256 GB model: $1,059 USD
1TB model: $1,299 USD
Preorder list randomized, goes out Sept 17th
Power supply not included, costs $29 (same as Steam Deck power supply)
3rd party addon available for color passthrough, Arcturus Vision Camera, $149
You must log in or # to comment.
Wow. I was looking forward to one but I’m skeptical about the standalone mode.
I want to play games like No Mans Sky in VR but I don’t think that’s possible. My only gaming PC is a steam deck.
Actually not terrible. Wow.
$1050 is not terrible for you? Ok…
I think a lot of people were worried that it would be ~2k from the way they were talking.
Since this is an ARM device, can we play traditional x86-64 games on ARM64 now? Like, on other hardware besides Steam Frame?
Wasn’t there also supposed to be a sale on VR games today?
Yup, I picked up a few wishlisted items for like 65% off
I meant a sale event. There are always a bunch of games on sale at any given time, but I thought there was supposed to be a big event this week. That was one of the main reasons people predicted the reveal of the Frame was going to be yesterday.
Ugh, I really hate those bullshit controllers. Index controllers are the best and I feel like I’m just going to use tethered HMDs forever because of it.
They sell a kit for 60 bucks with straps to turn them into the same style of controller as the index.
I’m kind of surprised they don’t do hybrid controllers yet. As in the experimental kind used for prosthetics. Combine that with an EEG headset. Sounds like fun to me. Then again setup time would be a pain.
Man, I really hate this economy. This AI bubble cannot pop fast enough, but I fear we have at least till the end of this year, possible Q2 of next year to see it happen. Even then, it’s not like it will be instant, and capacity won’t just instantly switch over to normal consumer components. Assuming even more tech idiocy doesn’t happen, we’re still years away from a ramp up to “normal” capacity.
I’m even more scared that the era of personal computing is in it’s last days. The combination of drastic cost increases, and the dominance of corpo-tech working 24/7 to destroy ownership completely, might be too much to overcome.
We’ll see a return to the era of computing similar to the 80’s and early 90’s. Building your own PC will require lots of money and technical skills. Pre-builts will be a distant memory. PC builders will be spoken of in similar terms as HAM radio people are now, hermitic nerds who are hardcore into their ancient, dark, tech wizardry.
but I fear we have at least till the end of this year, possible Q2 of next year to see it happen.
Considering at the start of August, I was already seeing stories that all the fabrication capacity for RAM has been completely spoken for and booked through the end of 2027, I would expect it to keep going quite a bit longer still.
You’re not wrong, but the whole thing is also a bit of a house of cards. If the buyers don’t have the money the contract won’t be fulfillable.
We have a data center planned not too far from my house. It was approved by the city council last December despite a lot of public skepticism. The developers aren’t moving because they don’t have the money. They’re waiting to have someone on contract to lease capacity from them before taking out a loan. In the best case that will simply never happen.
Sure, but with production stuff at scale like that, even if contracts fall through, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be able to switch right over to running consumer RAM down the lines. Unless the AI bubble bursts hard and soon enough for them not to have contracts to fulfill by March, I wouldn’t count on them being able to get meaningful production going during Q2. Switching over from producing one SKU to another can be a crazily time intensive problem on its own, and that’s leaving aside whether they have enough raw materials on hand to keep the lines busy producing those products. If they have some stupid Just in Time inventory system in place, we’ll get to follow their supply lines as we see where new logistical bottlenecks are emerging in the process.
I wish it was cheaper but I would rather have VR without Meta at the wrong time and not great price than VR with Meta and the right time and great price.
Same here, I did love that the gamers nexus video opened with a comparison of the terms and privacy policy of meta and valve just to show how buying a Quest may be cheaper but it costs a lot more than the money you exchange for it.
I would get it if the battery life didn’t suck.
~1.5 hours when streaming from PC at 144hz, and a full charge time of around 3 hours, meaning you probably can’t even get unlimited playtime if it’s plugged in the entire time and solely streaming from a PC instead of computing the game itself.
According to the Ars review, the 1.5 hour battery life is when running games on the Steam frame itself. Battery life is supposed to be a lot better when streaming from a PC I believe.
Also all lithium batteries slow down charging speed a lot as they get closer to being fully charged, so taking 3 hours to charge doesn’t mean that it can’t charge faster than the battery drains. I’m sure it can just do power passthrough to power the headset indefinitely.
