Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SteamMachines

store.steampowered.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 291 posts

Re: SteamMachines

#181

Post by dandelany »

TylerE wrote: post #164
meowface wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it'll ever become mandatory, but don't you think that VR and deeper immersion is eventually where gaming is going to go? The technology still needs a lot of time to improve, but if the kinks can get worked out and if they're less likely to make people dizzy/nauseated, I imagine VR headsets will dominate the market in the next few decades.

Frankly, no, I don't. The immersion is more than canceled out by the additional hassle, not to mention that many people (including myself) that this sort of 3D either doesn't work for or causes intense motion sickness.

So parent's comment was "it will be great once the tech improves" and your response is "no it won't because the tech currently sucks"? I think you're missing his point.

Re: SteamMachines

#182

Post by sejje »

jdjb wrote: post #154
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #120

As a parent, if these things don't come with time-based parental controls, that would reduce their appeal A LOT. Windows, for all its warts, is great this way. The Windows-based PC in the living room, running Steam, has time-based parental controls configured at the OS level. This works great for everyone involved, reduces effort and contention. Also, kids do really well on fixed timetables. I've opened a discussion…

What happens when the timer hits zero? The game just kicks out? Why not just set a timer on your smartphone and when it goes off turn off the kid's console..

Or just, you know, have your kids obey the rules. Without your daily intervention.

Re: SteamMachines

#183

Post by Brakenshire »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #120

As a parent, if these things don't come with time-based parental controls, that would reduce their appeal A LOT. Windows, for all its warts, is great this way. The Windows-based PC in the living room, running Steam, has time-based parental controls configured at the OS level. This works great for everyone involved, reduces effort and contention. Also, kids do really well on fixed timetables. I've opened a discussion…

This is Linux, though. Even if a timer isn't built in, it will be trivial to install. You could probably use something already in the apt-get repositories.

Re: SteamMachines

#184

Post by TylerE »

dandelany wrote: post #181
TylerE wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, no, I don't. The immersion is more than canceled out by the additional hassle, not to mention that many people (including myself) that this sort of 3D either doesn't work for or causes intense motion sickness.

So parent's comment was "it will be great once the tech improves" and your response is "no it won't because the tech currently sucks"? I think you're missing his point.

No, not at all. I am saying the CONCEPT sucks. It's not really a technology issue, since to overcome it we would need to be at like literally jack-in-to-the-brain, bypassing the optic nerve levels of tech. At which point we will probably have something better to do than play Half Life 3D.

Re: SteamMachines

#185

Post by walls »

rodgerd wrote: post #170
breckinloggins wrote: post #22

I'm excited about where Valve is going with this, of course, but to be honest I'm concerned about controllers the most. Buying a good controller for a PC is not hard, but it's not simple either. Picture yourself as a "living room console guy" getting into PC gaming. You'd like to use a controller for a certain game. Consider: - You can use your XBox360, PS3 controller, or WiiMote, but that's not obvious. You'll need…

Or you: Buy Logitech F710 wireless controller. Plug Logitech controller in. Notice modern Windows games auto-detect Logitech controller as XBox controller. Play games. It's not rocket science. And frankly, most PC gamers are pretty familiar with jumping through far more hoops than that.

Been there, done that.

Key binding continuity issues are still a problem for most games.

Re: SteamMachines

#186

Post by msie »

msie wrote: post #175

I wish they would follow Apple's lead and tightly control the hardware. It would make it easier for devs to test and consumers to make a choice. Apple's wildly successful with their iPhone business model. Please try to avoid the fragmentation issues with Android. Windows already owns the home PC market, why go after it?

To add further: there is only one XBOne hw configuration, there is only one PS4 hw configuration, there is only one WiiU hw configuration. Does Valve think it knows better?

Re: SteamMachines

#188

Post by Brakenshire »

chc wrote: post #156
jljljl wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems pretty big doesn't it? Going from "we are doing this" to "we are going to release some of these to early adopters"?

That seems pretty small to me, both in terms of progress and in terms of the actual size of of the release.

It means they are fully committed to the programme. Up to now there was speculation that they were going to abandon it.

Re: SteamMachines

#189

Post by mladenkovacevic »

ThomPete wrote: post #76
simias wrote: post #2

Sooo, it's what everybody's expected, except we don't know anything more about it. Frustrating. Also, only 300 boxes for beta? That seems a little small. EDIT: actually the latest answer in the FAQ is interesting: "Am I going to be using a mouse and a keyboard in the living-room?" "If you want. But Steam and SteamOS work well with gamepads, too. Stay tuned, though - we have some more to say very soon on the topic of…

Its probably this: https://www.google.com/patents/US8241126

I would love a trackball on a game controller in place of the right thumbstick.

I just searched for such a controller and this study from the University I went to came up: http://www.yorku.ca/mack/FuturePlay2.html

Apparently gaming performance increased between 5 and 10 percent going from a traditional controller to a prototype trackball controller.

In addition to that gaming performance increase, I wonder if a trackball could be put to better use in other more traditional UI situations that SteamOS has to implement (big-picture mode clover-leaf keyboard, scrolling, item selection...)

Re: SteamMachines

#190

Post by redwall_hp »

breckinloggins wrote: post #22

I'm excited about where Valve is going with this, of course, but to be honest I'm concerned about controllers the most. Buying a good controller for a PC is not hard, but it's not simple either. Picture yourself as a "living room console guy" getting into PC gaming. You'd like to use a controller for a certain game. Consider: - You can use your XBox360, PS3 controller, or WiiMote, but that's not obvious. You'll need…

Why would you use a controller? Wireless keyboard and mouse is the way to go. Especially if you're going to play an FPS. You'll be slaughtered if you use awkward analog sticks instead of a mouse...
Post reply on HN