Steam Frame starts at $1059
store.steampowered.com
store.steampowered.com
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.
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.
Potentially related, IIUC Unity only has linux arm64 support for the embedded linux version. And to use that you have to contact sales.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamhardware/steamframe/...
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?
Also VR headset has limited re-playability ... table tennis was my VR golf.
Edit: I missed the point here, see reply.
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.
I can already run 100% of my Steam games on a flat screen in front of my real eyes
People tend to forget that the human eye has 2 ways to adjust for distance: 1. Moving the eyes relative to each depending on parallax (works in VR) 2. Deforming the eyes' lens to match the focal length (is fixed)
But the Steam Frame specifically is not well suited for this. Something more minimal like the Big Screen Beyond 2 would be better, and XR-type glasses (like those from Viture) which present as standard monitors would be better still.
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.
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.
Worry not! That's how long the battery lasts!
Without a tether to the PC (I have battery in my pocket) it’s pretty okay!
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.
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 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.
...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...
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)
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.
A flood of VR mods for popular games have been coming out lately.
But they were talking about playing on a virtual 2D screen which I have no interest in
I played the original "Luke Ross" Cyberpunk port but it was pretty horrible due to his mediocre alternate eye rendering and the lack of controller support.
I saw the new mod (dariulone?) but I didn't yet install it because it comes with a huge list of dependencies of other mods to install and I haven't had time for all that. I'm kinda hoping he makes a quick installer that packages everything :)
I'll try that soon. Right now it's still a bit too hot to be in VR anyway. It's more of a winter activity for me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
Unless you fly first class, using a laptop on a plane is painful.
So far all reviews I've seen been centered around gaming and not work.
How many hours a day you spend in it? How often do you use it?
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 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.
I'm wondering if it is because the screen was "flat" in front of you and you had no possibility to change your perspective. It would be interesting if the IDE had been in 3D space and you would look at it as if it was on your desk, capturing head movements etc.
When you have fiction or game dialogue text there is good bunch skimming going on so you dont care about every single symbol and or digit. So eyes dont get stuck looking at specific parts of text.
So yeah its very much possible that using VR as a virtual monitor setup it's just wrong aproach and there have to be paradigm shift in how we interact with dev environment to use it efficiently in VR.
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.
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.
You're also not allowed to use them even if you do have them with you. This is all very strictly enforced with reminders at the check-in desk and several announcements before take-off.
This is Compiz Fusion [1,] 20 years later.
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
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.
What I was thinking of was on iPhone. It was Eye Tracking + Dwell for selecting.
Hands act as a pointer on the Quest, with a pinch action to select and drag.
Step 2: Open source projects implement whatever they want. Preferably, they provide a framework that allows high extensibility, if the software provider didn't already.
Step 3: People download and install open source plugins that violate stupid patents. It's still a patent violation, but as long as the people providing it aren't profiting monetarily, the ability to recoup damages from lost profits or royalties is very hard.
There's some nuance there, and different ways it could (and should) be done to avoid most consequences, but not so long ago (maybe still?) people commonly combined codecs and software from different parties for ffmpeg, which to get around some issues with distribution refused to compile the source and provide a binary, because that would make them a target, but just the source didn't (to a greater or lesser degree).
Where there's a will there's a way, and if a company is going to obtain stupidly simple patents which they often claim is to keep other companies at bay, we can put that to the test. If they go after individuals for usage, pressure them.
If we're lucky, what we're seeing is an ebb and flow between open source and the companies that capitalize on it, and we're in the ebb. I'm hoping for the flow.
I don't have too much experience with them, but I thought the ultrabook category was the answer of the rest of the market to the Air, at least.
I'm not sure the problem is that nobody makes the quality hardware, but that maybe it's just as pricey and that nobody trusts the companies that do the same as they do Apple to buy it at a large premium. Many companies have the ability to put together something of a similar quality and sell it (even if not at quite the profit, still probably some profit), but are you going to trust an Asus or MSI product that costs the same as the equivalent Apple product to have the same quality? Perception is important here. MSI or Asus could put out something better than Apple if they wanted to and didn't care about the cost, but I doubt anyone would actually believe that it was better even if they did (and even if they like it initially, they may suspect it won't hold up over time). Such is the power of the brand Apple has built, and that's in many ways more important than the actual quality they provide.
