occasionally VR golf. It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games.

Everyone is missing maybe the biggest point - this isn't just a VR device. You can run some/many (depending on your library) of your regular Steam games on a 'flat screen' inside the VR environment, which makes this much more like a SteamDeck with a giant private screen for a lot of people.

I was really hoping to realise the "Spatial Computing" dream of the Vision Pro, but was largely priced-out of the experience, considering it basically necessitates a MacBook to complete it too.

I would wager a simple browser and terminal session is probably all I need, so was looking forward to this device. However, the screen resolution is likely to be too small, I had done some experiments with Virtual Desktop, but the Rift S was too low-res, everything had to be like 48pt.

Reviews showing the desktop being fully accessible, does give quite a bit of hope, however.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#382

Post by iririririr »

willis936 wrote: post #326
tapoxi wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This machine runs Linux, it comes with KDE. This is the open Apple Vision Pro alternative that you can use as a real computer. It comes with a black and white passthrough camera but you can add on a 5K color one. There's ongoing work for a full Plasma XR mode, so you aren't restricted to a "virtual desktop" experience: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/8671

This is one of the main selling points for me. I threw my CV1 in the trash when facebook required a login. I want to see what OpenXR apps are like. Is freecad and blender usable? I want to tinker with gaussian splatting. When finger tracking starts to develop can I reasonably use it for input without controllers? Could this ever be a practical replacement for a six monitor desk? Also, my simracing seat has been very…

valve whole business model is invasive drm tho.

far from claiming they are as low as meta, but that is their business model which never gets mentioned in this comparison, leaving readers to confuse gabe newel with RMS as some freedom authority

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#383

Post by charcircuit »

benoau wrote: post #333
garciansmith wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that the review goes into the privacy issues and legal disclaimers with each. I don't doubt that everyone expects the Meta product to be much worse there, but wow it's a stark contrast.

Meta are objectively worse than Valve because Valve don't allow ads in games or offer advertising services and they're generally more trustworthy, but that's really only part of the privacy story. Each app/game usually has its own data collection and usage on top and I don't think either of them do much to police or constrain that.

Meta doesn't allow ads in games either except for an few exceptions like YouTubeVR.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#384

Post by dcw303 »

For those in Japan who are interested but getting blocked (or waiting) for access via Komodostation.com:

199,980 base 256GB

244,980 1TB model

considerable markup even over the current USDJPY rate

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#385

Post by month13 »

rwz wrote: post #186

I've never been interested in VR headsets and am not very educated about it. Can someone explain why you'd want to actually run things on it instead of having a much lighter screens-and-headphones-only unit that plugs it into a more powerful machine that renders things for it? What's the benefit of having to strap all this extra hot hardware and batteries to your face. Is it just about it being wireless? Surely there…

The wires really get in the way, even in a seated context. I often use a Rift S for rally games, and the wire will get caught in the backrest, the wheels, my legs. VR is immersive, so you instantly forget and it's a thick and fragile wire so there's a degree of stress.

Not to mention the trip hazard or ripping it out of the PC while playing room-scale games.

I concur, given hardware constraints that a far more slimmed down unit would have been appealing, and more future-proof, but I believe there's still a requirement for onboard compute for inside-out tracking and handling disconnection events, at some point making it self-sufficient (at the time) was seen as not much more expense.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#386

Post by asadotzler »

barnabee wrote: post #268
bentt wrote: post #232

Hacker News should be all over this device. They won't lock it down like the Meta stuff. Go ahead and install BeOS on it.

I’m excited. In addition to VR games I’m pretty interested to see how viable it is to do things with the Frame that I’d usually do on a Linux laptop. I hope the openness of the OS leads to lots of cool 3rd party options. I’d love to see a standalone headset the size of the Bigscreen Beyond 2, and I’d also be much more willing to pay $3000 for a premium VR/AR device that runs Linux than an Apple or Meta device.

If you're good with 1990s era text fidelity, you'll love it. If, on the other hand, you prefer text that's readable enough to not care that it's digital, this will certainly let you down.

Even Apple's Vision Pro is only half-Retina, the same jaggedy text a my 1998 G3 PowerBook. I kid you not, the PPD is identical. And taking off Vision Pro and looking at your iPhone or MBP screen makes you want to smash Vision Pro against the wall. The displays absolutely suck -- and Frame's are even worse.

(If Apple narrowed the FOV down to about 75-80 degrees, they'd get decent text. But 80 degrees isn't deep immersion so we got 100 degrees and terrible text.)

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#387

Post by asadotzler »

gunalx wrote: post #210
Apes wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question is why did they release this as a standalone unit for $1049 and then claim they couldn't sell it for less due to the RAM shortage - when that implies they could have released a dumb unit that depends on the Steam Deck or Steam Machine for far less?

If it can do innside out tracking its way more data efficent to have compute onboard. And if you already have a decent amount of compute you can scale it up just a little more to have. a fully standalone unit.

compute is fine. its necessary battery is not. compute is almost weightless, battery crushes heads.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#389

Post by matheusmoreira »

sporp wrote: post #16

Half-Life Alyx is the greatest gaming experience I have ever had the pleasure to witness. I now occasionally VR golf. It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games.

PC is the flight simulator platform. They're probably amazing to play in VR.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#390

Post by willis936 »

iririririr wrote: post #382
willis936 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the main selling points for me. I threw my CV1 in the trash when facebook required a login. I want to see what OpenXR apps are like. Is freecad and blender usable? I want to tinker with gaussian splatting. When finger tracking starts to develop can I reasonably use it for input without controllers? Could this ever be a practical replacement for a six monitor desk? Also, my simracing seat has been very…

valve whole business model is invasive drm tho. far from claiming they are as low as meta, but that is their business model which never gets mentioned in this comparison, leaving readers to confuse gabe newel with RMS as some freedom authority

DRM isn't really the story with Valve. Their business model is offer good service. Part of that is not being hostile to users. Users don't want to be spied on and have their data sold, so Valve doesn't do that. People want autonomy over their hardware, so they give them that. It's even in their marketing material for the steam machine. The frame is a computer running arch. If you want to 100% opt out of Steam and write your own driver stack, they're not standing in your way. That is uniquely pro-user and freedom in the tech industry. Also, their open source initiatives with proton and fex should not be discounted.

If there's a morally grey stone to turn over then imo it's the not-gambling-wink-microtransactions and even then it's no more predatory than what is common in the gaming industry.

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