According to the Ars review, the 1.5 hour battery life is when running games on the Steam frame itself
I was going off the LTT number which put it at 1:36 when streaming Half Life Alyx from a desktop PC, running at 144Hz. Ars’ number is when running on Performance mode with “most VR titles”, so I don’t know how comparable that is.
The Verge says they never got above 2 hours even when using battery-saving mode or streaming-only, and demanding games got under 1 hour.
As for charging time, LTT claims it’s 3 hours to 100%, and 2.4 to 95%, and doesn’t seem to state there’s much of a speed increase below that point, and as far as I’m aware you usually only see a major difference in charging speed for the last ~10%, though previously The Verge did also state a power bank could keep them going up to 2.5 hours.
So with all that said, if it takes around 1-2 hours for it to die after starting from full, and it takes a minimum of 2.4 hours just to get it almost full… that means it’ll still run out of battery eventually, even if plugged in.
That’s disheartening about the battery times.
So with all that said, if it takes around 1-2 hours for it to die after starting from full, and it takes a minimum of 2.4 hours just to get it almost full… that means it’ll still run out of battery eventually, even if plugged in.
Once again, battery charge speed is slower than what the charger can provide. Look at it this way, it has a 21.6 Wh battery. If that battery drains in 1.5 hours, that means it drains the battery at an average rate of 14.4 W. It charges at a max of 45w. So when plugged in you can fully power the Steam frame for about 14.4w, and still have about 30w of power left over to charge the battery. It won’t always use 30w to charge the battery, it will further reduce that amount based on heat and charge level, but it won’t ever have a problem maintaining the 14.4w needed to keep it powered up while plugged in.
hmmmmmmm good point, I didn’t consider that!
If I get one I’m planning on playing with an external battery attached on my hip lol
Does anyone have an educated guess on my odds of getting picked from the list for a 1TB?
No idea but I did sign up for the 1TB in the hopes that it is less popular so my odds are better but it could also be the case that they produced way less so who knows. Luckily my wife has her own steam account so I had her sign up for the 256 model just to increase my odds. Only planning on buying one so if I somehow get picked for both I will just let it drop to the next person in the list I suppose.
For the steam machine you could sign up for multiple SKUs and they’d offer you the one you came first in the list for. Is it different this time?
Yes, signing up for one then trying to sign up for the other removes your initial selection. They are mutually exclusive lists
If you pop for both and I don’t get mine, could we work something out for the 256?
Cheaper than expected given the economic hellscape, still more than the Index. Oh well. Glad they are attempting to prevent scalping, sad that it means that there’s a random draw to be able to buy them. Still trying to buy one. I figure the 256GB model will be entirely fine, especially with the SD card expansion slot. Pity that you can’t upgrade the storage like the Deck, but oh well.
I figure the 256GB model will be entirely fine, especially with the SD card expansion slot. Pity that you can’t upgrade the storage like the Deck, but oh well.
For the life of me I cannot imagine that anything running locally on the Frame would need enough bandwidth from storage to not be able to run it off of SD anyway. For anything using the emulation layer, it’s sure to be slow enough where one won’t notice. For anything running ARM native, it’s sure to be simple enough that one won’t notice.
Less than the index once you account for inflation.
The index would cost 1300$ in today’s money, give or take.
The price I expected for the main unit, but I’m kinda pissy with them wanting an extra $60 for a few straps. That price seems kinda bullshit.
My intended use case is 100% streaming from my PC so the fixed/low storage doesn’t even bother me.
Unless you’re using it entirely as stand alone I’m not certain of needing the 1TB version truthfully.
Nice to see you finally being honest.
Well, I thought it was funny.
Stalker vibes much?
To be fair theres like 12 of us on Lemmy
There are dozen
sof us!dozen*
Hence the strike through markup
I like your shirt today but yesterday’s was fine too.
Cheaper than expected given the economic hellscape
I expect this is why the accessories are so expensive. The ergo kit really should not cost that much, but they may have just increased the price of that so they could keep the base price of the Frame itself lower.
I’m hoping third parties have accessories out by the time it drops. I’d rather buy a boboVR kit at half the cost or something
Considering theres not many games and im assuming the bulk of the game devs are going to release a modified apk of their meta quest version, or scale back the PC port so it rubs via fex (less likely IMO)
Most good games on the quest tapped out at around 8-12 gigs, and im assuming that’s what a bulk of people are going to running considering most vr games made games where either made for, or designed for the quest first and foremost.
