Half-Life Alyx is the greatest gaming experience I have ever had the pleasure to witness. I now occasionally VR golf. It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games.
Half-Life Alyx is the greatest gaming experience I have ever had the pleasure to witness. I now occasionally VR golf. It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games.
Everyone is missing maybe the biggest point - this isn't just a VR device. You can run some/many (depending on your library) of your regular Steam games on a 'flat screen' inside the VR environment, which makes this much more like a SteamDeck with a giant private screen for a lot of people.
This machine runs Linux, it comes with KDE. This is the open Apple Vision Pro alternative that you can use as a real computer.
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
This is one of the main selling points for me. I threw my CV1 in the trash when facebook required a login. I want to see what OpenXR apps are like. Is freecad and blender usable? I want to tinker with gaussian splatting. When finger tracking starts to develop can I reasonably use it for input without controllers? Could this ever be a practical replacement for a six monitor desk?
Also, my simracing seat has been very lonely. I'm so happy that there is an HMD running arch that gives the user root.
> Is freecad and blender usable?
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.
valve whole business model is invasive drm tho.
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
DRM isn't really the story with Valve. Their business model is offer good service. Part of that is not being hostile to users. Users don't want to be spied on and have their data sold, so Valve doesn't do that. People want autonomy over their hardware, so they give them that. It's even in their marketing material for the steam machine. The frame is a computer running arch. If you want to 100% opt out of Steam and write your own driver stack, they're not standing in your way. That is uniquely pro-user and freedom in the tech industry. Also, their open source initiatives with proton and fex should not be discounted.
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.
There is a real danger if Valve ever gets sold in bad hands - the only hope is Gabe Newell living long enough or find a good successor who can continue having a majority stake in the company.
Their business model is cloud rent and lootboxes - I love their approach to service, hardware and Linux but let's not pretend they're noble.
loot boxes, sure but how is cloud rent amoral/ignoble?
> valve whole business model is invasive drm
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.
Valves bread and butter has been their distribution channel. Before Valve, there was no major player that provided a seamless gaming download experience. Anyone who’ve gamed in early 2000s understand the pain point of downloading and correctly installing patches from a daemon site.
Valve’s DRM is just about the least invasive and easiest to crack DRM systems on the market. The only way to be less invasive is to not have DRM at all. Obviously that’s preferable, but Valve’s setup is one that keeps publishers on the platform: provide a basic DRM system and allow publishers to add more if they want. If you don’t like what someone like Ubisoft does on the platform you’ve got plenty of other options (and third party DRM is clearly labeled within Steam).
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.
> Valve’s DRM is just about the least invasive and easiest to crack DRM systems on the market.
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.
0: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm
Their model is DRM, but they have no vendor lock-in (in theory, at least). You can use a Valve product (or non-valve product) and never use Steam, or use Steam on any of the 3 major OS's. You can't say the same for an apple product.
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.
Being able to comfortably sit back / lie down and work is an interesting proposition. The Apple Vision Pro is too bulky and expensive to carry that whole category on its own, they need an 'Android equivalent'. But I think Apple messed this up by creating an absolute patent minefield (some 5k patents for AVP features iirc).
Wow imagine we can have masses of people lie back and work. Think of how small we could make the cubicles
You know those drawers they have at morgues?
Reinventing server racks from first principles
Commuting would be much nicer on quality ball-bearing drawer runners.
This almost sounds like a movie I saw once. "The Matrices" maybe ?
Office capsules!
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.
I'm looking forward to the day when we can implant a chip in our neck that will override the senses. Imagine having your body doing a hard workout session while your mind was at work or on vacation
But everyone has to be in the office. For, you know, collaboration. And face-to-face interactions.
Ssssh, WeWork investors could be reading this thread!
If you think this is a joke and humanity can’t be that evil then look up the the „Brookes Ship“
> 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.
