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.
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 lonely. I'm so happy that there is an HMD running arch that gives the user root.
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.
far from claiming they are as low as meta, but that is their business model which never gets mentioned in this comparison, leaving readers to confuse gabe newel with RMS as some freedom authority
DRM isn't really the story with Valve. Their business model is offer good service. Part of that is not being hostile to users. Users don't want to be spied on and have their data sold, so Valve doesn't do that. People want autonomy over their hardware, so they give them that. It's even in their marketing material for the steam machine. The frame is a computer running arch. If you want to 100% opt out of Steam and write your own driver stack, they're not standing in your way. That is uniquely pro-user and freedom in the tech industry. Also, their open source initiatives with proton and fex should not be discounted.
If there's a morally grey stone to turn over then imo it's the not-gambling-wink-microtransactions and even then it's no more predatory than what is common in the gaming industry.
As much as I like gog and their game distribution model and buy most games there, this is a huge exaggeration and actually false. A game studio/publisher does not have to use DRM in steam and many of them don't. Examples are Larian (baldur's gate 3), cd project red (witcher, cyberpunk), and quite a few small and big studios that don't. Basically afaik most games that are in both gog and steam don't have DRM in steam. DRM is far from steam's fault, it is game studios/publishers that have pushed that, long before steam too.
Valves bread and butter has been their distribution channel. Before Valve, there was no major player that provided a seamless gaming download experience. Anyone who’ve gamed in early 2000s understand the pain point of downloading and correctly installing patches from a daemon site.
Valve’s DRM is just about the least invasive and easiest to crack DRM systems on the market. The only way to be less invasive is to not have DRM at all. Obviously that’s preferable, but Valve’s setup is one that keeps publishers on the platform: provide a basic DRM system and allow publishers to add more if they want. If you don’t like what someone like Ubisoft does on the platform you’ve got plenty of other options (and third party DRM is clearly labeled within Steam).
I don’t think people see Gabe Newell the way you describe. They just appreciate that Valve makes business decisions that have basic respect for their customer base. They are fully aware that he’s a billionaire yacht aficionado.
Capitalism and likability are not mutually exclusive, it’s just that so many capitalists have taken the route of maximizing serfdom.
> Valve’s DRM is just about the least invasive and easiest to crack DRM systems on the market.
In fact, their own documentation spells this out specifically[0]:
> The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not an anti-piracy solution. The Steam DRM wrapper protects against extremely casual piracy (i.e. copying all game files to another computer) and has some obfuscation, but it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.
Their model is DRM, but they have no vendor lock-in (in theory, at least). You can use a Valve product (or non-valve product) and never use Steam, or use Steam on any of the 3 major OS's. You can't say the same for an apple product.
I say in theory because yes: Steam in reality has a monopoly in the PC gaming market. And while many games are on multiple stores, odds are many games will only be on Steam. That's a more invisible hand form of a walled garden, but there's definitely an argument to be made there.
Being able to comfortably sit back / lie down and work is an interesting proposition. The Apple Vision Pro is too bulky and expensive to carry that whole category on its own, they need an 'Android equivalent'. But I think Apple messed this up by creating an absolute patent minefield (some 5k patents for AVP features iirc).
If you think this is a joke and humanity can’t be that evil then look up the the „Brookes Ship“
> Brookes was reportedly allowed to stow 454 African captives, by allowing a space of 6 feet (1.8 m) by 1 foot 4 inches (0.41 m) to each man, 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) by 1 foot 4 inches (0.41 m) to each woman, and 5 feet (1.5 m) by 1 foot 2 inches (0.36 m) to each child. However, the poster's text alleges that a slave trader confessed that before the Act, Brookes had carried as many as 609 captives at one time.
That's the samsung galaxy xr which is cheaper and lighter but it's not good enough run high resolution content for long periods without thermal throttling
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).
afaik the AVP has a dedicated Lidar sensor for gesture detection. I'd say Apple has managed to patent more basic stuff than that (pinch-to-zoom, rounded corners,...)
Oh, that'd make sense. I think the quest 3 has a depth sensor, but they mostly use that for room setup. I don't even think it has IR emitters for low light.
But that's the age old question about patents, if they're being granted too much they stifle innovation and competition instead of the opposite... (which is the point you were making as well).
On the quest 3, I've felt like the screen is just a bit too low res to use comfortably as a monitor anyways, so I imagine the Frame won't be much different. The better weight distribution should help a lot though.
The question here is whatever Steam Frame displays resolution is sufficient to work with text. So far only mass produced device that was really suitable is a Vision Pro.
So far all reviews I've seen been centered around gaming and not work.
It is said that human eyes can resolve down to 1 minute of arc(1 MOA or 1/60 degrees). Each eye has about 160 degrees of HFOV and 125 degrees of VFOV.
From there, you can work out requisite resolution for desktop replacing VR googles: 11K per eye.
The catch is that human eyes actually only have
~1 degree of full resolution area and ~30 degree of active area, and the full 200 degree HFOV is only realized by moving them around and subconsciously compositing images, so most of panels can bee left unlit, in theory.
But the panel resolution requirements is the same, and our technologies are just not there to make a true desktop replacement VR goggle, yet.
For me personally the Quest 3 is absolutely unusable for any text work. Even small font in games looks shitty. This is so far off for what it ought to be for comfortable work that I'll wait for devices with at least double the resolution per axis, i.e. 4x the pixels of the Quest 3 screens to even bother trying again.
Edit: And I'm writing this on a 32" 2560x1440 display which looks just dandy to me, so it's not like I'm super sensitive or have above average eyesight (quite the opposite actually)
I have tried this in the past and it wasn’t nearly sharp enough but I guess I see people using 1080p screens at work and those make me want to rip my eyeballs out.
I guess from the comments we can draw conclusion that its different to everyone.
I had Quest 3 for a few months to play games and I feel okay playing, but every time I tried to open IDE and terminal after 10 minutes my brain just say full stop. I tried different fonts, themes and zoom levels, but it just feel wrong.
I feel similar feeling of discomfort as if I try to work on something not in computer in low light in real world. Might be it have something to do with my bad eyesight.
I honestly did not tested AVP enough. Its just good enough for me not to immediately want to stop using it, but again I have no idea what would really happen after a week of use for 3 hours. I did it once for a few hours and it felt amazing, but its Apple and there lots of other reasons not to buy their locked down hardware.
Using it while flying will be complicated by the fact that all airlines have banned the use of power banks. If the onboard USB socket isn't very powerful then you'll only get an hours' use.
For me it's more that flights are extremely boring. I find watching any movies or TV shows on a plane to be a horrible experience. The noise of the plane can ruin even the best of movies.
Maybe better for a train; the benefit is that when you unfold your bike for the last mile, you just put your work into partial transparency and navigate using the external cameras.
Also only possible if you've got a power outlet (Surprisingly even today many long haul flights do not) as its only got just over an hour of battery life.
It has a 21.6 Wh battery. You can easily get a power bank 3+ times this capacity, thus can last 4x longer. If anything, I would rather have that weight in my pocket or backpack than on my head, all things considered.
Anecdotal, but on the last few flights that I've taken. I was told that you can use them, but you can't charge them on the flight. This was inside the US, American Airlines, and United. I can't speak to the other airlines.
In constrained plane environments https://github.com/vk2diy/hackbook-m4-mini works well and has long battery life. I fix the screen to the seat using adapted helping hands and use a wireless keyboard/mouse for input. Super comfy as long as your eyes can deal with the reduced distance (look down the aisle occasionally).
Magnifying style shop glsssed might actually be perfect for this. I use them for electronics repair (they also only focus close which is sort of a benefit here). Downside for me is they fit in a way that is too high (they are designed for looking straight ahead) that would be great for this
The issue is that magnifying the screens to fill your vision makes reasonably sized text very hard to read. You have to make the entire screen/text in front of you fairly large to make it legible. There are many other headsets with identical resolution panels, you can find this info everywhere
You can do this really well on $200 AR headsets that fit on your face like sunglasses and uses the battery of the device it's plugged into to last many hours.
If this is the biggest point, then I don't see why Xreal isn't more popular.
My tinfoil-hat take is that Lepton looks like it's just aimed at Facebook but will ultimately make Google's Android less... uniquely impenetrable. Certain hardware-dependent stuff will probably never fully work here (GPS for instance), but having a registry of what is and isn't compatible with a third-party Android derivative, on a specific reference device, will benefit every third-party Android derivative. And not that it won't have similar anticheat issues, but having a games ecosystem outside of Google Play will also cover some of the infrastructure that would require that dependency otherwise -- including payments.
And not that I don't see a net positive if gacha games never successfully make the jump... but as a Linux device there's also a lot of stuff where you just don't have to care about Play Integrity, because instead you can just run the PC version and/or a desktop browser.
(edit: shameless plug for my recent, longer writeup on this @ bhmt.dev/blog/frame)
Admittedly my VR glasses are older, but for me this is a really terrible experience. If a game lacks native VR support, it's far more comfortable to just use my widescreen monitor in the real world.
I'd agree even if the resolution is closer to a real monitor I'd really rather not have a headset strapped to my face to play the same games I could play on a tv or monitor.
There's a lot of mods (espescially for Unreal) that can graft VR support onto it, I'd say that's a more viable use case than virtual theatre screen.
I used to do this back in the day with VorpX. Playing the original bioshock via that was an incredible experience, seeing all the environmental storytelling. Utterly terrifying too.
Same. I'd say it's ridiculous to even mention it as a feature, it's more like a compatibility fallback. A shitty monitor showing an even shittier monitor while you have a fat brick strapped to your face. Maybe this gen is better, but from what reviewers say the practical hardware changes are very minimal.
What's more interesting is that it's a linux desktop open for tinkering. Maybe lots of virtual desktops all around, could probably get Blender to run in it too.
No, you need a much higher res screen to do so. A 4k screen a meter away will have ridiculously higher pixel density per degree of vision than a 2K screen directly in front of your eye that will only ever be able to do very partial coverage. The effective angular res of the virtual screen would probably be comparable to 1080p at best. In Norm's review it's said that the default render res for flat screen is 720p.
I don’t see that as the biggest point. I really don’t have much interest in playing normal games in VR.
I could see how a kid might want that on Quest when they don’t have their own TV. And it might be nice on a plane.
But $1000 is a lot for that. I know people say that watching video in the Vision Pro is really nice, I wasn’t that thrilled when I tried it, but it felt to me more like a “you can do this because you have the hardware“ not a “this is why you buy it” feature.
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.
I was really hoping to realise the "Spatial Computing" dream of the Vision Pro, but was largely priced-out of the experience, considering it basically necessitates a MacBook to complete it too.
I would wager a simple browser and terminal session is probably all I need, so was looking forward to this device. However, the screen resolution is likely to be too small, I had done some experiments with Virtual Desktop, but the Rift S was too low-res, everything had to be like 48pt.
Reviews showing the desktop being fully accessible, does give quite a bit of hope, however.
I have both a Rift S and a Quest 3. The Quest 3's displays and optics blow the Rift out of the water! I've used it for coding using Immersed, and would be happy to use equivalent or slightly better (as the Steam Frame should be) for this purpose.
Honestly as a VR enthusiast this is the least interesting feature by far.
If I want to game with glasses I'll just use my $200 xreal airs. I do sometimes on holidays using Samsung DeX and a gamepad, and GeForce now. Works well, I played through half of Cyberpunk that way.
Man GeForce now is surprisingly stable/smooth. I barely use it now (built a PC) but I got the $5 founders rate and have no intention of getting rid of it
Yes, this ability at this price point is very attractive indeed. I currently do this with Vision Pro, but it involves a mac and a capture card in addition to the steam deck.
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?
But sadly not (officially) in 3D! SuperDepth3D is such a cool concept, I don't need most of my games to be full VR immersive camera experiences, but a nice big virtual full no-limits 3D monitor would be sick.
I actually did this. Six month lap around Australia in a caravan with a Quest 3. It was ok; better than squinting at a laptop screen, but not as good as a decent physical monitor. If I did it again I'd convert a bus to have a proper desk/monitor.
Not trying to proselytize an opinion here, but every time I think about VR Goggles + a virtual flat screen, I think about how entire industries exist to make us comfortable while we watch our real flat screens. A VR option would allow me to just lay comatose-like in my bed, goggles affixed to my face, as I watch whatever. It terrifies me, partly because of how good I bet it could feel.
I have an "image sorter" web application that works great on desktop, tablets, phones and... my meta quest 3. I can bum around the spare room on the couch and have three big windows hanging in the air. If your "click" targets conform with WCAG AAA standards such an app is easy to use with controllers.
It's particularly fun to watch 3d movies with the headset but with several decent TVs in the house I'd watch movies most of the time with one of them.
> with several decent TVs in the house I'd watch movies most of the time with one of them
Once these headsets have comparable image quality, I could see them being very engaging for TV series, sports, and movies. I often wear headphones at night when I'm watching content to avoid waking my family. Being able to do that in any room, with an even larger "screen" would be really useful in some cases.
I don’t know. I can’t even take a nap while having my glasses on, so the thought of lying down with a much weightier VR headset pressing down on my face doesn’t sound super comfortable.
> I know lots … and lots … of people that sleep in VR.
Funny how demographics work. I don't know a lot of people who use VR. In fact I don't know a single person who is remotely interested in ehat looks to me and my friends like a very niche technology.
Honestly, with apps like Immersed, custom two-hand keyboards, and trackball mice, it is already feasible to lie comatose in bed with a VR headset strapped to your face and get through an entire day of software development.
When sitting, the optimally comfortable angle to look, and the optimal place to hold a controller are very far from each other. The Deck is basically only fun for long sessions if you can play it laying down. VR is more flexible in this regard.
I have used my deck (multi hour sessions) for a long time from the couch, bed, and gaming chair and i found them all very comfortable. As long as your chair has arm rests then it shouldnt be too bad. The only place i havent used a deck much is at a table or from a bench with no arm rests,and i could see how either might be uncomfortable.
For the Quest 3 for example, you can get a Bobovr halo strap that has replaceable magnetically connected battery packs. If you have at least two, you can just swap them when one runs out and by the time the second one is empty, the first one is charged.
IIRC Valve is going to release something similar in a couple months & I am sure there will be other accessory developers chiming in as well. :)
It is 21.6 Wh capacity and charges at up to 45W, so it should take less than half an hour to fully charge from zero. Not sure where you got the 3-5 hours from?
On the GamersNexus review Valve says charging should take 90 minutes. But it took GamersNexus and other reviewers 3 hours. So it probably broke in a software update and a fix is likely coming. But if this is important to you, make sure to wait for the update to land before making a decision...
Just used my Vision Pro nonstop on a 9hr flight. It’s a game changer for travel; you disappear into a private movie theater and come out at your destination.
Despite that experience that I’ve heard is lovely, it does compete with the $300 used iPad Air I bought years ago.
The screen on a used iPad Air really doesn’t look half bad, it is far smaller and lighter in a bag, and it can play movies for that entire flight without needing an external battery.
Although, speaking of used devices, the Vision Pro is looking delightfully depreciated on eBay.
It depends on the person. I can wear my Index on my head for like all day. I'm not sure what my longest Elite: Dangerous session was, but it was quite long. Other people find the same headset to be either too heavy or improperly balanced for wearing more than an hour or so at a time.
As far as motion sickness goes, it has been my experience that you can train yourself out of it. Recommendations:
1) If it doesn't do bad things to you, consume some Dramamine beforehand.
2) Don't play games that launch you through the air or otherwise induce a lot of mismatch between your virtual motion and your physical motion. Seated piloting (car or otherwise) games are one big exception to this recommendation, as most folks have a lot of brain training with "I'm sitting in a vehicle that's moving me around.", so one's brain doesn't freak out so much when presented with those visuals.
3) When you start getting nauseous, stop immediately. If you're still game, come back to play after the nausea is gone, but not before.
Newbies will attempt to power through the nausea, but it's not something you can power through... you'll just make it way worse, which sets back the whole "Convince your stupid brain that the minor mismatches between the visuals and the inner-ear sensations are not the result of poisoning, so it doesn't need to make you puke your toenails off" training that you're doing by easing into this and -if possible- using OTC anti-nausea drugs.
[0] For me, Dramamine is very helpful to prevent motion sickness.
Also VR is just not somewhere you want to be.. Its worth it in short bursts for playing Alyx or golf with a friend, but it's not comfortable, you wanna get that thing off asap.. Playing a conventional 40+ hour game in it would be awful.
I even downloaded some 3d movies to try watching in VR, pacific rim and avatar movies (there's not that many 3d movies) but I didnt get far into them, the 3d was more of a distraction than anything. Flat screen is just superior imo.
Hopefully Valve make a sequel to Alyx to help sell the new headset.
Have you seen G-Rebels? Gunman-Contracts? NMS.
Games such as Doom 2016, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Half Life 2, many many more are being modded currently.
I'd also recommend games such as Pistol Whip and Synth Riders if you'd like to exercise at home.
There are now many good quality games, and I purchased a headset only a month ago.
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 impulse purchase to try, and makes it a dedicated purchase and investment in the ecosystem. That killed any momentum.
I really suggest looking a bit into VRChat for some of the worlds people have created there - some of them are very complex & are telling stories by their environments that could be comparable to standalone VR games.
1:1 model of an Oneil Cylinder space colony that cna be fully explored:
https://vrclist.com/world/7780
(and Asagiris space/science worlds in general)
Far Future Propulsion˸ Museum of Nuclear Starflight
(1:1 models of space propulsion concepts all the way to Project Daedalus)
https://vrclist.com/world/1270747
Really, amazing things are being built in VRChat and most people even in the VR community itself are completely ignorant to that. At best they go "LOL SOCIAL VR APP" without actually checking what is possible with modern VRChat.
VRchat is what Zuckerberg wanted out of Meta. It is impressive but still suffers from the barrier to entry problem.
I think VR is in the same position the PC/Mac was in the mid 80's. It is finally technically capable enough to do some neat and useful things, it just struggles because of hardware costs. But I also said this about a decade back and progress has been neat but limited.
I played a few hours of Alyx and, I'll be honest, it started to kinda freak me out. I noticed myself getting a bit of anxiety when putting the headset on to play, and a relief when I took it off to see the real world was still there! I've never experienced something so immersive, but I haven't picked it back up to finish it yet. Someday.
I also still mini golf regularly. It's such a fun, low effort way to hang out with friends and family that we wouldn't otherwise see all that often.
I used to feel like that when I was younger and playing intense games, it was hard to "get out" and "come back to real life". I guess VR brings some of that back.
Even though its fairly cartoonish, when you see the life size gore of dead bodies with face huggers on them, etc - it hits really different in VR, at least at first.
Now imagine how intense that will become with even more realism. It could be actually seriously traumatic.
I was wondering, what could I play with it. But besides Half-Life Alyx (never played any of HF games), No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous, I couldn't find anything bigger (well, there is also SUPERHOT: VR).
I wonder why there are not that many 3D shooters, or 3D RPGs that use VR. The idea sounds great. Never used any of VR headsets and I was wondering if I should try out Steam Frame and if I don't like it I assume I could resell it later.
Also I wonder how well it would work with my headless linux gaming rig that I use for Game on Whales/Moonlight playing on my 3060ti card.
On the other hand, I still have Steam Deck that I used to play about 3 games total, it is unused besides that. But the initial investment is pretty high (well, it is AFAIR +50% from the Steam Deck 512GB price when I bought)
I remember playing this on my Oculus Rift 1 I think. It was such a better game than the other games I'd played in VR that had you put it on my head in a darkened room and told me it was the newest hardware tech I would have believed you.
Just the metaphors and "magnetics" for fiddling and dealing with your gun were so good. The conveyance system was also just so much more intuitive. I think they even seemed to have done something to deal with the very mild nausea I felt with some title.
If you enjoyed alyx , and did not play anything else interesting on vr headset you likely missed the huge pc vr flat 2 vr comunity that let us play incredible vr expériences like cyberpunk 2077. The trend these days is some random dev creating ok to full fledged VR mods for a lot of games viecoding these things. Check reddit virtualreality sub to see each week many more awesome vr content don't miss uevr too with an extensive game list ready : https://myuevr.pages.dev/
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 simulators like Elite Dangerous are quite fun as well, but harder to relate to, so seems my brain doesn't get as fooled as more "real life sims".
I think having a horizon is very useful for the immersion.
If flight sims were less of a niche category, I think VR would be mainstream. VR just improves them that much. Sadly, the entire flight sim market is probably insufficient to sustain the VR market.
Tangentially related: If I wanted to play Half-Life: Alyx, and spend as little money as possible whilst still having a good experience, what do I need? (I already own a beefy desktop computer)
I played it with Playstation VR2 and it was great, cost me around 350 euros for the headset and the PC dongle during black friday some years ago, but it might be more expensive now.
Probably Quest 3S, and unless things have improved with the native solution you'll want to pick up the "Virtual Desktop" app for better wireless streaming.
It's not very good resolution by today's standards but it's the cheap entry point. Quest 3 (non-S) has resolution comparable to the Steam Frame but costs $250 more.
If you only want to use it for streaming, you might look a used Quest 2, which has similar optics and screens as the 3S. I'm not sure the state of software support or whether its worse CPU/GPU matter for streaming performance. But I bet they're very cheap secondhand by now.
I played it with a Quest 1 and VirtualDesktop to steam it from my PC. It worked well enough to blow my mind. Of course a Quest 3 would be much better than that nowadays. That's probably the cheapest good experience.
Quest 1, the built in native streaming, with a wired connection from the beefy desktop to a WiFi 5 AP on 5 GHz in a low noise environment worked sufficiently. I'd get at least a Quest 2 if you're getting something new (not sure if the 3 is better than the 2).
What you want is a headset with fish eye lenses like the Quest 3 (not the S). Yes, it's more expensive, but you will avoid a lot of headaches with the frenel lenses. They are terrible. just buy it used.
I recently did a moon exploration in VR with a whole bunch of other people. They had a whole bunch of those pico headsets somehow syncing all their locations to each other, overwriting selective parts of the environment, and simultaneously showing the same location in English and Japanese. That was by far the best VR experience I’ve ever had.
2. There have been some big advances in converting traditional flat games to VR, especially UEVR (for Unreal games) and various custom mods. It takes a bit more work, but the experience is worth it, even for games you've played 1000 times before.
I had the Quest 2 a while ago and did manage to play some games on it (PCVR through Virtual Desktop, cause they didn't have 1st party support for Intel Arc B580).
In regards to shooting games, while some of them were nice (especially modded H3VR, all of the guns you could build etc.), the shooting and movement always felt off - rounds not always going where you'd think they should regardless of the game, aiming being a bit clunky especially with scopes and so on, same with some RPG combat games. I also tried out Into the Radius VR, CONVRGENCE, SUPERHOT VR and Zero Caliber VR. There was something weird going on, like the world scale feeling off and even when adjusting through the SteamVR options, the experience still being odd, no matter what IPD or height offsets or other settings I'd try. Never really got used to it.
But let me tell you, vehicle games were on another level. It's perhaps the best way to fly in War Thunder because the proper depth perception completely changes the feel of it (if they'd fix the damn camera, I don't want to break my neck trying to look far back), same with VTOL VR and racing games like Dirt Rally and even Euro Truck Simulator 2. You'd think I'd get motion sickness or something but no, it just felt good and more proper than staring at a flat screen, despite the limited resolution and all else. Oh and oddly enough Derail Valley also felt nicer than the FPS games, despite you also moving around a bunch (though it's mostly a train game).
VR is definitely a cool novelty, if sadly underpopulated. There was also some cool productivity software like Immersed but they kinda ruined it by removing support for multiple physical monitors and also the Virtual Desktop program and SteamVR won't let you display like 4x1080p monitors all at the same time, what's even the point of being limited to just one or two in VR? You have 360 degrees around you (well, or however much your neck can comfortably do)!
You can even run Half-Life Alyx on Steam Frame itself (standalone mode), albeit at around 36FPS according to Tested https://youtu.be/C9JyWAVj94E?t=3330
SteamVR's frame interpolation and warping is extremely well-polished. I would go into VRChat clubs, enable everyone's full-detail avatar, and I could go down to about 20fps with head tracking still feeling comfortable. Not sure if the onboard processors can do as good of a job though.