That and its the same hardware just running through valves version of waydroid which I can only assume is more performant than running a x86 pc game through fex, and using something like fsr to upscale it? Maybe foviated tracking comes in a lot more clutch than I think it will. But I don’t know honestly im just assuming.
I don’t get why people say “theres not many games” about VR. Have you looked on Steam?
I have, its still the same games I played like 2-4 years ago now, the only real big change is a lot of games I already own became vr compatible.
I’m sure theres a bunch of small indie games, or racing Sim kind of stuff that got added but just pure quantity isn’t what i mean. Otherwise I would just point at the meta quest store and say look how many clones of gorilla tag theres tons of stuff to play.
At one point we had medal of honor making vr games, and there where active lobbies for many games. We had many many growing YouTube channels dedicated around vr that where growing, and now sit stagnent at around 10k views.
If you are looking for a large back catalog of games then sure steam has a ton and many great titles. But they’re often much shorter experiences, ot lesser of a game. Thats much different from when theres actual momentum going and there’s hype around new releases of games, and people are actually there to make mods or be in lobbies for said games.
I’m not saying this because I’m saying vr sucks or theres only 5 vr games. I’m saying this because I am worried its not going to make a bump like how I wanted. In some other universe the steam frame was sold for 700 USD and everyone rushed to buy one, and devs rushed to make friendslop games for vr and it all kept getting bigger.
Yeah, but think of all the VR porn!
How could I forget the whole reason we as a species probably even tried to make vr.
I’m happy it’s here and probably will get one down the line. Equally as mad that it’s surely gone up in price thanks to all the AI and other bullshit, not only not costing less than Valve Index (as had been originally rumored, I think), but more.
Super sour about the not included PSU. Hate it about the smartphone market, too.
But as a VR enjoyer, I’m still happy.
Whatever they would have added as an PSU and have you pay for it a premium, you can buy for next to nothing online with better features and performance, while not generating a bunch of e-waste if you don’t need one (like me - i doubt they would have added a 100W charger with 3 USB-C ports).
Edit: Just saw they want 39€ for a 45W PSU with a 2.5m cable - go buy something better for cheaper, for real. If you are strapped for cash, this one delivers 100W with one port for under 17€: https://www.amazon.de/PAEBAI-Ladegerät-Netzteil-Pixelbook-ThinkPad-rosa-weiß/
Super sour about the not included PSU. Hate it about the smartphone market, too.
I have like 3k of these things, so personally I’m very happy to not have to spend another $30 on a worse one that’s just going to get chucked in a drawer anyway.
I feel the same way about smartphones not including chargers. The third-party charger that I already have is likely better than whatever charger comes with the phone, so the one that comes with the phone will just go unused. I understand that manufacturers are not going to “pass the savings onto the consumer” when they don’t include a charger, but at least it doesn’t feel like e-waste. I felt the same way about the headphones that would come with devices for a while. Just a waste that I will never use.
On the other hand, having a stock charger could aid in troubleshooting by offering a baseline of sorts. Being able to say “I can’t do X, even with the stock charger” can go a long way. Without the stock charger, tech support could wonder if maybe your third-party charger is to blame for your issue. The other benefit of included chargers are when the device uses some weird charging technology or something that makes the included charger actually better for that device than the third-party one that I already have.
For me at least I don’t use any of my original usb device chargers. I have a GaN charger with 2 cables by the sofa and one by my desk.
I totally use the 45w charger that came with my steam deck oled. It’s nice. This looks to be the same one.
As someone who has never played with VR much but would consider a Steam Frame in the future what kind of things do you enjoy it with?
The VR game is Beat Saber, hands down. Hands up. Hands down. Hands up. Hands down.
Oh I would 100% get that one but also I’m not looking to spend $1k purely on VR novelty games
Former vive owner here. Beat saber isn’t a novelty it is legitimately something to spend dozens of hours on. I’m buying either a frame or a used index specifically for beat saber.
Dozens? 👀
I’m the number one beat saber player in the world because nobody told me these things!
That’s impressive. Would you recommend this game to newbies?
How…how many dozens of hours you spend on it to be #1?
Half Life: Alyx, Beat Saber, Superhot, Budget Cuts, Space Pirate Trainer, Waltz of the Wizard etc. are all great VR games. If you like horror games, the FNAF series, The Forest, etc. also has some great VR games.