WeWork 2.x any time now ;)
> Android equivalent
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
The thing is, the AVP has a ton of quality-of-life features, eg relating to gestures, and most of them locked behind patents. Looks like we'll have to wait 20 years before other devices will be able to match it (or whatever the expiry date is on those patents).
That makes sense. I always wondered why nobody copied their gaze + tap interactions. That seems way too basic to grant a patent for...
That’s how it works with the Quest 3 on an updated OS. If you’re using hand tracking then you gaze + tap thumb and finger together to select, or pinch and hold to grab a corner for resizing or a border for dragging.
That’s not how it works, there is no gaze support. I just double checked and couldn’t find it in any Accessibility or Experimental settings. Apologies for the misinfo. (Also no inward-facing cameras ofc)
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.
afaik the AVP has a dedicated Lidar sensor for gesture detection. I'd say Apple has managed to patent more basic stuff than that (pinch-to-zoom, rounded corners,...)
Oh, that'd make sense. I think the quest 3 has a depth sensor, but they mostly use that for room setup. I don't even think it has IR emitters for low light. But that's the age old question about patents, if they're being granted too much they stifle innovation and competition instead of the opposite... (which is the point you were making as well).
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.
Unless you live in a walk in freezer !
Looking at the vendor page for that 5K colour camera, the page directly says they only support Windows and macOS. :( :( :(
> 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).
https://arcturus.vision
I've emailed their support to ask, just in case. :)
It's an open Linux box, using standard interfaces. You can use ffmpeg and scp to transcode and transfer, or whatever else you're comfortable with. Even if Arcturus provided an app, most Linux users probably wouldn't use it.
Is that a guess, or do you know for sure? :)
There's an Arcturus interview on YouTube that shows them doing it.
Awesome, thanks. :)
I believe gamer’s nexus showed it working
Thanks. I skimmed the video as it was late at night, and didn't notice it. I'd better take a proper look at the video. :)
So it may be a good wirk machine to use during long flights, with a compact wireless keyboard.
Unless you fly first class, using a laptop on a plane is painful.
The question here is whatever Steam Frame displays resolution is sufficient to work with text. So far only mass produced device that was really suitable is a Vision Pro.
So far all reviews I've seen been centered around gaming and not work.
It is said that human eyes can resolve down to 1 minute of arc(1 MOA or 1/60 degrees). Each eye has about 160 degrees of HFOV and 125 degrees of VFOV.
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.
Maybe I'm hard to please but I would say even the AVP isn't actually suitable for multi-hour text sessions.
I guess from the comments we can draw conclusion that its different to everyone.
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.
> every time I tried to open IDE and terminal after 10 minutes my brain just say full stop.
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.
This is certainly interesting idea, but I guess main problem isnt just UX and representation on 2D surface, but just pure amount of text data that you suppose to look at and understand what exactly it does.
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.
I work on a Quest 3 no problem. This is sharper.
For me personally the Quest 3 is absolutely unusable for any text work. Even small font in games looks shitty. This is so far off for what it ought to be for comfortable work that I'll wait for devices with at least double the resolution per axis, i.e. 4x the pixels of the Quest 3 screens to even bother trying again.
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 have tried this in the past and it wasn’t nearly sharp enough but I guess I see people using 1080p screens at work and those make me want to rip my eyeballs out.
Honestly I'be tried Quest 3 and it was not enough for me to consider it anything more than just a toy.
How many hours a day you spend in it? How often do you use it?
Most days often for several hours.
How many flights are you people taking that it's cutting into your work time? When I fly I just read a book.
For me it's more that flights are extremely boring. I find watching any movies or TV shows on a plane to be a horrible experience. The noise of the plane can ruin even the best of movies.
Maybe better for a train; the benefit is that when you unfold your bike for the last mile, you just put your work into partial transparency and navigate using the external cameras.
Also only possible if you've got a power outlet (Surprisingly even today many long haul flights do not) as its only got just over an hour of battery life.
