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Comment by Sohcahtoa82 | Hacker News Reader

It looks good until I reached one bit:

> Passthrough - Monochrome passthrough via outward facing cameras

This is an outright bone-headed move that I can't believe Valve is making. Only having monochrome cameras means augmented reality is basically a non-starter.

AR has a lot of potential. I literally bought a Meta Quest 3 just for PianoVision [0] when I already had a Valve Index. I would love to see some sort of AR-based game you could play outdoors. But with only monochrome vision, that's gonna be awful.

[0] https://youtu.be/apwZTV-Rg0s

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The videos I've seen about the Frame all call out the front expansion port, which "Valve says ... offers a dual 2.5Gbps MIPI camera interface and also supports a one-lane Gen 4 PCIe data port for other peripherals."[1]

That's plenty to support color passthrough as a physical addon, which in turn makes me think that, like with the OLED Deck, we'll see a Frame with built-in color-passthrough later as a different premium SKU when/if they justify it.

1: https://www.uploadvr.com/valve-steam-frame-official-announce...

I expect that a premium headset is in the works, but they probably didn't want to complicate what is effectively a console launch with multiple SKUs. They'll probably offer a 'Frame Pro' with wider FOV and better cameras a year or two down the line, possibly at the same time as the Steam Deck refresh we all know is coming.

I'm led to believe there's only so much FOV you can get out of pancake lenses? This is already spoecced to be the best pancake FOV seen to this date.

It's conceivable they could opt for better fidelity over more FOV (this would certainly support the 'play 2d games on your headset' push), but I wouldn't put it past Valve to be experimenting with alternative lens designs.

AR is really cool but it seems like a better fit for premium VR headsets right now. At a given price and assuming other specs are fixed, monochrome cameras offer higher refresh rate. I'm hoping this will help the frame offer better tracking.

Sad fact is that nobody outside tiny niche-cases in engineering really gives a shit about XR. The current round of meta-branded glasses don't have features worth the price.

When it's light & small enough to be a pair of glasses and more than just the expensive but limited gimmick that the form is currently, then it'll be world-changing. It's close, but it's not there yet.

The thing is, Google Glass was announced in 2013, 13 years ago. Yes, hardware and software advancements have been huge in the meantime but the form factor is so restrictive that we're probably still 10 years away from the "iPhone moment" of XR/AR. Especially since hardware is in a weird place where all the cutting edge stuff is more or less made by a single company.

To be fair, I have zero interest in AR so I am glad I will not have to pay for it when buying the headset.

PianoVision sounds like a really bad way to learn the piano. There are already pianos/midi controller that have the abilities to light up the keys you are supposed to play if you really needed that. But that is a gimmick that you might use the first few sessions and then never again. Same with PianoVision.

Generally, is is so much better to start with music notation from day one. I regret starting with all the piano learning apps because they only have been holding me back.

some just want to play Here Comes the Sun and not learn proper technique to go above grade 8 esoteric stuff without feeling pain bc they are playing for hours a day

Has PianoVision been working for you to learn piano?

> AR has a lot of potential

Name one that has to do with with this box competing with xbox and playstation in people's living room.

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