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Comment by Insanity | Hacker News Reader

This is going to be an instant buy for me, and my first VR device ever. I've used the previous Steam VR headset over at a friends' place many times, but never bit the bullet to get one myself.

The fact that this can run standalone, doesn't have a bunch of wires dangling from it, and is pretty much a fully working Linux box makes this am almost on-brainer for me.

I do _hope_ the price is reasonable though, if it ends up being like Apple VR I might not buy into it immediately, but I'm hoping for a reasonable $1000 max price.

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Not to mention this comes from a company that I respect and that has a proven record of trying to respect its users, unlike literally every other company making VR headsets. The fact that they are trying to making this an open device, and that the controllers have user-replaceable batteries is almost unheard of in any consumer device these days.

Valve kinda shows how a well-managed private business ought to run: respect your customers, find a cash cow and use it for slowly expand into related markets to your niche, develop good products over a long period (SteamOS took many years to become something actually useful) without focusing on the mentality of hyper-growth, keep the stereotypical contemporary MBA thinking away, have a small but competent team.

There are, of course, the issues with lootboxes but even there they've kept their hands much cleaner than any other game developer.

It's a very well oiled machine, I had another VR headset ordered for sim racing, immediately canceled it when saw the Frame announcement because even if specs-wise it's a bit of a downgrade, I want to buy what Valve is selling.

> There are, of course, the issues with lootboxes but even there they've kept their hands much cleaner than any other game developer.

They do seem to get a pretty big pass on that. Wonder what it is about.

Almost every other aspect of the company I find great, and I do wish they would release more games. Maybe Alyx 2 will come out with the headset? Could be what HLX has been this whole time, where people think it is HL3.

On sim racing in VR, absolute game changer. I would never go back to screens, it's the perfect application for VR.

I'm hoping for L4D3 in my lifetime lol. L4D2 is still my most played game of all time (~3000 hours in that game). I love it.

Back4blood is more or less l4d3

That's sacrilege, that game doesn't even come close to the quality of Left 4 dead series and suffers from just about every problem that plagues so many modern games.

Back 4 blood was just another "live service" game that stirred up hype, released in an extremely buggy state, poorly balanced, with terrible AI that was never fixed, without mod support or community servers. They cashed in on the initial surge of popularity, cashed in on the DLCs, and then it quickly died off because it didn't have any of the charm or reply value of the games they claimed to improve upon.

Word is they're aiming for less than the full Index kit (which was $1000), so good news there. I suspect it'll be fairly high up in that range though given the hardware.

See "cheaper than index": https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-frame-official-announce...

Thanks for the article link. Nice quote from the article:

> Unlike the Index controllers, Steam Frame Controllers don't have built-in hand grip straps. But Valve says it will sell them as an optional accessory for people who want them, a similar strategy to Meta.

I was disappointed seeing no hand grip straps. I've never used a Valve Index but they seemed very useful. Very glad that they will still be available.

As an Index controler and Pico user: The back straps are pretty much essential for any serious use; the controller purportedly includes finger tracking (capacitive) but you can't really open your hand without dropping the controller unless you have the strap.

If as I currently intend I end up purchasing this device, I will definitely endeavour to obtain the controller straps as well as the top strap for the headset at the same time, and I recommend others do the same.

It also includes the spacer for wearing glasses.

Genuine question, if you already own an Index, why would you also get this? Wireless functionality, or something else?

Wireless, weight, no lighthouses, standalone use, more polished rendering. It won't be prefect, but it'll be a heck of a lot better experience than what came before.

I only own Index controllers, not the headset. I have a mixed tracking Pico 4 setup and wireless functionality is definitely one of the pluses; the higher resolution panels also make a significant difference (the Frame and the Pico 4 seem to have the same resolution). This is basically an open Steam-backed Pico 4 that's superior to my hardware and definitely superior to the Index. Here's a comparison:

https://vr-compare.com/compare?h1=0jLuwg808-j&h2=w8xCM-oPA

The 1000hz tracking frequency is from the Lighthouse tracking system, which the Frame loses. For that and other reasons, I am not convinced the controllers are better than the Index controllers. Personally I think it's likely I will keep using the Index controllers, since I have the whole lighthouse setup and I own trackers as well.

Thanks!

You're gonna love where VR is at right now. If you had been holding off until it's good enough, then I think you've timed it well. The Quest 3 from an experience point of view was the watershed headset for me, but the ecosystem being Meta makes it less good from a privacy and ownership point of view.

But this headset solves the ecosystem aspect and brings that visual experience with it.

