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Steam Frame starts at $1059

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Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#401

Post by socalgal2 »

valgaze wrote: post #324

I've been astounded by how many older games are suddenly getting surprisingly good VR ports/mods (I suspect AI-assisted tooling is playing a role in some of this) There's a youtuber Beardo Benjo who has been documenting a bunch of them where some are tethered to a PC while others have been ported to run natively on the Quest. A few of the more interesting ones, newest to oldest: Left 4 Dead VR [9/14/2026]: https://ww…

Hopefully they have solved the issues but... the only times I got VR sickness from VR is

(1) trying GTA5 in VR using a patch. It was amazing once the game gave me control. But by that time I was already sick from the unskippable in game intro

(2) Breath of the Wild - Labo version. When Nintendo came out with a cardboard holder for Switch and a VR option for BotW, I tried it. The fact that it wasn't designed for VR made me sick really fast

I was surprised by both. I'd played 100s of hours of VR by that point and no sickness. Both of those games made me feel seriously ill and it took a while (30-60 minutes?) to recover.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#402

Post by socalgal2 »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #202
epiccoleman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a compelling product niche, for sure - but still, awfully niche. I'm sure there's folks out there who will bite on the chance to have a top-line VR headset with Linux, but at the price point... gotta be a fairly small market segment. Still, I'm happy they're doing this, it seems like a cool product and I bet it would be almost as much fun as a platform to hack around on as it will be for gaming.

I was careful in my wording - the benefit is the freedom. Many people will appreciate that, simply by being able to install what you want. That goes well beyond the benefits to Linux users, but as a Linux user I really appreciate it.

I still use a Rift-S, it still lets me run whatever I want.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#403

Post by m4rtink »

FlowingRiver wrote: post #342
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.

I said it when it came out, Alyx was the single best chance VR had to prove itself. It was going to be either the launching pad of the future or the high tide mark. 6 years on, it is looking like the high tide mark. Unfortunately, it is a technical and artistic marvel but the relatively high cost to entry (decent PC and headset) meant that it was simply out of reach for most people. A high price takes it from an impu…

I really suggest looking a bit into VRChat for some of the worlds people have created there - some of them are very complex & are telling stories by their environments that could be comparable to standalone VR games.

For some examples - PROJECT: SUMMER FLARE: https://vrclist.com/world/2924

Complex 7: https://vrclist.com/world/870431 (and Fins worlds in general)

1:1 model of an Oneil Cylinder space colony that cna be fully explored: https://vrclist.com/world/7780 (and Asagiris space/science worlds in general)

Far Future Propulsion˸ Museum of Nuclear Starflight (1:1 models of space propulsion concepts all the way to Project Daedalus) https://vrclist.com/world/1270747

Really, amazing things are being built in VRChat and most people even in the VR community itself are completely ignorant to that. At best they go "LOL SOCIAL VR APP" without actually checking what is possible with modern VRChat.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#404

Post by bryanlarsen »

HDBaseT wrote: post #373
teach wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've been Linux-only on the desktop since the early aughts and trying to get the Valve Index working was so frustrating and inconsistent I eventually gave up. It sits collecting dust and I've still never played more than the first fifteen minutes of HL: Alyx (because no game is worth installing Windows for). Very much looking forward to maybe actually being able to use VR on my gaming computer.

Even the Frame doesn't support Linux properly. You cannot do streaming from a Linux machine, it must be a Windows machine. (yet). I'm sick of pretending Valve cares about Linux. Their own games have major issues with Linux. Every CS2 update breaks something, last time it was the inventory screens which were completely broken for like 2 weeks. Left 4 Dead 2 has major frame pacing and stutter issues on the Native Build…

You can't stream from a Linux box to the Frame? Where did you hear that? Given that you can stream between Linux boxes using Steam, I find that surprising.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#405

Post by mortsnort »

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.

You can do this really well on $200 AR headsets that fit on your face like sunglasses and uses the battery of the device it's plugged into to last many hours.

If this is the biggest point, then I don't see why Xreal isn't more popular.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#406

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

Unless you are standing still (like sitting or playing Beat Saber), that cable really is annoying. You can't spin around for instance.

As for wireless communication. I also thought it would be easy, but the lack of options despite the demand in the Oculus Rift / HTC Vive days proved otherwise. There have been some attempts, some worked, none of them great, and they usually involved hot hardware and batteries.

Steam Frame is apparently the best at being a wireless, PC-driven headset.

As for standalone functionality, my guess is that a headset hardware powerful enough to deliver a good wireless PC VR experience is powerful enough to work as a standalone headset for less demanding applications.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#407

Post by m4rtink »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #353
two_handfuls wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, you don't have to run things on it, you can stream wirelessly from your PC. An advantage of a standalone unit is you can take it with you, or for people who don't already have a gaming computer. You're also asking why not have it plug to a more powerful machine. The answer for that is simple: wires get snagged and pulled on, in practice it's a poor experience (remember, you cannot see the wires when you…

> To be clear, you don't have to run things on it, you can stream wirelessly from your PC. But the hardware is adding weight and bulk to something that you really, desperately want to be as small and light and possible.

Well, there are already devices like that (Big Screen Beyond), Valve has a wired headset (Valve Index) - so it makes perfect sense to do something more modern and future proof.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#408

Post by ehsankia »

Rohansi wrote: post #81
0-_-0 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an example of foveated rendering implementation?

No Man's Sky is doing it now. It's also useful for foveated streaming which works for all games. https://www.nomanssky.com/cosmos-update/#:~:text=Added%20sup...

Curious if there's any info about how much Foveated rendering helps performance roughly. Is it like 50% more frames?

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#409

Post by garciansmith »

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.

Plus Valve also says they don't sell any data the collect to anyone else.

But the idea that games have data collection outside of the platform (e.g., Steam) is surprising to me. Would this be VR games only or a particular type of game, like ones with online multiplayer? I don't own a VR headset and don't really play multiplayer games these days. Of the games I have played (mostly indie), I've come across very few that have a EULA or anything that would imply any data collection of any sort.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#410

Post by m4rtink »

gunalx wrote: post #246
Apes wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure going from less than $50 of RAM and a $50 processor for foveated eye tracking to 16 GiB of RAM ($300) and a Snapdragon 8 ($200) is a "slight bump".

Wait I don't realise ram prices where this bad. Bought my kit for about a tenth of that a while ago. Ouch.

Yeah, can't wait for the AI hype bubble to finally end. Hey, we might even get some nice fast repurposed HBM from the scrappers reusing stuff from the bankruptcy auctions. :)
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