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Steam Frame

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Re: Steam Frame

#641

Post by VikingCoder »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #639
VikingCoder wrote: post #638

Next question in my head... Can we use one Steam Machine to drive, say, 4 to 16 Steam Frames. Multiplayer gameplay, like Goldeneye. With the convenience that all of the state is in memory in one process, so there's no networking layer in the gameplay logic itself. And you can't peak at the other players' screens.

GPU horsepower isn't there for that.

It depends entirely on the game.

For a AAA modern game, you're right - of course not.

But remember, they're saying this thing is six times as powerful as the Steam Deck.

That sounds like it might be able to handle 4 players running at about as good as on the Steam Deck.

And that's ignoring the whole idea of the server running on the Steam Machine, and custom clients running on everyone's Steam Frames. That would give you even more compute power.

I like the idea that the Steam Frame, in this "Living Room" scenario, doesn't even need to do network prediction. It just blasts game state to each of the clients.

So what, there's multi-player games on the same TV, like Goldeneye 64.

There's LAN games.

And now there's maybe a new category... Living Room, Multi-Screen games?

Re: Steam Frame

#642

Post by Razengan »

scheeseman486 wrote: post #529
Razengan wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want a "dumb" headset that I can use as a portable private display for my laptop. That's it. I don't need 3D, I don't need VR, I don't need weirdass controllers trying to be special. Just give me a damn simple monitor the size of my eyes. Fuck off with your XR OSes and "vision" for XR, not even Apple could get it fully right, the people in charge everywhere are too out of touch and have no clue where the fuck…

HUD glasses kind of suck since having a display oriented to your head is uncomfortable. Adding 3DOF tracking only partially solves that, so you go 6DOF to maximize optical/vestibular comfort. Now you're rendering a virtual display within a virtual environment, but look at all that wasted space! So add more virtual monitors! Now you need some mechanism to manage them, so you add that and now you have a windowing syste…

Yes sorry about my excessive use of French in the comment, I didn't mean it has to be a fixed 1:1 slab of the realspace screen, desktop app windows in XR space would be ideal, but none of the products seem to be able to get it all right yet.

Apple's visionOS comes close but it's crippled by the trademark Apple overcontrolling.

Re: Steam Frame

#643

Post by LarsDu88 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #467
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…

How the hell would foveated streaming even work, it seems physically impossible. Tracking where your eye is looking then sending that information to a server, it processing it and then streaming that back seems impossible.

The data you're sending out is just the position and motion vectors of the pupils. And you probably only need about 16 bits for each of these numbers for 2 eyes. So the equivalent of two floating point numbers along a particular channel or 32 bits at minimum. Any lag can be compensated for by simply interpolating the motion vectors.

It actually makes a lot of sense!

Re: Steam Frame

#644

Post by xandrius »

imtringued wrote: post #624
xandrius wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing against user-replaceable batteries, just that they use AA batteries. I was expecting something a bit more long lasting and rechargeable via USB.

https://www.reichelt.com/de/en/shop/product/lithium-ion_batt... I'm not trying to sell you on these in particular, it's just that I am struggling to find "non-German" results. Go search for them on ebay or a local store.

Those are cool but it does seem like they are forced to have that form factor to fit in most existing devices.

While a brand new device could employ something more apt? Even say something larger which can store more energy, dunno. It just feel off to still have AA batteries (which are generally not rechargeable) in a new product in 2025 which is not targeted to elderlies.

Re: Steam Frame

#645

Post by xandrius »

blashyrk wrote: post #566
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

Why not replaceable batteries which are not AA? Like any li-on batteries.

Also if the stand is also a charger then the hot-swap is mostly a non-issue. Playing with this for more than X hours should not be the default usage.

Re: Steam Frame

#647

Post by dagmx »

eptcyka wrote: post #267
dagmx wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foveated streaming is cool. FWIW the Vision Pro does that for their Mac virtual display as well, and it works really well to pump a lot more pixels through.

I think it works really well to pump the same amount of pixels, just focusing them on the more important parts.

It lets you pump more pixels in a given bandwidth window.

People are conflating rendering (which is not what I’m talking about) with transmission (which is what I’m talking about).

Lowering the quality outside the in focus sections lets them reduce the encoding time and bandwidth required to transmit the frame over.

Re: Steam Frame

#648

Post by yuters »

Wow this is perfect timing! I've dusted out my old Valve Index tuesday so my kids could try The Lab. It now shows a green pixels line on the right. Also the headset is too heavy for them and not easy to adjust, and I had to hold the cable so they don't trip over it. This new headset will be perfect for them.

Re: Steam Frame

#649

Post by rudimentary_phy »

barrenko wrote: post #559
rudimentary_phy wrote: post #490

I've actually just recently started using my Quest 3 again through virtual desktop. I found the sharpening feature to actually make text look good enough that I'm able to work in it for hours uninterrupted, mostly writing papers and coding. I'm super excited for this launch and for all the crazy open source builds, mods, and fun that are going to come from an open VR system (or at least that's my hope).

I am unable to parse announcements such as for this Valve product. Could I use this as a thing through which to spawn multiple monitors and code / read papers?

Definitely. There will be apps that will allow this (Virtual Desktop Classic is on steam already), and I foresee some neat things coming from its more open environment.

On the other hand, it will be highly subjective. I have found that the sharpening algorithms they have put into apps like Virtual Desktop to be sufficient for me to read text with, but it will probably bother some people. The Quest 3 and Valve’s will have very similar resolutions.

And although it looks like this Valve product will actually be quite light, the weight could be another factor in its use over many hours.

For some people, XR glasses with OLED screens might provide a better experience as well if you are looking solely for monitor or tv support. I kind of like going to an entirely new environment to work in for a while, so I appreciate the VR aspect, but if you are looking only for screen support, XR glasses may be the better choice (there are quite a few models, though, and I unfortunately don’t know the market well enough to make suggestions on that).

Re: Steam Frame

#650

Post by mastax »

monocasa wrote: post #120
esseph wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so much of an issue when neighbors with paper thin walls see that 6ghz as a -87 signal That said, in the US it is 1200MHz aka 5.925 GHz to 7.125 GHz.

More of an issue when your phone's wifi or your partner watching a show while you game is eating into that one channel in bursts, particularly since the dedicated fob means that it's essentially another network conflicting with the regular WiFI rather than deeply collaborating for better real time guarantees (not that arbitrary wifi routers would even support real time scheduling). MIMO helps here to separate the spe…

Why are you assuming the fob would use the same WiFi channel as your regular 6GHz network? That would be extremely poor channel selection.
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