It has a 21.6 Wh battery. You can easily get a power bank 3+ times this capacity, thus can last 4x longer. If anything, I would rather have that weight in my pocket or backpack than on my head, all things considered.
Can't use power banks on many flights now
Anecdotal, but on the last few flights that I've taken. I was told that you can use them, but you can't charge them on the flight. This was inside the US, American Airlines, and United. I can't speak to the other airlines.
I believe the restriction is on charging devices out of sight (in luggage, seatback pockets etc).
Depends on the airline and jurisdiction.
Using it while flying will be complicated by the fact that all airlines have banned the use of power banks. If the onboard USB socket isn't very powerful then you'll only get an hours' use.
Source?
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.
I can confirm that all the flights I have been on this year we were told not to use power banks. You can have one with you (well you have to since you're not allowed to check large lithium ion batteries) but you aren't allowed to actively use it.
100 W sockets? All the flights I've been on that provided power have had a really low current USB A port that can barely keep my phone from discharging when the screen is on.
In constrained plane environments https://github.com/vk2diy/hackbook-m4-mini works well and has long battery life. I fix the screen to the seat using adapted helping hands and use a wireless keyboard/mouse for input. Super comfy as long as your eyes can deal with the reduced distance (look down the aisle occasionally).
Magnifying style shop glsssed might actually be perfect for this. I use them for electronics repair (they also only focus close which is sort of a benefit here). Downside for me is they fit in a way that is too high (they are designed for looking straight ahead) that would be great for this
> https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/8671
This is Compiz Fusion [1,] 20 years later.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR8x5Wb26ew
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawkc3jH3ws
If only the Steam Frame had a decent pass through mode.
i miss my wobbly windows
The Frame's screens aren't good enough for general computing. This is purely an entertainment device.
As far as I've kept track, a good-enough-for-reading headset doesn't exist yet. So it's not like Frame bad, it's whole industry still bad.
The Vision Pro is close, close enough for at least some people. Which is also why it's over 3x the price.
> The Frame's screens aren't good enough for general computing.
We did "general computing" in 320x200 screens. I think the Frame's screen is a bit better than that.
The issue is that magnifying the screens to fill your vision makes reasonably sized text very hard to read. You have to make the entire screen/text in front of you fairly large to make it legible. There are many other headsets with identical resolution panels, you can find this info everywhere
I disagree and I've got one
Just increase size/scaling of everything I guess right?
You can do this really well on $200 AR headsets that fit on your face like sunglasses and uses the battery of the device it's plugged into to last many hours.
If this is the biggest point, then I don't see why Xreal isn't more popular.
XReal is only replacing the screen part and needs another device as a core, this headset works standalone.
As the form factor is already pretty bulky, keeping it as a single device helps a lot IMHO.
Maybe some of the non-xreal brands or some combinations of hardware provide usable experiences, but all my experiences with xreal have been abysmal.
I think even that's an understatement.
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)
Admittedly my VR glasses are older, but for me this is a really terrible experience. If a game lacks native VR support, it's far more comfortable to just use my widescreen monitor in the real world.
I'd agree even if the resolution is closer to a real monitor I'd really rather not have a headset strapped to my face to play the same games I could play on a tv or monitor.
For sure. I think this is more for someone who wants something portable though.
Agreed, I think that's the big selling point: a private screen you can take with you.
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.
Agreed, this sounds like an odd feature to list.
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.
Same. I'd say it's ridiculous to even mention it as a feature, it's more like a compatibility fallback. A shitty monitor showing an even shittier monitor while you have a fat brick strapped to your face. Maybe this gen is better, but from what reviewers say the practical hardware changes are very minimal.
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.
You don't need 4k in the headset panels to simulate a 4k monitor. The virtual screen isn't glued to your head.
