Reservations Go Live for Valve's Steam Frame VR Headset. An Experiment in Progress? (cnet.com)
- Reference: 0185651014
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/09/14/2019212/reservations-go-live-for-valves-steam-frame-vr-headset-an-experiment-in-progress
- Source link: https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/valve-steam-frame-vr-headset-review/
CNET's editor at large even argues that the Steam Frame "isn't necessarily the future of XR, as much as it's [3]a framework for evolving beyond the present ." Their review calls it an "ambitious" VR headset that "feels like an experiment in progress."
> The ability to run other apps in windows can make Frame feel, at times, almost like a computer. Linux apps in desktop mode range from Chromium to Firefox to a bunch of other tools. I watched YouTube in one window while playing Portal 2 in other, and started to marvel at how flexible Frame could be. But VR games require a full immersive takeover of the headset... The Steam Frame can convert games intended for both PC VR and even Android APK files, using a conversion tool called Lepton... I haven't sideloaded anything yet, but Steam Frame in theory could be a Rosetta Stone for VR gaming, even tapping into some Android XR titles, but not out of the box...
>
> 2D games can be projected onto a near-range or farther-off theater mode screen that can be dragged around, resized and turned into a curved or flat monitor, much like with the Apple Vision Pro, Samsung Galaxy XR or Meta Quest. You can download any game in your Steam library to test, even if it's not technically listed as "Great on Frame" yet...
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> But the name "Frame" suggests a framework, something Valve's team acknowledged when I spoke to them during my review process... "We want this to be your PC, and people mod it, take it apart, make accessories for it," says Jeremy Selan, a software developer on the Steam Frame team. "We'll be putting out the CAD for all these [Steam Frame] systems. This is entirely based on open-source technology stacks based upon SteamOS. Our hope is that this isn't just one device, that this would be sort of the root of a growing SteamOS ecosystem. It already encompasses gaming and Proton and SteamOS and those Linux gaming capabilities. This is going to lay the foundation for a new sort of evolutionary tree of that, to also bring it into the VR and XR space."
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/hardware/steamframe
[2] https://www.cnet.com/deals/reserve-stream-frame-waitlist/
[3] https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/valve-steam-frame-vr-headset-review/
At that price, yes, an experiment (Score:2)
Some people will certainly buy it at that price. I'm not even saying it's overpriced for what it is today. I'm saying you can't make it highly successful at that price.
If they can cover their costs they get into a product and get a bunch of experience and IP for the future in which it actually is viable to make it cheap enough to be successful, so it might be worth doing. But it's hard enough to sell the kind of game consoles everyone is comfortable with at that price "in this economy" etc etc.
eh (Score:4)
Ok, I'm tempted. Not enough to preorder, but if the reviews are good enough I might go for this.
Steamy (Score:3)
We all know this is going to end up being used by people with pr0n habits - and at that resolution they might even see parts of the female anatomy that they didn't know existed.
I just want a nice VR headset for my PC (Score:2)
And unfortunately, this is not that. For PC usage they seem to be doing the same thing that Meta foolishly did. They turned it into a video codec system that encodes video on the PC, streams that to the device, and the device decodes it and then displays it. Encoding and decoding via video codecs take time. That means the latency is going to be horrible, just like it is with current Meta video players. Gamers Nexus showed latency numbers for the Steam Frame, and while it is better than the Meta crap, i
Re: (Score:2)
Just spitballing here, but the encoding/decoding is probably needed so the image being sent can be shaped properly first. I've had a look into a few VR headsets and the optics can get pretty wild in those.The image going into them is a fish-eyed mess but the optics displays it properly. Just a hunch on my part though.
They are all experiments in progress (Score:1)
> ... VR Headset. An Experiment in Progress?
What consumer oriented VR headset is NOT an experiment in progress? Various human computer interaction issues and ergonomics issues are still being worked out.
Nah, you're alright. (Score:2)
I'm still not interested in VR.
Re: (Score:2)
Me neither but I ordered 3 dozens to take the RAM out of them and put it in my Beowulf cluster. At $1,299 for 1TB, it's really a steal at that price for 1TB
From TFS:
> Reservations are now live for Valve's "Steam Frame" VR headset (with its Linux-based SteamOS and an ARM CPU). "It starts at $1,059 for 256GB or $1,299 for 1TB,"