HL:A is incredible, and I think it's still the best single-player VR game ever made, but it's almost seven years old now. It's pretty clear that this software ecosystem is dead.
The race/flight sim market is still going strong, but I guess it's the exception that proves the rule. It's extremely difficult to make a non-vehicle-based game that actually plays well in VR.
Incidentally I made a vehicle based game in VR (https://roguestargun.com), but currently I have no idea how to upload the APK to Steam to run on-device for the steam frame.
I suspect that the current design of VR/AR is not likely to get cheap enough and light/small enough to catch on in a big way. Kind of seems like diminishing returns on headset improvements at this point.
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.
The Xreal augmented reality sunglasses type designs look a lot more interesting. I’m sure they sacrifice a lot of visual quality compared to a full gaming headset, but the general pitch makes more sense.
Just my two cents, Xreal is a long way from a good product. There are other brands like Viture to consider which have more support for the limited software solutions out there. Make sure you do some looking into whether they are compatible with your setup. Or if any of the various features will work without buying additional hardware from the manufacturer.
Those are the ones I am keeping an eye on most closely. In a few generations they might be where they need to be for a "floating monitors" experience in AR.
Until the hardware is ubiquitous it will remain so. But low profile AR/VR glasses that actually look exactly like normal glasses or goggles could bring it back from the dead
I had the Oculus DK1, and now have a Meta Quest 2. I haven't had reason to boot it in the past... year?
I love the idea of the Apple Vision Pro 2, but its wildly expensive and it sounds too heavy to wear for very long throughout the day unless you're reclined. I'd just use it for virtual screens for development and in my workshop ideally - but that requires me moving around, and the weight makes that a no-go.
I'm into these things, but they still just aren't there yet- and the ecosystem is still lacking geniune investment beyond HL:A and some cool tech demos.
For what it's worth, I use the Apple Vision Pro as my primary display for an average of 8+ hours a day without any issues. I have years of experience with previous headsets, but my wife has no issues with the AVP's weight either, despite having no prior experience.
I'm looking forward to the modding community finally having full, unfettered access to a single hardware deploy target that will allow them to do a lot of interesting work that may be technically possible right now, but is very hard in a complicated and heterogeneous ecosystem, both because it is technically difficult to set up, and because the technical difficulty of doing the set up prevents any community from getting over the activation energy to grow and become self-sustaining.
In particular, I don't know if the Steam Frame will have the power for this, but something like a native ARM build of Dolphin (so no FEX) that exposes the 3D nature of polygonal games is very interesting to me. If you can cross your eyes to get stereo you can see what that would look like for something like Super Mario 3D Galaxy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmgdqCL2toE (I find a conventional, unfolding phone to be a pretty good size for that. On a big monitor getting it small enough to cross eyes can be a challenge.) In general any emulation target that has 3D polygons is really interesting to me. I'm also pretty interested in what full 3D does to Skies of Arcadia (could be a complete disappointment, could be absolutely amazing) and Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, where I feel like the game that was a bit crowded and struggling with being 2D in SD might just come alive. (Assuming they didn't play too many games with the distance that doesn't work if we see it in true 3D.)
I gather the modding community is already gearing up for modding more games to be true 3D in the VR space. That is, not necessarily VR (though there's a mod community for that as well), but having a visible screen floating in 3D VR space where the screen itself is fully 3D. There is also a wide variety of games from the past couple of decades that I suspect might be very difficult to "convert to VR" but might be relatively easy to trick into rendering full 3D instead of down to 2D.
Nothing really stops any of this from happening now, but I've tried to set it up before and I was unsuccessful with my current stack. Being able to give out instructions that say "Install the Dolphin3D Build from the Flatpak Store and load up your ROMs" rather than the current set of ad hoc complex instructions that I couldn't even get through successfully could be a game changer.
I will giggle like a schoolgirl if the reason why Steam Frames sell like hot cakes in six to twelve months is that they become recognized as the premier way to emulate 3D systems from the Playstation forward. Overclocking, texture packs, modding, all that's great, but how about all those things and true 3D for a lot of games?
TBH in terms of intensity it maybe the best single-player game for me. The experience is so different from non-VR games that I struggle to even put it into the same category.
Gonna try it out on my m1 mbp because of this comment. Been waiting to play alyx forever but I didn't know a way to get mac to work - theres a solution now.
Also VR headset has limited re-playability ... table tennis was my VR golf.
Idk. After having THREE Quest 3s brick themselves within the extended warranty period, I really want an alternative. I can do normal cardio but rhythm games like Beat Saber and more are just such a better time of knocking out a decent hour of cardio several times a week for me. Beat Saber is more easily modded on PC and while the number of games I play is really low, this is worth it for me.
For good reason. Last time I checked (this year), Alyx crashes Mesa (i.e. your Vulkan layer) when the player enters an in-game load zone. This happens with native linux and the proton windows version.
It's pretty good, but it would have been good enough as a non-VR title. The thought of digging out my VR headset to play it makes me shudder. I never even managed to finish it, played through most of it and then couldn't bring myself to get my VR headset out again.
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
> It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games.
There are a lot of good games and unique experiences (Lone Echo). A lot of these games also get you moving i.e. you won't need to do cardio exercise if you play games. Many of these games aren't even considered fitness games
Batman
Beat Saber
Mother Gunship
Superhot
Pistol Whip
Gasland
Thrill of the Fight
Underdogs
Synth Riders
Guerilla Tag
Blade and Sorcery
Gorn
Les Mills Body Combat
FitXR
Creed
If you get a slip rig, just walking around Fallout VR or Skyrim VR will give you a lot of cardio while essentially enjoying a more immersive game than the flat screen version.
Name a popular flat screen game and there is likely a decent VR version. There are lots of good racing games and FPS's
Zero Caliber
Arizona Sunshine
Walking Dead Saints and Sinners
Bonelab
Pavlov
Breachers
Contractors
Into the Radius
Tactical Assault
It's also worth for having your own private movie theater. YouTube VR is great
There's a lot missing of games missing from my comment, and I didn't even touch on VR mods for games like Cyberpunk or even Zelda BOW
What your comment tells me is that you didn't really use VR for more than a few days.
I've never understood the whole VR game ecosystem. There is a handful of titles (outside of Half Life Alyx, which even then looks pretty shit and clunky) that are worth playing on VR.
Most are short bursts of fun and don't really have any moat.
There are a lot of titles that both look great and are fun, but you wouldn't know because you don't use VR. That doesn't included mods to existing games ever since Unreal made it easier to make most games, running on their engine, VR compatible. It also depends on whether you're using standalone or PCVR. Why critique something that you're not very familiar with?
VR still has a lot of problems. Some of which may never be solved, but lack of content is no longer a problem.
I have owned a quest 2 and now 3 and have always heard about that game but yet to try it. I forgot about it. I don't often get to play the quest as my kids seem to have taken over it. But there are definitely some gems out there. Echo VR was so fun it was sad to see it shut down. I also love Google Earth vr on the quest.
I appreciate that the review goes into the privacy issues and legal disclaimers with each. I don't doubt that everyone expects the Meta product to be much worse there, but wow it's a stark contrast.
Meta are objectively worse than Valve because Valve don't allow ads in games or offer advertising services and they're generally more trustworthy, but that's really only part of the privacy story. Each app/game usually has its own data collection and usage on top and I don't think either of them do much to police or constrain that.
Plus Valve also says they don't sell any data the collect to anyone else.
But the idea that games have data collection outside of the platform (e.g., Steam) is surprising to me. Would this be VR games only or a particular type of game, like ones with online multiplayer? I don't own a VR headset and don't really play multiplayer games these days. Of the games I have played (mostly indie), I've come across very few that have a EULA or anything that would imply any data collection of any sort.
It's nothing to do with VR in particular. This is the top-10 from https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/US, half of them are collecting data to share (and one to sell) to advertisers. The fact that this is surprising you is kind of the point, Valve's not providing enough transparency or doing enough (any?) policing of this. You won't even find the disclosures in the EULAs, at best they link to a separate privacy policy. I suspect lack of EULA isn't necessarily a good indicator of no data being collected either.
The breadth of data being collected includes browsing, installed software, identity and account identifiers, location, device and OS characteristics.
"In the last 12 months, Take-Two has sold and/or shared unique identifiers, IP address, as well as Internet/Electronic Activity and Profile Inferences with third-party advertising providers to enable us to provide personalized advertising to you and others like you. We may sell or share personal information about users that we know are under the age of 18 (or older, in certain locations) with their (or depending on age, their parent's) settings or permission."
"Some advertising we engage in may be “targeted advertising,” which is the practice of showing you more relevant or personalized ads based on your activity over time and across non-affiliated services. Targeted advertising often involves us incorporating third party tracking technologies into our Service or disclosing (often hashed) identifiers, such as email addresses or Ad IDs, with third parties. These third parties then match our data with their own (or their partners’ data) to deliver ads to you or similar audiences. For example, we may incorporate the Meta pixel on our website to serve ads to Meta audiences based on the data we provide.
We also use audience modeling services, where we and a partner each disclose (often hashed) identifiers to a technology provider. The technology provider then matches common factors between our and the partner’s data to help us understand audience overlap and improve campaign performance."
"We disclose this personal information to: Online marketing or advertising partners including on our mobile games These partners may combine this personal information with information that they have collected about you when you use their services (or the websites and services of third parties) to personalize your experience or to improve the accuracy of their analytics, targeting, and measurement systems."
"We also may share information relating to your device and your use of our Services with our third-party advertising partners so they may deliver targeted advertisements to you when you visit third-party services and websites within their networks. This practice is commonly referred to as "interest-based advertising," "online behavioral advertising," or "targeted advertising
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 don't think the SoC they're using supports displays much larger than this, so they'd have to upgrade that too. When you have such a wide FoV the number of pixels you need to cover it all at high resolution becomes very large.
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?
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 may not need highly general UIs based on abstractions and metaphors to the physical world anymore.
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.
Every single time I use VR, it is a brilliant experience and then a day later I completely forget about it. The object permanence and product stickiness just isn't there yet. It is like the Apple Vision, I only remember it is a thing when it is brought up by someone else.
I had imagined that remote work would induce a VR desktop work environment (as the killer app), but that hadnt taken off at all (mostly, i think, because it's difficult to type and do keyboard work in VR).
Gaming has not and will not be the killer app for VR imho. It needs to be business/money/work-related for it to actually gain a level of traction like how personal computing gained traction from mainframes.
> - There is still not a lot of great content around VR
I'm sorry but, will there ever be? I've always been on the fence about VR, it looks great for flying/racing/space games, but there has been a lot of time since it seems to have peaked and the only killer app it has is Alyx which came out 6 years ago
The motion sickness in particular is something that's been mostly solved by using non-stick locomotion, like Gorilla Tag (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1533390/Gorilla_Tag/). Both the 'big name' developers and the various flat-to-VR mod makers still insist on stick locomotion, though, even though that actively makes the experience worse.
Funnily, I always found all the anti motion sickness "hacks" (especially teleporting for movement) to be the only things that actually caused motion sickness for me when I started out using VR. "Normal" controller movement was never a problem for me, so it was kind of unexpected that the safe mode was actually harder for me.
I often wonder how common this is. As in, how many people consider motion sickness in VR a problem specifically because they only ever experienced it with these workarounds applied, and then never even found out that actual normal movement (which their brains might be completely used to from years of video games) would have been completely problem free for them.
That's not a solution, that's a workaroud. Gorilla Tag is still a niche game where you're simulating gorillas.
Most games are human-centric, so until we're able to move around using our legs & feet, stick locomotion is still the preferred way to get around in a human-centric simulated environment.
I’m excited. In addition to VR games I’m pretty interested to see how viable it is to do things with the Frame that I’d usually do on a Linux laptop.
I hope the openness of the OS leads to lots of cool 3rd party options. I’d love to see a standalone headset the size of the Bigscreen Beyond 2, and I’d also be much more willing to pay $3000 for a premium VR/AR device that runs Linux than an Apple or Meta device.
If you're good with 1990s era text fidelity, you'll love it. If, on the other hand, you prefer text that's readable enough to not care that it's digital, this will certainly let you down.
Even Apple's Vision Pro is only half-Retina, the same jaggedy text a my 1998 G3 PowerBook. I kid you not, the PPD is identical. And taking off Vision Pro and looking at your iPhone or MBP screen makes you want to smash Vision Pro against the wall. The displays absolutely suck -- and Frame's are even worse.
(If Apple narrowed the FOV down to about 75-80 degrees, they'd get decent text. But 80 degrees isn't deep immersion so we got 100 degrees and terrible text.)
Now the only problem is I'm not sure if I really have another $1059 worth of playing VR golf and rhythm games in me. Cool hardware though & even cooler software.
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 input latency and artifacting.
Wireless headsets also _suck_ for simulators and productivity - where a battery only adds weights and a wire is not noticable.
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.
That sort of "head mounted display"-first approach would make it practical to use the device for productivity / screen replacement while gaming would be dependant on your phone or computer.
> 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 or computer. Since I have a Samsung phone, it just opens DeX on my glasses and the phone screen becomes a giant trackpad. Completely seamless except for the onscreen keyboard.
For my laptop it's good enough for all the coding I need and I use it in the office because I'm used to ultrawide.
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.
I've been eyeing xreals for coding for a couple of years now, ever since my office became a children's bedroom, and the two of you are killing me. I don't know which one of you I would agree with.
For anyone interested, in the Tested video he states that you can use it plugged in but you will only be able to use it this way uninterrupted while streaming, because using the Frame itself will use up the battery faster than the rate at which it charges
At least with the Quest, the video quality over cable was only slightly better than wireless. The heat and weight of the extra hardware also becomes noticeable when sitting for a while.
For example, there's no way I could do an 8 hour work day inside a Quest - but I imagine a cool lightweight bigscreen beyond would be fine.
I used to love shooting games in my G2, I got the Quest and, despite having a similar resolution, I could hardly make out distant targets whether wired or not. It entirely killed VR for me and I haven't used it in over 6 months.
The USB-C port for charging is on the battery itself; their store diagram doesn't show if the battery itself can be disconnected for power passthrough.
For sit down, say flight, driving sims and productivity, then things to look at to compare would be things with a cable and no local compute taking weight, heat and component cost. There's the Pimax Dream Air SE and the Big Screen Beyond 2e as two recent updates in the ball park of Steam Frame pricing. Both that have eye tracking for better high resolution performance. The Pimax has a variable quality reputation and the Big Screen Beyond requires a deprecating Lighthouse tracking system, so no easy answers. None will be as smooth an experience of the Frame but are more geared to head mounted display.
Wired is only great if you're sitting down, playing driving or flying simulators. If you ever need to turn or move, wires get annoying really fast. Even with Beat Saber, it's terrible
I agree but, my experience with wireless has been so bad that I'd rather be able to play games with a wire than avoid them without one.
I liked shooters and going from the G2 where I could actually use sniper rifles to barely being able to make out people down a corridor - wired or wireless - really killed it for me.
I do hope Valve's work on ARM64 for this, alongside improvements to performance in Honeykrisp, make for a dramatically better experience with Linux on Apple Silicon Macs.
They're very lovely devices with big GPUs, and I would love to (one day when ram prices go back to normal!) repurpose my M3 Max as a under TV Steam Machine when I upgrade.
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 are wireless protocols that can stream high-bandwidth videostreams from your PC to VR goggles.
Not trying to be snarky or facetious, but genuinely curious.
I'm surprised no one really has answered the implied question. Wireless protocols are hard for VR not because of bandwidth, but because of latency. Head tilt motions have to be processed extremely quickly to not be nauseating. Even with wired systems, the headset often ends up doing all kinds of motion prediction to process motion and shift the image before the game has time to process it, because engines aren't going to round trip input to video output at 120fps/8ms (double buffering doubles your latency!).
Of course, that multiplies with bandwidth requirements, which are also quite extreme at 4k 120fps.
To be clear, you don't have to run things on it, you can stream wirelessly from your PC.
An advantage of a standalone unit is you can take it with you, or for people who don't already have a gaming computer.
You're also asking why not have it plug to a more powerful machine. The answer for that is simple: wires get snagged and pulled on, in practice it's a poor experience (remember, you cannot see the wires when you are wearing the headset).
Well, there are already devices like that (Big Screen Beyond), Valve has a wired headset (Valve Index) - so it makes perfect sense to do something more modern and future proof.
The real question is why did they release this as a standalone unit for $1049 and then claim they couldn't sell it for less due to the RAM shortage - when that implies they could have released a dumb unit that depends on the Steam Deck or Steam Machine for far less?
You're asking why they couldn't completely change the product from a full-fledged VR machine into a headset in roughly a year, especially when they already sell a regular VR headset for $1,000?
They do not, in fact sell such a headset, in that it is permanently out of stock. You can risk buying it used for $1800…
It was released in 2019 and by comparison, sucks. A new index with new displays of the frame but without the things that make the frame expensive (ram) would be welcome.
If it can do innside out tracking its way more data efficent to have compute onboard. And if you already have a decent amount of compute you can scale it up just a little more to have. a fully standalone unit.
I'm not sure going from less than $50 of RAM and a $50 processor for foveated eye tracking to 16 GiB of RAM ($300) and a Snapdragon 8 ($200) is a "slight bump".
Yeah, can't wait for the AI hype bubble to finally end. Hey, we might even get some nice fast repurposed HBM from the scrappers reusing stuff from the bankruptcy auctions. :)
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 design a few years ago - before the AI hyperscalers bought up all the RAM - so the economics changed a lot under their feet.
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.
I like wired for the better graphics and unlimited playtime. In practice even a single cable gets wound up, stuck on things, and generally feels in the way. It's a difficult trade off to accept, even with a long and light weight cable.
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 Frame is apparently the best at being a wireless, PC-driven headset.
As for standalone functionality, my guess is that a headset hardware powerful enough to deliver a good wireless PC VR experience is powerful enough to work as a standalone headset for less demanding applications.
There are two use-cases. Already sitting at a PC and you just pop your headset on - your idea makes sense. But traditional VR means standing up in a dedicated space (2m x 2m) and demands uninterrupted time. That's a high friction activity, and adding setting up a PC and Oculus Link and Steam VR before you start playing makes that friction even higher to the point where it's a niche hobby. Most casual players are doing stuff like VRChat and Beat Saber which can run on low powered hardware, so having a basic game-playing ability is a good idea.
At least right now, the "mobile" version of VRChat is not that impressive (well, its impressive what can even run when you cut it down this much).
All the really impressive Worlds and avatars are still PC only.
Ideally, there would be some more seamless performance scaling than the current "do 2 versions, one of them ugly but fast, if even possible". :P
Maybe Steam Frame will help this get going by being in a better place to run more advanced stuff, being more powerful than Qeust 3, which was basically the "mobile" VRChat benchmark so far.
The wires really get in the way, even in a seated context. I often use a Rift S for rally games, and the wire will get caught in the backrest, the wheels, my legs. VR is immersive, so you instantly forget and it's a thick and fragile wire so there's a degree of stress.
Not to mention the trip hazard or ripping it out of the PC while playing room-scale games.
I concur, given hardware constraints that a far more slimmed down unit would have been appealing, and more future-proof, but I believe there's still a requirement for onboard compute for inside-out tracking and handling disconnection events, at some point making it self-sufficient (at the time) was seen as not much more expense.
Being able to play without a bunch of setup in your room and without worrying about getting tangled in cables seems great. I have a Valve Index—which is a pretty remarkable device, that I definitely enjoyed—but the hassle of cable management/etc adds some real hassle. And I say this as somebody who actually set up a pulley system to make it work better in my home office :P
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
I have a dedicated Wifi 6 (not 6e, so just miss/using the 5 GHz band) AP just for VR, directly connected to my PC and it works well Virtual Desktop & Quest 3.
Have done quite a lot of quite active stuff (exploration, driving, flying, fighting games) and it really is seamless and I don't notice any lag as long as the game itself manages good FPS.
If you really concentrate on the graphics, you can see some compression artifacts in places, but it is unnoticeable when you are actually doing VR stuff, not just looking for it. :)
For the Frame, this should all be much better - easier setup, much better available bandwidth (dongle has Wifi 7), efficient foveated streaming, etc. :) I would exect better image quality (more bandwidth, more efficient streaming), better FPS (more efficient rendering) and better image quality (can reduce compression).
I suspect the answer is actually very simple, when you compare this device to one that is made deliberately dumber there are far too few actual differences to make it make sense.
1. Unless all you play is a sit down driving or flying simulator, the wires will get in your way. You can mitigate it with ceiling and wall pulleys, but it's still a really terrible experience that kills immersion.
2. Fitness. If you're moving and turning a lot, you're just going to hate wires. Your arms will slam into them and you'll almost trip on them and pull your computer down.
Wireless to a desktop isn't perfect, but it's doable. Stand alone is ideal if you don't the visuals being turned down a bit.
If use for solely VR Gaming, and you don't care a ton about the privacy aspect, it is a hard sell against a new or used Q3. However, for myself personally I love the idea of it as a device I can tinker with and have full control over. I would love to also replace my laptop with it while traveling. Especially with a small wireless keyboard it has a good chance to replace my laptop for tinkering/gaming on the go.
With the price increases it is likely not a good value for an average person, but for myself and some other tinkerers I think it is very acceptable.
That depends. Having had a Quest 2 and dealt...nay, put up with with Meta and their god awful ecosystem you couldn't pay me to touch another one of their headsets. I'll take an open linux based one over a Q3 any day. That alone makes the price difference worth it to me. Throw in the foveated streaming and the vastly superior quality and latency of streaming and it makes for a fairly decent offering.
Doesn't wearing a headset in public have antisocial "Glasshole" vibes?
Honestly, people who cowork in public already give me the ick. Maybe immersing yourself in a headset is just a physical manifestation of the digital immersion that is already plaguing public spaces.
Im not too familiar with the term Glasshole, but on long dark plane rides, if I want to use my laptop I feel like a lighthouse, even with lowest screen brightness. If I look like a dork with it on while doing some light gaming or movie watching, that is an OK price to pay to not disturb others around me. But if you are talking about just general out in public, then it absolutely gives dorky vibes. On the train, or in a coffee shop or something, a laptop just looks much less conspicuous.
Is the Glasshole thing more geared towards recording people in public? This headset has 1. bad cameras but 2. a much better privacy posture than meta.
The Glasshole thing comes from when Google Glasses were new (sort of the ancestor to the modern Meta pervert glasses). When you saw someone wearing Google Glasses, you could see the camera pointed at you and that the screen was on and doing stuff. It made a lot of people uncomfortable.
The “glasshole” vibe wasn’t antisocial; it was an understandably human reaction to the fact that you couldn’t tell whether the wearer (and/or google) was surveilling or recording you any time they so much as glanced in your direction in public.
I don't really get the ick about wearing these kinds of things in public, but, having tried to wear XR glasses in public has shown me that the bigger issue is that these things are at a whole other level of distracting compared even to phones. It'd probably be worse with a full face headset, since at least with glasses you have your full field of view.
Even despite pinning the display in a corner, I noticed I was very distracted when crossing streets. Made me stop wearing them like that, instead prefering to carry them in my backpack and use them on train rides or flights.
At least with my phone I can just slip it back in my pocket when I need to pay attention to my surroundings.
I don't think using a display when walking around is a good idea or even just safe to do. On the other hand, I think it makes perfect sense to have something a like a fighter jet HUD - important information in static places (time/location/notification status/etc.) with possibly some highlights (showing where is the next bus in AR, annotating things when you look at them, seamless translation of text, etc.).
What's icky about taking a laptop down to the park and getting some work done while surrounded by nature?
Although, I do agree, I would find it odd to go down to the park and see someone wandering around with a VR headset tuning out the world and waving controllers around. I'm more addressing the "cowork in public spaces" part of that. I think their statement about "while traveling" is more like while seated on a several hour plane trip or relaxing at a hotel or things along those lines. Not like wearing the device while ordering a latte or something along those lines.
I've been astounded by how many older games are suddenly getting surprisingly good VR ports/mods (I suspect AI-assisted tooling is playing a role in some of this) There's a youtuber Beardo Benjo who has been documenting a bunch of them where some are tethered to a PC while others have been ported to run natively on the Quest.