No, you need a much higher res screen to do so. A 4k screen a meter away will have ridiculously higher pixel density per degree of vision than a 2K screen directly in front of your eye that will only ever be able to do very partial coverage. The effective angular res of the virtual screen would probably be comparable to 1080p at best. In Norm's review it's said that the default render res for flat screen is 720p.
I don’t see that as the biggest point. I really don’t have much interest in playing normal games in VR.
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.
Honestly as a VR enthusiast this is the least interesting feature by far.
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.
But, now you can play through the second half in VR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXho2LdD1qo
A flood of VR mods for popular games have been coming out lately.
Sorry I thought you were talking about the half-life ports.
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 :)
Yes I've already played those ports on my quest 3 (streaming). That was fun!
But they were talking about playing on a virtual 2D screen which I have no interest in
Man GeForce now is surprisingly stable/smooth. I barely use it now (built a PC) but I got the $5 founders rate and have no intention of getting rid of it
I was really hoping to realise the "Spatial Computing" dream of the Vision Pro, but was largely priced-out of the experience, considering it basically necessitates a MacBook to complete it too.
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.
I have both a Rift S and a Quest 3. The Quest 3's displays and optics blow the Rift out of the water! I've used it for coding using Immersed, and would be happy to use equivalent or slightly better (as the Steam Frame should be) for this purpose.
I think its performance is quite underappreciated. It has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip.
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.
Let's ignore that fact that you're saying "this isn't just a VR device" and then immediately describe the basic functionality of a VR device.
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?
For those priced out of getting an AVP at more than 3x the price on locked down hardware? You don't seem to think that market exists, but I think it does. $3,500 and Apple, or whatev but Facebook are total non-starters for some people while Valve and Linux are.
> You can run some/many (depending on your library) of your regular Steam games on a 'flat screen' inside the VR environment
I can already run 100% of my Steam games on a flat screen in front of my real eyes
Not cinema size, and not with your poor eyes focused on "infinite". And not any of this on a plane, or a train, or a self driving car, or an RV.
Your eyes won't be focused on "infinite" in VR either. The focus distance is similar to the distance to the screen on your desk.
Yes, it's around 1-2 meters
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)
I can't believe you forgot the toilet.
But sadly not (officially) in 3D! SuperDepth3D is such a cool concept, I don't need most of my games to be full VR immersive camera experiences, but a nice big virtual full no-limits 3D monitor would be sick.
I like that you specified that the car was self driving, but didn't specify the RV was.
In my head the RV was parked and the VR provides a virtual office in the small space :)
I actually did this. Six month lap around Australia in a caravan with a Quest 3. It was ok; better than squinting at a laptop screen, but not as good as a decent physical monitor. If I did it again I'd convert a bus to have a proper desk/monitor.
My eyes already show as much as I can see.
Yes, this ability at this price point is very attractive indeed. I currently do this with Vision Pro, but it involves a mac and a capture card in addition to the steam deck.
Not trying to proselytize an opinion here, but every time I think about VR Goggles + a virtual flat screen, I think about how entire industries exist to make us comfortable while we watch our real flat screens. A VR option would allow me to just lay comatose-like in my bed, goggles affixed to my face, as I watch whatever. It terrifies me, partly because of how good I bet it could feel.
I have an "image sorter" web application that works great on desktop, tablets, phones and... my meta quest 3. I can bum around the spare room on the couch and have three big windows hanging in the air. If your "click" targets conform with WCAG AAA standards such an app is easy to use with controllers.
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.
> 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.
Not bed, a stasis biochamber. Taking care of all your needs during a long fleet fight in EvE online.
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 don’t know. I can’t even take a nap while having my glasses on, so the thought of lying down with a much weightier VR headset pressing down on my face doesn’t sound super comfortable.
I know lots … and lots … of people that sleep in VR. I don’t know how they do it either, but there we are!
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.
> I know lots … and lots … of people that sleep in VR.
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.
Honestly, with apps like Immersed, custom two-hand keyboards, and trackball mice, it is already feasible to lie comatose in bed with a VR headset strapped to your face and get through an entire day of software development.
