STEREOSCOPE
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STEREOSCOPE
Steam Frame, Explained
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We dig into Valve’s Steam Frame headset, the revived Steam Machine concept, and the new Steam Controller 2.0, weighing smart tradeoffs against ambitious promises. Comfort, eye tracking, and foveated streaming headline a PC-first strategy that could challenge Quest on user experience.
• why Valve picked a mobile ARM chip over XR silicon
• eye tracking as the key to dynamic foveated rendering gains
• PC-hybrid focus with a low-latency wireless streaming puck
• openness of the Steam library and Linux-first SteamOS
• missing features: no hand tracking, monochrome pass-through
• LCD panels vs OLED hopes, and real-world contrast limits
• comfort-first design with balanced weight and modular front
• Steam Machine power, TDP, and tough pricing realities
• controller upgrades: dual trackpads, gyro, community profiles
• future possibilities: gaze input, hybrid compute, OpenXR ports
Tell us what you think. Don’t forget to subscribe, share, hit the like button, you know, all that stuff
Setting The Stage: Valve’s Reveal
SPEAKER_00Hi, welcome to Stereoscope Mini Podcast. So we're doing a sort of more concentrated, direct. We're only talking about the steam frame today. Steam frame, steam machine, etc. The recent valve announcements. I mean it's just me and Anthony today. We've got our the legacy of VR sort of set before us, going all the way back to the gear VR and the Steam Frame. Steam frame.
SPEAKER_01The long-awaited, long-rumored, the Deckard. Yeah, the the thing, the big guy, the one we've all been waiting for.
SPEAKER_00You know, I I part of me wishes that they could have just stayed with Deckard because uh it's a cooler name. I'm a huge Late Runner fan, so it always worked for me.
SPEAKER_01But always but also Steam Machine is also a great name to start. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Especially since like Steam Machine, even do you remember the the first iteration of the Steam Machine from 2013?
SPEAKER_01Just like the the NVIDIA, like that little cure scene.
SPEAKER_00So this was this was more specific than that. This was a this this was a this was a platform that came out in 2013. Uh Steam Machine, Bivalve, same concept as now, but they were working with various OEM manufacturers to provide different iterations of set top boxes that ran the the earliest version of Steam OS, Arch Linux, but it was a complete and utter failure. So the Steam Frame itself, right? So last week, Valve announced their new hardware sort of rollout. They they announced three products at the same time, which was it's sort of shocking. Like it was almost Apple in its deluge, just like you're constantly hit by all these new features. So there are three products. There was a Steam Frame, their new standalone hybrid VR headset, the Steam Controller 2.0, which might actually be the dark horse of the day for me, and then the Steam Machine, a uh dedicated Linux-based, all-in-one small forms console slash PC thing, or that small form factor PC. Yeah. And it was generally like it it had leaked a couple days that this was happening, but also like these devices have been sort of rumored for years and years. The Deckard first rumors go all the way back to 2021. Yeah. And I think the the Deckard name sort of popped up around 2022. And the Steam Machine, people had sort of been expecting this the Steam Machine to pop up because of Valve's work on Steam Deck over the last couple of years and their sort of maturing Steam OS platform, which all if you were paying attention, the Steam Deck very much was a shot across the Valve for Windows gaming and for gaming on Linux and an eventual an eventual re-emergence of the Steam Machine. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And SteamOS is available, right? You can just like install that. Yeah, yeah.
Steam Machine History And Strategy
SPEAKER_00So Steam OS is available as a disk image. You can, you know, do a side boot on an existing machine. If and I mean, as of right now, you can download an X86 version of SteamOS, and soon you'll be able to download an armor version of SteamOS. So all these various like this this is a huge thing for the gaming industry as a whole, especially even like Android-based handheld devices. Yeah. Because then all of a sudden you can run Steam.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Which is up until now has only been available through apps like Game Native or there's another one I'm liking on. But the Steam frame itself is interesting because it's an ARM-based device. Yes. So I'll just sort of rattle through the the specs here. So it's got a Qualcam Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 ARM chip. Really important distinction here though, this is not an XR chip from Qualcomm. This is this is a a mobile chip. So there's a differentiation there. They're small, but there are differences. On the XR2 like chips, there are sensor processors, dedicated processing cores for the like cameras and that type of thing. This is not that chip. This is a mobile phone chip, effectively, in comparable to the most recent generation of mobile phone processors. So that's that's an interesting distinction because it means that there hasn't been an XR chipset that has been released in the last year and a half. So Valve was
Three New Devices At Once
SPEAKER_00able to jump ahead of the competition and get the next class of device by just not using an XR chipset.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that chipset has about a 30% performance headroom over the XR2 Gen 2. So Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So this is bad news for Galaxy XR.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, enter another, right? Like really don't know what this is gonna be. It's really strange. So it it's got a it's got a a pretty generous spec boost on the Quest 3 and the Galaxy XR, but not just that, because it uses eye tracking, it potentially could allow developers to use dynamic foveated rendering technology to eke out e, I would expect about a 60 to 70 percent performance gain on those devices, which is, I mean, at that point, like nothing to sneeze at. Nothing to sneeze at. To be fair though, you know, this is this device, they're not aiming it. Valve seems to be very clear in their marketing, yeah. That they're looking at this device as a PC hybrid device first and a standalone device second, which I think is an interesting distinction, especially given that it's got all this extra performance in it.