A few of the more interesting ones, newest to oldest:
Hopefully they have solved the issues but... the only times I got VR sickness from VR is
(1) trying GTA5 in VR using a patch. It was amazing once the game gave me control. But by that time I was already sick from the unskippable in game intro
(2) Breath of the Wild - Labo version. When Nintendo came out with a cardboard holder for Switch and a VR option for BotW, I tried it. The fact that it wasn't designed for VR made me sick really fast
I was surprised by both. I'd played 100s of hours of VR by that point and no sickness. Both of those games made me feel seriously ill and it took a while (30-60 minutes?) to recover.
Wish Valve would make enough of something so that everyone that wanted one could get one.
I wanted to get an Index headset when they launched that. I would check the Steam store page every few months, for 5 years. Every time it said "Out of Stock". It's still out of stock in France today.
They design great products, but are useless at getting them produced in quantity.
True but it still happened with the controller at least. But it also backfired. I would have impulse bought day one but they only just in the last week offered me the opportunity to purchase and I passed on it.
You might look at why it's out of stock. Here in the US, it looks like they're out of stock of the base stations, the right controller (but not the left!) and replacement face gaskets. [0]
> They design great products, but are useless at getting them produced in quantity.
shrug I've little doubt that there were a great many periods between the Index release and now that you could have gotten a full set of equipment. I'm very suspicious of the claim that you never found a time when you could purchase one from the Steam Store.
The Index had the misfortune of being released during the start of The Global Plague when everyone with a sizable chunk of disposable cash found themselves with a great need for new toys to play while stuck at home... and global manufacturing got turbofucked by said plague, which didn't make it especially easy to ramp up production.
The Steam Frame has the misfortune of being released in the beginning of The Great Abandonment of The Consumer PC Market, which has just screwed the availability of parts and their price.
I'd say that neither of those things are Valve's fault, but what can I really know? They're a secretive private company, so maybe they engineered both catastrophes. ;)
This feels like kind of a weird set of trade offs. I'm sure they'll be able to fix a bunch of polish issues in software later (better gamepad support, adding hand tracking, etc). And the enthusiast crowd will likely fork out the money for the ecosystem advantage alone. But I feel like I'd be hard put to convince a non-enthusiast
For me a lot of the value comes from the freedom you get with frame. Valve says “it’s your PC, install what you want” and it runs an open source OS. It’s the first truly Linux friendly headset (it runs arch btw) and I don’t have to send my data to Meta. Also foveated streaming means, according to reviewers, a pretty decent wireless PCVR experience. I can’t wait to play half life Alyx without a tether. Valve is just doing something very different from meta.
It's a compelling product niche, for sure - but still, awfully niche. I'm sure there's folks out there who will bite on the chance to have a top-line VR headset with Linux, but at the price point... gotta be a fairly small market segment.
Still, I'm happy they're doing this, it seems like a cool product and I bet it would be almost as much fun as a platform to hack around on as it will be for gaming.
I was careful in my wording - the benefit is the freedom. Many people will appreciate that, simply by being able to install what you want. That goes well beyond the benefits to Linux users, but as a Linux user I really appreciate it.
Yeah, I've been Linux-only on the desktop since the early aughts and trying to get the Valve Index working was so frustrating and inconsistent I eventually gave up. It sits collecting dust and I've still never played more than the first fifteen minutes of HL: Alyx (because no game is worth installing Windows for).
Very much looking forward to maybe actually being able to use VR on my gaming computer.
I love the Steam Deck because it is almost entirely a consumer electronics experience. I mean, maybe for 10% of the games I have to edit an .INI file to have a perfect experience, but for the most part I can pick it up and play and not fight with configuration files and shell scripts the way I do at work and with my hobbies. I've seen Windows-based devices that compete with it at Best Buy and I'm kinda shocked that, for a demo, they drop you on an ordinary Windows desktop with visual scaling appropriate for a 20x bigger screen and it is not obvious how to play a game -- such a fail!
Overall I like the experience of installing and running games on the MQ3, I can very much see a Steam-based device that is just as nice or nicer.
Can you elaborate on what your setup is? I have tinkered plenty and there are multiple issues I'm still dealing with on my Arch machine, despite being on a setup that Valve claims is supported (KDE Wayland, Nvidia), namely:
- SteamVR won't see my Index unless I power cycle it
- The in-overlay desktop view does not work at all, either shows all black or doesn't render at all, so I can't control my desktop from VR which is a massive pain
- The SteamVR Home environment (the startup app) crashes immediately even if launched manually
You can't stream from a Linux box to the Frame? Where did you hear that? Given that you can stream between Linux boxes using Steam, I find that surprising.
Yeah, I used my Index on my Gentoo Linux machine like six months ago and it worked fine. FWIW, I'm using an AMD video card. Perhaps it doesn't work at all on Nvidia hardware, but -absent sabotage from Nvidia- there's no reason why the type of video card should matter at all... the thing's a wide-ass screen with some sensors attached that the graphics card has absolutely nothing to do with.
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 standing within 10ft of the router with the PC being wired into the network with ethernet, nothing has beat a tethered USB connection using the native Link functionality on my Quest 2.
Any SteamVR based solution fixes most of these issues and the Frame sounds like it might make wireless actually viable. Even if it doesn't, tethered with Valve software instead of with Facebook software is still a meaningful improvement.
2x GPU performance[1] and RAM, along with it being your machine instead of a locked down Meta android device is worth 2x the price for many. Eye tracking is also huge, both as an additional input device, and lifting GPU performance even more with foveated rendering.
It'll be highly dependent on the game. Unlike foveated streaming the implementation of foveated rendering could mean many things. Actually rendering at a lower resolution in areas you aren't actively looking is probably the most complicated approach because it seems like you'd have to render two times (low res + high res) to get the desired effect.
> Actually rendering at a lower resolution in areas you aren't actively looking is probably the most complicated approach because it seems like you'd have to render two times (low res + high res) to get the desired effect
In the newer implementations, you can split the display into tiles, and render each tile at a different resolution, so it's not that bad. A bunch of the intermediate rendering targets are already rendered at reduced resolution, so you won't see a full 4x speed up in the low-res regions, but you should be able to achieve a ~30% overall speed up with modern foveated rendering.
The framebuffer that you are filling out is still at native resolution, but while computing that frame buffer you can do many of the steps at reduced resolution. For example, instead of evaluating the pixel shader code for every pixel, it could evaluate once for a block of four pixels in the reduced resolution region and use the result for all four.
Not having to faff about with Meta's developer program or whatever to side load my own homebrew stuff, and then get locked out, then have to do whatever hoop jumping six months later, is a huge bonus. I have an OG Quest 1 and the damn thing needs a new copy of meta quest ...whatever, installed every 2 weeks if I want to use it. It's exhausting.
Everything from meta is a spyware and should be only touched inside a VM like with any other malware vendors.
Money is just a number and far less precious than personal dignity and privacy. I don't even get the idea why people really would compare something around 1k usd range in developed countries, it's a no brainer.
> Everything from meta is a spyware and should be only touched inside a VM like with any other malware vendors.
I'm on your side, but this kind of hyperbole weakens your argument. Tell me about the spyware in pytorch, react, zstd, or llama3.2:1b and how you shouldn't touch this except within a VM.
Took me a very small amount of time to figure out pytorch was a one man effort that actually was discouraged by Facebook initially, and the dev no longer works there
No, but take other applications with a grain of salt. Everybody gets excited about the idea of having a dozen large virtual monitors floating around your desk, but even really great resolution has just not been good enough to make those displays look crisp. Also, a lot of folks still get pretty bad headaches when they use VR or AR. So MOSTLY it's for games and movies, but people remain convinced that there's a big killer app here somewhere that we just need to figure out.
Right, in terms of hardware and price, I've always been tempted by the Meta Quest, but the ecosystem and the fact that it's locked down has always been the major blocker for me. It does suck that this more than twice as much (although some of it is obviously the current surge pricing), but for hardware that I own, it's well worth it.
There is much more - people use it to communicate (VRchat), visit 3D scans of real places (3D Gaussian splatting) or see future concepts, like space colonies or massive starship concepts from their won PoV. Really, a lot of stuff is happening & possible with modern VR. :)
Quest 3 is cheap for the same reason that 80 inch TVs are sold at or below cost. If you value your privacy at zero and want to strap a surveilling, billboard on your face for pennies on the dollar be my guest.
This is for people who want control over their devices. Despite the poor timing and somewhat high price tag I am glad there's competition in this space. Meta's stance on software and hardware openness is not great & it's suffocating the whole space.
The price is basically the same as the Index was at launch 7 years ago. With the devaluing of the currency, the increase in specs and capabilities, and the current component suppy crisis, it is a deal. Adjusted for inflation the Index would cost $1300 today, which now gets you a Frame with 1TB of internal storage.
Quest 3 is a mindblowing piece of hardware completely ruined by the runtime and vendor. This is basically it as a Linux machine you actually own. That being said, my Quest has sat on the shelf for years now since purchasing. I just don't really see a market for these things outside of driving/flight simulation enthusiasts. The whole "smartphone strapped to your face" paradigm is a dead end for actual VR.
There's an incredibly simple product case I think HN is missing: I bought a Vive and then an Index. This has higher resolution than the Index, lower mass (even with a battery!), and easier setup that can enable more spontaneous use. In addition, I now get the benefits of "standalone" headsets that I previously did not think were worth hundreds of dollars on their own.
Am I paying $1000 for a minor improvement? Yes. It's a hobby. It costs money sometimes. I don't do this for nearly anything else, like phones that other people seem fine for paying $1000 every other year. I expect this device to last until another 6 years when I can justify spending another $1000 on another iterative improvement. Similarly, I may spend $1000 on a new setup for simracing soon.
Spending $6k on a gaming PC, a VR headset, and wheels and pedals is an experience you otherwise cannot get. I would spend money on VR even if it only worked with one or two driving games and nothing else. For those of us in that niche, VR has been anything but a "Failure", that business people seem convinced it is because it couldn't be the next "Platform" to put an app store on.
But, that's the market for VR. It's a niche toy for people with expendable income. It's not a mass market to rival the smartphone.
I wonder how well fex will work with older 2d-3d games before, say, 2003, of the PS2/Xbox era and earlier, and whether controling mouse pointer is viable using the default controller.
For me personally steam frame would be worth it if only for running these kinds of games on a large virtual screen, watching movies and intermittently using it as a linux computer (with a limitation that text is likely not readable if the screen is comparable with Quest 3). And some VR native apps like Alyx.
Basically the stuff that Steam Deck already does save for all the new games (which run worse and worse with each year anyway)
Something to keep in mind that a lot of simmers (DCS specifically) don't get when they want to jump into VR:
Once you hit the advanced 3rd Gen or any 4th Gen fighter or attack aircraft (essentially anything where you go "heads down" for any significant portion of the aircrafts mission profile) VR becomes more of a liability than an asset.
For those aircraft being a pilot is secondary to being a systems operator.
Think of an F-14; you have the front seat who would want to be in VR because they fly the aircraft, but the RIO would NOT want to be because they have very little need to be, especially since it makes interfacing with their mission systems so much harder. AH-64's are the same split.
Now if you are the sole person in the aircraft and need to do both missions being able to operate the systems fluently and smoothly via dedicated interfaces FAR exceeds any benefit from being in VR.
I've done it all, and I far prefer flying in VR. But for accomplishing complex mission profiles multiscreen with each being an MFD and a rich control set far beat that immersion.
Perhaps the best mix is using a curved UW and trackir plus dedicated MFD screens. Once you get that setup its amazing for that advanced capability set.
All of this assumes you want to use the full capability set of an airframe, or use an attack profile at all. If all you want is to use them for A2A, then VR is wonderful as long as you have a full HOTAS set, understand the preset modes on everything, and memorize the controls and alternate control schemes properly for BVR to close in conversion, countermeasures, etc.
Personally I use physical MFDs in my simulator together with a VR headset, it works out great. Initially I thought I would need to get some kind of hand tracking cameras or passthrough in order to see what buttons I was pressing, but I found that you develop muscle memory super quickly, and seeing the buttons move in VR when you press them physically is good enough.
Does not seems like a very realistic simulation if you basically give both the pilot and operators their own home office. In reality that does not fit into a fighter jet & the idea being to simulate that experience as realistically as possible.
I wanna do all of the above, to the extent that a few sessions a week can be had, and yeah, my existing multi-monitor rig allows for a degree of MFD integration, with lots of controls (faderfoxes repurposed for it) alongside an admittedly kind of basic warthog HOTAS .. its more for the fun than anything else. No chance, ever, to fly some of these machines any other way, so its gonna be great ..
For DCS only, I wonder how this slots between a Q3 and a bigscreen beyond. The beyond with no controllers is probably about the same price all in as the 1TB, but would be better screens and lighter. If you dont care about the standalone stuff it might be another good option. The frame does bring more versatility, but at the cost of battery/weight. Wireless VR in sims is unbeatable in terms of immersion though.
I bought an HP Reverb G2 for DCS about 5 years ago and it worked great. When Windows started deprecating the Mixed Reality services random things started breaking, though.
IMO VTOL VR is better than DCS in VR (albeit unavoidably more arcade-y) because it's designed for VR first, while DCS's screens and labels are much more difficult to read given the limited resoultion
I just want to clarify for others reading that the resolution is really mainly limited by your PC hardware, NOT VR headsets.
As in, it's totally possible to have completely clear text on DCS screens and labels even with an older lower res headset like the Valve Index, as long as you render the game at a sufficiently high resolution (via SteamVR settings or similar).
Just wanted to point this out, since a lot of folks aren't aware how drastically increasing the render resolution (even far past the native HMD panel resolution) affects image clarity.
I used a Rift for DCS and it was amazing graphically. Hard to go back to playing on a screen and using a HOTAS hat to capture your view (or head tracker).
But you better have your HOTAS controls memorized because it's a pain not having visibility of them.
Yes, I would probably try to do some kind of "point webcam at HOTAS" hack to try to obviate this hassle, at least until I get the muscle memory really nailed.
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 device and the use time thereof.
Now, what they do with that data after the fact is almost certainly less nefarious than Meta - but they do by definition collect that data.
This does make me excited for the possibility, several years down the line of a Valve ARM Linux laptop with decent battery life. I wonder if anyone will rip out the compute unit out of the headset and try to use it as mini PC, just because you can, it seems like fun.
The Meta model (of cheaper hardware, highly subsidized) is probably not long for this world, with the recent increase in component costs.
Lower volume with consumers fully covering the device cost will probably become the norm, which doesn't bode particularly well for this industry (at least in the short term)
> Lower volume with consumers fully covering the device cost will probably become the norm
dont know about lower volume, but having the consumer pay the cost of the device fully (instead of subsidized by the later sale of games on the system) is better aligned with the interests of the consumer. You'd be less likely to get monopolistic device sellers signing exclusivity for games like the consoles of the past.
I want the device to be as good as it can be, rather than wanting the device for the exclusive game that it has.
I wanted so much to play with VR back in the 90s, but most 3d games give me motion sickness. I could barely play 5min of Goldeneye on N64, 2min playing Metroid and I was sick to death (headache, vomiting if I forced myself, feeling sick for hours).
Although I can play many, it's really a hit and miss. And thus I avoided VR not really knowing how it would render me useless.
I'm a little late to the party but is there any list for recommended VR games?
I had Quest 3s for a couple weeks but I returned it because I didn't liked it and wanted to buy the Quest 3, but at the end I just decided to wait for the Steam Frame.
Superhot VR and Half-Life Alix, in that order. Sprinkle in some Beatsaber to taste.
Playing Superhot VR for the first time made me experience actual physical euphoria. I hadn't had that reaction to a new tech thing since I first got a ZX Spectrum as a little kid.
The only downside of starting with these is that it sets the bar incredibly high. But I still recommend it - it's hell of an introduction to a new medium.
Foveated Streaming seems to be buried on the page, this feels like a true game changer, especially for PCVR. Coupled with eye tracking it unlocks about 2-3x more compute for rendering. Now sparkle DLSS-like upscaling and you can render 144hz native resolution PCVR games without buying a 5090. Truly exciting stuff.
I still remember Michael Abrash's talk from 2016 where he talks about Foveated Rendering + Eye tracking as one of the key pillars of next-gen headsets https://youtu.be/o7OpS7pZ5ok?t=5438. Interestingly, his prediction was that it would be widespread as of about 5 years ago. Is next-gen finally here after 10 years?
Not quite: foveated streaming only affects the bitrate of the stream. For improving rendering performance, there is a similar technique called foveated rendering. It's still somewhat unclear how well that works while streaming, though. In theory, it should work, but no reviewers seem to have covered it for some reason.
I do wonder if they use local upscaling after foveated rendering/streaming. The screenshot I've seen look a bit aliased in the periphery, which I hope isn't too distracting.
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.)
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
Usually the pixel density is higher in the center of the FOV though (more distortion due to the lenses on the sides). It's what set the original Oculus apart from existing headsets at the time: cheap lenses and correct the distorsiin in software. It's also a feature, as the actual density is better in the center :)
I do wish they used micro-LEDs for that kind of display though. I guess that they could be manufactured at the same time as a metamaterial acting as a lens sitting on top.
Seems like we need one more decade of oled panel and gpu improvements before we can have good enough density with a reasonable size and power consumption.
you can even replace the whole computer if you tinker enough, since it runs Linux. whether or not that is a good idea in principle with _any_ vr headset is debatable.
AR glasses are much more suited towards that vertical at a lower cost, yet imo still struggle to be compelling in productivity.
I think it would still work. A lot of people claim VR is about immersion, but I disagree. There is nothing less immersive than having a giant headset strapped to your face. To me VR is about the control scheme. Playing games with your hands with full freedom is very different to playing with a standard controller. That wouldn't be affected by a lack of 3D vision.
Some VR games assume you have depth perception and so you may have trouble with them, such as Beat Saber, but I honestly think most VR games would be perfectly playable without 3D vision. You may not be as good at the games as someone with 3D vision, but you'd probably still enjoy it.
My second favourite VR game is Gorilla Tag. I think that would play fine without 3D vision... as long as you don't get motion sickness - that game can be a lot.
> Reservations are currently not available for customers who have not made a purchase on Steam before Mon, April 27, 2026.
As someone who made a purchase on steam (that I can't even play) after the release of the Steam Machine, but before the release of the Steam Frame, in the hopes that the date would be later, I am disappointed that they used the same date, such that that purchase still does not unlock the ability to order.
I'm thinking of selling my Index and my Vision Pro for one. The screens/tech in the Vision Pro is remarkable, but sadly the iron grip of the App Store Guidelines means none of it is really accessible for any interesting applications. The AVP App Store is a pathetic ghost town. I'd much rather have a less technically capable headset but have it be completely open.
This is everything and much more than i wanted from a VR system, it feels like its designed exactly for me. Also tbh i thought after the steam machine price shock i got that this will be like 200 more.
1. It is SteamOS with desktop mode, the SteamDeck made me really miss that feature on any newer console i use like my ps5 or switch 2. Like even if we just limit it to games, playing games like The Binding of Isaac or Minecraft unmodded is a pain for me.
Even just using websites for Streaming Services that dont have their app on every system ever, PS5 and Switch 2 dont even have webbrowsers you can just access, I think you have to edit DNS settings to make it think you have to sign up for a free wifi in the browser IIRC.
2. Wireless Streaming without the (Quest 3S) downsides of Wireless Streaming. I have a 6ghz router in my room, connected to my Laptop with an ethernet cable and tried the streaming on a quest 3S.
I dont want todo that ever again, it was so inconsistent. It felt like the beatsaber song and gameplay speed up and slowed down like 1-5% in waves to catch up with the stream. Also sometimes my right eye turned into a chess grid of black pixels but i would assume that was more of a Linux Quirk.
Also since i use a Laptop i dont want any wires from my headset to the Laptop, I dont want to pull my laptop and possibly more off my desk in the middle of a game.
Also for movement games like beatsaber i find cables really annoying when you want to quickly accelerate.
3. Both the Windows mixed reality Headset and Quest 3S had TERRIBLE software.
To continue using the WMR i had to reinstall windows like once every 1-2 months. Which just ended up with me stopping to play VR (Like why would i reinstall my PC like 6-12 times a year just to play those 3-4 games. From what i know from the steamdeck, the frame will be so so much better in this regard.
On the Quest i wouldnt even have my steam library without connecting to a PC.
4. An ARM linux device that doesnt contain 10-15 year old somewhat mid phone hardware.
Like i had been thinking about getting a macbook for asahi linux for a long time now just because it seemed like the best in that regard and i really really wanted a finished, high performance ARM device. And if i can run that many steam games on my non actively cooled phone already without the frame even being out (Since both use the FEX layer) (which has the same chip as the frame) I feel like i will really enjoy it for local Minecraft VR and Beatsaber and probably more.
5. The controllers. LTT complained about the "Default Xbox layout" because reaching all buttons is a bit hard, but for me, both the meta quest 3S and Samsung odyssey + controllers had a severe lack of buttons to bind game actions to. Also i like bigger controllers anyway, I like the Steam controller, I like the Wii u Gamepad, I like the steamdeck and I even like the OG xbox controller. To me those werent big clunky controllers, they were (or are) the most comfortable controllers i have used so far.
The only 2 things im eagerly waiting for more Info on is the "Much better comfort" i have been hearing about and the ability to install .APK files.
Either way im already sold on this thing and believe i will LOVE it for years and years to come.
Kind of bizarre tbh, given the software market for VR seems absolutely dead. Announcing it with a 7 year old game is like, what? What's Valve's plan here?
I think Valve’s plan is that some of their engineers wanted to make the device. That was the plan.
I also think they just couldn’t justify selling the valve index anymore because of the current state of technology, but didn’t want to discontinue offering VR entirely. A large percentage of Steam sales are back catalog games. A game being 7, 10, 20, 30 years old doesn’t mean it’s bad or that someone won’t buy it.
Another aspect here is “steam store on everything” is a strategy. It doesn’t matter if it’s a niche, because the mere presence of endless hardware options adds value to the Steam store. You can be confident in buying lots of games on Steam because you know they’ll run on more stuff than games you buy on PS5 or Switch or the Microsoft Store.
They’re not a public company, they don’t have to make stock price go up. At the same time, this thing existing is a net positive for them.
Well they are the ones trying to build market. And they have money to invest. Cycle most likely should be lot faster but it doesn't seem unreasonable thing to try.
Agreed... I already played Alyx years ago and there's no other game of similar quality... love the hardware, but it's hard for me to imagine dropping a grand on this
It's absolutely wild to me that they didn't include, and have devs ship profiles for some of their games, SuperDepth3D or some other depth map shader officially in some form in the Steam UI for this. If a big focus is playing your pancake library on a huge screen (due to there not being not many native VR games), having that huge screen be 3D would be a huge value add. And they're big enough to get some developers to ship profiles for their games officially guaranteeing some form of workingness(?).
This. This is what I am looking for. I remember using iz3d years ago, with their anaglyph renderer. Playing Half Life 2, Halo and others in stereoscopic 3D was a great experience. Dead Space was particularly nice, as the game uses no HUD.
Isn't it bit odd that there is no basic wired connectivity option? Or am I just old-fashioned? As far as I can tell you only options are 6GHz streaming or stand-alone mode
You can pick up a Valve Index if you want to do this, which is a fantastic device, but I think the reality is that the market for the wired to a desktop head set just isn't there to support the product.
The streaming is good enough now, especially with foveated rendering, that there's no reason for them to eat the extra support cost and user experience drag of focusing on a tether.
The Steam Frame looks like a heck of a device. At the cost, though, I question why they didn't include a better pass-through camera. A device with onboard processing and a good pass-through camera would be very neat. If they were trying to make this an affordable device I'd understand, but it's over a thousand dollars.
I suspect the reason it wasn’t included by default was that pass through is not the intended experience.
For a gaming focused device, pass through is not getting used very much. It’s only used for the kind of stuff the Vision Pro is trying to use. If you’re playing Half Life Alyx or something you’re just not using it your entire session.
What is the thing with Komodo having exclusivity for Valve hardware in Japan by the way ? We wanted to buy a SteamDeck OLED in Japan last year and it all the big department stores in Akiba it was sold out - kinda indicating Komodo is not really handling this very well if they have no stock.