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.
> 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.
We did "general computing" in 320x200 screens. I think the Frame's screen is a bit better than that.
Also, my simracing seat has been very lonely. I'm so happy that there is an HMD running arch that gives the user root.
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
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.
steam was and always will be awful. they just publish whatever the game studio sends them. try installing gta V from steam... you get Two Launchers besides steam! all three ad ridden.
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.
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.
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.
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.
None of the crazy VM wrapping etc.
Plenty studios do not ship adware launchers, and steam does not inject adware into them or anything. Even if steam gets percentage from the ads or whatever (I dont even know if this is the case) EA anyway ships the same adware outside steam.
I do not like this but let's blame it to the ones actually doing it, than the ones that dont oppose it.
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.
> The Arcturus Vision apps include Arcturus Vision Camera for recording and playing 5K HDR spatial video, Arcturus Vision Gaussian XR for exploring 3D Gaussian splats, and Sync for transferring recordings to Windows or Mac (with conversion for other players on Mac).
I've emailed their support to ask, just in case. :)
One lets you one-tap download native Microsoft Office, one runs it through a browser or via bespoke vm/wine configuration.
Instead, I'd say the difference is that both are consumer devices, AVP geared primarily toward computing while steam frame is geared primarily toward gaming, but the steam frame is open enough for you to develop upon and customize to meet whatever use case you desire.
HL Alyx was awesome though, nothing else on VR has been worth it for me.
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?
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.
If this is the biggest point, then I don't see why Xreal isn't more popular.
As the form factor is already pretty bulky, keeping it as a single device helps a lot IMHO.
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.
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.
Started by not-Valve in 1995
I don't have a windows machine for that. A bit disappointing.
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".
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.
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.
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.
here's a great video about exactly this, might be outdated as it's 6 years old
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.
Now imagine how intense that will become with even more realism. It could be actually seriously traumatic.
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)!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most are short bursts of fun and don't really have any moat.
VR still has a lot of problems. Some of which may never be solved, but lack of content is no longer a problem.
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)
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.
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.
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
https://github.com/FreeXR/exploits is a good starting point for that. I think replacing the Android userland would be the tricky part here.
I have few rooted Quests, only some Quest2 still left unrooted.
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.
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.
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.
you could... just plug it in? unless the frame cannot be used while charging, but i haven't seen anyone claim that.
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.
Steam Frame is solving this with a dedicated dongle, if I recall, which I think is a good choice.
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.
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 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.
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
What I would really like to see next, though, isn't so much on the content side. Instead of putting everything in the headset and seeing how light it can get, I really want to see a system on a belt, vest, or backpack involved. The HMD can just have hardware for the display, audio, and head & eye tracking. Put a coiled connector down to my shoulders. Put the compute, storage, and batteries on my torso somehow. That's where most of the weight is, and your core will notice it a lot less than your neck.
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/
Try Underdogs for some fun mech action, “You control giant metal arms using your real-life hand movements to punch, bash, and tear enemies apart. Movement: You move around the arena by grabbing the floor with your hands.”
That’s on Steam and also on the Meta store to run directly on the Quest.
Also, find the Hawken discord where we meet for networked games on a community build of the old Hawken.
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.
I did for my Valve Index, which I've used twice and are now sitting in a box. So, if I ever wanted to wear Facebook glasses, I couldn't because they don't sell them in my prescription; not that I ever will.
VR only works when your eyes are not skewed.
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?
3d desktops? workframes?
just let me TRON into the machine and show them all how it's done :D
Personally I wouldn't want to replace my desktop, but replacing my monitor? I'd do it if I could.
Something with the ergonomics of Bigscreen Beyond 2, passthrough and resolution improved beyond Vision Pro, and the hackability of Steam Frame, I think could be pretty attractive as a laptop replacement for some people. Of course we're nowhere near that product yet. But a Steam Frame with a higher resolution screen and a better head mount (and the Arcturus Vision passthrough camera add-on) would be pretty close.
IMHO usable real estate relative to the task (because coding doesn't have the same need as video editing, 3D modeling, etc) is a proper way to compare, not pixel density or anything or the sort that doesn't take what VR can actually offer.
