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Steam Frame

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Re: Steam Frame

#561

Post by jackwilsdon »

globular-toast wrote: post #550
pixelpoet wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an awesome shader on shadertoy that illustrates just how extreme the fovea focus is: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dsXzM Linus the shrill/yappy poodle and his channel are less than worthless IMO.

That's crazy. I feel dumb for initial thinking it was somehow doing eye tracking to achieve this, despite having no such hardware installed. I would be curious to see a similar thing that includes flashing. Anecdotally, my peripheral vision seems to be highly sensitive to flashing/strobing even if it is evidently poor at seeing fine details. Make me think compression in the time domain (e.g. reducing frame rate) will…

It is doing eye tracking for the foveated rendering - it has 2 cameras inside the visor for it.

Re: Steam Frame

#562

Post by rkomorn »

Bombthecat wrote: post #560
somenameforme wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like you're describing dactyl nightmare. [1] I played a version where you were attacking pterodactyls instead of other players, but it was more or less identical. That experience is what led me to believe that VR would eventually take over. I still, more or less, believe it even though it's yet to happen. I think the big barrier remains price and experiences that are focusing more on visual fidelity over…

Nah, people spend 700 on consoles, the biggest barriers is comfort. As long as the headsets are heavy, I won't get one, no matter how great the graphics are or how good the game is

And even more so for people with corrective lenses and/or weird eye behaviors.

Didn't stop me from getting two different Oculus headsets (and some custom corrective lense inserts) but ultimately, comfort is what made me give up.

Re: Steam Frame

#563

Post by niek_pas »

barrkel wrote: post #317
baggachipz wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good while back I abandoned PC gaming because I was sick of driver issues, compatibility, and always having to update hardware to play the next game. Instead, I embraced consoles and haven't considered PC gaming since then. This, however, has me reconsidering that. I want it to "just work". When I want to play games, I don't want to deal with all of that other crap. I'm old, ain't nobody got time for that.

I guess you abandoned PC gaming some time in the early 2000s?

I'm guessing you have a very positive experience with gaming PCs; I wish I could say the same. My Windows PC:

  - Randomly BSODs because of (I think) a buggy Focusrite audio interface driver (that I can't fix and Focusrite refuses to)
  - Regularly 'forgets' I have an RX 5600 XT GPU and defaults to the integrated graphics, forcing me to go into the 1995 'Device Manager' to reset it
  - Occasionally just... stops playing audio?
  - Occasionally has its icons disappear from the taskbar
  - Regularly refuses to close applications, making me go into the Task Manager to force-quit them.
These are just the issues I can think of off the top of my head. I've been playing PC games for like 15 years and this is just par for the course for my experience.

Re: Steam Frame

#564

Post by dspillett »

modeless wrote: post #60

Foveated streaming! That's a great idea. Foveated rendering is complicated to implement with current rendering APIs in a way that actually improves performance, but foveated streaming seems like a much easier win that applies to all content automatically. And the dedicated 6 GHz dongle should do a much better job at streaming than typical wifi routers. > Just like any SteamOS device, install your own apps, open a bro…

> Foveated streaming! That's a great idea.

It would be interesting to see⁰ how that behaves when presented with weird eyes like mine or worse. Mine often don't always point the same way and which one I'm actually looking through can be somewhat arbitrary from one moment to the next…

Though the flapping between eyes is usually in the presence of changes, however minor, in required focal distance, so maybe it wouldn't happen as much inside a VR headset.

----

[0] Sorry not sorry.

Re: Steam Frame

#565

Post by jagermo »

modeless wrote: post #60

Foveated streaming! That's a great idea. Foveated rendering is complicated to implement with current rendering APIs in a way that actually improves performance, but foveated streaming seems like a much easier win that applies to all content automatically. And the dedicated 6 GHz dongle should do a much better job at streaming than typical wifi routers. > Just like any SteamOS device, install your own apps, open a bro…

> Very cool, should be very hackable. Very unlike every other standalone VR headset. That might be the reason I'm going to buy it. I want to support this and Steam has done a lot to get gaming on linux going.

Re: Steam Frame

#566

Post by blashyrk »

xandrius wrote: post #46

Kind of weird using AA batteries, I'd imagine something else would be better suited for this?

Why? You can use rechargeable AA batteries and if you want you can swap them out and basically never have downtime for charging. Also all embedded batteries degrade over time which is a non issue here

Re: Steam Frame

#567

Post by globular-toast »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #96
pixelpoet wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an awesome shader on shadertoy that illustrates just how extreme the fovea focus is: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dsXzM Linus the shrill/yappy poodle and his channel are less than worthless IMO.

Imagine if we could hook this into game rendering as well. Have super high resolution models, textures, shadows, etc near where the player is looking, and use lower LoDs elsewhere. It could really push the boundaries of detail and efficiency, if we could somehow do it real-time for something that complex. (Streaming video sounds a lot easier)

That's foveated rendering. Foveated streaming, which is newly presented here, is a more general approach which can apply to any video signal, be it from a game, movie or desktop environment.

They are complementary things. Foveated rendering means your GPU has to do less work which means higher frame rates for the same resolution/quality settings. Foveated streaming is more about just being able get video data across from the rendering device to the headset. You need both things to get great results as either rendering or video transport could be a bottleneck.

Re: Steam Frame

#568

Post by jagermo »

srjek wrote: post #23

Steam Frame is running SteamOS on ARM, and is capable of playing games standalone, which implies ARM support in Steam. Through granted, it could be in a limited form.

they are porting FEX to Proton, and according to the VRUpload article linked it has "shockingly little performance impact". This could be fun.

https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX

Re: Steam Frame

#570

Post by teaearlgraycold »

KolibriFly wrote: post #556
arnaudsm wrote: post #269

This is the first standalone headset with an open ecosystem. That's a big deal. Meta Quests & Apple Visions require developer verification to run your own software, and provide no root access, which slowed down innovation significantly.

Valve giving users root access out of the box is huge. It puts the headset in the same category as a real PC

Praise be to gaben
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