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.
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.