PS: I do spend times in HMDs to work, including Vision Pro, Varjo, Frame, other HMD I can't mention, and in my experience it did already reach point where it is actually "good enough" for most tasks even one where a lot of text (which is typically quite demanding for readibility) is needed, but we don't have the same eyes, workflow, etc. It is though not good enough if you try to reproduce what you already have and compare exactly, but it's also not the point.
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.
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.)
I mean Valve definitely are very open-source friendly but I wouldn't just assume.
> Just like any SteamOS device, install your own apps, open a browser, do what you want: It's your PC.
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.
How unexpected! I love this comment.
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 mean, you can comfortably play GTAV on this thing and it’s powered by a smartphone processor.
Your dreams are going to become true.
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.
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).
But the hardware is adding weight and bulk to something that you really, desperately want to be as small and light and possible.
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).
They also have a dedicated wifi stick that directly connects to the frame in addition to using your normal wifi network.
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 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.
Valve Index Base Station: "Out of Stock"
You cannot buy a functioning Valve Index. And you wouldn't want one, because its 7 years out of date.
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.
The Pimax headsets with foveated eye tracking start at $1599.
The cheapest comparable device with the same (or better) level of eye tracking is $1500 (i.e., 50% more than the Steam Frame)...and that was the price before the tariff war and Iran conflict jacked up prices.
While the ram may currently be $300, the CPU is not $200 unless you're including the custom processing units Valve is using to handle the eye tracking, which are (a) industry leading, and (b) made to spec in relatively small quantities and therefore more expensive (and given the limited chip capacity also affecting chip manufacturing, also significantly more expensive than they would normally be).
If foveated rendering was cheap, it would already be standard in every VR device.
A. become ~$300 cheaper, close to the PlayStation VR2 which also has eye tracking
B. magically go up in price to $1500 like a Pimax headset?
If answering is difficult try asking an LLM for help. You're their target audience.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Of course, that multiplies with bandwidth requirements, which are also quite extreme at 4k 120fps.
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.
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.
To be clear, wearing a full VR headset has an "I am an idiot" vibe.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's full of technical details and down-to-earth analysis, and includes interviews with the Valve engineers.
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...>
Ah, this announcement from the end of 2025 explains the recent dreadfully spotty availability: [0]
What a shame you never used any of the "alert me when this shit is in stock" buttons, which are what I used to get one of my own.
[0] <https://www.theverge.com/news/817967/valve-index-vr-headset-...> [1]
[1] If you're inclined to emit some "How dare they sell something that they're not making anymore!" froth, do spare me. They're not taking your money and leaving you in limbo, they're very clearly indicating what is and is not in stock and not accepting money for the parts that are out of stock.
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
(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.
Will be super interesting to benchmark various ARM chips and see where they land performance-wise!
https://interfacinglinux.com/community/sbcsoftware/native-st...
Our expectations have been warped by Meta's decade long subsidization of VR hardware
Very much looking forward to maybe actually being able to use VR on my gaming computer.
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.
That made me get into playing games on linux on a desktop pc. Even when I have to run windows, I use the xbox game mode to launch steam bpm without opening windows explorer. It's a surprisingly great experience and the idea is ripped straight out of steam os.
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
- 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
I don't use arch btw, but on fedora i have often found setroubleshoot useful for non-flatpak apps
I'm sorry you're missing out on Alyx - it's not the greatest game ever made, but it's up there.
I'm using Arch-packaged Steam, so it's not running in flatpak. I suspect both the headset not detected and desktop view being unavailable issues are Wayland-related, but the Steam Frame itself is running Arch+KDE, and KDE is dropping X11 very soon, so I'm confused that this setup is not functional even in the latest version of SteamVR - it should be what the Frame is running, modulo the CPU architecture.
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.
I think this is just a symptom of Valve neglecting their (old and new) games as a whole.
> Left 4 Dead 2 has major frame pacing and stutter issues on the Native Build
Is this a common problem? I've never had it :P
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.
It is a niche, definitely, but one that spends a lot of money and time on their virtual third space.
https://www.nomanssky.com/cosmos-update/#:~:text=Added%20sup...
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.
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.
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.
For some reason this never works on the Quest Pro I have (which I received for free from Meta). Works every time on the Pico 4 Ultra
Its a steep premium to not have zucc peering through your headset cameras.
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.
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.