There are other tangentially fun things to do with VR, too. I watch movies in BigScreen with friends and family sitting on a virtual couch together. VRChat is fun to just meet and chat with people. This headset also plays 2D games, which I’m intrigued by, both on headset and streaming. I can stream Steam games on my Quest headset, too, but it’s lower resolution on the Quest 2.
If you’ve never tried it, Google Earth VR is tons of fun! I don’t know what it is about looking at little miniature cities, but it’s just so compelling. Also fun is when you turn on human-scale and actually have to look up at the buildings and such as you walk or fly through the city, or the Grand Canyon, or whatever!
I’m happy with the fex coming out that someone is very likely to get all the unreal engine vr mods to play nicely with Linux. So many community projects showed up on github when the steam deck came out, just having a dedicated community based around a standard piece of hardware seems to bring enough hype to get shit done. Really excited for the possibility of arch64 Linux phone distros that people make due to this.
Other than that I’m worried theres not enough vr games, and I’m highly certain the steam frame isnt going to bring a new wave of vr devs like the quest 2 did.
Most the vr games I played consistently where multiplayer and have all died off, and for me theres not much else, the other titles its more of a novelty. Majority of titles are the equivalent of walking the plank simulator and charge 20 bucks still, while still feeling like an shitty free game off the google play store.
I’d want it for all the other things like 3d modeling, or other weird applications that are more tinkering focused. I’m excited that its Linux I might be able to set up some kind of UI/HUD, or actually engage with the hardware in some meaningful way. I just don’t see vr taking off again to the point where I can justify 1k USD purchase, I pretty much only played 1 game when I had a quest and the measly 300 dollars the quest costed was hard enough to justify so I could play a single 10 dollar multiplayer game.
I think some of the best VR games are unofficial ports of flat games like Jedi Outcast or Alien Isolation. In my opinion VR is the definitive way of playing Doom 3.
To add to this: there’s also mods for most new resident evil games, Minecraft, Neon White, Outer Wilds, Firewatch, and A LOT more. Beardo Benjo is pretty decent at covering these.
I use VR primarily for seated simulation games. Flight sims, racing, space… VR brings a whole new level of immersion and situational awareness that makes these sort of sims better, and makes me better at playing them.
One of the few times I played around with VR was a racing game and it was awesome, but I’m not a big racing games person so my concern is that the $1200 headset would not add much value beyond the quick thrill of adding VR to a few games
Why are you asking if your response to every example use case is “that’s just a novelty”? All games are novelties in one sense or another. What are you looking for?
Guess I’m not True Gamer™ enough for you sorry!
“Narrative but VR”, “simulation or strategy but VR” sound like novelties to me.
I don’t think VR is for you mate, and that’s okay.
why are you so confrontational lmao I don’t interrogate your tastes
I Expect You to Die, the game series. Funny room escape secret agent story game series. Does a great job of utilizing VR controls and room layout without requiring you to leave your seat. Also has an interesting story to it.
Looks awesome thanks for sharing
Do you liek trains? Derail Valley Simulator, a game that started out as funny physics meme turned hyper realistic train engineer job simulator. You get to realistically drive big chugga chugga choo choo - or a diesel electric if you’re boring. They also have the funny pump handle cart
Lmao imagine asking someone on Lemmy if they like trains OF COURSE I LIKE TRAINS GREAT RECOMMENDATION
Minecraft should work pretty well in it via ViveCraft, if you’re comfortable modding. It officially supports Linux play
I really enjoy VR chat. My IRL friends go to movie worlds there to stream anything we want and watch it together regularly, although you don’t need a headset for that just makes it more fun.
You can also do No Mans Sky and Subnautica in VR. I did it for the Forest and that was fun.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/451010/Kittypocalypse/
Pick something fun and short (not skyrim vr) for having something heavy on your face makes everything exhausting and sweaty. Beatsaber sounds dumb but its the perfect fit for the medium Hmm actually cut that, the perfect fit for the medium is porn
I loved The 7th Guest VR
I’m blown away that no one has mentioned lone echo 1 and 2. IMO they are the crown jewel of the best use of the VR medium for immersive gameplay and story telling, surpassing even half life alyx.
I’m blown away that no one has mentioned lone echo 1 and 2.
