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Steam Frame starts at $1059

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Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#451
post #196
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it may be a good wirk machine to use during long flights, with a compact wireless keyboard. Unless you fly first class, using a laptop on a plane is painful.

The question here is whatever Steam Frame displays resolution is sufficient to work with text. So far only mass produced device that was really suitable is a Vision Pro. So far all reviews I've seen been centered around gaming and not work.

It is said that human eyes can resolve down to 1 minute of arc(1 MOA or 1/60 degrees). Each eye has about 160 degrees of HFOV and 125 degrees of VFOV.

From there, you can work out requisite resolution for desktop replacing VR googles: 11K per eye.

The catch is that human eyes actually only have ~1 degree of full resolution area and ~30 degree of active area, and the full 200 degree HFOV is only realized by moving them around and subconsciously compositing images, so most of panels can bee left unlit, in theory.

But the panel resolution requirements is the same, and our technologies are just not there to make a true desktop replacement VR goggle, yet.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#452
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to comfortably sit back / lie down and work is an interesting proposition. The Apple Vision Pro is too bulky and expensive to carry that whole category on its own, they need an 'Android equivalent'. But I think Apple messed this up by creating an absolute patent minefield (some 5k patents for AVP features iirc).

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

If you think this is a joke and humanity can’t be that evil then look up the the „Brookes Ship“

> Brookes was reportedly allowed to stow 454 African captives, by allowing a space of 6 feet (1.8 m) by 1 foot 4 inches (0.41 m) to each man, 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) by 1 foot 4 inches (0.41 m) to each woman, and 5 feet (1.5 m) by 1 foot 2 inches (0.36 m) to each child. However, the poster's text alleges that a slave trader confessed that before the Act, Brookes had carried as many as 609 captives at one time.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#453
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.

> It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games. There are a lot of good games and unique experiences (Lone Echo). A lot of these games also get you moving i.e. you won't need to do cardio exercise if you play games. Many of these games aren't even considered fitness games Batman Beat Saber Mother Gunship Superhot Pistol Whip Gasland Thrill of the Fight Underdogs Synth Riders Guerilla Tag Blade and Sorcery G…

Pistol whip, beat saber and audio trip are in my rotation. Also I expect you to die I/II/III or whatever the numbering is.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It'll be highly dependent on the game. Unlike foveated streaming the implementation of foveated rendering could mean many things. Actually rendering at a lower resolution in areas you aren't actively looking is probably the most complicated approach because it seems like you'd have to render two times (low res + high res) to get the desired effect.

The framebuffer that you are filling out is still at native resolution, but while computing that frame buffer you can do many of the steps at reduced resolution. For example, instead of evaluating the pixel shader code for every pixel, it could evaluate once for a block of four pixels in the reduced resolution region and use the result for all four.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#455
Why they decided to include standalone functionality is beyond me. It's a $1000 dollar VR headset. 99.9% of people buying this will already have a beefy gaming setup and will much prefer to stream from that instead of play standalone. You're not traveling with this thing, you're not using it on the go, it's not heavily subsidized like Quest headsets...

Including standalone and an SSD and ram and stuff does nothing but jack up the prices drastically, for functionality that nobody's gonna use. Rest assured, I will not be buying one.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

VRchat is what Zuckerberg wanted out of Meta. It is impressive but still suffers from the barrier to entry problem.

I think VR is in the same position the PC/Mac was in the mid 80's. It is finally technically capable enough to do some neat and useful things, it just struggles because of hardware costs. But I also said this about a decade back and progress has been neat but limited.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#457
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 played a few hours of Alyx and, I'll be honest, it started to kinda freak me out. I noticed myself getting a bit of anxiety when putting the headset on to play, and a relief when I took it off to see the real world was still there! I've never experienced something so immersive, but I haven't picked it back up to finish it yet. Someday. I also still mini golf regularly. It's such a fun, low effort way to hang out wi…

I used to feel like that when I was younger and playing intense games, it was hard to "get out" and "come back to real life". I guess VR brings some of that back.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#458
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 think a hackable Linux PC in a VR headset is very exciting. But the major problem is the screen resolution is not good enough to make it a viable desktop replacement. It'll work great for gaming or media consumption, but reading smallish text will be difficult at best. If they made a more expensive version with a better display it would potentially be interesting as a portable workstation/laptop alternative. But I…

Why would you want to replace your desktop with this? I keep hearing things like that, but anyone who has tried VR knows that it's just never going to happen. VR's killer app is gaming, and that's it.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Valve’s DRM is just about the least invasive and easiest to crack DRM systems on the market. The only way to be less invasive is to not have DRM at all. Obviously that’s preferable, but Valve’s setup is one that keeps publishers on the platform: provide a basic DRM system and allow publishers to add more if they want. If you don’t like what someone like Ubisoft does on the platform you’ve got plenty of other options…

> Valve’s DRM is just about the least invasive and easiest to crack DRM systems on the market.

In fact, their own documentation spells this out specifically[0]:

> The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not an anti-piracy solution. The Steam DRM wrapper protects against extremely casual piracy (i.e. copying all game files to another computer) and has some obfuscation, but it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.

0: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm

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