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Comment by JeremyNT | Hacker News Reader

I guess there's a market for this but I'm personally disappointed that they've gone with the "cram a computer into the headset" route. I'd much rather have a simpler, more compact dumb device like the Bigscreen Beyond 2, which in exchange should prove much lighter and more comfortable to wear for long time periods.

The bulk and added component cost of the "all in one" PC/headset models is just unnecessary if you already have a gaming PC.

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I'm personally quite hyped to see the first commercially available Linux-based standalone VR headset announced. This thing is quite a bit lighter than any of the existing "cram a computer in" solutions.

Yeah, this is exactly what I've been waiting for for quite a long time. I'm very excited.

Strictly speaking the mobile Oculus/Meta Go/Quest headsets were linux/android based, you can run Termux terminal with Fedora/Ubuntu on them and use an Android VNC/X app to run the 2D graphical part. But I share your SteamOS enthousiasm.

They crammed a computer into the headset, but UNLIKE Meta's offerings, this is indeed an actual computer you can run linux on. Perhaps even do standard computer stuff inside the headset like text editing, Blender modeling, or more.

As a current and frequent user of this form factor (Pico 4, with the top strap, which the Steam Frame will also have as an option, over Virtual Desktop) I can assure you that it's quite comfortable over long periods of time (several hours). Of course it will ultimately depend on the specific design decisions made for this headset, but this all looks really good to me.

Full color passthrough would have been nice though. Not necessarily for XR, but because it's actually quite useful to be able to switch to a view of the world around you with very low friction when using the headset.

There's always going to be a computer in it to drive it. It's just a matter of how generalised it is and how much weight/power consumption it's adding.

It's nice to have some local processing for tracking and latency mitigation. Cost from there to full computer on headset is marginal, so you might as well do that.

You can get a Beyond if that's what you want. It's an amazing device, and will be far more comfortable and higher resolution than this one. Valve has supported Bigscreen in integrating Lighthouse tracking, and I hope that they continue that support by somehow allowing them to integrate the inside-out tracking they've developed for this device in the next version of the Beyond.

That would probably add a lot of extra weight and it would need to make the device bigger.

I don't think it would be too bad. Cameras are tiny. The processing would still happen on the PC, and you could delete the lighthouse tracking sensors. I guess the hardest part would be sending that much camera data back to the PC over the cable.

Its worse than that. Cameras (plus DToF if you want tracking in the dark), imus, gyros, and necessarily onboard compute/SOC to handle processing that data. Shipping it all off to a remote computer and then making the round trip creates an untenable amount of lag. Thats not even accounting for controller and hand tracking.

And once you have the pipeline and computation power to enable inside out tracking all on device, adding an OS is essentially free.

It already has an IMU and gyro, obviously. Time of flight cameras are unnecessary. Steam Frame doesn't have them either. At most you would put IR LEDs for illumination which are tiny but also optional (Quest 3 doesn't have them), and there's no reason they have to be in the headset, you could just have a standalone IR illuminator on your desk.

As for sending data over a cable, there's nothing inherently laggy about it. After all, the display signal already travels over the cable, and the cable transfer is by far not the limiting factor in latency. The camera data is lower bandwidth than the display signal, too.

I agree. Hopefully Bigscreen continues making hardware. I still have the original bigscreen beyond and im very happy with it besides the glare.

How is Linux support?

From the review section:

Nikos Q: Linux Desktop support? A: Hi,

Linux is not officially supported but can absolutely work with the Beyond 2. I'd suggest joining the Bigscreen Beyond Discord server for more information

Thanks By Bigscreen Support Team

---

Rant: they have disabled selected text for the reviews for some inexplicable reason.

Lol, doesn't sound confidence inspiring. "More info in Discord" is such a non-starter.

I wish Valve every bit of success, if they deliver an open platform people can own and hack.

its using SteamVR, so it should work

It's super light compared to Quest 3, half the weight on your face, the rest is on the back which balances the headset. Big Screen Beyond isn't wireless and has a narrower field of view.

> has a narrower field of view.

On the beyond 2, only by 2 degrees horizontally. I don't think that would even be noticeable.

I was worried about the built in computer as well, but then I found out it's only 185g. It is 78g more than the Bigscreen Beyond 2, but it's still pretty light.

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