AFAIK they still aren't shipping an actual ARM64 version of Steam, making it difficult to actually use those (unsupported) ARM builds of Proton. That article is 5 months old.
You can use it really easily on Android devices through apps like Game Native and some of the more powerful Android gaming handhelds have support for Steam through Linux distros like Rocknix and Armada OS.
I think this is a good chance to try and port Alyx (ARM64 build) to visionOS and run it on my Vision Pro headset which has been running around unused for the last two years xD
>Your Steam Frame headset easily pairs with your Steam Controller. Stream from your PC, laptop, Steam Deck or (coming soon!) Steam Machine for an immersive experience with any of your favorite games.
How are they even intending for the Steam Frame to be used with the Steam Deck? As far as I know, it’s not meant to be used with a cable, and the wireless adapter it ships with is USB-A.
I think the only way this is really compelling is if it's able to effectively function as a virtual Linux desktop with a reasonably clear floating monitor in front of you.
I'm not sure that's appealing to me for a couple reasons that mostly boil down to "I don't really want a computer strapped to my face for hours at a time", but I'm the right kind of weirdo who sees the appeal in being able to eliminate the 32 inch monitor from my desk. I'd love to have all this desk space back to put "not computers" in. Or even just leave it empty.
Outside that, so much of this feels very ... I dunno. Answer in pursuit of question. Sure, I can play my Steam library "anywhere" (* caveats apply), but how often do I really want to do that, and especially how often do I want to take the very expensive gadget around to do that?
I've got a Lenovo x86 handheld purchased for around $500, which I'd already be a bit reluctant to drag out on the train or wherever public. For an even more expensive headset with optics and other difficult-to-clean parts, much more so.
VR games themselves are very "meh" to me. Some are insanely cool, but they just aren't enough to rationalize buying a headset. I've got a CV1 that's collected dust for years because it's just not worth it.
It looks like this does support a pretty robust sort of virtual desktop environment, though. That could make this almost compelling, I think. But that's a steep price for "it's almost interesting"...
> I'm the right kind of weirdo who sees the appeal in being able to eliminate the 32 inch monitor from my desk. I'd love to have all this desk space back to put "not computers" in. Or even just leave it empty.
Unfortunately none of the current generation VR/AR/XR glasses come close to replacing a monitor full-time. They may be okay for using in a pinch (like if you're travelling and need a bigger/secondary/private display), but they suck for long term use.
Biggest issues:
- Screen resolution is still pretty low. At 2160x2160, it feels like you're just sitting really close to a 27" 720p monitor. You will see the pixels. It may not matter much for movies and some games, but you will notice it for productivity. If you have a decent monitor already, it's a very noticeable downgrade, even when compared to using any modern laptop display.
- They're just not comfortable for long term wear. I can work 8+ hours in front of a regular screen with almost no issues, but that's just impossible with current generation VR/AR/XR glasses.
- The big screen promise is a lie for productivity. You'd need to constantly move your head around to be able to see the whole screen; you can't see it all in one go, without dealing with blurry/distorted edges. If you do want to see the entire screen in one go then not only does the image become smaller (breaking the big screen promise), the clarity of text drops sharply.
So if you're considering getting any of the current generation glasses for long-term productivity: just don't.
I’m somewhat surprised nobody has pointed one of those hacking models at a Rift CV1 and said “make it work without all the Facebook junk, preferably in Linux.”
But in seriousness, I've gone down this rabbithole ever year or two for about as long as I've had the darn thing (including one especially masochistic attempt at making it work on ppc64le), and any time I have gotten an open stack to drive it, the result has always been unusable with regard to input jitter and "general feel". Which is to say, yes, people have already figured out how to drive it on Linux.
It's just that the experience sucks.
Very impressive work by all the folks who hacked on it. But it seems like actually getting all the smoothing/filtering and interpolating sensor data is, for whatever reason, an unreasonably hard problem. Dunno if the LLMs could help at all, short of ... stealing the secret sauce from the proprietary runtime??
Ars Technica's article put it at 1.5hrs in performance mode and over 2 in a power saving mode, but noted that the lower saving mode wasn't enjoyable. Of course it's I am sure that is going to be highly subjective to what you are doing.
Why they decided to include standalone functionality is beyond me. It's a $1000 dollar VR headset. 99.9% of people buying this will already have a beefy gaming setup and will much prefer to stream from that instead of play standalone. You're not traveling with this thing, you're not using it on the go, it's not heavily subsidized like Quest headsets...
Including standalone and an SSD and ram and stuff does nothing but jack up the prices drastically, for functionality that nobody's gonna use. Rest assured, I will not be buying one.
I think the price is very reasonable for what’s on offer (especially given the current memory crisis), and given that Valve doesn’t subsidize the cost of anything, it really shows how much Meta values your privacy and biometric data for advertising purposes (~$600 in subsidies).
One thing I keep seeing reviewers skip over is VR Chat, which is weird since it’s a core VR experience that continues seeing average player count increases YoY compared to the boom-bust cycle of most VR games/experiences. It’s also an experience the headset seems uniquely targeted for - wandering the home or apartment streaming over 6GHz Wi-Fi, hanging out with friends or going to raves, no umbilical needed or dodgy Quest support limiting the experience.
For VRC alone, $1300 is a very respectable price for the experience on offer, especially compared to the $1k “entry point” of the Index. Common man VR this ain’t, this is targeting the VR serious as well as those who value privacy higher than what Meta offers in subsidies. The 2D support is a clever way of justifying the higher price though, and giving folks a more private way of enjoying their libraries in non-gaming spaces.
You're fooling yourself if the quest provides any advertising data value, let alone 600$ The device is simply just being sold for as a loss and is not a data harvesting operation.
Some quick googling shows the ARPU of a meta user is approx 57$ a year, and ~65$ in NA. Even if the quest provided useful advertising data (it doesn't) it would never come close to 600$ over the lifetime of a user.
I don't even understand what you mean by "biometric data" for advertising purposes. What biometric data is the quest collecting? How in the world is biometric data useful for advertising?
There's a reason why Meta is tens of billions of dollars in the hole for reality labs. It's not to subsidize for advertising that's for sure.
For VRChat it has even more benefits - built in eye tracking out of the box and and expansion port for which rumoredly there should be an official project Babble lower face tracker under development. :)
That’s a big reason I’m buying it (along with the wireless freedom of movement). VRChat has been a godsend of socialization and authenticity, and I want to immerse myself into it more with FBT, ET, and FT/MT such that it feels like a proper digital self. I couldn’t do that in my apartment layout with lighthouses a la BSB or Index, but the Frame and modern SteamVR/OpenXR suggests this will be one of the best ways to immerse into VR experiences going forward.
The fact I can throw it into my bag and travel with it is a bonus.
vrchat is just weird enough (and for, maybe, weird people) plus the new user experience/children yelling slurs situation makes it hard to even bring up to general audiences
I do think hardcore sims and vrchat are the only good reasons to get into vr now, though
Underpowered where it really counts. The GPU is barely better than that in a Quest 3 (Adreno 750 in Steam Frame vs Adreno 740 in Quest 3,) and while the CPU is almost 250% better overall than what is in the Quest 3, CPU power hasn't really been the limiting factor in most VR games I've played, it has been the GPU, both in PCVR and in standalone devices.
I imagine thats why they've gone so far with the dual stream setup that can use the 6ghz dongle + your wifi for ultra low latency to a dedicated machine.
10 years later and VR headsets are still too heavy, hot and sweaty. Short of having brain implants or magical contact lenses, nothing will ever change that.
Can't be used more than 30min without major discomfort for most people. Any talks about it replacing monitors are lies.
Headsets like the Bigscreen Beyond 2 are basically the weight and size of goggles. Wearing headphones isn't actively comfortable either but very few people would say that that is prohibitively uncomfortable relative to their desire to listen to music. It's not unreasonable to think that the privacy and convenience of a VR workspace could eventually reach that level of convenience for a significant number of people.
The real issue for replacing monitors seems to be screen fidelity.
in my experience this is only an issue when headsets are unbalanced between the front and back, since this results in the weight going on your nose/face rather than straight through your head to your neck. the frame's battery is on the back specifically for this reason in addition to the whole thing being relatively light anyway
No better than the rest of the VR headsets that came before it and almost no-one wants them. These headsets will end up collecting dust with the Apple Vision Pro and the Meta Quest Pro.
We gave VR headsets enough time and this is just going to be a repeat failure of the previous ones.
Glasses such as the XReal on the other hand have a far better future than these VR headsets.
> Glasses such as the XReal on the other hand have a far better future than these VR headsets
Far into the future, perhaps. These glasses may be fine for short stints, but not for serious 8+hrs of productivity. I have a Viture Beast and I regret buying it. Even for short gaming stints, I still prefer my laptop or smartphone display as these glasses are such a downgrade.
The current XReal models are very underwhelming. Very narrow FOV more or less equivalent to using a 27" monitor, lots of fuss with the cable, switching sound to headphones because the built in speakers are garbage. Issues with HDR support.
Which means? We should buy the Meta Quest / Quest Pro headset? I don't think so.
Maybe that's the reason why the Meta Quest Pro is in "so much demand" that Meta is no longer selling them anymore. Apple is not even bothering to restock Vision Pro either.
So much demand /s
I am saying VR had a great run. We are not in the Covid era anymore which the Quest greatly benefited from this. VR has a very limited future and it shows.
I am saying that too. AR had a comparatively terrible run - it's possible that Apple's Vision Pro moved even less units than XReal.
VR is niche, but a real market. It coexists with the AR world and still outsells it consistently, despite being a terribly unpopular market segment.
It means that your claim of AR glasses eventual popularity is even more spurious than a guy with a Rift DK1 saying that VR is destined for mainstream success. They're both wishcasting.
Brutal pricing. It would have been brutal at $600.
Having said that, there really is no other game quite like Half Life Alyx. It's so good, immersive and one of a kind. Perhaps worth the price of admission. It's so good that it kind of ruined VR gaming for me because all other games kind of felt like tech demos from that point on.
Yikes, what a terrible price. 55 minutes playing on-device Half Life Alyx. 1hr 30min streaming from a PC with dongle. 3 hours charge time. It's just pretty lame tbh. Damn :(
Is it really that bad? The hardware processing and storage is effectively a S24 which retails for $800. Add the additional displays, cameras and controllers, an extra $250 doesn’t seem that out there.
Whether it's a brutal price is separate from where it's fair for the hardware costs that went into it.
I don't want to buy that high end cell phone. First because I already have one (it would be very nice if I could have my phone handle compute from the back of my head or my pocket), second because I mostly want the headset to use with my desktop computer. $250 or $500 for a dumb headset with these features would be great.
Also charging 2-3x slower than you use the battery is very lame.
Eh, I don't think that's how the maths works, especially for products that are in completely different categories. For starters, display costs relatively much more on a VR headset compared to a 6" phone screen, the unit cost is much lower for a phone that is sold in many millions, the marketing cost is different etc. There will likely be actual breakdowns that provide some perspective into this.
Sure, it's not one to one, so the fact that the headset is so close to the retail price of a presumably much cheaper per unit flagship phone is why I don't really think the pricing is that bad for what it is.
Slim, lightweight form factors similar to that of the Bigscreen Beyond are not going to be practical in a self-contained headset for quite some time to come, at least if the goal is to play anything more demanding than Terraria on it and its price range is anywhere remotely within reach of the general consumer.
The only reason why Facebook has been able to swing such low prices is with steep subsidization, and the Quest hardware itself isn't much less bulky.
I hope the fact there's now a more open, Linux based VR headset will encourage more variety of headsets and price points, like we see with PCs, generic Android handhelds, etc.
I'd love someone (maybe even Bigscreen themselves) to make something like a standalone version of the Beyond 2. I'd be happy with some kind of puck or whatever for the compute and/or battery just to have it be that lightweight.
Nitpicking a bit - once again another FOV of ~110. Sigh.
Maybe I’m just being picky, but I feel like I’m playing a submarine periscope simulator when I use these things. It’s been over a decade since the early VR headsets like the Rift, and it’s pretty much the same as it’s always been.
The only headset that didn’t give me this tunnel effect was the Pimax 8K, but it had its own problems.
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.
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 lonely. I'm so happy that there is an HMD running arch that gives the user root.
> 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.
valve whole business model is invasive drm tho.
far from claiming they are as low as meta, but that is their business model which never gets mentioned in this comparison, leaving readers to confuse gabe newel with RMS as some freedom authority
DRM isn't really the story with Valve. Their business model is offer good service. Part of that is not being hostile to users. Users don't want to be spied on and have their data sold, so Valve doesn't do that. People want autonomy over their hardware, so they give them that. It's even in their marketing material for the steam machine. The frame is a computer running arch. If you want to 100% opt out of Steam and write your own driver stack, they're not standing in your way. That is uniquely pro-user and freedom in the tech industry. Also, their open source initiatives with proton and fex should not be discounted.
If there's a morally grey stone to turn over then imo it's the not-gambling-wink-microtransactions and even then it's no more predatory than what is common in the gaming industry.
> valve whole business model is invasive drm
As much as I like gog and their game distribution model and buy most games there, this is a huge exaggeration and actually false. A game studio/publisher does not have to use DRM in steam and many of them don't. Examples are Larian (baldur's gate 3), cd project red (witcher, cyberpunk), and quite a few small and big studios that don't. Basically afaik most games that are in both gog and steam don't have DRM in steam. DRM is far from steam's fault, it is game studios/publishers that have pushed that, long before steam too.
Valves bread and butter has been their distribution channel. Before Valve, there was no major player that provided a seamless gaming download experience. Anyone who’ve gamed in early 2000s understand the pain point of downloading and correctly installing patches from a daemon site.
Valve’s DRM is just about the least invasive and easiest to crack DRM systems on the market. The only way to be less invasive is to not have DRM at all. Obviously that’s preferable, but Valve’s setup is one that keeps publishers on the platform: provide a basic DRM system and allow publishers to add more if they want. If you don’t like what someone like Ubisoft does on the platform you’ve got plenty of other options (and third party DRM is clearly labeled within Steam).
I don’t think people see Gabe Newell the way you describe. They just appreciate that Valve makes business decisions that have basic respect for their customer base. They are fully aware that he’s a billionaire yacht aficionado.
Capitalism and likability are not mutually exclusive, it’s just that so many capitalists have taken the route of maximizing serfdom.
> Valve’s DRM is just about the least invasive and easiest to crack DRM systems on the market.
In fact, their own documentation spells this out specifically[0]:
> The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not an anti-piracy solution. The Steam DRM wrapper protects against extremely casual piracy (i.e. copying all game files to another computer) and has some obfuscation, but it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.
0: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm
Their model is DRM, but they have no vendor lock-in (in theory, at least). You can use a Valve product (or non-valve product) and never use Steam, or use Steam on any of the 3 major OS's. You can't say the same for an apple product.
I say in theory because yes: Steam in reality has a monopoly in the PC gaming market. And while many games are on multiple stores, odds are many games will only be on Steam. That's a more invisible hand form of a walled garden, but there's definitely an argument to be made there.
Being able to comfortably sit back / lie down and work is an interesting proposition. The Apple Vision Pro is too bulky and expensive to carry that whole category on its own, they need an 'Android equivalent'. But I think Apple messed this up by creating an absolute patent minefield (some 5k patents for AVP features iirc).
Wow imagine we can have masses of people lie back and work. Think of how small we could make the cubicles
You know those drawers they have at morgues?
Reinventing server racks from first principles
Commuting would be much nicer on quality ball-bearing drawer runners.
This almost sounds like a movie I saw once. "The Matrices" maybe ?
Office capsules!
We meet in VR meeting rooms and at the end of the day, we’re safely delivered back to the parking lot via capsule shuttle.
But everyone has to be in the office. For, you know, collaboration. And face-to-face interactions.
Ssssh, WeWork investors could be reading this thread!
If you think this is a joke and humanity can’t be that evil then look up the the „Brookes Ship“
> Brookes was reportedly allowed to stow 454 African captives, by allowing a space of 6 feet (1.8 m) by 1 foot 4 inches (0.41 m) to each man, 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) by 1 foot 4 inches (0.41 m) to each woman, and 5 feet (1.5 m) by 1 foot 2 inches (0.36 m) to each child. However, the poster's text alleges that a slave trader confessed that before the Act, Brookes had carried as many as 609 captives at one time.
WeWork 2.x any time now ;)
> Android equivalent
That's the samsung galaxy xr which is cheaper and lighter but it's not good enough run high resolution content for long periods without thermal throttling
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...
afaik the AVP has a dedicated Lidar sensor for gesture detection. I'd say Apple has managed to patent more basic stuff than that (pinch-to-zoom, rounded corners,...)
Oh, that'd make sense. I think the quest 3 has a depth sensor, but they mostly use that for room setup. I don't even think it has IR emitters for low light. But that's the age old question about patents, if they're being granted too much they stifle innovation and competition instead of the opposite... (which is the point you were making as well).
On the quest 3, I've felt like the screen is just a bit too low res to use comfortably as a monitor anyways, so I imagine the Frame won't be much different. The better weight distribution should help a lot though.
Unless you live in a walk in freezer !
So it may be a good wirk machine to use during long flights, with a compact wireless keyboard.
Unless you fly first class, using a laptop on a plane is painful.
The question here is whatever Steam Frame displays resolution is sufficient to work with text. So far only mass produced device that was really suitable is a Vision Pro.
So far all reviews I've seen been centered around gaming and not work.
It is said that human eyes can resolve down to 1 minute of arc(1 MOA or 1/60 degrees). Each eye has about 160 degrees of HFOV and 125 degrees of VFOV.
From there, you can work out requisite resolution for desktop replacing VR googles: 11K per eye.
The catch is that human eyes actually only have ~1 degree of full resolution area and ~30 degree of active area, and the full 200 degree HFOV is only realized by moving them around and subconsciously compositing images, so most of panels can bee left unlit, in theory.
But the panel resolution requirements is the same, and our technologies are just not there to make a true desktop replacement VR goggle, yet.
I work on a Quest 3 no problem. This is sharper.
For me personally the Quest 3 is absolutely unusable for any text work. Even small font in games looks shitty. This is so far off for what it ought to be for comfortable work that I'll wait for devices with at least double the resolution per axis, i.e. 4x the pixels of the Quest 3 screens to even bother trying again.
Edit: And I'm writing this on a 32" 2560x1440 display which looks just dandy to me, so it's not like I'm super sensitive or have above average eyesight (quite the opposite actually)
I have tried this in the past and it wasn’t nearly sharp enough but I guess I see people using 1080p screens at work and those make me want to rip my eyeballs out.
Honestly I'be tried Quest 3 and it was not enough for me to consider it anything more than just a toy.
How many hours a day you spend in it? How often do you use it?
Most days often for several hours.
Maybe I'm hard to please but I would say even the AVP isn't actually suitable for multi-hour text sessions.
I guess from the comments we can draw conclusion that its different to everyone.
I had Quest 3 for a few months to play games and I feel okay playing, but every time I tried to open IDE and terminal after 10 minutes my brain just say full stop. I tried different fonts, themes and zoom levels, but it just feel wrong.
I feel similar feeling of discomfort as if I try to work on something not in computer in low light in real world. Might be it have something to do with my bad eyesight.
I honestly did not tested AVP enough. Its just good enough for me not to immediately want to stop using it, but again I have no idea what would really happen after a week of use for 3 hours. I did it once for a few hours and it felt amazing, but its Apple and there lots of other reasons not to buy their locked down hardware.
Using it while flying will be complicated by the fact that all airlines have banned the use of power banks. If the onboard USB socket isn't very powerful then you'll only get an hours' use.
Source?
Last I checked I'm allowed 100Wh of power bank on a flight. And for flights where that's not enough I'm used to having a (~100W) socket.
How many flights are you people taking that it's cutting into your work time? When I fly I just read a book.
For me it's more that flights are extremely boring. I find watching any movies or TV shows on a plane to be a horrible experience. The noise of the plane can ruin even the best of movies.
Maybe better for a train; the benefit is that when you unfold your bike for the last mile, you just put your work into partial transparency and navigate using the external cameras.
Also only possible if you've got a power outlet (Surprisingly even today many long haul flights do not) as its only got just over an hour of battery life.
It has a 21.6 Wh battery. You can easily get a power bank 3+ times this capacity, thus can last 4x longer. If anything, I would rather have that weight in my pocket or backpack than on my head, all things considered.
Can't use power banks on many flights now
Anecdotal, but on the last few flights that I've taken. I was told that you can use them, but you can't charge them on the flight. This was inside the US, American Airlines, and United. I can't speak to the other airlines.
In constrained plane environments https://github.com/vk2diy/hackbook-m4-mini works well and has long battery life. I fix the screen to the seat using adapted helping hands and use a wireless keyboard/mouse for input. Super comfy as long as your eyes can deal with the reduced distance (look down the aisle occasionally).
Magnifying style shop glsssed might actually be perfect for this. I use them for electronics repair (they also only focus close which is sort of a benefit here). Downside for me is they fit in a way that is too high (they are designed for looking straight ahead) that would be great for this
The Frame's screens aren't good enough for general computing. This is purely an entertainment device.
As far as I've kept track, a good-enough-for-reading headset doesn't exist yet. So it's not like Frame bad, it's whole industry still bad.
> The Frame's screens aren't good enough for general computing.
We did "general computing" in 320x200 screens. I think the Frame's screen is a bit better than that.
The issue is that magnifying the screens to fill your vision makes reasonably sized text very hard to read. You have to make the entire screen/text in front of you fairly large to make it legible. There are many other headsets with identical resolution panels, you can find this info everywhere
I disagree and I've got one
Just increase size/scaling of everything I guess right?
> https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/8671
This is Compiz Fusion [1,] 20 years later.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR8x5Wb26ew
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawkc3jH3ws
If only the Steam Frame had a decent pass through mode.
You can do this really well on $200 AR headsets that fit on your face like sunglasses and uses the battery of the device it's plugged into to last many hours.
If this is the biggest point, then I don't see why Xreal isn't more popular.
XReal is only replacing the screen part and needs another device as a core, this headset works standalone.
As the form factor is already pretty bulky, keeping it as a single device helps a lot IMHO.
Maybe some of the non-xreal brands or some combinations of hardware provide usable experiences, but all my experiences with xreal have been abysmal.
I think even that's an understatement.
My tinfoil-hat take is that Lepton looks like it's just aimed at Facebook but will ultimately make Google's Android less... uniquely impenetrable. Certain hardware-dependent stuff will probably never fully work here (GPS for instance), but having a registry of what is and isn't compatible with a third-party Android derivative, on a specific reference device, will benefit every third-party Android derivative. And not that it won't have similar anticheat issues, but having a games ecosystem outside of Google Play will also cover some of the infrastructure that would require that dependency otherwise -- including payments.
And not that I don't see a net positive if gacha games never successfully make the jump... but as a Linux device there's also a lot of stuff where you just don't have to care about Play Integrity, because instead you can just run the PC version and/or a desktop browser.
(edit: shameless plug for my recent, longer writeup on this @ bhmt.dev/blog/frame)
Admittedly my VR glasses are older, but for me this is a really terrible experience. If a game lacks native VR support, it's far more comfortable to just use my widescreen monitor in the real world.
I'd agree even if the resolution is closer to a real monitor I'd really rather not have a headset strapped to my face to play the same games I could play on a tv or monitor.
For sure. I think this is more for someone who wants something portable though.
Agreed, this sounds like an odd feature to list.
There's a lot of mods (espescially for Unreal) that can graft VR support onto it, I'd say that's a more viable use case than virtual theatre screen.
I used to do this back in the day with VorpX. Playing the original bioshock via that was an incredible experience, seeing all the environmental storytelling. Utterly terrifying too.
Same. I'd say it's ridiculous to even mention it as a feature, it's more like a compatibility fallback. A shitty monitor showing an even shittier monitor while you have a fat brick strapped to your face. Maybe this gen is better, but from what reviewers say the practical hardware changes are very minimal.
What's more interesting is that it's a linux desktop open for tinkering. Maybe lots of virtual desktops all around, could probably get Blender to run in it too.
You don't need 4k in the headset panels to simulate a 4k monitor. The virtual screen isn't glued to your head.
