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Steam Frame starts at $1059

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Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#601

Post by vel0city »

embedding-shape wrote: post #159
Yhippa wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a recommendation in a similar vein: Gran Turismo 7 in VR on PS5. I have a headseat graveyard and never really used my headsets except for that game. I've heard good things about Half-Life Alyx and now your comment has me absolutely intrigued.

Simulation games in general reached a whole other level with VR, just the added depth perception makes it impossible to go back to "flat" screens again. The degree of freedom to move your head to look around is underrated as well. I dove into VR first with X-Plane 11 I think, which was janky at best, but nowadays Microsoft Flight Simulator has really good VR mode, and it's just such a great experience. Spaceflight si…

Star Wars Squadrons has excellent VR support. Its awesome flying around in the cockpit of an X-Wing or TIE fighter.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#602

Post by fragmede »

stonedivot wrote: post #354
njovin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's ignore that fact that you're saying "this isn't just a VR device" and then immediately describe the basic functionality of a VR device. You really think people have been waiting to drop $1k for a device that lets them play games designed for a monitor inside of a headset rendering a larger virtual monitor with all of the additional complexity that brings?

For those priced out of getting an AVP at more than 3x the price on locked down hardware? You don't seem to think that market exists, but I think it does. $3,500 and Apple, or whatev but Facebook are total non-starters for some people while Valve and Linux are.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#604

Post by modeless »

utopiah wrote: post #596
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…

Out of curiosity do say this after trying with a recent e.g. Vision Pro or Quest 3 and finding that resolution itself (not inputs, UX, ergonomics, etc) is the limiting factor for work and if so what use case?

I have used most of the major headsets. Vision Pro is close to monitor resolution but not quite there. Quest 3 and Steam Frame are nowhere near that. Vision Pro's ergonomics are bad, as are Quest 3's, but Bigscreen Beyond 2 is much, much better and could be acceptable for laptop replacement I think, especially with the flip-up halo band they are working on. For inputs, passthrough with keyboard and mouse/trackpad would be fine for desktop work, and eye tracking could be used in combination I think, along with tracked controllers for 3D tasks.

Something with the ergonomics of Bigscreen Beyond 2, passthrough and resolution improved beyond Vision Pro, and the hackability of Steam Frame, I think could be pretty attractive as a laptop replacement for some people. Of course we're nowhere near that product yet. But a Steam Frame with a higher resolution screen and a better head mount (and the Arcturus Vision passthrough camera add-on) would be pretty close.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#605

Post by ActorNightly »

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…

There needs to be a premium club around vr gaming, like there is for other activities like car/driving enthusiasm.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#606

Post by jareklupinski »

modeless wrote: post #424
jareklupinski wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a viable desktop replacement. xerox intentionally replicated what the typical office desk 'experience' looked like to create the 'the desktop'; this approach either isn't possible or just hasn't been explored by someone with a headset on maybe we just need to think of work differently to be productive in an enviornment where we sacrificed horizontal and vertical fidelity for a third dimension? 3d desktops? workfram…

Given the current direction of technology it seems more likely that the need for highly precise and information dense UIs will be reduced, and we will do most of our work by directing agents through language. Where language is not enough we will use custom visualizations and purpose-built UI controls that contain and directly manipulate only the relevant information for the task at hand, constructed on-the-fly. We ma…

it's already taking me a lot of time to 'translate' the architecture diagram in my head to something that i can type for an ai, likely losing fidelity on the way

just let me TRON into the machine and show them all how it's done :D

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#607

Post by swiftcoder »

account42 wrote: post #559
swiftcoder wrote: post #501

I don't really actually understand how Valve can answer "no" to the data collection questions. If they have an inside-out tracking system, then they implicitly obtain biometric and environment data (user height, room layout). If they have a microphone, then they implicitly obtain data about humans talking inside your house. If they have an App Store, then they implicitly obtain data about apps installed on your devic…

Does Valve collect that data or the owner of the device?

Valve-authored software running on Valve-built hardware collects the data, and in some cases, that data is transmitted to Valve's servers (per Valve's own privacy policy).

I get that a lot of people have a hard-on for Valve, but we wouldn't give any other tech company the benefit of the doubt that reviewers are giving here.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#608

Post by LarsDu88 »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #54
LarsDu88 wrote: post #7

At basically quest 3 levels of on device performance, this thing better have amazing software. This price is way too high. Our expectations have been warped by Meta's decade long subsidization of VR hardware

I'm ready to pay it to not be forced into using Facebook's terrible desktop software that they frequently break the PC Link functionality of. The way it's Windows-only also sucks; it's one of the few things that's prevented me from switching my gaming PC to Linux. And yes, I've tried third-party solutions like Virtual Desktop under Windows and ALVR under Linux. Even with some of the best WiFi 6E hardware available st…

The inability of Meta to write a simple working drivers to connect a USB cable from the Quest to my PC is probably the greatest opportunity for Valve here.

For some reason this never works on the Quest Pro I have (which I received for free from Meta). Works every time on the Pico 4 Ultra

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#609

Post by Wowfunhappy »

GuB-42 wrote: post #406
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 F…

I had a TP Link wireless adapter (I think that was the name) for my HTC Vive. I was kind of skeptical going in, but it worked shockingly well--no detectable added latency. The only thing I lost was the ability to use the Vive's camera, which I think was just a software issue of some kind.

Re: Steam Frame starts at $1059

#610

Post by spectre3d »

schmorptron wrote: post #509
c7b wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the AVP has a ton of quality-of-life features, eg relating to gestures, and most of them locked behind patents. Looks like we'll have to wait 20 years before other devices will be able to match it (or whatever the expiry date is on those patents).

That makes sense. I always wondered why nobody copied their gaze + tap interactions. That seems way too basic to grant a patent for...

That’s how it works with the Quest 3 on an updated OS. If you’re using hand tracking then you gaze + tap thumb and finger together to select, or pinch and hold to grab a corner for resizing or a border for dragging.
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