Just like nature intended.
They are simply uncomfortable for that. That is a niche for a niche use case.
That sounds like a worse experience to me.
When sitting, the optimally comfortable angle to look, and the optimal place to hold a controller are very far from each other. The Deck is basically only fun for long sessions if you can play it laying down. VR is more flexible in this regard.
I have used my deck (multi hour sessions) for a long time from the couch, bed, and gaming chair and i found them all very comfortable. As long as your chair has arm rests then it shouldnt be too bad. The only place i havent used a deck much is at a table or from a bench with no arm rests,and i could see how either might be uncomfortable.
How long is that comfortable? For sure not couple of hours in 1 go
Valve thought of that. Its got a 1 hour battery life and you have to wait 3-5 hours for it to charge back up!
It is 21.6 Wh capacity and charges at up to 45W, so it should take less than half an hour to fully charge from zero. Not sure where you got the 3-5 hours from?
Valves own testing + reviewers. Nobody anywhere has got anything close to the speed you're suggesting.
On the GamersNexus review Valve says charging should take 90 minutes. But it took GamersNexus and other reviewers 3 hours. So it probably broke in a software update and a fix is likely coming. But if this is important to you, make sure to wait for the update to land before making a decision...
For the Quest 3 for example, you can get a Bobovr halo strap that has replaceable magnetically connected battery packs. If you have at least two, you can just swap them when one runs out and by the time the second one is empty, the first one is charged.
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. :)
Gamers Nexus lists a ~120-min battery life in their video review of the Steam Frame.
Reviews say around 2-4 hours when streaming from PC, 1 hour is if you're gaming directly on the device with the graphics turned all the way up.
> For sure not couple of hours in 1 go
Worry not! That's how long the battery lasts!
Just used my Vision Pro nonstop on a 9hr flight. It’s a game changer for travel; you disappear into a private movie theater and come out at your destination.
Despite that experience that I’ve heard is lovely, it does compete with the $300 used iPad Air I bought years ago.
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.
VR enthusiasts will be in VR 7+ hours on a weekend. I regularly clock 4+.
Without a tether to the PC (I have battery in my pocket) it’s pretty okay!
> How long is that comfortable?
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.
Do you need to keep taking Dramamine, or do you adapt to it eventually?
Everyone I'm aware of adapts to it eventually unless they keep trying to power through the nausea. It's the basis for my
statement. Having said that, I haven't met everyone... so it's possible that there are people who will never adapt.Except far less comfortable and motion sick inducing for a non-trivial portion of the population. No thanks.
HL Alyx was awesome though, nothing else on VR has been worth it for me.
That's already true for most PC VR headsets.
Edit: I missed the point here, see reply.
Standalone? No. Most PC VR headsets require a PC. The Steam Frame will let you play 2D games (and some VR games), with no phone or PC attached.
Thank you for the correction.
Also VR is just not somewhere you want to be.. Its worth it in short bursts for playing Alyx or golf with a friend, but it's not comfortable, you wanna get that thing off asap.. Playing a conventional 40+ hour game in it would be awful.
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.
You may not realise that we are currently in the midst of a VR Mod rennaisance:
https://pcvrcentral.com/
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/VRGaming/
Interesting, a lot of cool mods including Mass Effect Trilogy. Thx for sharing this.
That seems like a really good fit, since they might actually run onboard at a usable framerate?
I played a few hours of Alyx and, I'll be honest, it started to kinda freak me out. I noticed myself getting a bit of anxiety when putting the headset on to play, and a relief when I took it off to see the real world was still there! I've never experienced something so immersive, but I haven't picked it back up to finish it yet. Someday.
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.
I used to feel like that when I was younger and playing intense games, it was hard to "get out" and "come back to real life". I guess VR brings some of that back.
I know that feeling. I had it with Resident Evil 4 and other full games in VR. It's almost too immersive and I can't play more than an hour or so.