No, you need a much higher res screen to do so. A 4k screen a meter away will have ridiculously higher pixel density per degree of vision than a 2K screen directly in front of your eye that will only ever be able to do very partial coverage. The effective angular res of the virtual screen would probably be comparable to 1080p at best. In Norm's review it's said that the default render res for flat screen is 720p.
I don’t see that as the biggest point. I really don’t have much interest in playing normal games in VR.
I could see how a kid might want that on Quest when they don’t have their own TV. And it might be nice on a plane.
But $1000 is a lot for that. I know people say that watching video in the Vision Pro is really nice, I wasn’t that thrilled when I tried it, but it felt to me more like a “you can do this because you have the hardware“ not a “this is why you buy it” feature.
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.
I was really hoping to realise the "Spatial Computing" dream of the Vision Pro, but was largely priced-out of the experience, considering it basically necessitates a MacBook to complete it too.
I would wager a simple browser and terminal session is probably all I need, so was looking forward to this device. However, the screen resolution is likely to be too small, I had done some experiments with Virtual Desktop, but the Rift S was too low-res, everything had to be like 48pt.
Reviews showing the desktop being fully accessible, does give quite a bit of hope, however.
I have both a Rift S and a Quest 3. The Quest 3's displays and optics blow the Rift out of the water! I've used it for coding using Immersed, and would be happy to use equivalent or slightly better (as the Steam Frame should be) for this purpose.
Honestly as a VR enthusiast this is the least interesting feature by far.
If I want to game with glasses I'll just use my $200 xreal airs. I do sometimes on holidays using Samsung DeX and a gamepad, and GeForce now. Works well, I played through half of Cyberpunk that way.
But, now you can play through the second half in VR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXho2LdD1qo
A flood of VR mods for popular games have been coming out lately.
Man GeForce now is surprisingly stable/smooth. I barely use it now (built a PC) but I got the $5 founders rate and have no intention of getting rid of it
They are simply uncomfortable for that. That is a niche for a niche use case.
Yes, this ability at this price point is very attractive indeed. I currently do this with Vision Pro, but it involves a mac and a capture card in addition to the steam deck.
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?
> You can run some/many (depending on your library) of your regular Steam games on a 'flat screen' inside the VR environment
I can already run 100% of my Steam games on a flat screen in front of my real eyes
Not cinema size, and not with your poor eyes focused on "infinite". And not any of this on a plane, or a train, or a self driving car, or an RV.
But sadly not (officially) in 3D! SuperDepth3D is such a cool concept, I don't need most of my games to be full VR immersive camera experiences, but a nice big virtual full no-limits 3D monitor would be sick.
I can't believe you forgot the toilet.
Your eyes won't be focused on "infinite" in VR either. The focus distance is similar to the distance to the screen on your desk.
I like that you specified that the car was self driving, but didn't specify the RV was.
In my head the RV was parked and the VR provides a virtual office in the small space :)
I actually did this. Six month lap around Australia in a caravan with a Quest 3. It was ok; better than squinting at a laptop screen, but not as good as a decent physical monitor. If I did it again I'd convert a bus to have a proper desk/monitor.
My eyes already show as much as I can see.
Not trying to proselytize an opinion here, but every time I think about VR Goggles + a virtual flat screen, I think about how entire industries exist to make us comfortable while we watch our real flat screens. A VR option would allow me to just lay comatose-like in my bed, goggles affixed to my face, as I watch whatever. It terrifies me, partly because of how good I bet it could feel.
I have an "image sorter" web application that works great on desktop, tablets, phones and... my meta quest 3. I can bum around the spare room on the couch and have three big windows hanging in the air. If your "click" targets conform with WCAG AAA standards such an app is easy to use with controllers.
It's particularly fun to watch 3d movies with the headset but with several decent TVs in the house I'd watch movies most of the time with one of them.
> with several decent TVs in the house I'd watch movies most of the time with one of them
Once these headsets have comparable image quality, I could see them being very engaging for TV series, sports, and movies. I often wear headphones at night when I'm watching content to avoid waking my family. Being able to do that in any room, with an even larger "screen" would be really useful in some cases.
Not bed, a stasis biochamber. Taking care of all your needs during a long fleet fight in EvE online.
Finally no need to let people leave for a 5 min bio every 1.5h.
Though with the current direction things are evolving towards, the biochamber might get replaced with the torment nexus.
I don’t know. I can’t even take a nap while having my glasses on, so the thought of lying down with a much weightier VR headset pressing down on my face doesn’t sound super comfortable.
I know lots … and lots … of people that sleep in VR. I don’t know how they do it either, but there we are!
This product doesn’t look half bad for sleeping in VR for people that are used to doing so with other headsets. Definitely easier than some offerings.
> I know lots … and lots … of people that sleep in VR.
Funny how demographics work. I don't know a lot of people who use VR. In fact I don't know a single person who is remotely interested in ehat looks to me and my friends like a very niche technology.
Honestly, with apps like Immersed, custom two-hand keyboards, and trackball mice, it is already feasible to lie comatose in bed with a VR headset strapped to your face and get through an entire day of software development.
Just like nature intended.
That sounds like a worse experience to me.
When sitting, the optimally comfortable angle to look, and the optimal place to hold a controller are very far from each other. The Deck is basically only fun for long sessions if you can play it laying down. VR is more flexible in this regard.
I have used my deck (multi hour sessions) for a long time from the couch, bed, and gaming chair and i found them all very comfortable. As long as your chair has arm rests then it shouldnt be too bad. The only place i havent used a deck much is at a table or from a bench with no arm rests,and i could see how either might be uncomfortable.
How long is that comfortable? For sure not couple of hours in 1 go
Valve thought of that. Its got a 1 hour battery life and you have to wait 3-5 hours for it to charge back up!
For the Quest 3 for example, you can get a Bobovr halo strap that has replaceable magnetically connected battery packs. If you have at least two, you can just swap them when one runs out and by the time the second one is empty, the first one is charged.
IIRC Valve is going to release something similar in a couple months & I am sure there will be other accessory developers chiming in as well. :)
It is 21.6 Wh capacity and charges at up to 45W, so it should take less than half an hour to fully charge from zero. Not sure where you got the 3-5 hours from?
Valves own testing + reviewers. Nobody anywhere has got anything close to the speed you're suggesting.
On the GamersNexus review Valve says charging should take 90 minutes. But it took GamersNexus and other reviewers 3 hours. So it probably broke in a software update and a fix is likely coming. But if this is important to you, make sure to wait for the update to land before making a decision...
Gamers Nexus lists a ~120-min battery life in their video review of the Steam Frame.
Reviews say around 2-4 hours when streaming from PC, 1 hour is if you're gaming directly on the device with the graphics turned all the way up.
> For sure not couple of hours in 1 go
Worry not! That's how long the battery lasts!
Just used my Vision Pro nonstop on a 9hr flight. It’s a game changer for travel; you disappear into a private movie theater and come out at your destination.
Despite that experience that I’ve heard is lovely, it does compete with the $300 used iPad Air I bought years ago.
The screen on a used iPad Air really doesn’t look half bad, it is far smaller and lighter in a bag, and it can play movies for that entire flight without needing an external battery.
Although, speaking of used devices, the Vision Pro is looking delightfully depreciated on eBay.
VR enthusiasts will be in VR 7+ hours on a weekend. I regularly clock 4+.
Without a tether to the PC (I have battery in my pocket) it’s pretty okay!
> How long is that comfortable?
It depends on the person. I can wear my Index on my head for like all day. I'm not sure what my longest Elite: Dangerous session was, but it was quite long. Other people find the same headset to be either too heavy or improperly balanced for wearing more than an hour or so at a time.
As far as motion sickness goes, it has been my experience that you can train yourself out of it. Recommendations:
1) If it doesn't do bad things to you, consume some Dramamine beforehand.
2) Don't play games that launch you through the air or otherwise induce a lot of mismatch between your virtual motion and your physical motion. Seated piloting (car or otherwise) games are one big exception to this recommendation, as most folks have a lot of brain training with "I'm sitting in a vehicle that's moving me around.", so one's brain doesn't freak out so much when presented with those visuals.
3) When you start getting nauseous, stop immediately. If you're still game, come back to play after the nausea is gone, but not before.
Newbies will attempt to power through the nausea, but it's not something you can power through... you'll just make it way worse, which sets back the whole "Convince your stupid brain that the minor mismatches between the visuals and the inner-ear sensations are not the result of poisoning, so it doesn't need to make you puke your toenails off" training that you're doing by easing into this and -if possible- using OTC anti-nausea drugs.
[0] For me, Dramamine is very helpful to prevent motion sickness.
Except far less comfortable and motion sick inducing for a non-trivial portion of the population. No thanks.
HL Alyx was awesome though, nothing else on VR has been worth it for me.
That's already true for most PC VR headsets.
Edit: I missed the point here, see reply.
Standalone? No. Most PC VR headsets require a PC. The Steam Frame will let you play 2D games (and some VR games), with no phone or PC attached.
Thank you for the correction.
Also VR is just not somewhere you want to be.. Its worth it in short bursts for playing Alyx or golf with a friend, but it's not comfortable, you wanna get that thing off asap.. Playing a conventional 40+ hour game in it would be awful.
I even downloaded some 3d movies to try watching in VR, pacific rim and avatar movies (there's not that many 3d movies) but I didnt get far into them, the 3d was more of a distraction than anything. Flat screen is just superior imo.
Hopefully Valve make a sequel to Alyx to help sell the new headset.
You may not realise that we are currently in the midst of a VR Mod rennaisance:
https://pcvrcentral.com/
Have you seen G-Rebels? Gunman-Contracts? NMS. Games such as Doom 2016, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Half Life 2, many many more are being modded currently.
I'd also recommend games such as Pistol Whip and Synth Riders if you'd like to exercise at home.
There are now many good quality games, and I purchased a headset only a month ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/VRGaming/
Interesting, a lot of cool mods including Mass Effect Trilogy. Thx for sharing this.
That seems like a really good fit, since they might actually run onboard at a usable framerate?
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 impulse purchase to try, and makes it a dedicated purchase and investment in the ecosystem. That killed any momentum.
I really suggest looking a bit into VRChat for some of the worlds people have created there - some of them are very complex & are telling stories by their environments that could be comparable to standalone VR games.
For some examples - PROJECT: SUMMER FLARE: https://vrclist.com/world/2924
Complex 7: https://vrclist.com/world/870431 (and Fins worlds in general)
1:1 model of an Oneil Cylinder space colony that cna be fully explored: https://vrclist.com/world/7780 (and Asagiris space/science worlds in general)
Far Future Propulsion˸ Museum of Nuclear Starflight (1:1 models of space propulsion concepts all the way to Project Daedalus) https://vrclist.com/world/1270747
Really, amazing things are being built in VRChat and most people even in the VR community itself are completely ignorant to that. At best they go "LOL SOCIAL VR APP" without actually checking what is possible with modern VRChat.
VRchat is what Zuckerberg wanted out of Meta. It is impressive but still suffers from the barrier to entry problem.
I think VR is in the same position the PC/Mac was in the mid 80's. It is finally technically capable enough to do some neat and useful things, it just struggles because of hardware costs. But I also said this about a decade back and progress has been neat but limited.
Barrier to entry can't be that extreme given it's full of kids.
I played a few hours of Alyx and, I'll be honest, it started to kinda freak me out. I noticed myself getting a bit of anxiety when putting the headset on to play, and a relief when I took it off to see the real world was still there! I've never experienced something so immersive, but I haven't picked it back up to finish it yet. Someday.
I also still mini golf regularly. It's such a fun, low effort way to hang out with friends and family that we wouldn't otherwise see all that often.
I used to feel like that when I was younger and playing intense games, it was hard to "get out" and "come back to real life". I guess VR brings some of that back.
I know that feeling. I had it with Resident Evil 4 and other full games in VR. It's almost too immersive and I can't play more than an hour or so.
Even though its fairly cartoonish, when you see the life size gore of dead bodies with face huggers on them, etc - it hits really different in VR, at least at first.
Now imagine how intense that will become with even more realism. It could be actually seriously traumatic.
I was wondering, what could I play with it. But besides Half-Life Alyx (never played any of HF games), No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous, I couldn't find anything bigger (well, there is also SUPERHOT: VR).
I wonder why there are not that many 3D shooters, or 3D RPGs that use VR. The idea sounds great. Never used any of VR headsets and I was wondering if I should try out Steam Frame and if I don't like it I assume I could resell it later.
Also I wonder how well it would work with my headless linux gaming rig that I use for Game on Whales/Moonlight playing on my 3060ti card.
On the other hand, I still have Steam Deck that I used to play about 3 games total, it is unused besides that. But the initial investment is pretty high (well, it is AFAIR +50% from the Steam Deck 512GB price when I bought)
There are TONS of VR shooters. What subgenre interests you most?
I feel like Valve will sell a lot more Steam Frames if they can get HL Alyx to run well on it and have every Steam Frame come with it.
I remember playing this on my Oculus Rift 1 I think. It was such a better game than the other games I'd played in VR that had you put it on my head in a darkened room and told me it was the newest hardware tech I would have believed you.
Just the metaphors and "magnetics" for fiddling and dealing with your gun were so good. The conveyance system was also just so much more intuitive. I think they even seemed to have done something to deal with the very mild nausea I felt with some title.
Oh, and the game was fun.
If you enjoyed alyx , and did not play anything else interesting on vr headset you likely missed the huge pc vr flat 2 vr comunity that let us play incredible vr expériences like cyberpunk 2077. The trend these days is some random dev creating ok to full fledged VR mods for a lot of games viecoding these things. Check reddit virtualreality sub to see each week many more awesome vr content don't miss uevr too with an extensive game list ready : https://myuevr.pages.dev/
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 simulators like Elite Dangerous are quite fun as well, but harder to relate to, so seems my brain doesn't get as fooled as more "real life sims".
I think having a horizon is very useful for the immersion.
If flight sims were less of a niche category, I think VR would be mainstream. VR just improves them that much. Sadly, the entire flight sim market is probably insufficient to sustain the VR market.
Tangentially related: If I wanted to play Half-Life: Alyx, and spend as little money as possible whilst still having a good experience, what do I need? (I already own a beefy desktop computer)
I played it with Playstation VR2 and it was great, cost me around 350 euros for the headset and the PC dongle during black friday some years ago, but it might be more expensive now.
Probably Quest 3S, and unless things have improved with the native solution you'll want to pick up the "Virtual Desktop" app for better wireless streaming.
It's not very good resolution by today's standards but it's the cheap entry point. Quest 3 (non-S) has resolution comparable to the Steam Frame but costs $250 more.
If you only want to use it for streaming, you might look a used Quest 2, which has similar optics and screens as the 3S. I'm not sure the state of software support or whether its worse CPU/GPU matter for streaming performance. But I bet they're very cheap secondhand by now.
Of course, if you get a Quest you're also paying with the sheer amount of personal data shipped off to Meta the entire time you're using it.
I played it with a Quest 1 and VirtualDesktop to steam it from my PC. It worked well enough to blow my mind. Of course a Quest 3 would be much better than that nowadays. That's probably the cheapest good experience.
Quest 1, the built in native streaming, with a wired connection from the beefy desktop to a WiFi 5 AP on 5 GHz in a low noise environment worked sufficiently. I'd get at least a Quest 2 if you're getting something new (not sure if the 3 is better than the 2).
What you want is a headset with fish eye lenses like the Quest 3 (not the S). Yes, it's more expensive, but you will avoid a lot of headaches with the frenel lenses. They are terrible. just buy it used.
https://youtu.be/-NBMdcUTC2M
here's a great video about exactly this, might be outdated as it's 6 years old
VR would be a perfect device for sharing or an arcade if it wasn't for the usual issues with sharing anything.
I recently did a moon exploration in VR with a whole bunch of other people. They had a whole bunch of those pico headsets somehow syncing all their locations to each other, overwriting selective parts of the environment, and simultaneously showing the same location in English and Japanese. That was by far the best VR experience I’ve ever had.
1. Try Google Earth VR if you haven't. I've poured hours into it and it can be an almost emotional experience.
https://youtu.be/SCrkZOx5Q1M
2. There have been some big advances in converting traditional flat games to VR, especially UEVR (for Unreal games) and various custom mods. It takes a bit more work, but the experience is worth it, even for games you've played 1000 times before.
I had the Quest 2 a while ago and did manage to play some games on it (PCVR through Virtual Desktop, cause they didn't have 1st party support for Intel Arc B580).
In regards to shooting games, while some of them were nice (especially modded H3VR, all of the guns you could build etc.), the shooting and movement always felt off - rounds not always going where you'd think they should regardless of the game, aiming being a bit clunky especially with scopes and so on, same with some RPG combat games. I also tried out Into the Radius VR, CONVRGENCE, SUPERHOT VR and Zero Caliber VR. There was something weird going on, like the world scale feeling off and even when adjusting through the SteamVR options, the experience still being odd, no matter what IPD or height offsets or other settings I'd try. Never really got used to it.
But let me tell you, vehicle games were on another level. It's perhaps the best way to fly in War Thunder because the proper depth perception completely changes the feel of it (if they'd fix the damn camera, I don't want to break my neck trying to look far back), same with VTOL VR and racing games like Dirt Rally and even Euro Truck Simulator 2. You'd think I'd get motion sickness or something but no, it just felt good and more proper than staring at a flat screen, despite the limited resolution and all else. Oh and oddly enough Derail Valley also felt nicer than the FPS games, despite you also moving around a bunch (though it's mostly a train game).
VR is definitely a cool novelty, if sadly underpopulated. There was also some cool productivity software like Immersed but they kinda ruined it by removing support for multiple physical monitors and also the Virtual Desktop program and SteamVR won't let you display like 4x1080p monitors all at the same time, what's even the point of being limited to just one or two in VR? You have 360 degrees around you (well, or however much your neck can comfortably do)!
You can even run Half-Life Alyx on Steam Frame itself (standalone mode), albeit at around 36FPS according to Tested https://youtu.be/C9JyWAVj94E?t=3330
36 FPS makes running it on the device a rather theoretical possibility for a VR game.
A great option if you're having trouble throwing up.
SteamVR's frame interpolation and warping is extremely well-polished. I would go into VRChat clubs, enable everyone's full-detail avatar, and I could go down to about 20fps with head tracking still feeling comfortable. Not sure if the onboard processors can do as good of a job though.
HL:A is incredible, and I think it's still the best single-player VR game ever made, but it's almost seven years old now. It's pretty clear that this software ecosystem is dead.
The race/flight sim market is still going strong, but I guess it's the exception that proves the rule. It's extremely difficult to make a non-vehicle-based game that actually plays well in VR.
Incidentally I made a vehicle based game in VR (https://roguestargun.com), but currently I have no idea how to upload the APK to Steam to run on-device for the steam frame.
SteamOS doesn't use APK files afaik, it's just desktop linux. Probably an AppImage executable? Ought to be explained in Steamworks somewhere.
I suspect that the current design of VR/AR is not likely to get cheap enough and light/small enough to catch on in a big way. Kind of seems like diminishing returns on headset improvements at this point.
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.
Yep
https://www.timeextension.com/features/virtuality-gave-us-90...
Only Amiga makes it possible.
The Xreal augmented reality sunglasses type designs look a lot more interesting. I’m sure they sacrifice a lot of visual quality compared to a full gaming headset, but the general pitch makes more sense.
Just my two cents, Xreal is a long way from a good product. There are other brands like Viture to consider which have more support for the limited software solutions out there. Make sure you do some looking into whether they are compatible with your setup. Or if any of the various features will work without buying additional hardware from the manufacturer.
Those are the ones I am keeping an eye on most closely. In a few generations they might be where they need to be for a "floating monitors" experience in AR.
Until the hardware is ubiquitous it will remain so. But low profile AR/VR glasses that actually look exactly like normal glasses or goggles could bring it back from the dead
Rather bring back the glass hole creeps
I had the Oculus DK1, and now have a Meta Quest 2. I haven't had reason to boot it in the past... year?
I love the idea of the Apple Vision Pro 2, but its wildly expensive and it sounds too heavy to wear for very long throughout the day unless you're reclined. I'd just use it for virtual screens for development and in my workshop ideally - but that requires me moving around, and the weight makes that a no-go.
I'm into these things, but they still just aren't there yet- and the ecosystem is still lacking geniune investment beyond HL:A and some cool tech demos.
For what it's worth, I use the Apple Vision Pro as my primary display for an average of 8+ hours a day without any issues. I have years of experience with previous headsets, but my wife has no issues with the AVP's weight either, despite having no prior experience.
I'm looking forward to the modding community finally having full, unfettered access to a single hardware deploy target that will allow them to do a lot of interesting work that may be technically possible right now, but is very hard in a complicated and heterogeneous ecosystem, both because it is technically difficult to set up, and because the technical difficulty of doing the set up prevents any community from getting over the activation energy to grow and become self-sustaining.
In particular, I don't know if the Steam Frame will have the power for this, but something like a native ARM build of Dolphin (so no FEX) that exposes the 3D nature of polygonal games is very interesting to me. If you can cross your eyes to get stereo you can see what that would look like for something like Super Mario 3D Galaxy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmgdqCL2toE (I find a conventional, unfolding phone to be a pretty good size for that. On a big monitor getting it small enough to cross eyes can be a challenge.) In general any emulation target that has 3D polygons is really interesting to me. I'm also pretty interested in what full 3D does to Skies of Arcadia (could be a complete disappointment, could be absolutely amazing) and Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, where I feel like the game that was a bit crowded and struggling with being 2D in SD might just come alive. (Assuming they didn't play too many games with the distance that doesn't work if we see it in true 3D.)
I gather the modding community is already gearing up for modding more games to be true 3D in the VR space. That is, not necessarily VR (though there's a mod community for that as well), but having a visible screen floating in 3D VR space where the screen itself is fully 3D. There is also a wide variety of games from the past couple of decades that I suspect might be very difficult to "convert to VR" but might be relatively easy to trick into rendering full 3D instead of down to 2D.
Nothing really stops any of this from happening now, but I've tried to set it up before and I was unsuccessful with my current stack. Being able to give out instructions that say "Install the Dolphin3D Build from the Flatpak Store and load up your ROMs" rather than the current set of ad hoc complex instructions that I couldn't even get through successfully could be a game changer.
I will giggle like a schoolgirl if the reason why Steam Frames sell like hot cakes in six to twelve months is that they become recognized as the premier way to emulate 3D systems from the Playstation forward. Overclocking, texture packs, modding, all that's great, but how about all those things and true 3D for a lot of games?
TBH in terms of intensity it maybe the best single-player game for me. The experience is so different from non-VR games that I struggle to even put it into the same category.
Yeah the games I most want to play on VR aren't only old... the servers have been shut down.
Gonna try it out on my m1 mbp because of this comment. Been waiting to play alyx forever but I didn't know a way to get mac to work - theres a solution now.
Also VR headset has limited re-playability ... table tennis was my VR golf.
What headsets work on M1? The hoops I tried to jump through for a Quest 2 made me give up about a year ago.
I got a Legion Go 3y ago for this reason. Alyx and SteamOS were both draws as a lifelong Mac/Nintendo kid.
Idk. After having THREE Quest 3s brick themselves within the extended warranty period, I really want an alternative. I can do normal cardio but rhythm games like Beat Saber and more are just such a better time of knocking out a decent hour of cardio several times a week for me. Beat Saber is more easily modded on PC and while the number of games I play is really low, this is worth it for me.
Interesting that Alyx is still listed as "Windows only" even though the reviews say it includes a native Linux port:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/546560/HalfLife_Alyx/
For good reason. Last time I checked (this year), Alyx crashes Mesa (i.e. your Vulkan layer) when the player enters an in-game load zone. This happens with native linux and the proton windows version.
Ah, definitely a subtle reference to Black Mesa. Bravo Valve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics)
Started by not-Valve in 1995
It's pretty good, but it would have been good enough as a non-VR title. The thought of digging out my VR headset to play it makes me shudder. I never even managed to finish it, played through most of it and then couldn't bring myself to get my VR headset out again.
I spent 5 min in Alyx and almost vomit :(. Mean while i can play beat saber all day.
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
The Arizona Sunshine series are also really great VR-native games. Not AAA but far closer to a complete game than most VR games.