They've cut some fairly shallow corners, like mono vs color cameras so I imagine getting it within a decent price range has been of high importance. I really doubt it'll be any thing close to $1k.

I think it’s possible that there’s a technical reason for monochrome cameras. For example, to let in the maximum amount of IR light for tracking. Bayer filters reduce the amount of light getting in, so it might help the IR LEDs be visible on surrounding walls in the dark.

Still hoping that you’re right, though.

I can't imagine it exceeding ~1k USD - they've got to at least keep it reasonably competitive with the Meta Quest which is around half that.

Meta Quest 2 owner here, with all the damage to UX after Oculus was acquired by Meta, I'll lean towards something from steam, even with a 2-3x price tag.

I don't think I'm the norm, but probably neither an exception

I realize this might not be the case for everyone, but for me, $600 premium is easily worth it to "jailbreak" the meta game store. Steam was here for ~25 years and I expect it to be around in another 25 years. My Quest 1, an absolute Dinosaur of the VR world now, 2019, barely works at this point, is out of support and Meta still haven't open sourced the firmware for it.

Seconding this, I love my Quest 1 but at this point it's looking more and more like it'll turn into a brick at some point. The Frame looks like the next best non-meta alternative, and a damn good one at that.

I imagine there are a non-negligible amount of us here who looked at the Apple Vision Pro with interest, despite its $3,500+ price tag, only to find out it can't meaningfully be used as a standalone development device.

Only question is if 2160px is enough.

I'm also very interested in this use case, however I suspect 2160 square is going to be great for gaming but insufficient for serious work. It's very comparable to the Quest 3 (lenses too), which is kind of on the level of a giant 1080p monitor.

I somewhat agree except that you can still make the screen however big you want, and the pixel density is the same across the new area.

Clarity has been totally fine for work reading text on, if I were inclined to code in VR that would totally work for me.

If the lenses are good, it's enough. Just have to up the font size a bit and give up some information density compared to, say, a 16-17 inch laptop.

The Quest 3 is already close to good enough to spend decent chunks of time in reading text. Just have breaks every 30m to avoid mild strain.

To me, the sweaty face issue is the main annoyance with working in these types of headsets.

> at least keep it reasonably competitive with the Meta Quest

Having the headset also be a PC (and not essentially a phone OS) is worth a premium of >$250 at least. You can build desktop apps/games on this thing, it can (hopefully) do just about anything a normal PC can.

The Quest is impressive in many ways, but it's a much narrower-use device. I don't think Valve's pricing needs to be in that same bracket to still sell.

> The fact that this can run standalone

Just make sure to wait for reviews on this front - it almost certainly can't run AAA games at the native resolution + fps. Likely it'll only be able to run lower req games on device.

Can it run the terminal and vscode comfortably is what I’m very interested about. Not having high hopes due to it being only 2160px, but… a man can dream

We just need a terminal with stereo rendered distance field font.

plug me into the matrix already so I can do without any screen at all

"I don't even see the code anymore... I see Steam, Proton, Fex..."

> Can it run the terminal and vscode comfortably is what I’m very interested about

This. The combination of this being from Valve, and the fact it's highly likely to be an open Linux machine you can strap to your face, I'm looking to finally bite the bullet on a headset and the one thing I need to know is, can I use it for productivity, I'm used to working on 27"+ 4k monitors, _how much_ clarity am I going to sacrifice with this.

Sure, but there are already quite a few pretty nice looking games on Quest 3 running locally, so it can be done and should not be discounted as a gimmick.

It has pretty important benefits - lowest possible latency & being able to just pick the headset any play anywhere.

I bought the original Steam Index and pretty much never used it again cause its such a mess to have around. That plus the motion sickness. For applications where you're moving around in game though Id really want to try it again.

from your keyboard to GabeN's ears. I've spent a lot of dollars supporting my local startup; it was mostly wasted.

At 2.5x fewer pixels vs the Vision Pro it doesn’t make sense. That’s 12 million pixels per eye vs 4.5 million pixels. Feels like a much more inferior product. The games aren’t going to look great.

Financially, it makes sense. I don't need the absolute best of everything. The Steam Frame already has a very solid and comparable display. The Vision Pro is the one that's absolutely insane - and the only one on the market with those specs

Yeah, Frame already seems to do all the right tradeoffs for an early 2026 VR headset - has resolution similar to the Quest 3 AND has eye tracking, enabling very nice and useful eye tracking based optimizations for both rendering and streaming.

In comparison Meta might have cut down too much in Quest 3 by omitting eye tracking.

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