Even though its fairly cartoonish, when you see the life size gore of dead bodies with face huggers on them, etc - it hits really different in VR, at least at first.
Now imagine how intense that will become with even more realism. It could be actually seriously traumatic.
I said it when it came out, Alyx was the single best chance VR had to prove itself. It was going to be either the launching pad of the future or the high tide mark. 6 years on, it is looking like the high tide mark.
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.
I really suggest looking a bit into VRChat for some of the worlds people have created there - some of them are very complex & are telling stories by their environments that could be comparable to standalone VR games.
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.
VRchat is what Zuckerberg wanted out of Meta. It is impressive but still suffers from the barrier to entry problem.
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.
Barrier to entry can't be that extreme given it's full of kids.
There needs to be a premium club around vr gaming, like there is for other activities like car/driving enthusiasm.
I remember playing this on my Oculus Rift 1 I think. It was such a better game than the other games I'd played in VR that had you put it on my head in a darkened room and told me it was the newest hardware tech I would have believed you.
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.
I was wondering, what could I play with it. But besides Half-Life Alyx (never played any of HF games), No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous, I couldn't find anything bigger (well, there is also SUPERHOT: VR).
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)
There are TONS of VR shooters. What subgenre interests you most?
I have a recommendation in a similar vein: Gran Turismo 7 in VR on PS5. I have a headseat graveyard and never really used my headsets except for that game. I've heard good things about Half-Life Alyx and now your comment has me absolutely intrigued.
Simulation games in general reached a whole other level with VR, just the added depth perception makes it impossible to go back to "flat" screens again. The degree of freedom to move your head to look around is underrated as well.
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".
I think having a horizon is very useful for the immersion.
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.
Star Wars Squadrons has excellent VR support. Its awesome flying around in the cockpit of an X-Wing or TIE fighter.
Tangentially related: If I wanted to play Half-Life: Alyx, and spend as little money as possible whilst still having a good experience, what do I need? (I already own a beefy desktop computer)
Probably Quest 3S, and unless things have improved with the native solution you'll want to pick up the "Virtual Desktop" app for better wireless streaming.
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.
Of course, if you get a Quest you're also paying with the sheer amount of personal data shipped off to Meta the entire time you're using it.
I played it with a Quest 1 and VirtualDesktop to steam it from my PC. It worked well enough to blow my mind. Of course a Quest 3 would be much better than that nowadays. That's probably the cheapest good experience.
I played it with Playstation VR2 and it was great, cost me around 350 euros for the headset and the PC dongle during black friday some years ago, but it might be more expensive now.
Quest 1, the built in native streaming, with a wired connection from the beefy desktop to a WiFi 5 AP on 5 GHz in a low noise environment worked sufficiently. I'd get at least a Quest 2 if you're getting something new (not sure if the 3 is better than the 2).
What you want is a headset with fish eye lenses like the Quest 3 (not the S). Yes, it's more expensive, but you will avoid a lot of headaches with the frenel lenses. They are terrible. just buy it used.
https://youtu.be/-NBMdcUTC2M
here's a great video about exactly this, might be outdated as it's 6 years old
I feel like Valve will sell a lot more Steam Frames if they can get HL Alyx to run well on it and have every Steam Frame come with it.
1. Try Google Earth VR if you haven't. I've poured hours into it and it can be an almost emotional experience.
https://youtu.be/SCrkZOx5Q1M
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.
I had the Quest 2 a while ago and did manage to play some games on it (PCVR through Virtual Desktop, cause they didn't have 1st party support for Intel Arc B580).
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)!
Interesting that Alyx is still listed as "Windows only" even though the reviews say it includes a native Linux port:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/546560/HalfLife_Alyx/
For good reason. Last time I checked (this year), Alyx crashes Mesa (i.e. your Vulkan layer) when the player enters an in-game load zone. This happens with native linux and the proton windows version.