>> a steep proce for a niche with not a lot of games
Porn. This, like every other vr device, will see more use streaming 3d porn than it will vr games.
This is not unussual. Porn has often been at the forefront of the internet, from the first cc transactions to the first streaming video.
Plays really well but it is very yucky.
What do you mean?
All the fun of headcrab jump scares and skulking through the dark but now with complete immersion!
> It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games.
There are a lot of good games and unique experiences (Lone Echo). A lot of these games also get you moving i.e. you won't need to do cardio exercise if you play games. Many of these games aren't even considered fitness games
Batman
Beat Saber
Mother Gunship
Superhot
Pistol Whip
Gasland
Thrill of the Fight
Underdogs
Synth Riders
Guerilla Tag
Blade and Sorcery
Gorn
Les Mills Body Combat
FitXR
Creed
If you get a slip rig, just walking around Fallout VR or Skyrim VR will give you a lot of cardio while essentially enjoying a more immersive game than the flat screen version.
Name a popular flat screen game and there is likely a decent VR version. There are lots of good racing games and FPS's
Zero Caliber
Arizona Sunshine
Walking Dead Saints and Sinners
Bonelab
Pavlov
Breachers
Contractors
Into the Radius
Tactical Assault
It's also worth for having your own private movie theater. YouTube VR is great
There's a lot missing of games missing from my comment, and I didn't even touch on VR mods for games like Cyberpunk or even Zelda BOW
What your comment tells me is that you didn't really use VR for more than a few days.
I've never understood the whole VR game ecosystem. There is a handful of titles (outside of Half Life Alyx, which even then looks pretty shit and clunky) that are worth playing on VR.
Most are short bursts of fun and don't really have any moat.
There are a lot of titles that both look great and are fun, but you wouldn't know because you don't use VR. That doesn't included mods to existing games ever since Unreal made it easier to make most games, running on their engine, VR compatible. It also depends on whether you're using standalone or PCVR. Why critique something that you're not very familiar with?
VR still has a lot of problems. Some of which may never be solved, but lack of content is no longer a problem.
Pistol whip, beat saber and audio trip are in my rotation. Also I expect you to die I/II/III or whatever the numbering is.
I have owned a quest 2 and now 3 and have always heard about that game but yet to try it. I forgot about it. I don't often get to play the quest as my kids seem to have taken over it. But there are definitely some gems out there. Echo VR was so fun it was sad to see it shut down. I also love Google Earth vr on the quest.
“Not a lot of games” will soon be a thing of the past once people find out they can just vibe code all kinds of VR games and experiences.
VR is a solution in search of a problem
GamersNexus released a video comparing the Frame VR vs Meta Quest 3 today, worth a watch for the Frame review alone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcerOYY_K1g
I appreciate that the review goes into the privacy issues and legal disclaimers with each. I don't doubt that everyone expects the Meta product to be much worse there, but wow it's a stark contrast.
Meta are objectively worse than Valve because Valve don't allow ads in games or offer advertising services and they're generally more trustworthy, but that's really only part of the privacy story. Each app/game usually has its own data collection and usage on top and I don't think either of them do much to police or constrain that.
Plus Valve also says they don't sell any data the collect to anyone else.
But the idea that games have data collection outside of the platform (e.g., Steam) is surprising to me. Would this be VR games only or a particular type of game, like ones with online multiplayer? I don't own a VR headset and don't really play multiplayer games these days. Of the games I have played (mostly indie), I've come across very few that have a EULA or anything that would imply any data collection of any sort.
It's nothing to do with VR in particular. This is the top-10 from https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/US, half of them are collecting data to share (and one to sell) to advertisers. The fact that this is surprising you is kind of the point, Valve's not providing enough transparency or doing enough (any?) policing of this. You won't even find the disclosures in the EULAs, at best they link to a separate privacy policy. I suspect lack of EULA isn't necessarily a good indicator of no data being collected either.
The breadth of data being collected includes browsing, installed software, identity and account identifiers, location, device and OS characteristics.
- WarDogs: not sharing/selling https://www.wardogs.com/privacy
- Marvel Rivals: not sharing/selling https://protocol.unisdk.easebar.com/release/latest_v475.html
- CounterStrike: is Valve's
- Borderlands 4: https://www.take2games.com/privacy/en-US/
"In the last 12 months, Take-Two has sold and/or shared unique identifiers, IP address, as well as Internet/Electronic Activity and Profile Inferences with third-party advertising providers to enable us to provide personalized advertising to you and others like you. We may sell or share personal information about users that we know are under the age of 18 (or older, in certain locations) with their (or depending on age, their parent's) settings or permission."
- Halloween: https://www.illfonic.com/privacy-policy-eula
"Some advertising we engage in may be “targeted advertising,” which is the practice of showing you more relevant or personalized ads based on your activity over time and across non-affiliated services. Targeted advertising often involves us incorporating third party tracking technologies into our Service or disclosing (often hashed) identifiers, such as email addresses or Ad IDs, with third parties. These third parties then match our data with their own (or their partners’ data) to deliver ads to you or similar audiences. For example, we may incorporate the Meta pixel on our website to serve ads to Meta audiences based on the data we provide.
We also use audience modeling services, where we and a partner each disclose (often hashed) identifiers to a technology provider. The technology provider then matches common factors between our and the partner’s data to help us understand audience overlap and improve campaign performance."
- Baldur's Gate 3: not sharing/selling https://larian.com/privacy
- Overwatch: https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/legal/a4380ee5-5c8d-4e3b-83b7...
"We disclose this personal information to: Online marketing or advertising partners including on our mobile games These partners may combine this personal information with information that they have collected about you when you use their services (or the websites and services of third parties) to personalize your experience or to improve the accuracy of their analytics, targeting, and measurement systems."
- Apex Legends: https://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBPRIVACY/US/en/PC/
"We also may share information relating to your device and your use of our Services with our third-party advertising partners so they may deliver targeted advertisements to you when you visit third-party services and websites within their networks. This practice is commonly referred to as "interest-based advertising," "online behavioral advertising," or "targeted advertising
- The Blood of Dawnwalker: not sharing/selling https://bandainamco.com/privacy-policy/
- Bodycam: not sharing/selling https://www.playbodycam.com/en-US/personal-data
Meta doesn't allow ads in games either except for an few exceptions like YouTubeVR.
Yeah but they'll take your data and purpose it for their ads outside the games.
The comparison difference of terms and conditions was hilarious and spot on. Well done GN!
Would be great if the Meta Quest could be jailbroken to run SteamOS
If you have a pc to run steam, you don’t even need to jailbreak
Hacker News should be all over this device. They won't lock it down like the Meta stuff. Go ahead and install BeOS on it.
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 don't think the SoC they're using supports displays much larger than this, so they'd have to upgrade that too. When you have such a wide FoV the number of pixels you need to cover it all at high resolution becomes very large.
> 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? workframes?
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 may not need highly general UIs based on abstractions and metaphors to the physical world anymore.
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.
Never is a long time.
It's still VR. It's still niche.
There are still many issues that VR hasn't solved (and may never solve).
- You still have to wear a device on your head
- You still (can) get motion sickness and/or headaches
- There is still not a lot of great content around VR
- Many people still prefer the flat screen medium and content
The openness/closeness is only one of the many issues this solves, and it doesn't matter when all of the other above issues exist.
Every single time I use VR, it is a brilliant experience and then a day later I completely forget about it. The object permanence and product stickiness just isn't there yet. It is like the Apple Vision, I only remember it is a thing when it is brought up by someone else.
The VR world still has not produced a killer app.
I had imagined that remote work would induce a VR desktop work environment (as the killer app), but that hadnt taken off at all (mostly, i think, because it's difficult to type and do keyboard work in VR).
Gaming has not and will not be the killer app for VR imho. It needs to be business/money/work-related for it to actually gain a level of traction like how personal computing gained traction from mainframes.
> - There is still not a lot of great content around VR
I'm sorry but, will there ever be? I've always been on the fence about VR, it looks great for flying/racing/space games, but there has been a lot of time since it seems to have peaked and the only killer app it has is Alyx which came out 6 years ago
The motion sickness in particular is something that's been mostly solved by using non-stick locomotion, like Gorilla Tag (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1533390/Gorilla_Tag/). Both the 'big name' developers and the various flat-to-VR mod makers still insist on stick locomotion, though, even though that actively makes the experience worse.
Funnily, I always found all the anti motion sickness "hacks" (especially teleporting for movement) to be the only things that actually caused motion sickness for me when I started out using VR. "Normal" controller movement was never a problem for me, so it was kind of unexpected that the safe mode was actually harder for me.
I often wonder how common this is. As in, how many people consider motion sickness in VR a problem specifically because they only ever experienced it with these workarounds applied, and then never even found out that actual normal movement (which their brains might be completely used to from years of video games) would have been completely problem free for them.
That's not a solution, that's a workaroud. Gorilla Tag is still a niche game where you're simulating gorillas.
Most games are human-centric, so until we're able to move around using our legs & feet, stick locomotion is still the preferred way to get around in a human-centric simulated environment.
Yeah. The primary draw for me is being able to try out VR stuff on Linux (finally).
There are other devices with what seems like unofficial Linux support, but this seems like the only modern VR system with official support for it.
It’s the year of the Linux Headset!
I’m excited. In addition to VR games I’m pretty interested to see how viable it is to do things with the Frame that I’d usually do on a Linux laptop.
I hope the openness of the OS leads to lots of cool 3rd party options. I’d love to see a standalone headset the size of the Bigscreen Beyond 2, and I’d also be much more willing to pay $3000 for a premium VR/AR device that runs Linux than an Apple or Meta device.
If you're good with 1990s era text fidelity, you'll love it. If, on the other hand, you prefer text that's readable enough to not care that it's digital, this will certainly let you down.
Even Apple's Vision Pro is only half-Retina, the same jaggedy text a my 1998 G3 PowerBook. I kid you not, the PPD is identical. And taking off Vision Pro and looking at your iPhone or MBP screen makes you want to smash Vision Pro against the wall. The displays absolutely suck -- and Frame's are even worse.
(If Apple narrowed the FOV down to about 75-80 degrees, they'd get decent text. But 80 degrees isn't deep immersion so we got 100 degrees and terrible text.)
As a hive mind representative, I will be the first to say: I was already waitlisted before I saw it on HN.
Now the only problem is I'm not sure if I really have another $1059 worth of playing VR golf and rhythm games in me. Cool hardware though & even cooler software.
Is that confirmed? Arm devices tend to be awkward to install your own OS on in general. E.g. look at Android phones.
I mean Valve definitely are very open-source friendly but I wouldn't just assume.
They don't specifically say you can install your own OS but they have similar wording on the Steam Frame page as their other systems:
> Just like any SteamOS device, install your own apps, open a browser, do what you want: It's your PC.
Android phones with unlocked bootloaders are awkward, but doable. It would be somewhat un-Valve-like if they lock the bootloader.
Steam Machine and Steam Deck are open so I cannot see why this wouldn’t be.
Those are x86. But yeah it does sound like it will be open.
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 input latency and artifacting.
Wireless headsets also _suck_ for simulators and productivity - where a battery only adds weights and a wire is not noticable.
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.
That sort of "head mounted display"-first approach would make it practical to use the device for productivity / screen replacement while gaming would be dependant on your phone or computer.
> 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 or computer. Since I have a Samsung phone, it just opens DeX on my glasses and the phone screen becomes a giant trackpad. Completely seamless except for the onscreen keyboard.
For my laptop it's good enough for all the coding I need and I use it in the office because I'm used to ultrawide.
Like $500.
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.
I've been eyeing xreals for coding for a couple of years now, ever since my office became a children's bedroom, and the two of you are killing me. I don't know which one of you I would agree with.
> Wireless headsets also _suck_ for simulators and productivity - where a battery only adds weights and a wire is not noticable.
you could... just plug it in? unless the frame cannot be used while charging, but i haven't seen anyone claim that.
For anyone interested, in the Tested video he states that you can use it plugged in but you will only be able to use it this way uninterrupted while streaming, because using the Frame itself will use up the battery faster than the rate at which it charges
At least with the Quest, the video quality over cable was only slightly better than wireless. The heat and weight of the extra hardware also becomes noticeable when sitting for a while.
For example, there's no way I could do an 8 hour work day inside a Quest - but I imagine a cool lightweight bigscreen beyond would be fine.
I used to love shooting games in my G2, I got the Quest and, despite having a similar resolution, I could hardly make out distant targets whether wired or not. It entirely killed VR for me and I haven't used it in over 6 months.
That doesn't fix anything. The battery is still heavy whether it's plugged in or not.
The USB-C port for charging is on the battery itself; their store diagram doesn't show if the battery itself can be disconnected for power passthrough.
For sit down, say flight, driving sims and productivity, then things to look at to compare would be things with a cable and no local compute taking weight, heat and component cost. There's the Pimax Dream Air SE and the Big Screen Beyond 2e as two recent updates in the ball park of Steam Frame pricing. Both that have eye tracking for better high resolution performance. The Pimax has a variable quality reputation and the Big Screen Beyond requires a deprecating Lighthouse tracking system, so no easy answers. None will be as smooth an experience of the Frame but are more geared to head mounted display.
Wired is only great if you're sitting down, playing driving or flying simulators. If you ever need to turn or move, wires get annoying really fast. Even with Beat Saber, it's terrible
I agree but, my experience with wireless has been so bad that I'd rather be able to play games with a wire than avoid them without one.
I liked shooters and going from the G2 where I could actually use sniper rifles to barely being able to make out people down a corridor - wired or wireless - really killed it for me.
I have pretty much given up on VR as a result.
I do hope Valve's work on ARM64 for this, alongside improvements to performance in Honeykrisp, make for a dramatically better experience with Linux on Apple Silicon Macs.
They're very lovely devices with big GPUs, and I would love to (one day when ram prices go back to normal!) repurpose my M3 Max as a under TV Steam Machine when I upgrade.
fwiw, I’m already playing windows games on my Retroid (Android ARM Snapdragon) console and it’s already really good at least compatibility wise.
I mean, you can comfortably play GTAV on this thing and it’s powered by a smartphone processor.
Your dreams are going to become true.
I use my RP6 (and RP5 previously) quite a bit. Its amazing what those devices can do nowadays.
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 are wireless protocols that can stream high-bandwidth videostreams from your PC to VR goggles.
Not trying to be snarky or facetious, but genuinely curious.
I'm surprised no one really has answered the implied question. Wireless protocols are hard for VR not because of bandwidth, but because of latency. Head tilt motions have to be processed extremely quickly to not be nauseating. Even with wired systems, the headset often ends up doing all kinds of motion prediction to process motion and shift the image before the game has time to process it, because engines aren't going to round trip input to video output at 120fps/8ms (double buffering doubles your latency!).
Of course, that multiplies with bandwidth requirements, which are also quite extreme at 4k 120fps.
To be clear, you don't have to run things on it, you can stream wirelessly from your PC.
An advantage of a standalone unit is you can take it with you, or for people who don't already have a gaming computer.
You're also asking why not have it plug to a more powerful machine. The answer for that is simple: wires get snagged and pulled on, in practice it's a poor experience (remember, you cannot see the wires when you are wearing the headset).
> To be clear, you don't have to run things on it, you can stream wirelessly from your PC.
But the hardware is adding weight and bulk to something that you really, desperately want to be as small and light and possible.
Well, there are already devices like that (Big Screen Beyond), Valve has a wired headset (Valve Index) - so it makes perfect sense to do something more modern and future proof.
The real question is why did they release this as a standalone unit for $1049 and then claim they couldn't sell it for less due to the RAM shortage - when that implies they could have released a dumb unit that depends on the Steam Deck or Steam Machine for far less?
You're asking why they couldn't completely change the product from a full-fledged VR machine into a headset in roughly a year, especially when they already sell a regular VR headset for $1,000?
They do not, in fact sell such a headset, in that it is permanently out of stock. You can risk buying it used for $1800…
It was released in 2019 and by comparison, sucks. A new index with new displays of the frame but without the things that make the frame expensive (ram) would be welcome.
If it can do innside out tracking its way more data efficent to have compute onboard. And if you already have a decent amount of compute you can scale it up just a little more to have. a fully standalone unit.
I'm not sure going from less than $50 of RAM and a $50 processor for foveated eye tracking to 16 GiB of RAM ($300) and a Snapdragon 8 ($200) is a "slight bump".
Foveated eye tracking, but also SLAM for the controllers. Also, to be fair, the onboard processing costs less than a separate VR capable PC.
Wait I don't realise ram prices where this bad. Bought my kit for about a tenth of that a while ago. Ouch.
Yeah, can't wait for the AI hype bubble to finally end. Hey, we might even get some nice fast repurposed HBM from the scrappers reusing stuff from the bankruptcy auctions. :)
Yeah! Just like we all made out when the cryptocurrency bubble burst too!
Yeah! Got some nice and very cheep GPUs back then. :)
compute is fine. its necessary battery is not. compute is almost weightless, battery crushes heads.
Which is why it is in the back part, balancing out the frot part.
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 design a few years ago - before the AI hyperscalers bought up all the RAM - so the economics changed a lot under their feet.
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.
I like wired for the better graphics and unlimited playtime. In practice even a single cable gets wound up, stuck on things, and generally feels in the way. It's a difficult trade off to accept, even with a long and light weight cable.
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 Frame is apparently the best at being a wireless, PC-driven headset.
As for standalone functionality, my guess is that a headset hardware powerful enough to deliver a good wireless PC VR experience is powerful enough to work as a standalone headset for less demanding applications.
There are two use-cases. Already sitting at a PC and you just pop your headset on - your idea makes sense. But traditional VR means standing up in a dedicated space (2m x 2m) and demands uninterrupted time. That's a high friction activity, and adding setting up a PC and Oculus Link and Steam VR before you start playing makes that friction even higher to the point where it's a niche hobby. Most casual players are doing stuff like VRChat and Beat Saber which can run on low powered hardware, so having a basic game-playing ability is a good idea.
At least right now, the "mobile" version of VRChat is not that impressive (well, its impressive what can even run when you cut it down this much).
All the really impressive Worlds and avatars are still PC only.
Ideally, there would be some more seamless performance scaling than the current "do 2 versions, one of them ugly but fast, if even possible". :P
Maybe Steam Frame will help this get going by being in a better place to run more advanced stuff, being more powerful than Qeust 3, which was basically the "mobile" VRChat benchmark so far.
The wires really get in the way, even in a seated context. I often use a Rift S for rally games, and the wire will get caught in the backrest, the wheels, my legs. VR is immersive, so you instantly forget and it's a thick and fragile wire so there's a degree of stress.
Not to mention the trip hazard or ripping it out of the PC while playing room-scale games.
I concur, given hardware constraints that a far more slimmed down unit would have been appealing, and more future-proof, but I believe there's still a requirement for onboard compute for inside-out tracking and handling disconnection events, at some point making it self-sufficient (at the time) was seen as not much more expense.
Being able to play without a bunch of setup in your room and without worrying about getting tangled in cables seems great. I have a Valve Index—which is a pretty remarkable device, that I definitely enjoyed—but the hassle of cable management/etc adds some real hassle. And I say this as somebody who actually set up a pulley system to make it work better in my home office :P
It's a lot easier for developers to target a known platform.
It is designed to stream wirelessly from a powerful computer too
I’m shocked that this is performant enough to work in practice. Isn’t the timing window for VR responsiveness extremely tight?
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
It works, but there is usually a noticeable difference (at least with Quest).
I have a dedicated Wifi 6 (not 6e, so just miss/using the 5 GHz band) AP just for VR, directly connected to my PC and it works well Virtual Desktop & Quest 3.
Have done quite a lot of quite active stuff (exploration, driving, flying, fighting games) and it really is seamless and I don't notice any lag as long as the game itself manages good FPS.
If you really concentrate on the graphics, you can see some compression artifacts in places, but it is unnoticeable when you are actually doing VR stuff, not just looking for it. :)
For the Frame, this should all be much better - easier setup, much better available bandwidth (dongle has Wifi 7), efficient foveated streaming, etc. :) I would exect better image quality (more bandwidth, more efficient streaming), better FPS (more efficient rendering) and better image quality (can reduce compression).
I suspect the answer is actually very simple, when you compare this device to one that is made deliberately dumber there are far too few actual differences to make it make sense.
1. Unless all you play is a sit down driving or flying simulator, the wires will get in your way. You can mitigate it with ceiling and wall pulleys, but it's still a really terrible experience that kills immersion.
2. Fitness. If you're moving and turning a lot, you're just going to hate wires. Your arms will slam into them and you'll almost trip on them and pull your computer down.
Wireless to a desktop isn't perfect, but it's doable. Stand alone is ideal if you don't the visuals being turned down a bit.
When you’re in VRChat you can be your fursona
If use for solely VR Gaming, and you don't care a ton about the privacy aspect, it is a hard sell against a new or used Q3. However, for myself personally I love the idea of it as a device I can tinker with and have full control over. I would love to also replace my laptop with it while traveling. Especially with a small wireless keyboard it has a good chance to replace my laptop for tinkering/gaming on the go.
With the price increases it is likely not a good value for an average person, but for myself and some other tinkerers I think it is very acceptable.
> hard sell against a new or used Q3
That depends. Having had a Quest 2 and dealt...nay, put up with with Meta and their god awful ecosystem you couldn't pay me to touch another one of their headsets. I'll take an open linux based one over a Q3 any day. That alone makes the price difference worth it to me. Throw in the foveated streaming and the vastly superior quality and latency of streaming and it makes for a fairly decent offering.
Doesn't wearing a headset in public have antisocial "Glasshole" vibes?
Honestly, people who cowork in public already give me the ick. Maybe immersing yourself in a headset is just a physical manifestation of the digital immersion that is already plaguing public spaces.
Im not too familiar with the term Glasshole, but on long dark plane rides, if I want to use my laptop I feel like a lighthouse, even with lowest screen brightness. If I look like a dork with it on while doing some light gaming or movie watching, that is an OK price to pay to not disturb others around me. But if you are talking about just general out in public, then it absolutely gives dorky vibes. On the train, or in a coffee shop or something, a laptop just looks much less conspicuous.
Is the Glasshole thing more geared towards recording people in public? This headset has 1. bad cameras but 2. a much better privacy posture than meta.
The Glasshole thing comes from when Google Glasses were new (sort of the ancestor to the modern Meta pervert glasses). When you saw someone wearing Google Glasses, you could see the camera pointed at you and that the screen was on and doing stuff. It made a lot of people uncomfortable.
I put my laptop in dark mode on a flight. Further, you could add one of those privacy screens for more
The “glasshole” vibe wasn’t antisocial; it was an understandably human reaction to the fact that you couldn’t tell whether the wearer (and/or google) was surveilling or recording you any time they so much as glanced in your direction in public.
I don't really get the ick about wearing these kinds of things in public, but, having tried to wear XR glasses in public has shown me that the bigger issue is that these things are at a whole other level of distracting compared even to phones. It'd probably be worse with a full face headset, since at least with glasses you have your full field of view.
Even despite pinning the display in a corner, I noticed I was very distracted when crossing streets. Made me stop wearing them like that, instead prefering to carry them in my backpack and use them on train rides or flights.
At least with my phone I can just slip it back in my pocket when I need to pay attention to my surroundings.
I don't think using a display when walking around is a good idea or even just safe to do. On the other hand, I think it makes perfect sense to have something a like a fighter jet HUD - important information in static places (time/location/notification status/etc.) with possibly some highlights (showing where is the next bus in AR, annotating things when you look at them, seamless translation of text, etc.).
I don't think that's what GP means. They are likely using it in private settings.
To be clear, wearing a full VR headset has an "I am an idiot" vibe.
Never see these kinds of complaints when people do with the Apple Vision Pro.
Because hardly anyone owns that highly capable, but ridiculous product.
Hey, looking at a few of your comments, we'll welcome you to Reddit any fucking day of the week. Respect, bro
What's icky about taking a laptop down to the park and getting some work done while surrounded by nature?
Although, I do agree, I would find it odd to go down to the park and see someone wandering around with a VR headset tuning out the world and waving controllers around. I'm more addressing the "cowork in public spaces" part of that. I think their statement about "while traveling" is more like while seated on a several hour plane trip or relaxing at a hotel or things along those lines. Not like wearing the device while ordering a latte or something along those lines.
