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Steam Frame starts at $1059

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#461

Post by gamblor956 »

Apes wrote: post #347
solid_fuel wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've doing inside-out SLAM to map the environment and tracking your eyes for foveated rendering at the same time. That's fairly heavy - I think the compute required would necessitate a much higher speed connection with a desktop and a fair bit of CPU time, so it's probably cheaper and easier to put the compute right in the headset instead of scaling up the connection. Also, they probably landed on this rough desig…

Maybe I'm misunderstanding - but I thought there's already "dumb" headsets doing foveated eye tracking, like the Pimax headsets. If that's the case, then you don't need $300 of ram and a $200 CPU to perform this locally.

You're misunderstanding.

The Pimax headsets with foveated eye tracking start at $1599.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#462

Post by jkl5xx »

jjmarr wrote: post #336
apatheticonion wrote: post #318

I know everyone is singing the praises of the Steam Frame's wireless capabilities but honestly, I just want my wired VR experience back. I had a Rift 2, Reverb G2, then Quest 2 and eventually Quest 3. Despite the Quest 3 having a resolution similar to the G2, it looked more like the Rift 2 than the awe inspiring G2. Wireless gaming never looked as sharp and streaming over USB was also a very poor experience, with inp…

> Personally, I would love to see a wired headset that resembles the bigscreen beyond but with inside out tracking and a universal face gasket. For wireless experiences, I'd love to be able to plug my phone in, put it in my back pocket and use it that way. Been doing this with my wired XREALs for the past few months. They are light enough to be unnoticeable and can display a large monitor when plugged into my phone o…

For another datapoint, I took the plunge on a pair of xreals and trying to do real work in them felt like a joke. They’re not comfortable enough to wear as normal glasses, so you end up using them more like you would a VR headset. And at that point, they’re just a semi-transparent low-res screen that’s never quite in the right spot.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#463

Post by cmdr2 »

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…

> Is freecad and blender usable?

Blender works in VR (using any OpenXR compatible headset). To view scenes in VR, you can use the free built-in VR Scene Inspector addon. To edit and create scenes in VR, you can use the Freebird XR addon for Blender (https://freebirdxr.com/).

Fingers crossed for OpenXR working properly in Steam Frame! In which case Blender and other OpenXR-compatible apps will work too.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of Freebird XR, a VR editing addon for Blender.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#464

Post by snvzz »

ngcazz wrote: post #223
criddell wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first VR system that many of us used was the W Industries / Virtuality system in the early 1990's. Those were $60k in 1991 which is $140k today. If the price of leading edge VR price drops two orders of magnitude every 35 years or so, it's probably only going to be another 10-15 years for $200 headsets. So it's not here yet, but will be soon.

The computer powering the Virtuality was an Amiga, which I've always found mindblowing.

Only Amiga makes it possible.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#465

Post by sureglymop »

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 think its performance is quite underappreciated. It has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip.

I have a tiny handheld with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip and among many other things it plays GTA V and RDR2 almost perfectly, using FEX nonetheless. And because it's arm, battery life is so much better than on my laptop that I use it as a tiny mini linux laptop now.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#466

Post by Arn_Thor »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #389
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.

My biggest use case for the Quest 3 is Euro Truck Simulator 2. That is, until I got a wheel and pedals to replace the controller, at which point I got immediate motion sickness with the headset and had to go back to big screen and head tracking. Bit disappointing, and will keep me from jumping on the Steam Frame until I can try it properly

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#467

Post by modeless »

baby wrote: post #458
modeless wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Never is a long time.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#468

Post by ironhaven »

stouset wrote: post #395
JohnnyMarcone wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are using foveated streaming where they track where your eye is looking and only stream that part at full resolution. They also have a dedicated wifi stick that directly connects to the frame in addition to using your normal wifi network.

I was more concerned with the latency than the bandwidth.

Bandwidth is very important for low latency with wireless VR. To have a low latency you need to give the VR headset a video stream of at least 90 fps. That means every 11ms the headset needs a full screen frame of video. Over regular Wi-Fi 5 from my phone I can ping my desktop in 4ms so is the latency problem solved? The problem is there is not enough consistent bandwidth over my consumer Wi-Fi router to maintain a high quality experience in VR.

Enthusiasts solve this problem with a dedicated VR only Wi-Fi router connected to their PC but now it will be much easier with the included 6Ghz Wi-Fi dongle in the box

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#469

Post by unsnap_biceps »

HDBaseT wrote: post #376
daemonologist wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could do it, but the resolution isn't high enough for it to be a good experience. (2160x2160 per eye sounds like a lot, but with a 110 degree fov it's only ~19 pixels per degree. Which is like sitting very close to a 27" 720p monitor.)

What hardware are people using to run modern VR? 1440p (2560x1440) is 3,686,400 pixels. 2160p (2160x2160) is 4,665,600 pixels, per eye, so 9,331,200 pixels. This headset will require a million more pixels to be rendered than 4K. 9 Million pixels @ 144hz is no easy task. My RTX 4080 (9800X3D) struggles with 4K gaming.

You render lower quality and scale the images up to native resolution, with filters to reduce any jagged artifacts. It's not ideal, and so even running at the "same" resolution, the 2d monitor looks better then it does in the headset.

But the immersion is enough that you forget about it and just enjoy the content, as long as it's comfortable enough

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#470

Post by cma »

baby wrote: post #458
modeless wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the xreal form factor it is pretty viable. It just needs a bit more resolution, and for more immersive gaming a bit more FOV, what it has FOV wise is fine for screen replacement.
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