The Apple Vision Pro is an expensive flop. I haven’t heard anyone mention the Meta Quest in months, despite it getting a new model just last year. I can’t even remember the name of Samsung’s incoming Android-based headset. While virtual reality gamers remain passionate, the excitement around the format seems to be slowly dying… again.
And then along came Zeus Valve. Easily the least mainstream of its three — THREE! — hardware announcements yesterday, the Steam Frame is everything I was hoping for. It’s a standalone, self-powered headset with its own software and apps, a la the Quest. With an internal battery, it’s ready to go on the road or just roam around your home without being tethered.
But it can also connect to a gaming PC or a Steam Deck or a Steam Machine (what’s the difference?) to access more powerful virtual reality games and non-VR media. And Valve is setting this up as a central feature, with a low-latency wireless dongle included in the box.
It’s packing the latest VR tech such as eye tracking, pancake lenses, and expansion options for MicroSD and USB-C. It’ll be running on a powerful Snapdragon ARM64 processor, and the software is at least some flavor of SteamOS, giving it immediate access to a huge amount of both VR and standard games.
My biggest issue with VR is the same as it was 10 years ago:
It costs a lot of money and I would not use it often enough to justify the purchase.
The lack of good games for it is by far my biggest issue.
It excels at flight sims, driving games. If there were really good mech games for it then it would be good at that.
I played the ever loving shit out squadrons in vr. BEING in a tie fighter was like a dream come tru and the immersion made the game incredible. Being able to look around the cockpit while dogfighting was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in gaming.
But so much of what’s on vr is just not that great. The tech has so much potential though.
I agree with that!
Index was a really incredible piece of hardware, but I only ever played with it wired.
Excited to try this out. For it to be free of lighthouses and sensors is a huge upgrade by itself, but wireless is very exciting.
Fingers crossed… can they really compete on price with Quest at like 300$?
Index was 1k$.
Very curious to see the price points on these things.
Depends on how expensive it is.
Yes… If it’s priced low enough.
Also, they’re not pitching this off as just a VR headset. They’re pitching it as a private big screen you can regularly watch videos and play regular games on. While not anything new in that aspect, if it works well without eyestrain, many people will get it just for its non VR game use. Quest sucked because if it’s ecosystem. Valve is once again touting it’s hardware as actual hardware, with none of the lockdowns attached, and it will work with all the VR games from steam and other VR PC games, along with any steam games and other PC games.
No.
Because the biggest problem with VR isn’t the god damn hardware. It’s the lack of games. The Frame looks pretty great; but what would save VR gaming is a truly killer app. Or ten.
The VR market is splintered into several smaller ones with each maker offering exclusives. So there probably is ten truly great games but they are split across each store.
I feel like if these companies really wanted VR to take off they should work to be sure any game is available on any headset to start building the critical mass they need to actually have a functional player base. Only the enthusiasts are going to spend time researching what set offers what.
There are so many fewer great experiences with VR than with flat gaming so it’s much, much more important. I am pretty sure Valve understands this but you still have Meta and Sony hoarding exclusives and limiting the overall experience.
And the fragmentation certainly doesn’t help The market is already small, and yet locked to single store exclusives still come out all the god damn time
Given how it probably undercuts growth of vr, I can only guess why would companies do that. Facebook in particular probably thinks it could be a monopoly, and doesn’t want to settle for just a slice of the pie even if the pie could be bigger.
Valve is going the route of not just selling this for VR, but selling it to play non VR games on as well. If there’s no eyestrain or latency issues it will be a good purchase for a lot of people…if the price is right.
No one wants apple products to game on, or their huge pricetag. No one wants quest because the hardware is locked down. This could be a great product to pick up if it works as well as is being reported so far
There is actually quite a backlog on VR games by now. Admittedly mostly by b-grade studios, so not reaching the quality of HL:Alyx or so, but not bad either. Stuff like
BoneworksBonelab or the Alien and Metro games are genuinely quite good and came out recently.Boneworks will be 6 years old next month
I meant the successor Bonelab 🤦
Bonelab is almost 4.
No.
Because the biggest problem with VR isn’t the library. It’s the price. The Frame looks pretty great; but what would save VR gaming is if people could afford a headset. Or two.
There are already at least 5 VR sets that are under $500 right now. But all but one (PSVR) is sold by Meta and ByteDance. It definitely is not just about the cost of entry.
It definitely is not just about the cost of entry.
Not for people of your economical status.
Gaming devices, be they console, PC, or even mobile, are going to cost more than a few bucks if you want to do anything more than text based adventures. A few hundred dollars for a gaming device is baseline.