For these devices, I always enjoy Adam Savage's Tested videos. Here's the one they posted today for the Steam frame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9JyWAVj94E
It's full of technical details and down-to-earth analysis, and includes interviews with the Valve engineers.
Thanks. This was great.
I've been astounded by how many older games are suddenly getting surprisingly good VR ports/mods (I suspect AI-assisted tooling is playing a role in some of this) There's a youtuber Beardo Benjo who has been documenting a bunch of them where some are tethered to a PC while others have been ported to run natively on the Quest.
A few of the more interesting ones, newest to oldest:
Left 4 Dead VR [9/14/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-blXLU_oy8
DOOM [9/11/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkxVI2KEKrk
Call of Duty Zombies VR [9/2/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9VjFpInLiU
Dead Island 2 VR [8/28/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=notfg5bjUdM
The Simpsons: Hit & Run VR [8/26/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQJZKjkRzyI
GTA: Vice City VR [8/18/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH5k5Un8_HE
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time VR [8/6/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzhbhrotI1Q
Cyberpunk 2077 VR [8/4/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXho2LdD1qo
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild VR [5/17/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0Mpqk2X3ww
Pokémon VR [9/1/2026]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlEl1IVU8PA
Ready or Not UEVR Mod [9/8/2025]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnGfQBQJP8Y
Hopefully they have solved the issues but... the only times I got VR sickness from VR is
(1) trying GTA5 in VR using a patch. It was amazing once the game gave me control. But by that time I was already sick from the unskippable in game intro
(2) Breath of the Wild - Labo version. When Nintendo came out with a cardboard holder for Switch and a VR option for BotW, I tried it. The fact that it wasn't designed for VR made me sick really fast
I was surprised by both. I'd played 100s of hours of VR by that point and no sickness. Both of those games made me feel seriously ill and it took a while (30-60 minutes?) to recover.
Some of the Resident Evil series is in VR, and is also very good.
https://github.com/praydog/REFramework
Damn that's expensive but well now if they made the streaming stuff openly accessibly for any headset that would be nice.
I see no reason meta quest headsets couldn't do it next gen.
My personal ambition is to see VR/AR be cheap enough.
Wish Valve would make enough of something so that everyone that wanted one could get one. I wanted to get an Index headset when they launched that. I would check the Steam store page every few months, for 5 years. Every time it said "Out of Stock". It's still out of stock in France today. They design great products, but are useless at getting them produced in quantity.
Given the entire hardware world is experiencing multiple important shortages that are unlikely to improve before a while, I wouldn’t bet on it
The scalpers will probably be all over this too.
Thats a lot harder to do now they use a lottery system which if I'm not mistaken also takes account history into account along with physical address.
True but it still happened with the controller at least. But it also backfired. I would have impulse bought day one but they only just in the last week offered me the opportunity to purchase and I passed on it.
Yeah the controller didnt have the lottery system, thats why they implemented it for the steam machine and frame having learnt their lesson.
> It's still out of stock in France today.
You might look at why it's out of stock. Here in the US, it looks like they're out of stock of the base stations, the right controller (but not the left!) and replacement face gaskets. [0]
> They design great products, but are useless at getting them produced in quantity.
shrug I've little doubt that there were a great many periods between the Index release and now that you could have gotten a full set of equipment. I'm very suspicious of the claim that you never found a time when you could purchase one from the Steam Store.
The Index had the misfortune of being released during the start of The Global Plague when everyone with a sizable chunk of disposable cash found themselves with a great need for new toys to play while stuck at home... and global manufacturing got turbofucked by said plague, which didn't make it especially easy to ramp up production.
The Steam Frame has the misfortune of being released in the beginning of The Great Abandonment of The Consumer PC Market, which has just screwed the availability of parts and their price.
I'd say that neither of those things are Valve's fault, but what can I really know? They're a secretive private company, so maybe they engineered both catastrophes. ;)
[0] <https://store.steampowered.com/app/1059530/Valve_Index_Heads...>
This feels like kind of a weird set of trade offs. I'm sure they'll be able to fix a bunch of polish issues in software later (better gamepad support, adding hand tracking, etc). And the enthusiast crowd will likely fork out the money for the ecosystem advantage alone. But I feel like I'd be hard put to convince a non-enthusiast
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
For me a lot of the value comes from the freedom you get with frame. Valve says “it’s your PC, install what you want” and it runs an open source OS. It’s the first truly Linux friendly headset (it runs arch btw) and I don’t have to send my data to Meta. Also foveated streaming means, according to reviewers, a pretty decent wireless PCVR experience. I can’t wait to play half life Alyx without a tether. Valve is just doing something very different from meta.
It's a compelling product niche, for sure - but still, awfully niche. I'm sure there's folks out there who will bite on the chance to have a top-line VR headset with Linux, but at the price point... gotta be a fairly small market segment.
Still, I'm happy they're doing this, it seems like a cool product and I bet it would be almost as much fun as a platform to hack around on as it will be for gaming.
I was careful in my wording - the benefit is the freedom. Many people will appreciate that, simply by being able to install what you want. That goes well beyond the benefits to Linux users, but as a Linux user I really appreciate it.
I still use a Rift-S, it still lets me run whatever I want.
VR Chat often has 70k+ concurrent players across the world.
It is a niche, definitely, but one that spends a lot of money and time on their virtual third space.
Yeah, I've been Linux-only on the desktop since the early aughts and trying to get the Valve Index working was so frustrating and inconsistent I eventually gave up. It sits collecting dust and I've still never played more than the first fifteen minutes of HL: Alyx (because no game is worth installing Windows for).
Very much looking forward to maybe actually being able to use VR on my gaming computer.
I love the Steam Deck because it is almost entirely a consumer electronics experience. I mean, maybe for 10% of the games I have to edit an .INI file to have a perfect experience, but for the most part I can pick it up and play and not fight with configuration files and shell scripts the way I do at work and with my hobbies. I've seen Windows-based devices that compete with it at Best Buy and I'm kinda shocked that, for a demo, they drop you on an ordinary Windows desktop with visual scaling appropriate for a 20x bigger screen and it is not obvious how to play a game -- such a fail!
Overall I like the experience of installing and running games on the MQ3, I can very much see a Steam-based device that is just as nice or nicer.
Just echo'ing the other comment.
I'm on arch, and with nearly no tinkering my index just works.
Only low level knowledge I think would be useful is the different VR runtimes. SteamVR vs Monado
Can you elaborate on what your setup is? I have tinkered plenty and there are multiple issues I'm still dealing with on my Arch machine, despite being on a setup that Valve claims is supported (KDE Wayland, Nvidia), namely:
- SteamVR won't see my Index unless I power cycle it
- The in-overlay desktop view does not work at all, either shows all black or doesn't render at all, so I can't control my desktop from VR which is a massive pain
- The SteamVR Home environment (the startup app) crashes immediately even if launched manually
Even the Frame doesn't support Linux properly. You cannot do streaming from a Linux machine, it must be a Windows machine. (yet).
I'm sick of pretending Valve cares about Linux. Their own games have major issues with Linux.
Every CS2 update breaks something, last time it was the inventory screens which were completely broken for like 2 weeks.
Left 4 Dead 2 has major frame pacing and stutter issues on the Native Build & Proton doesn't let you play multiplayer.
Counter Strike Dev Tools only runs on Windows.
You can't stream from a Linux box to the Frame? Where did you hear that? Given that you can stream between Linux boxes using Steam, I find that surprising.
Linus said it on the leaked TechQuickie video from a 2 days ago.
VR on linux has really turned a corner in the past 3 years. Last I played in vr with linux it was perfectly acceptable.
Yeah, I used my Index on my Gentoo Linux machine like six months ago and it worked fine. FWIW, I'm using an AMD video card. Perhaps it doesn't work at all on Nvidia hardware, but -absent sabotage from Nvidia- there's no reason why the type of video card should matter at all... the thing's a wide-ass screen with some sensors attached that the graphics card has absolutely nothing to do with.
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 standing within 10ft of the router with the PC being wired into the network with ethernet, nothing has beat a tethered USB connection using the native Link functionality on my Quest 2.
Any SteamVR based solution fixes most of these issues and the Frame sounds like it might make wireless actually viable. Even if it doesn't, tethered with Valve software instead of with Facebook software is still a meaningful improvement.
Same here. I would gladly pay extra just to not be tied to Facebook.
2x GPU performance[1] and RAM, along with it being your machine instead of a locked down Meta android device is worth 2x the price for many. Eye tracking is also huge, both as an additional input device, and lifting GPU performance even more with foveated rendering.
[1] https://shattered.io/steam-frame-vs-quest-3/
Is there an example of foveated rendering implementation?
No Man's Sky is doing it now. It's also useful for foveated streaming which works for all games.
https://www.nomanssky.com/cosmos-update/#:~:text=Added%20sup...
Curious if there's any info about how much Foveated rendering helps performance roughly. Is it like 50% more frames?
It'll be highly dependent on the game. Unlike foveated streaming the implementation of foveated rendering could mean many things. Actually rendering at a lower resolution in areas you aren't actively looking is probably the most complicated approach because it seems like you'd have to render two times (low res + high res) to get the desired effect.
> Actually rendering at a lower resolution in areas you aren't actively looking is probably the most complicated approach because it seems like you'd have to render two times (low res + high res) to get the desired effect
In the newer implementations, you can split the display into tiles, and render each tile at a different resolution, so it's not that bad. A bunch of the intermediate rendering targets are already rendered at reduced resolution, so you won't see a full 4x speed up in the low-res regions, but you should be able to achieve a ~30% overall speed up with modern foveated rendering.
The framebuffer that you are filling out is still at native resolution, but while computing that frame buffer you can do many of the steps at reduced resolution. For example, instead of evaluating the pixel shader code for every pixel, it could evaluate once for a block of four pixels in the reduced resolution region and use the result for all four.
Quest Pro has eye tracking, and Red Matter 2 used it.
Not having to faff about with Meta's developer program or whatever to side load my own homebrew stuff, and then get locked out, then have to do whatever hoop jumping six months later, is a huge bonus. I have an OG Quest 1 and the damn thing needs a new copy of meta quest ...whatever, installed every 2 weeks if I want to use it. It's exhausting.
Everything from meta is a spyware and should be only touched inside a VM like with any other malware vendors.
Money is just a number and far less precious than personal dignity and privacy. I don't even get the idea why people really would compare something around 1k usd range in developed countries, it's a no brainer.
> Everything from meta is a spyware and should be only touched inside a VM like with any other malware vendors.
I'm on your side, but this kind of hyperbole weakens your argument. Tell me about the spyware in pytorch, react, zstd, or llama3.2:1b and how you shouldn't touch this except within a VM.
Took me a very small amount of time to figure out pytorch was a one man effort that actually was discouraged by Facebook initially, and the dev no longer works there
I have barely even considered VR until the Steam Frame.
I'm just not interested in closed ecosystems like Oculus.
That said, I have barely looked at VR so much that I'm not sure whether to bother with the Steam Frame.
Is it just for gaming/movies?
No, but take other applications with a grain of salt. Everybody gets excited about the idea of having a dozen large virtual monitors floating around your desk, but even really great resolution has just not been good enough to make those displays look crisp. Also, a lot of folks still get pretty bad headaches when they use VR or AR. So MOSTLY it's for games and movies, but people remain convinced that there's a big killer app here somewhere that we just need to figure out.
Right, in terms of hardware and price, I've always been tempted by the Meta Quest, but the ecosystem and the fact that it's locked down has always been the major blocker for me. It does suck that this more than twice as much (although some of it is obviously the current surge pricing), but for hardware that I own, it's well worth it.
There is much more - people use it to communicate (VRchat), visit 3D scans of real places (3D Gaussian splatting) or see future concepts, like space colonies or massive starship concepts from their won PoV. Really, a lot of stuff is happening & possible with modern VR. :)
Visiting 3D virtual places sounds cool.
What communities do this? Can I do this on my laptop too to trial it?
Quest 3 is cheap for the same reason that 80 inch TVs are sold at or below cost. If you value your privacy at zero and want to strap a surveilling, billboard on your face for pennies on the dollar be my guest.
This is for people who want control over their devices. Despite the poor timing and somewhat high price tag I am glad there's competition in this space. Meta's stance on software and hardware openness is not great & it's suffocating the whole space.
The price is basically the same as the Index was at launch 7 years ago. With the devaluing of the currency, the increase in specs and capabilities, and the current component suppy crisis, it is a deal. Adjusted for inflation the Index would cost $1300 today, which now gets you a Frame with 1TB of internal storage.
I feel much the same. I don't think I'll be moving on from my Quest 3 until the hardware kicks the bucket.
Its a steep premium to not have zucc peering through your headset cameras.
Quest 3 is a mindblowing piece of hardware completely ruined by the runtime and vendor. This is basically it as a Linux machine you actually own. That being said, my Quest has sat on the shelf for years now since purchasing. I just don't really see a market for these things outside of driving/flight simulation enthusiasts. The whole "smartphone strapped to your face" paradigm is a dead end for actual VR.
There's an incredibly simple product case I think HN is missing: I bought a Vive and then an Index. This has higher resolution than the Index, lower mass (even with a battery!), and easier setup that can enable more spontaneous use. In addition, I now get the benefits of "standalone" headsets that I previously did not think were worth hundreds of dollars on their own.
Am I paying $1000 for a minor improvement? Yes. It's a hobby. It costs money sometimes. I don't do this for nearly anything else, like phones that other people seem fine for paying $1000 every other year. I expect this device to last until another 6 years when I can justify spending another $1000 on another iterative improvement. Similarly, I may spend $1000 on a new setup for simracing soon.
Spending $6k on a gaming PC, a VR headset, and wheels and pedals is an experience you otherwise cannot get. I would spend money on VR even if it only worked with one or two driving games and nothing else. For those of us in that niche, VR has been anything but a "Failure", that business people seem convinced it is because it couldn't be the next "Platform" to put an app store on.
But, that's the market for VR. It's a niche toy for people with expendable income. It's not a mass market to rival the smartphone.
lmao. n o. thats meta and this steam. iykyk
lol.. offended some zuckers
I wonder how well fex will work with older 2d-3d games before, say, 2003, of the PS2/Xbox era and earlier, and whether controling mouse pointer is viable using the default controller.
For me personally steam frame would be worth it if only for running these kinds of games on a large virtual screen, watching movies and intermittently using it as a linux computer (with a limitation that text is likely not readable if the screen is comparable with Quest 3). And some VR native apps like Alyx.
Basically the stuff that Steam Deck already does save for all the new games (which run worse and worse with each year anyway)
It has 16GB ram so the device is only like $500 actually.
I want this for one reason and one reason only: DCS.
Anyone know how well it works/doesn't work yet?
I've waited for years to get a VR heads for DCS (its a flight simulator folks) .. and now, maybe, this is it.
Something to keep in mind that a lot of simmers (DCS specifically) don't get when they want to jump into VR:
Once you hit the advanced 3rd Gen or any 4th Gen fighter or attack aircraft (essentially anything where you go "heads down" for any significant portion of the aircrafts mission profile) VR becomes more of a liability than an asset.
For those aircraft being a pilot is secondary to being a systems operator.
Think of an F-14; you have the front seat who would want to be in VR because they fly the aircraft, but the RIO would NOT want to be because they have very little need to be, especially since it makes interfacing with their mission systems so much harder. AH-64's are the same split.
Now if you are the sole person in the aircraft and need to do both missions being able to operate the systems fluently and smoothly via dedicated interfaces FAR exceeds any benefit from being in VR.
I've done it all, and I far prefer flying in VR. But for accomplishing complex mission profiles multiscreen with each being an MFD and a rich control set far beat that immersion.
Perhaps the best mix is using a curved UW and trackir plus dedicated MFD screens. Once you get that setup its amazing for that advanced capability set.
All of this assumes you want to use the full capability set of an airframe, or use an attack profile at all. If all you want is to use them for A2A, then VR is wonderful as long as you have a full HOTAS set, understand the preset modes on everything, and memorize the controls and alternate control schemes properly for BVR to close in conversion, countermeasures, etc.
Personally I use physical MFDs in my simulator together with a VR headset, it works out great. Initially I thought I would need to get some kind of hand tracking cameras or passthrough in order to see what buttons I was pressing, but I found that you develop muscle memory super quickly, and seeing the buttons move in VR when you press them physically is good enough.
I had wondered how well that would work; thanks for that input!
Does not seems like a very realistic simulation if you basically give both the pilot and operators their own home office. In reality that does not fit into a fighter jet & the idea being to simulate that experience as realistically as possible.
I wanna do all of the above, to the extent that a few sessions a week can be had, and yeah, my existing multi-monitor rig allows for a degree of MFD integration, with lots of controls (faderfoxes repurposed for it) alongside an admittedly kind of basic warthog HOTAS .. its more for the fun than anything else. No chance, ever, to fly some of these machines any other way, so its gonna be great ..
For DCS only, I wonder how this slots between a Q3 and a bigscreen beyond. The beyond with no controllers is probably about the same price all in as the 1TB, but would be better screens and lighter. If you dont care about the standalone stuff it might be another good option. The frame does bring more versatility, but at the cost of battery/weight. Wireless VR in sims is unbeatable in terms of immersion though.
I bought an HP Reverb G2 for DCS about 5 years ago and it worked great. When Windows started deprecating the Mixed Reality services random things started breaking, though.
If you enjoy DCS give VTOLVR a shot as well. Fantastic fun.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/667970/VTOL_VR/
IMO VTOL VR is better than DCS in VR (albeit unavoidably more arcade-y) because it's designed for VR first, while DCS's screens and labels are much more difficult to read given the limited resoultion
I just want to clarify for others reading that the resolution is really mainly limited by your PC hardware, NOT VR headsets.
As in, it's totally possible to have completely clear text on DCS screens and labels even with an older lower res headset like the Valve Index, as long as you render the game at a sufficiently high resolution (via SteamVR settings or similar).
Just wanted to point this out, since a lot of folks aren't aware how drastically increasing the render resolution (even far past the native HMD panel resolution) affects image clarity.
I used a Rift for DCS and it was amazing graphically. Hard to go back to playing on a screen and using a HOTAS hat to capture your view (or head tracker).
But you better have your HOTAS controls memorized because it's a pain not having visibility of them.
Yes, I would probably try to do some kind of "point webcam at HOTAS" hack to try to obviate this hassle, at least until I get the muscle memory really nailed.
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 device and the use time thereof.
Now, what they do with that data after the fact is almost certainly less nefarious than Meta - but they do by definition collect that data.
At current hardware prices, this is worth buying to use as a server!
This does make me excited for the possibility, several years down the line of a Valve ARM Linux laptop with decent battery life. I wonder if anyone will rip out the compute unit out of the headset and try to use it as mini PC, just because you can, it seems like fun.
Heh, I use one of my Steam Decks as a small home server.
The Meta model (of cheaper hardware, highly subsidized) is probably not long for this world, with the recent increase in component costs.
Lower volume with consumers fully covering the device cost will probably become the norm, which doesn't bode particularly well for this industry (at least in the short term)
> Lower volume with consumers fully covering the device cost will probably become the norm
dont know about lower volume, but having the consumer pay the cost of the device fully (instead of subsidized by the later sale of games on the system) is better aligned with the interests of the consumer. You'd be less likely to get monopolistic device sellers signing exclusivity for games like the consoles of the past.
I want the device to be as good as it can be, rather than wanting the device for the exclusive game that it has.
I wanted so much to play with VR back in the 90s, but most 3d games give me motion sickness. I could barely play 5min of Goldeneye on N64, 2min playing Metroid and I was sick to death (headache, vomiting if I forced myself, feeling sick for hours).
Although I can play many, it's really a hit and miss. And thus I avoided VR not really knowing how it would render me useless.
You should try it out! There should be local stores around you, and many libraries set up an oculus corner.
Although IDK... "3D games" is a shockingly low bar. Can you watch movies...?
I'm a little late to the party but is there any list for recommended VR games?
I had Quest 3s for a couple weeks but I returned it because I didn't liked it and wanted to buy the Quest 3, but at the end I just decided to wait for the Steam Frame.
Superhot VR and Half-Life Alix, in that order. Sprinkle in some Beatsaber to taste.
Playing Superhot VR for the first time made me experience actual physical euphoria. I hadn't had that reaction to a new tech thing since I first got a ZX Spectrum as a little kid.
The only downside of starting with these is that it sets the bar incredibly high. But I still recommend it - it's hell of an introduction to a new medium.
Foveated Streaming seems to be buried on the page, this feels like a true game changer, especially for PCVR. Coupled with eye tracking it unlocks about 2-3x more compute for rendering. Now sparkle DLSS-like upscaling and you can render 144hz native resolution PCVR games without buying a 5090. Truly exciting stuff.
I still remember Michael Abrash's talk from 2016 where he talks about Foveated Rendering + Eye tracking as one of the key pillars of next-gen headsets https://youtu.be/o7OpS7pZ5ok?t=5438. Interestingly, his prediction was that it would be widespread as of about 5 years ago. Is next-gen finally here after 10 years?
Not quite: foveated streaming only affects the bitrate of the stream. For improving rendering performance, there is a similar technique called foveated rendering. It's still somewhat unclear how well that works while streaming, though. In theory, it should work, but no reviewers seem to have covered it for some reason.
you would probably need special engine optimizations to really make use of it, and VR hasn't been exactly an attractive option for AAA games.
DLSS adds lag, as does wireless, that 144hz may not help as much in those cases. For me it's the lag that gives me headaches.
Doesn't it render at half or even quarter resolution before upscaling, so wouldn't it be less e2e latency overall?
I do wonder if they use local upscaling after foveated rendering/streaming. The screenshot I've seen look a bit aliased in the periphery, which I hope isn't too distracting.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 does have a dedicated Hexagon NPU, so supposedly it can be done, but quality might not be great
I don't game much nowadays; can I just use this to replace my monitor, and work within high fidelity VR?
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
Usually the pixel density is higher in the center of the FOV though (more distortion due to the lenses on the sides). It's what set the original Oculus apart from existing headsets at the time: cheap lenses and correct the distorsiin in software. It's also a feature, as the actual density is better in the center :)
I do wish they used micro-LEDs for that kind of display though. I guess that they could be manufactured at the same time as a metamaterial acting as a lens sitting on top.
For comparison, Apple’s Vision Pro has 3660x3200 pixels per eye.
Yep, across a smaller fov too (100 degree horizontal).
Seems like we need one more decade of oled panel and gpu improvements before we can have good enough density with a reasonable size and power consumption.
you can even replace the whole computer if you tinker enough, since it runs Linux. whether or not that is a good idea in principle with _any_ vr headset is debatable.
AR glasses are much more suited towards that vertical at a lower cost, yet imo still struggle to be compelling in productivity.
This might be a stupid question, but presumably this (and similar devices) won't cater to people without 3D vision?
I think it would still work. A lot of people claim VR is about immersion, but I disagree. There is nothing less immersive than having a giant headset strapped to your face. To me VR is about the control scheme. Playing games with your hands with full freedom is very different to playing with a standard controller. That wouldn't be affected by a lack of 3D vision.
Some VR games assume you have depth perception and so you may have trouble with them, such as Beat Saber, but I honestly think most VR games would be perfectly playable without 3D vision. You may not be as good at the games as someone with 3D vision, but you'd probably still enjoy it.
My second favourite VR game is Gorilla Tag. I think that would play fine without 3D vision... as long as you don't get motion sickness - that game can be a lot.
You mean people blind in one eye? I think it still works, but obviously depth perception will not be there
> Reservations are currently not available for customers who have not made a purchase on Steam before Mon, April 27, 2026.
As someone who made a purchase on steam (that I can't even play) after the release of the Steam Machine, but before the release of the Steam Frame, in the hopes that the date would be later, I am disappointed that they used the same date, such that that purchase still does not unlock the ability to order.
Just ask someone you trust to make the reservation from their account.
Unfortunately, your behavior is identical to what a reseller would do.
Actually more reasonable prices than I assumed. I know it’s a position of privilege, but just pre ordered the 1TB.