So it doesn't work on Steam Machine, and also won't work when streaming from it to Steam Frame :(
I don't have a windows machine for that. A bit disappointing.
Well, I think the issue is in the AMD GPU driver. So, presumably it works on the Frame natively? Surely... Right?
It doesn't just crash Mesa but freeze the entire GPU last I tried. Kinda surprised that Valve has cared so little to fix this considering how much effort they have been putting in those drivers and into the game in the first place.
Ah, definitely a subtle reference to Black Mesa. Bravo Valve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics)
Started by not-Valve in 1995
It's pretty good, but it would have been good enough as a non-VR title. The thought of digging out my VR headset to play it makes me shudder. I never even managed to finish it, played through most of it and then couldn't bring myself to get my VR headset out again.
I think without the VR-bait parts like the starting room I would consider it to be the worst Half-Life game. There were some people trying to make it run without VR but I don't remember how far they got.
You can even run Half-Life Alyx on Steam Frame itself (standalone mode), albeit at around 36FPS according to Tested https://youtu.be/C9JyWAVj94E?t=3330
36 FPS makes running it on the device a rather theoretical possibility for a VR game.
A great option if you're having trouble throwing up.
SteamVR's frame interpolation and warping is extremely well-polished. I would go into VRChat clubs, enable everyone's full-detail avatar, and I could go down to about 20fps with head tracking still feeling comfortable. Not sure if the onboard processors can do as good of a job though.
HL:A is incredible, and I think it's still the best single-player VR game ever made, but it's almost seven years old now. It's pretty clear that this software ecosystem is dead.
The race/flight sim market is still going strong, but I guess it's the exception that proves the rule. It's extremely difficult to make a non-vehicle-based game that actually plays well in VR.
Incidentally I made a vehicle based game in VR (https://roguestargun.com), but currently I have no idea how to upload the APK to Steam to run on-device for the steam frame.
It is in their documentation.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamhardware/steamframe/...
SteamOS doesn't use APK files afaik, it's just desktop linux. Probably an AppImage executable? Ought to be explained in Steamworks somewhere.
The Frame can, presumably to allow easier porting of Quest games. It uses lepton, which is a fork of waydroid.
Potentially related, IIUC Unity only has linux arm64 support for the embedded linux version. And to use that you have to contact sales.
I suspect that the current design of VR/AR is not likely to get cheap enough and light/small enough to catch on in a big way. Kind of seems like diminishing returns on headset improvements at this point.
The first VR system that many of us used was the W Industries / Virtuality system in the early 1990's. Those were $60k in 1991 which is $140k today.
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.
The computer powering the Virtuality was an Amiga, which I've always found mindblowing.
Yep
https://www.timeextension.com/features/virtuality-gave-us-90...
Only Amiga makes it possible.
The Xreal augmented reality sunglasses type designs look a lot more interesting. I’m sure they sacrifice a lot of visual quality compared to a full gaming headset, but the general pitch makes more sense.
Just my two cents, Xreal is a long way from a good product. There are other brands like Viture to consider which have more support for the limited software solutions out there. Make sure you do some looking into whether they are compatible with your setup. Or if any of the various features will work without buying additional hardware from the manufacturer.
Those are the ones I am keeping an eye on most closely. In a few generations they might be where they need to be for a "floating monitors" experience in AR.
I had the Oculus DK1, and now have a Meta Quest 2. I haven't had reason to boot it in the past... year?
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.
For what it's worth, I use the Apple Vision Pro as my primary display for an average of 8+ hours a day without any issues. I have years of experience with previous headsets, but my wife has no issues with the AVP's weight either, despite having no prior experience.
Until the hardware is ubiquitous it will remain so. But low profile AR/VR glasses that actually look exactly like normal glasses or goggles could bring it back from the dead
Rather bring back the glass hole creeps
I'm looking forward to the modding community finally having full, unfettered access to a single hardware deploy target that will allow them to do a lot of interesting work that may be technically possible right now, but is very hard in a complicated and heterogeneous ecosystem, both because it is technically difficult to set up, and because the technical difficulty of doing the set up prevents any community from getting over the activation energy to grow and become self-sustaining.