And for a peripheral device?
Standalone sets like the Frame and the other affordable VR options on the market (again, except the PSVR) aren’t just peripherial devices; they’re an entire console/PC strapped to your face. They don’t need to connect to another machine, but they still have the option to do so.
If someone were to make a headset that was nothing more than the display and some sensors for motion and wireless connectivity to make it way cheaper, that would be cool… But there’d still be little to play on it if you’re looking for real solid gaming experiences and not just virtual interactive art pieces and gimmick apps.
You mean “broke motherfuckers?” Cuz I’m a broke motherfucker.
Sorry to hear you’re broke - Try not to get as broke as me.
I think Valve will have to somehow help developers migrate from the Meta’s software store, as I feel like in the past few years, most VR games that aren’t AAA have only came out on Quest.
Well they’re saying you’ll be able to install Android APK files on the Frame, which pretty much confirms this is exactly what they’re going for. Meta headsets run Android and the games are APKs.
How does this work, can Arch run APK files?
I mean Waydroid is a thing you can install Android apps with. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Waydroid
But that’s basically a full VM that can do some tricks to make it look like a window. I imagine Valve must have some other translation layer.
No waydroid is exactly what they are using.
Really? That’s kinda neat. Probably pretty customized image to handle the VR stuff.
Is this not similar to BlueStacks on Windows?
Yes basically. It’s just more open source.
Well, there’s more technical differences too. Waydroid should be lighter because it’s not a full VM like BlueStacks. It uses your already running Kernel. (Because Android is also Linux based)
Sure, you could try it right now with Waydroid.
Will have to see more details. They may mean ability to run common Android applications on a virtual 2d surface. Apk is too vague, since my phone certainly is apk based but cannot run any quest applications.
Running something like waydroid is one thing, implementing all the quest apis may be a whole other thing.
Actually there’s already a project that gets (some) Quest exclusives working on other Android based VR sets like those made by Pico, so it’s further along than I thought.
Oh yes, I know, but we cannot expect everyone to side-load APKs. My point was that nowadays Meta’s catalog way surpass Steam VR’s and that Valve should entice developers that published on Meta’s marketplace to publish on Steam.
No I’m saying that I’m pretty sure side-loading is just a side effect of them making it compatible exactly so that it’s very easy for devs to port Quest games.
Oh sure! But wouldn’t that mean that some VR games sold on Steam would only run on the Frame? That seems so not like Valve.
Would it? Maybe just because of the walled garden approach if other hardware developers, and that would be their own fault and not Valve’s. If they had some sort of proprietary format that only worked on Valve hardware, maybe. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s being discussed.
One big problem is that people are probably used to meta’s pricepoint for the quest systems… which Valve can’t possibly compete with.
I’d love to thee it selling for about 500$, but according to interviews, it’s probably going to cost about 1k$, which is simply too much for many people (in this economy, etc.).
Thr Valve Index is $1000, and is still the premium option compared to the new headset, so presumably they’d plan on beating that price.
The Index is no longer produced, so they won’t compete with themselves. That means the market segment is in fact unoccupied.
Also, it has afaik been superceded in terms of image quality and carrying comfort (no wonder: it’s 6 years old).
In the interview with Adam Savage’s Youtube channel they say that they’re aiming for the Index pricepoint but can’t specify any more.
It’s sad that the majority either won’t or can’t pay full price for products, and go for those that are discounted due to vendor lock and/or built-in ads.
If the Steam Frame ends up costing only $1k I think that’s a relatively good price, feels like everything else has doubled in the time since the original Vive was released. Obviously I hope for lower but I kind of expected it to cost at least $1.5k
1k is still way more than the average consumer is ready to pay for a console. Especially with the mostly single player nature of a headset.
I don’t disagree with that part of the observation :) I also think it’s going to be too expensive for the average gamer :( The HTC Vive cost $800 and was released close to the GTX 1080 which cost $600. If high end VR headsets follow a similar price development as high end GPUs, it would cost just above $1.3k based on the RTX 5080’s release price of $1k. Anything less that this and it has become relatively cheaper, even though it would still be too expensive for most people. On the other hand, I was surprised by how little the Steam Deck cost, I thought it was also going to cost more than it did.
@fhein@lemmy.world @Prunebutt@slrpnk.net The aggressive pricing for Deck was an experiment from Valve. I imagine they must consider it mostly successful since it led to the device creating an entire new gaming market segment. The way they are speaking about the Steam Frame and Machine sounds like they’re not ncessarily really looking to repeat that model here though.
