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Steam Frame starts at $1059

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Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#441

The Steam Frame looks like a heck of a device. At the cost, though, I question why they didn't include a better pass-through camera. A device with onboard processing and a good pass-through camera would be very neat. If they were trying to make this an affordable device I'd understand, but it's over a thousand dollars.

There's an accessory that adds high-res color passthrough: https://arcturus.vision/ > If they were trying to make this an affordable device I'd understand, but it's over a thousand dollars. It costs less than a third of the Vision Pro, and less than the Meta Quest Pro. It's relatively affordable, for a RAM crisis.

I suspect the reason it wasn’t included by default was that pass through is not the intended experience.

For a gaming focused device, pass through is not getting used very much. It’s only used for the kind of stuff the Vision Pro is trying to use. If you’re playing Half Life Alyx or something you’re just not using it your entire session.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#442
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that the current design of VR/AR is not likely to get cheap enough and light/small enough to catch on in a big way. Kind of seems like diminishing returns on headset improvements at this point.

The Xreal augmented reality sunglasses type designs look a lot more interesting. I’m sure they sacrifice a lot of visual quality compared to a full gaming headset, but the general pitch makes more sense.

Just my two cents, Xreal is a long way from a good product. There are other brands like Viture to consider which have more support for the limited software solutions out there. Make sure you do some looking into whether they are compatible with your setup. Or if any of the various features will work without buying additional hardware from the manufacturer.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#443
post #313

Kind of bizarre tbh, given the software market for VR seems absolutely dead. Announcing it with a 7 year old game is like, what? What's Valve's plan here?

I think Valve’s plan is that some of their engineers wanted to make the device. That was the plan.

I also think they just couldn’t justify selling the valve index anymore because of the current state of technology, but didn’t want to discontinue offering VR entirely. A large percentage of Steam sales are back catalog games. A game being 7, 10, 20, 30 years old doesn’t mean it’s bad or that someone won’t buy it.

Another aspect here is “steam store on everything” is a strategy. It doesn’t matter if it’s a niche, because the mere presence of endless hardware options adds value to the Steam store. You can be confident in buying lots of games on Steam because you know they’ll run on more stuff than games you buy on PS5 or Switch or the Microsoft Store.

They’re not a public company, they don’t have to make stock price go up. At the same time, this thing existing is a net positive for them.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#444
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah but they'll take your data and purpose it for their ads outside the games.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#445

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

Their model is DRM, but they have no vendor lock-in (in theory, at least). You can use a Valve product (or non-valve product) and never use Steam, or use Steam on any of the 3 major OS's. You can't say the same for an apple product.

I say in theory because yes: Steam in reality has a monopoly in the PC gaming market. And while many games are on multiple stores, odds are many games will only be on Steam. That's a more invisible hand form of a walled garden, but there's definitely an argument to be made there.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Linus said it on the leaked TechQuickie video from a 2 days ago.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#447

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

Valves bread and butter has been their distribution channel. Before Valve, there was no major player that provided a seamless gaming download experience. Anyone who’ve gamed in early 2000s understand the pain point of downloading and correctly installing patches from a daemon site.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow imagine we can have masses of people lie back and work. Think of how small we could make the cubicles

You know those drawers they have at morgues?

Office capsules!

We meet in VR meeting rooms and at the end of the day, we’re safely delivered back to the parking lot via capsule shuttle.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#449
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 have owned a quest 2 and now 3 and have always heard about that game but yet to try it. I forgot about it. I don't often get to play the quest as my kids seem to have taken over it. But there are definitely some gems out there. Echo VR was so fun it was sad to see it shut down. I also love Google Earth vr on the quest.
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