Because they had asked for recommendations on what to do with a Steam Frame, but those are Oculus exclusives.
Damn, you are correct, I could’ve sworn I played them through steam VR but my memory isn’t that great these days. Wonder if pirating them and adding them into steam as a 3rd party title is possible.
I remember there was a way to play these games on other headsets but I think the project got abandoned. Maybe someone will pick it up again.
This is exactly what I was curious about, I’d never heard of these. Thanks!
Simracing for me. Automobilista 2 in VR is sublime.
Any word on VR streaming from Linux? I have yet to watch and read most reviews, but I can’t seem to find anything about it being exclusive to Windows like the Short Circuit leak claimed
I can almost guarantee you that if valve doesnt get it working, someone will via moonlight, ALVR, and/or WiVRn.
The amount of work that has gone into the Monado/XRizer/Envision/WayVR stack is phenomenal and gaining momentum.
Pretty much every existing streaming method is complicated and had poor results. Not to mention the lack of foveated streaming.
I am sure there will be third-party solutions working, but will they use foveated streaming? That is a huge selling point of the wireless streaming capabilities of the Steam Frame, but that feature seems to be proprietary to their first-party wireless streaming software. Without it, wireless streaming will be just okay.
Last year’s announcement trailer for Valve‘s new hardware mentioned that Steam Machine would be a great option for streaming games to Steam Frame. So it‘s pretty safe to assume that Linux support for streaming is coming.
It’s safe to assume, but from GN video - it’s not there.
Yes, something that is coming is typically not there yet.
Given how much valve has been advertising running the steam frame with the steam machine if it doesn’t already work now it will be a priority to make it work. I trust valve’s fairly consistent marketing more than a leak
Information seems to be mixed, but it’s looking like it at least works in some cases: https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality_linux/comments/1welkhs/steam_frame_confirmed_by_linustechtips_to_not/
I think what’s in question is whether the wifi dongle is widely supported. It might require some manual configuration at first.It seems odd they wouldn’t prioritise that considering how hard they’ve been pushing Linux/SteamOS.
The wifi dongle was demonstrated via the Steam Machine in the “first look” videos.
It’ll work in Linux.
As of now it does not work with the Steam Machine, which is kind of embarrassing. Though I expect them to fix that ASAP. Hopefully at least a beta version is available when customers get it.
WiVRn works in Fedora (over flatpak even!) since March this year, and performs better than SteamVR and possibly even Virtual Desktop - on a Quest 2. WayVR provides desktop portal and playspace dragging. Very recent update makes the interface look good and also provides USB Ethernet support for Android headsets (Quest etc.) if you prefer wired
Their quick start guide confirms that it does stream from the Steam Machine.
Steam Frame includes a wireless adapater to provide the best quality streaming from your Steam Machine or VR-compatible PC.
Steam Frame: Official Overview and Quick Start Guide (@ 3:40)
Personally I am slightly concerned about their confidence in it’s performance with the Steam Machine if it wasn’t working by the time reviewers got their hands on it.
They recently updated it, which seems to have at least improved stability for me. Still can’t get room configuration to run, but I can use default settings fine
steamos is a linux distro so presumably already working if its supposed to be able to stream from the steam machine. other distros will likely be within a couple days tops if it doesn’t work out of the box.
I recall it comes with a USB dongle for 6GHz Wifi streaming. That’s most likely going to be supported on Linux
I’ve streamed Steam games from my Linux PC to my Steam Deck. Other than increased resolution and the foveated streaming, it should be the same or similar enough technology to go to the Frame. I would be surprised if it didn’t work. Especially because this “generation” of Steam hardware so far has great interoperability between the Steam Machine and Controller, I would expect them to have thoroughly tested streaming from the Machine to the Frame.
Well, considering all thats an incredible price. Youre getting 16 gigs of ram in it, thats actually like half of its price 💀. This is very heavily subsidized, theyre not making a penny of of it. Still as i said before im looking for a car right now and a used car is about 5 steam frames so i dont think i will have money for it for a while. Whelp. Also i have to tune up the car so thats prolly another 3k…
Ughhh. Guess im not getting one of these either.
I’d definitely take the 256GB model, if it was available in my country… 😢
What country? I’m on the list. I don’t necessarily need it but if someone really wants it and will pay for the whole thing and the insane shipping costs…
Switzerland, and yeah if you don’t mind let’s give it a shot and cross fingers! 🤞