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?
TBH in terms of intensity it maybe the best single-player game for me. The experience is so different from non-VR games that I struggle to even put it into the same category.
Yeah the games I most want to play on VR aren't only old... the servers have been shut down.
[dead]
Gonna try it out on my m1 mbp because of this comment. Been waiting to play alyx forever but I didn't know a way to get mac to work - theres a solution now.
Also VR headset has limited re-playability ... table tennis was my VR golf.
What headsets work on M1? The hoops I tried to jump through for a Quest 2 made me give up about a year ago.
Quest 3.
I got a Legion Go 3y ago for this reason. Alyx and SteamOS were both draws as a lifelong Mac/Nintendo kid.
Idk. After having THREE Quest 3s brick themselves within the extended warranty period, I really want an alternative. I can do normal cardio but rhythm games like Beat Saber and more are just such a better time of knocking out a decent hour of cardio several times a week for me. Beat Saber is more easily modded on PC and while the number of games I play is really low, this is worth it for me.
If you enjoyed alyx , and did not play anything else interesting on vr headset you likely missed the huge pc vr flat 2 vr comunity that let us play incredible vr expériences like cyberpunk 2077. The trend these days is some random dev creating ok to full fledged VR mods for a lot of games viecoding these things. Check reddit virtualreality sub to see each week many more awesome vr content don't miss uevr too with an extensive game list ready : https://myuevr.pages.dev/
VR would be a perfect device for sharing or an arcade if it wasn't for the usual issues with sharing anything.
I recently did a moon exploration in VR with a whole bunch of other people. They had a whole bunch of those pico headsets somehow syncing all their locations to each other, overwriting selective parts of the environment, and simultaneously showing the same location in English and Japanese. That was by far the best VR experience I’ve ever had.
The Arizona Sunshine series are also really great VR-native games. Not AAA but far closer to a complete game than most VR games.
I spent 5 min in Alyx and almost vomit :(. Mean while i can play beat saber all day.
PC is the flight simulator platform. They're probably amazing to play in VR.
My biggest use case for the Quest 3 is Euro Truck Simulator 2. That is, until I got a wheel and pedals to replace the controller, at which point I got immediate motion sickness with the headset and had to go back to big screen and head tracking. Bit disappointing, and will keep me from jumping on the Steam Frame until I can try it properly
Plays really well but it is very yucky.
What do you mean?
All the fun of headcrab jump scares and skulking through the dark but now with complete immersion!
“Not a lot of games” will soon be a thing of the past once people find out they can just vibe code all kinds of VR games and experiences.
>> a steep proce for a niche with not a lot of games
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.
I have owned a quest 2 and now 3 and have always heard about that game but yet to try it. I forgot about it. I don't often get to play the quest as my kids seem to have taken over it. But there are definitely some gems out there. Echo VR was so fun it was sad to see it shut down. I also love Google Earth vr on the quest.
> It's a steep price for a niche with not a lot of games.
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.
I've never understood the whole VR game ecosystem. There is a handful of titles (outside of Half Life Alyx, which even then looks pretty shit and clunky) that are worth playing on VR.
Most are short bursts of fun and don't really have any moat.
There are a lot of titles that both look great and are fun, but you wouldn't know because you don't use VR. That doesn't included mods to existing games ever since Unreal made it easier to make most games, running on their engine, VR compatible. It also depends on whether you're using standalone or PCVR. Why critique something that you're not very familiar with?
VR still has a lot of problems. Some of which may never be solved, but lack of content is no longer a problem.
Pistol whip, beat saber and audio trip are in my rotation. Also I expect you to die I/II/III or whatever the numbering is.
VR is a solution in search of a problem