Well, I would have said the same for 1k handhelds, yet they exist and apparently sell well enough for companies to make even more of them.
Interesting!
I wonder what type of soft could break the stalemate. Simplicity is already a good plus, but maybe not enough?
I’d probably play some very immersive “MMO” - RPG.
Every single vr mmorpg has died
Every single MMORPG has died is the norm. WoW was an outlier, but I guess something like it would be needed to kick off VR for good.
I think all the top current MMOs are old or older than old, so yeah most died
Since the steam frame is an entire pc, you can run third party motion trackers on the headset itself like SlimeVR so every Steam Frame has the potential for full body VR for cheap.
Also it could run waydroid to potentially run android based VR games.
Also since it’s is a PC, it would probably simplify game dev for VR games. And potentially run the same exe with a LOD/Quality slider to transition between pcvr and standalone.
Further, it may enable other companies like HTC to make steamos based headsets to escape Google.
They would need to start churning out great VR games. They may be the only company that could. Being able to play existing games on a virtual 3DTV would also be fun.
Only personal experience but I have friends newly excited about VR woth this announcement
It got me thinking about VR enough to turn on my Quest 3 again, so that’s something
I really don’t want a headset that relies on a wireless protocol to stream a game from my pc.
I want to plug it in to my PC for the lowest latency possible.
I also don’t want to worry about a battery and keeping it charged.
So for me, the stream frame is absolutely not what I’m looking for. I’ll stick to my reverb.
Do they really not have a wired option? Bummer
I’m excited for the Frame not because of the hardware itself, but because it is intended for SteamOS, and by extension Linux in general. Maybe it will mean more progress for VR gaming on Linux overall.
I haven’t been following the VR discussion since the release of the Oculus Dev kit2
Have they figured out how to let people who wear glasses use it yet?
I use the Valve Index with my glasses just fine. Probably depends on the specific anatomy of your face and geometry of your lenses. There’s also a bunch of options for prescription lenses for (at least some) headsets.
For me, the limitation of VR is the actual physical effort - standing, limited movement, swinging your arms - a couple hours of that, especially on a warm summer day, is just about enough. It’s far easier to lounge in a chair clicking buttons on a controller for hours. Like, Skyrim VR is amazing as an experience, but I just can’t get into it the same way as Skyrim flatscreen.
Yeah but Beat Saber is a pretty good workout routine, and you don’t want to be doing that for 7 hours a day anyway!
The VR games I keep going back to all have that same kind of ‘workout’ vibe: lot of activity; short, episodic play. I think that conflict - short play sessions vs expensive gear - is one of the reasons VR is still a niche market. It’s like geek Peloton, but that also keeps devs from building the big, story-rich games that get media attention and get people excited to play. I don’t think anyone wants an Elden Ring or a Silksong like experience in VR. Beat Saber, Gorn, Gorilla Tag are great uses of the platform, but it’s hard to convince someone to drop $1000 for ‘fancy fruit ninja.’
Wasn’t Half-Life Alyx pretty well regarded? Was it more than “fancy fruit ninja”?
Definitely. Of all the VR I’ve done, Alyx still stands out as the best - realistic graphics, interactive objects, puzzles that actually use the VR controls, great environments. It was what finally convinced me to get a VR system, and to get Index instead of FacebookVR.
It’s like 15 hour game with limited replayability. Some of the mods are pretty good, but also short. If Valve had a ‘loss leader’ introducing VR, it was Alyx, not the Index itself - supposedly cost $50M to develop. I was really hoping that there would be other studios follow Alyx’s example, but we come back to that conflict between relatively short gaming sessions and a big, immersive (expensive) experience. If the studios don’t think there’s demand to cover a 9 figure development budget, then they’re not going to make big, story-driven experiences, and the market will have mostly episodic activity-driven games, multiplayer arenas, and flight simulators.
Alyx came out after I had to take my gaming machine offline, due to no longer having a place to put it while my home is being rebuild (which will be done one day, hopefully, so fucking done with that damn laptop and it’s tiny screen)… but anyway there were other great games. Lone Echo was quite good. Elite Dangerous in VR was pretty awesome as well. Although my Oculus CV1 might be dated now. Not even sure if I can use it any longer now that it’s a meta piece of hardware.
That was an issue solved quite some time ago. Either you get custom prescription lenses for the headset, or you have a spacer (modern sets have an adjustable shroud built in, including the Frame).
I’ve got some prescription lens inserts for my reverb which work wonderfully.
I think Valve has mentioned the intention of the same for the frame, but nothing concrete yet and I’m not sure how they would work with the eye tracking.