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'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?
What communities do this? Can I do this on my laptop too to trial it?
Scan of a park in Japan with a steam locomotive on static display: https://vrclist.com/world/1191265
Scan of a park in Japan with blooming Sakura trees: https://vrclist.com/world/1216699
In general, you can see other 3D Gaussian splatting worlds using this tag: https://vrclist.com/?type=search&sort=recent&tags=3DGS
The quality can varies a lot, so I suggest checking for number of favorites & visits to see the best scanned worlds or to go by author once you find the good ones. :)
In general, 3D gaussian splatting is not the only way you can use to reproduce a real world location in VR - you can also just do it manually, modeling the structure & possibly using textures from photos. A good example of such manual reconstruction is Gion Street from Fins: https://vrclist.com/world/859459
As for trying it out - all of the VRchat worlds can be explored in flat screen mode on a PC & VRChat can be installed from Steam or from their website. VRChat is also free, so the only thing needed is to register & it is possible to just use a Steam account as well.
Then just get one of the URLs & there is a launch URL. Alternatively you can search the worlds by name from the VRChat UI. :)
Looks cool!
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.
But you better have your HOTAS controls memorized because it's a pain not having visibility of them.
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.
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.
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 $1k “entry point” of the Index. Common man VR this ain’t, this is targeting the VR serious as well as those who value privacy higher than what Meta offers in subsidies. The 2D support is a clever way of justifying the higher price though, and giving folks a more private way of enjoying their libraries in non-gaming spaces.
The fact I can throw it into my bag and travel with it is a bonus.
I do think hardcore sims and vrchat are the only good reasons to get into vr now, though
Some quick googling shows the ARPU of a meta user is approx 57$ 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.
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)
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 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.
I don't buy that Valve is actually that much of an adult daycare center as you imply. Their past projects haven't just been whatever the employees want to do but part of a larger strategy, e.g. their Linux efforts are a hedge against being fucked over by Microsoft. Employees are still evaluated based on their performance towards company goals.
AR glasses are much more suited towards that vertical at a lower cost, yet imo still struggle to be compelling in productivity.
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.
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.
But the immersion is enough that you forget about it and just enjoy the content, as long as it's comfortable enough
I guess most of it could run as a Vulkan layer?
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 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?
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)
I see no reason meta quest headsets couldn't do it next gen.
My personal ambition is to see VR/AR be cheap enough.
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.
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.
If this actually works, this is quite a nice, if a bit niche, combination. I really like the control layout of the Deck and it has more performance than the Frame. If you can put the screen on your head instead of having to look down on it, it might be a bit more comfortable. Sadly it seems the Deck has no IR LEDs so it can get picked up like the Controller by the Frame. Maybe a case/sleeve for the Deck can add those LEDs for full integration.
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.
Although IDK... "3D games" is a shockingly low bar. Can you watch movies...?
> 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.
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.
Bad news: I'm poor. Just wish I had pocket money for niche products like this.
Bad news: It's trapped in a VR headset and not a pocket-size steam deck
Or use gamenative on your phone
:(
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.
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.
The 4K we've all been waiting for - the (2x2)K.
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!
Ther are countries that get it at 100% or even 200% more.
Many of the comments here do speak to the experience, which is helpful!
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...)
199,980 base 256GB
244,980 1TB model
considerable markup even over the current USDJPY rate
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!
The official product page above has a link to one you can already preorder: https://arcturus.vision/
> 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!
Also you can run steam os on arm portables. https://armadaos.dev/
So all this was possible before the Steam frame was launched
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.
been there
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.
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.
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.
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"...
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??
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.
What’s the appeal? Can someone enlighten me? :)
Can't be used more than 30min without major discomfort for most people. Any talks about it replacing monitors are lies.
The real issue for replacing monitors seems to be screen fidelity.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/09/steam-frame-the-ars-t...
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.
That's why the Quest 3 (LCD) has less blur than the far more expensive Vision Pro (OLED).
OLED screens have much better black levels, but those are perhaps a lesser priority than reducing persistence blur.
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.
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 :(
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
I know, that’s an almost absurd concept in this day and age. But apparently it is possible.
I get that a lot of people have a hard-on for Valve, but we wouldn't give any other tech company the benefit of the doubt that reviewers are giving here.