I’m looking forward to the Frame. I have no interest in giving any money to Meta and Valve has been great with Linux support. I’ve seen people complain about the specs, but if it’s a reasonable price it looks pretty good to me!
I’m afraid of the price… this looks much more capable and powerful than the Index, which was quite expensive, I suspect it might end up in a similar price range, if not higher. But let’s hope.
Interestingly, it seems to be using a snapdragon ARM-based unit. Which means it requires another layer of emulation/translation for running Steam games standalone. It’s said it uses FEX (https://fex-emu.com/), probably combined/integrated with Proton.
I’m extremely curious about the price.
For a long time, there were $1200 rumors.
Now we have the “less than index”, which I believe spawned the “under $1000” rumors.
but since index has a huge range, depending on the accessories you buy with it “less than index”, can mean anything from <$600 to <$1100.But in reality this has to compete with Quest 3, and preferably also with Quest 4 when that releases.
So I think it really should be on the lower side. <$600 would be good, <$500 would be great, <$700 would be okaySteve went to their HQ and had talks with their engineers.
They’re using snapdragon 8 gen 3 and emulation
I am suspecting the price to knock me back a little and I also suspect I will still consider it far longer than my wallet will be happy about
Also curious about the Frame. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my HTC Vive Pro 2 but it was $$$$$. The inside out camera based tracking is the way to go as long as they did it well. Also hoping they have some upper-tier audio hardware so you can use your own wired headphones.
Oh, this video by Digital Foundry is also relevant:
Hands-On With Steam Machine: Valve’s Beautiful PC/Console - Specs, Impressions And More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rv83LgXiN0this looks awesome
Really disappointing to see that the Steam Frame is a standalone headset. On the other hand, I guess it’s safe to place my order for Bigscreen Beyond now.
Maybe I misread but I think it’s both a standalone and a VR headset, similar to how the quest can be a standalone or connect to a computer.
Yes but standalone functionality means the price will be unnecessarily high and it will be unnecessarily large and heavy.
Steve went to Valve and had talks with their engineers.
Valve said the frame should be cheaper than the index
I don’t think you understand. Native rendering requires more powerful, more expensive processors than streaming does. Simple as. Doesn’t matter what the price point is, it’s going to be cheaper when streaming.
I know nothing about hardware development but I think it needs to have the computing power based on the inside out tracking.
It can’t use the same compute power for both simultaneously. Take the same hardware and remove the local gaming and suddenly you need much less power/have much more power. Not to mention you don’t need a battery.
Well I think you have a great conclusion that the bigscreen is probably a better fit for you since this headset might not fit your needs. I love my bigscreen v2 would definitely recommend (though I do hate the cable and the swimming goggles effect, and the eye tracking sucks right now) but other than that it is awesome
The battery is in the strap anyway and the additional weight for compute is likely very negligible.
The battery is on your head, with the rest of the headset. Weight is a concern of the power required, not the available compute. The bigger concern is cost.
The battery is functioning as a counterweight and is optional.
cost, absolutely valid though.
According to LTT, the section containing the computer just weights under 190 grams (that’s about the weight of an average medium-sized apple).
The battery is the counterweight… which is actually a good thing to have… I have a fist generation Quest and the main problem with that one was the weight distribution. Adding weight to the back actually made it more bearable. Just by looking at how thin the front part of this one is, I can tell this is gonna be so much more comfortable.
the section containing the computer just weights under 190 grams
Cool, the entire Bigscreen Beyond weighs 127 grams.
The battery is the counterweight…
Do you typically put on a counterweight with your sunglasses?
Do you typically have a cable tethered to your sunglasses?
I personally would prefer the small counterweight instead of the cable, specially if it helps securing the glasses while I move around.