I'm thinking of selling my Index and my Vision Pro for one. The screens/tech in the Vision Pro is remarkable, but sadly the iron grip of the App Store Guidelines means none of it is really accessible for any interesting applications. The AVP App Store is a pathetic ghost town. I'd much rather have a less technically capable headset but have it be completely open.
Hopefully it's possible to use eye tracking as a pointer in desktop mode. I'd like to connect only a keyboard and use binds to emulate clicks.
With the software being open source I wonder if the quest 3 will get owned so that eventually we can run steam frame sw on it
> This item is not available for purchase in your region
:(
This is everything and much more than i wanted from a VR system, it feels like its designed exactly for me. Also tbh i thought after the steam machine price shock i got that this will be like 200 more.
1. It is SteamOS with desktop mode, the SteamDeck made me really miss that feature on any newer console i use like my ps5 or switch 2. Like even if we just limit it to games, playing games like The Binding of Isaac or Minecraft unmodded is a pain for me. Even just using websites for Streaming Services that dont have their app on every system ever, PS5 and Switch 2 dont even have webbrowsers you can just access, I think you have to edit DNS settings to make it think you have to sign up for a free wifi in the browser IIRC.
2. Wireless Streaming without the (Quest 3S) downsides of Wireless Streaming. I have a 6ghz router in my room, connected to my Laptop with an ethernet cable and tried the streaming on a quest 3S. I dont want todo that ever again, it was so inconsistent. It felt like the beatsaber song and gameplay speed up and slowed down like 1-5% in waves to catch up with the stream. Also sometimes my right eye turned into a chess grid of black pixels but i would assume that was more of a Linux Quirk. Also since i use a Laptop i dont want any wires from my headset to the Laptop, I dont want to pull my laptop and possibly more off my desk in the middle of a game. Also for movement games like beatsaber i find cables really annoying when you want to quickly accelerate.
3. Both the Windows mixed reality Headset and Quest 3S had TERRIBLE software. To continue using the WMR i had to reinstall windows like once every 1-2 months. Which just ended up with me stopping to play VR (Like why would i reinstall my PC like 6-12 times a year just to play those 3-4 games. From what i know from the steamdeck, the frame will be so so much better in this regard. On the Quest i wouldnt even have my steam library without connecting to a PC.
4. An ARM linux device that doesnt contain 10-15 year old somewhat mid phone hardware. Like i had been thinking about getting a macbook for asahi linux for a long time now just because it seemed like the best in that regard and i really really wanted a finished, high performance ARM device. And if i can run that many steam games on my non actively cooled phone already without the frame even being out (Since both use the FEX layer) (which has the same chip as the frame) I feel like i will really enjoy it for local Minecraft VR and Beatsaber and probably more.
5. The controllers. LTT complained about the "Default Xbox layout" because reaching all buttons is a bit hard, but for me, both the meta quest 3S and Samsung odyssey + controllers had a severe lack of buttons to bind game actions to. Also i like bigger controllers anyway, I like the Steam controller, I like the Wii u Gamepad, I like the steamdeck and I even like the OG xbox controller. To me those werent big clunky controllers, they were (or are) the most comfortable controllers i have used so far.
The only 2 things im eagerly waiting for more Info on is the "Much better comfort" i have been hearing about and the ability to install .APK files.
Either way im already sold on this thing and believe i will LOVE it for years and years to come.
Kind of bizarre tbh, given the software market for VR seems absolutely dead. Announcing it with a 7 year old game is like, what? What's Valve's plan here?
I think Valve’s plan is that some of their engineers wanted to make the device. That was the plan.
I also think they just couldn’t justify selling the valve index anymore because of the current state of technology, but didn’t want to discontinue offering VR entirely. A large percentage of Steam sales are back catalog games. A game being 7, 10, 20, 30 years old doesn’t mean it’s bad or that someone won’t buy it.
Another aspect here is “steam store on everything” is a strategy. It doesn’t matter if it’s a niche, because the mere presence of endless hardware options adds value to the Steam store. You can be confident in buying lots of games on Steam because you know they’ll run on more stuff than games you buy on PS5 or Switch or the Microsoft Store.
They’re not a public company, they don’t have to make stock price go up. At the same time, this thing existing is a net positive for them.
Well they are the ones trying to build market. And they have money to invest. Cycle most likely should be lot faster but it doesn't seem unreasonable thing to try.
Agreed... I already played Alyx years ago and there's no other game of similar quality... love the hardware, but it's hard for me to imagine dropping a grand on this
It's absolutely wild to me that they didn't include, and have devs ship profiles for some of their games, SuperDepth3D or some other depth map shader officially in some form in the Steam UI for this. If a big focus is playing your pancake library on a huge screen (due to there not being not many native VR games), having that huge screen be 3D would be a huge value add. And they're big enough to get some developers to ship profiles for their games officially guaranteeing some form of workingness(?).
This. This is what I am looking for. I remember using iz3d years ago, with their anaglyph renderer. Playing Half Life 2, Halo and others in stereoscopic 3D was a great experience. Dead Space was particularly nice, as the game uses no HUD.
I guess most of it could run as a Vulkan layer?
Isn't it bit odd that there is no basic wired connectivity option? Or am I just old-fashioned? As far as I can tell you only options are 6GHz streaming or stand-alone mode
You can pick up a Valve Index if you want to do this, which is a fantastic device, but I think the reality is that the market for the wired to a desktop head set just isn't there to support the product.
Apparently the beta just added support for this.
The streaming is good enough now, especially with foveated rendering, that there's no reason for them to eat the extra support cost and user experience drag of focusing on a tether.
Anyone recommend light-weight VR (or AR) setup that’s just good for watching movies on a big screen? Nothing fancy just good for that and portable.
Xreal or Viture
The Steam Frame looks like a heck of a device. At the cost, though, I question why they didn't include a better pass-through camera. A device with onboard processing and a good pass-through camera would be very neat. If they were trying to make this an affordable device I'd understand, but it's over a thousand dollars.
There's an accessory that adds high-res color passthrough: https://arcturus.vision/
> If they were trying to make this an affordable device I'd understand, but it's over a thousand dollars.
It costs less than a third of the Vision Pro, and less than the Meta Quest Pro. It's relatively affordable, for a RAM crisis.
I suspect the reason it wasn’t included by default was that pass through is not the intended experience.
For a gaming focused device, pass through is not getting used very much. It’s only used for the kind of stuff the Vision Pro is trying to use. If you’re playing Half Life Alyx or something you’re just not using it your entire session.
They use a generic phone chip so have to do camera processing using CPU and not dedicated accelerators.
That’s a better price than I thought it would be, but still quite high. I will consider buying it someday, but today it’s a luxury I can’t afford…
Great news: SteamOS running on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, ARM64
Bad news: I'm poor. Just wish I had pocket money for niche products like this.
> Great news: SteamOS running on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, ARM64
Bad news: It's trapped in a VR headset and not a pocket-size steam deck
You can buy a pocket sized steam deck and do it yourself https://armadaos.dev/
Or use gamenative on your phone
I'm so happy that they DONT SELL TO 75% OF THE WORLD(No options in Asia, Latin America or Africa. 3 ENTIRE CONTINENTS)
It's SteamOS on ARM64 platform, which means now you can run PC games on phone chips, definitely should be a revolution product.
You could already do that with gamenative. There are many videos.
Also you can run steam os on arm portables. https://armadaos.dev/
So all this was possible before the Steam frame was launched
Macbook neo has been playing PC games for ages now.
For those in Japan who are interested but getting blocked (or waiting) for access via Komodostation.com:
199,980 base 256GB
244,980 1TB model
considerable markup even over the current USDJPY rate
What is the thing with Komodo having exclusivity for Valve hardware in Japan by the way ? We wanted to buy a SteamDeck OLED in Japan last year and it all the big department stores in Akiba it was sold out - kinda indicating Komodo is not really handling this very well if they have no stock.
> Steam Frame starts at $1059
I see no price in the linked page. I only see "This item is not available for purchase in your region."
(Still waiting for the Steam Deck...)
What country?
He's from Brazil, as am I, and I got the same message.
Also exciting, Valve has finally started shipping native ARM/FEX builds of Proton 11: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/vr/valves-latest-proton-11-bet...
Will be super interesting to benchmark various ARM chips and see where they land performance-wise!
AFAIK they still aren't shipping an actual ARM64 version of Steam, making it difficult to actually use those (unsupported) ARM builds of Proton. That article is 5 months old.
Not officially, but it's publicly available for download.
https://interfacinglinux.com/community/sbcsoftware/native-st...
You can use it really easily on Android devices through apps like Game Native and some of the more powerful Android gaming handhelds have support for Steam through Linux distros like Rocknix and Armada OS.
Yeah this could open up a whole new category of lightweight gaming PCs.
I think this is a good chance to try and port Alyx (ARM64 build) to visionOS and run it on my Vision Pro headset which has been running around unused for the last two years xD
Aussies are getting it at a premium, too.
USD$1059 (256GB) should be AUD$1483, retailing for AUD$1609 - a AUD$126 premium.
USD$1299 (1TB) should be AUD$1819, retailing for AUD$1969 - a AUD$150 premium!
Taxes aren't included in the US prices; I'd have to pay 1138USD for the 256GB model, which is 1593AUD, so it's only a 16AUD premium over where I live.
Not so bad, New Zealanders won't get it at all :(.
It’s hard to meaningfully compare prices across countries due to differences in tax regimes.
That is nothing, less than 10%.
Ther are countries that get it at 100% or even 200% more.
Which is actually good, as it includes GST.
It includes GST right? US prices are before sales tax.
That makes more sense then. I did not realise that US electronics prices were before tax.
>Your Steam Frame headset easily pairs with your Steam Controller. Stream from your PC, laptop, Steam Deck or (coming soon!) Steam Machine for an immersive experience with any of your favorite games.
How are they even intending for the Steam Frame to be used with the Steam Deck? As far as I know, it’s not meant to be used with a cable, and the wireless adapter it ships with is USB-A.
Not being very savvy about VR glasses, am I assuming correctly that this device can't do AR, as the cameras are only used for tracking?
I think technically it can, but the cameras are black and white, so it would be very subpar for AR out of the box.
There is some chatter about using the expansion port to add a 3rd party colour camera to get over this, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it.
Edit: I stand corrected, there is such a 3rd party camera linked on the page!
> There is some chatter about using the expansion port to add a 3rd party colour camera to get over this, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it.
The official product page above has a link to one you can already preorder: https://arcturus.vision/
Now I see that the page reveals this:
> Four high-resolution, monochrome cameras provide controller and headset tracking
(Emphasis mine)
So it's not really suitable for real AR out of the box. Thanks for the heads up!
I use VR a lot and have not needed AR except for getting a drink from the fridge. What am I missing?
At this price I don't think you can expect the high quality cameras and processing power needed to do AR.
It can do AR, especially with this addon arcturusvision.myshopify.com
> 2160 x 2160 LCD (per eye)
The 4K we've all been waiting for - the (2x2)K.
Anyone knows how the passthrough compares to visionpro with the add-on?
I think the only way this is really compelling is if it's able to effectively function as a virtual Linux desktop with a reasonably clear floating monitor in front of you.
I'm not sure that's appealing to me for a couple reasons that mostly boil down to "I don't really want a computer strapped to my face for hours at a time", but I'm the right kind of weirdo who sees the appeal in being able to eliminate the 32 inch monitor from my desk. I'd love to have all this desk space back to put "not computers" in. Or even just leave it empty.
Outside that, so much of this feels very ... I dunno. Answer in pursuit of question. Sure, I can play my Steam library "anywhere" (* caveats apply), but how often do I really want to do that, and especially how often do I want to take the very expensive gadget around to do that?
I've got a Lenovo x86 handheld purchased for around $500, which I'd already be a bit reluctant to drag out on the train or wherever public. For an even more expensive headset with optics and other difficult-to-clean parts, much more so.
VR games themselves are very "meh" to me. Some are insanely cool, but they just aren't enough to rationalize buying a headset. I've got a CV1 that's collected dust for years because it's just not worth it.
It looks like this does support a pretty robust sort of virtual desktop environment, though. That could make this almost compelling, I think. But that's a steep price for "it's almost interesting"...
> I'm the right kind of weirdo who sees the appeal in being able to eliminate the 32 inch monitor from my desk. I'd love to have all this desk space back to put "not computers" in. Or even just leave it empty.
Unfortunately none of the current generation VR/AR/XR glasses come close to replacing a monitor full-time. They may be okay for using in a pinch (like if you're travelling and need a bigger/secondary/private display), but they suck for long term use.
Biggest issues:
- Screen resolution is still pretty low. At 2160x2160, it feels like you're just sitting really close to a 27" 720p monitor. You will see the pixels. It may not matter much for movies and some games, but you will notice it for productivity. If you have a decent monitor already, it's a very noticeable downgrade, even when compared to using any modern laptop display.
- They're just not comfortable for long term wear. I can work 8+ hours in front of a regular screen with almost no issues, but that's just impossible with current generation VR/AR/XR glasses.
- The big screen promise is a lie for productivity. You'd need to constantly move your head around to be able to see the whole screen; you can't see it all in one go, without dealing with blurry/distorted edges. If you do want to see the entire screen in one go then not only does the image become smaller (breaking the big screen promise), the clarity of text drops sharply.
So if you're considering getting any of the current generation glasses for long-term productivity: just don't.
I’m somewhat surprised nobody has pointed one of those hacking models at a Rift CV1 and said “make it work without all the Facebook junk, preferably in Linux.”
... You know, now there's an idea ...
But in seriousness, I've gone down this rabbithole ever year or two for about as long as I've had the darn thing (including one especially masochistic attempt at making it work on ppc64le), and any time I have gotten an open stack to drive it, the result has always been unusable with regard to input jitter and "general feel". Which is to say, yes, people have already figured out how to drive it on Linux.
It's just that the experience sucks.
Very impressive work by all the folks who hacked on it. But it seems like actually getting all the smoothing/filtering and interpolating sensor data is, for whatever reason, an unreasonably hard problem. Dunno if the LLMs could help at all, short of ... stealing the secret sauce from the proprietary runtime??
Well it’s news to me that things are already at the state of just needing better filtering. Maybe it is time to dust mine off…
Who are they targeting with this product?
What’s the appeal? Can someone enlighten me? :)
People who want a VR system that runs Linux
VR users who want no Meta spyware.
Just duct tape your smart phone to your face for free
I'm wondering how long the battery is in one charge.
Ars Technica's article put it at 1.5hrs in performance mode and over 2 in a power saving mode, but noted that the lower saving mode wasn't enjoyable. Of course it's I am sure that is going to be highly subjective to what you are doing.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/09/steam-frame-the-ars-t...
Valve confirmed a separate strap with hot-swappable batteries 'coming soon'
Why they decided to include standalone functionality is beyond me. It's a $1000 dollar VR headset. 99.9% of people buying this will already have a beefy gaming setup and will much prefer to stream from that instead of play standalone. You're not traveling with this thing, you're not using it on the go, it's not heavily subsidized like Quest headsets...
Including standalone and an SSD and ram and stuff does nothing but jack up the prices drastically, for functionality that nobody's gonna use. Rest assured, I will not be buying one.
Maybe Im just poor
Same
Does anyone make VR games anymore?
You can get a used or cheap headset for a similar experience. VR has a couple of games you get bored of pretty quickly :0
been there
I think the price is very reasonable for what’s on offer (especially given the current memory crisis), and given that Valve doesn’t subsidize the cost of anything, it really shows how much Meta values your privacy and biometric data for advertising purposes (~$600 in subsidies).
One thing I keep seeing reviewers skip over is VR Chat, which is weird since it’s a core VR experience that continues seeing average player count increases YoY compared to the boom-bust cycle of most VR games/experiences. It’s also an experience the headset seems uniquely targeted for - wandering the home or apartment streaming over 6GHz Wi-Fi, hanging out with friends or going to raves, no umbilical needed or dodgy Quest support limiting the experience.
For VRC alone, $1300 is a very respectable price for the experience on offer, especially compared to the $1k “entry point” of the Index. Common man VR this ain’t, this is targeting the VR serious as well as those who value privacy higher than what Meta offers in subsidies. The 2D support is a clever way of justifying the higher price though, and giving folks a more private way of enjoying their libraries in non-gaming spaces.
You're fooling yourself if the quest provides any advertising data value, let alone 600$ The device is simply just being sold for as a loss and is not a data harvesting operation.
Some quick googling shows the ARPU of a meta user is approx 57$ a year, and ~65$ in NA. Even if the quest provided useful advertising data (it doesn't) it would never come close to 600$ over the lifetime of a user.
I don't even understand what you mean by "biometric data" for advertising purposes. What biometric data is the quest collecting? How in the world is biometric data useful for advertising?
There's a reason why Meta is tens of billions of dollars in the hole for reality labs. It's not to subsidize for advertising that's for sure.
For VRChat it has even more benefits - built in eye tracking out of the box and and expansion port for which rumoredly there should be an official project Babble lower face tracker under development. :)
I'm really hopping for a combined face/vive tracker, because calibrating the Frame to Vive trackers is going to be annoying without it.
That’s a big reason I’m buying it (along with the wireless freedom of movement). VRChat has been a godsend of socialization and authenticity, and I want to immerse myself into it more with FBT, ET, and FT/MT such that it feels like a proper digital self. I couldn’t do that in my apartment layout with lighthouses a la BSB or Index, but the Frame and modern SteamVR/OpenXR suggests this will be one of the best ways to immerse into VR experiences going forward.
The fact I can throw it into my bag and travel with it is a bonus.
vrchat is just weird enough (and for, maybe, weird people) plus the new user experience/children yelling slurs situation makes it hard to even bring up to general audiences
I do think hardcore sims and vrchat are the only good reasons to get into vr now, though
If only it were OLED
Yeah, cannot comprehend why it isn't. At that price tag.
The usual "images burn in" OLED concern isn't even at all applicable on a VR headset, where the entire image naturally changes every frame.
The contrast, low-latency and power efficiency of OLED seem a no-brainer.
Funny, I'm now finding my first thought with new hardware like this to be "how good is it at running AI models locally?"
Underpowered where it really counts. The GPU is barely better than that in a Quest 3 (Adreno 750 in Steam Frame vs Adreno 740 in Quest 3,) and while the CPU is almost 250% better overall than what is in the Quest 3, CPU power hasn't really been the limiting factor in most VR games I've played, it has been the GPU, both in PCVR and in standalone devices.
I imagine thats why they've gone so far with the dual stream setup that can use the 6ghz dongle + your wifi for ultra low latency to a dedicated machine.
IIRC VRchat is usually CPU limited in practice.
overspecced cpu is useful for x86 translation, but yes the gpu is disappointing
10 years later and VR headsets are still too heavy, hot and sweaty. Short of having brain implants or magical contact lenses, nothing will ever change that.
Can't be used more than 30min without major discomfort for most people. Any talks about it replacing monitors are lies.
Headsets like the Bigscreen Beyond 2 are basically the weight and size of goggles. Wearing headphones isn't actively comfortable either but very few people would say that that is prohibitively uncomfortable relative to their desire to listen to music. It's not unreasonable to think that the privacy and convenience of a VR workspace could eventually reach that level of convenience for a significant number of people.
The real issue for replacing monitors seems to be screen fidelity.
in my experience this is only an issue when headsets are unbalanced between the front and back, since this results in the weight going on your nose/face rather than straight through your head to your neck. the frame's battery is on the back specifically for this reason in addition to the whole thing being relatively light anyway
Fuckfuckfuck. Not now, I will need to now offset this with a present for wife. Not to mention, it will mess with how fast other projects move. Fuck.
That’s a remarkably cheap storage upgrade too. First time I’ve ever thought the upgrade would be worth the money.
I mean.. I could consider renting a pair over a weekend or something. But buying? No way
No better than the rest of the VR headsets that came before it and almost no-one wants them. These headsets will end up collecting dust with the Apple Vision Pro and the Meta Quest Pro.
We gave VR headsets enough time and this is just going to be a repeat failure of the previous ones.
Glasses such as the XReal on the other hand have a far better future than these VR headsets.
> Glasses such as the XReal on the other hand have a far better future than these VR headsets
Far into the future, perhaps. These glasses may be fine for short stints, but not for serious 8+hrs of productivity. I have a Viture Beast and I regret buying it. Even for short gaming stints, I still prefer my laptop or smartphone display as these glasses are such a downgrade.
The current XReal models are very underwhelming. Very narrow FOV more or less equivalent to using a 27" monitor, lots of fuss with the cable, switching sound to headphones because the built in speakers are garbage. Issues with HDR support.
The XReal is practically guaranteed to have sold less units than any generation of the Quest hardware.
Which means? We should buy the Meta Quest / Quest Pro headset? I don't think so.
Maybe that's the reason why the Meta Quest Pro is in "so much demand" that Meta is no longer selling them anymore. Apple is not even bothering to restock Vision Pro either.
So much demand /s
I am saying VR had a great run. We are not in the Covid era anymore which the Quest greatly benefited from this. VR has a very limited future and it shows.
> I am saying VR had a great run.
I am saying that too. AR had a comparatively terrible run - it's possible that Apple's Vision Pro moved even less units than XReal.
VR is niche, but a real market. It coexists with the AR world and still outsells it consistently, despite being a terribly unpopular market segment.
It means that your claim of AR glasses eventual popularity is even more spurious than a guy with a Rift DK1 saying that VR is destined for mainstream success. They're both wishcasting.
Brutal pricing. It would have been brutal at $600.
Having said that, there really is no other game quite like Half Life Alyx. It's so good, immersive and one of a kind. Perhaps worth the price of admission. It's so good that it kind of ruined VR gaming for me because all other games kind of felt like tech demos from that point on.
Yikes, what a terrible price. 55 minutes playing on-device Half Life Alyx. 1hr 30min streaming from a PC with dongle. 3 hours charge time. It's just pretty lame tbh. Damn :(
Is it really that bad? The hardware processing and storage is effectively a S24 which retails for $800. Add the additional displays, cameras and controllers, an extra $250 doesn’t seem that out there.
Whether it's a brutal price is separate from where it's fair for the hardware costs that went into it.
I don't want to buy that high end cell phone. First because I already have one (it would be very nice if I could have my phone handle compute from the back of my head or my pocket), second because I mostly want the headset to use with my desktop computer. $250 or $500 for a dumb headset with these features would be great.
Also charging 2-3x slower than you use the battery is very lame.
Eh, I don't think that's how the maths works, especially for products that are in completely different categories. For starters, display costs relatively much more on a VR headset compared to a 6" phone screen, the unit cost is much lower for a phone that is sold in many millions, the marketing cost is different etc. There will likely be actual breakdowns that provide some perspective into this.
Sure, it's not one to one, so the fact that the headset is so close to the retail price of a presumably much cheaper per unit flagship phone is why I don't really think the pricing is that bad for what it is.
I played it on my Quest 2 so that's not really the price of admission
This is a huge step backwards for VR. The headset is heavy, hot, and worst of all, expensive. This is the opposite of progress for this field.
Slim, lightweight form factors similar to that of the Bigscreen Beyond are not going to be practical in a self-contained headset for quite some time to come, at least if the goal is to play anything more demanding than Terraria on it and its price range is anywhere remotely within reach of the general consumer.
The only reason why Facebook has been able to swing such low prices is with steep subsidization, and the Quest hardware itself isn't much less bulky.
I hope the fact there's now a more open, Linux based VR headset will encourage more variety of headsets and price points, like we see with PCs, generic Android handhelds, etc.
I'd love someone (maybe even Bigscreen themselves) to make something like a standalone version of the Beyond 2. I'd be happy with some kind of puck or whatever for the compute and/or battery just to have it be that lightweight.
Weighs less than Quest 3 on the first review I saw? They also said weight was better distributed, not as heavy in the front area as others.
Watching the gamers nexus review, that seems not true? Outside of expensive.
It's not heavy, it's very light. I bet it's not hot either.
Nitpicking a bit - once again another FOV of ~110. Sigh.
Maybe I’m just being picky, but I feel like I’m playing a submarine periscope simulator when I use these things. It’s been over a decade since the early VR headsets like the Rift, and it’s pretty much the same as it’s always been.
The only headset that didn’t give me this tunnel effect was the Pimax 8K, but it had its own problems.
Did you try it?
The focus on mobile game graphic quality of the Quest was the real step back