SPEAKER_01Well, and interesting that they're not restricting certain things. Like one of the things that's interesting is that like they're not restricting anything in your Steam library that say is VR or whatever. Like you could try and play my god, what they common name. Half-Life Alex. Yeah, yeah. You could try and play Half-Life Alyx on this thing. It probably won't play very well. It might be one frame per second. Well, okay, but it will play it, which is interesting. They're not even gonna try to wall that off.
SPEAKER_00Half-Life Alyx is a very performant game because the source engine is incredibly dynamic. It's very performant even on especially low hardware. I mean, there are people who have run Half-Life Alyx on lower than potato settings, and it still runs. So, like I'm guessing that they're going to deliver an optimized version of Alex that runs standalone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which would be awesome. But it's just an interesting concept that like anything you have in your library, you can at least try and play it on your Steam frame without tethering to the machine or whatever.
SPEAKER_00The one unfortunate thing is you're almost certainly not going to be able to play Skyrim VR modded standalone. Because it's just not powerful enough to do that. I mean, even today, like you need at least like a 4070 TI to run Skyrim VR in anything but like the worst settings. So but it does it's a strange device.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like I'm so intrigued, but I'm also it's definitely in the wait and see category on this one for me. Yeah. Because like, I mean, to just jump into jump into some of the other issues with it, right?
ARM Chip Choice And Performance
SPEAKER_01Like it doesn't have as what monocular It's got monocular black and white pass black and white pass-through.
SPEAKER_00And what was the other big like downside? Well, the L C D E screens.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there was one. Oh, no hand tracking.
SPEAKER_00No hand tracking.
SPEAKER_01We were talking about this earlier. And it's interesting because like for some people, complete deal breaker, giant whiff. Me, on the other hand, I've had pass-through turned off on my quest three for like a year now.
SPEAKER_00Which is so funny because I use pass, I don't even load into the virtual environment anymore. Uh my headset when I'm running apps, if I'm not explicitly in a VR game or a VR experience, I'm in pass-through. And I use pass-through for video watching. For I I mean, I play GForce now on my headset all the time. What do you do with the boundary? So the reason I turned off the pass-through was boundaries were a pain in my ass. Like, well, I just set a giant boundary, so it's not even enough.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but but like you become the studio, you got to reset your boundary, right?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So like even just doing that and like wanting to hand the headset, like if I take the headset over to my like neighbor's house, I'm like, hey, check out this thing I'm working on. They're like, what's this shit? I'm like, uh, just let me turn all the crap off, right? Like, so it's it that's probably like it's a very interesting specific use case that I'm in there, right? And no, I'm not alone, and clearly they think it's not important either because they went they went the direction they did with Steam Frame.
SPEAKER_00See, but I have a I have a lot of thoughts about about that specifically. So one of the so in the last two years, because that's how long it's been since the quest three came out. Yeah, I know which works. I have used my headset dramatically more than the end of the quest two's life cycle. I have to say that I used my quest two, especially in the first year. That was COVID. So I was using it almost every single day. I don't use my quest three as much anymore, mostly just because I don't have as much free time as I did during COVID. But one thing I will say is that the drop-in experience for me with the color pass-through removes a layer of friction from the device that I think is psychological in a very specific way. I find back in the Quest 2 era with the with the you know, it was stereo, but it was still black and white pass-through. It I just didn't, I hated it. I hated that experience. I hated going from that layer of reality, and I just completely didn't do it. I never turned on pass-through. And uh it made the experience of going into games much more sort of fumbly and sort of like you're you're just grabbing around in the dark. With the pass-through, I find it a much more sort of like soothing transition into a virtual world.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which is a fair point. And to be fair, they've improved the hell out of pass-through.
SPEAKER_00It's so good. It's so good now. Yeah. Um the hand tracking is is like practically second nature, even if it is still very fiddly.
Eye Tracking And Foveated Gains
SPEAKER_00And that's why and I'm getting into sort of like the what Apple Vision Pro did with their hand tracking and eye tracking solution was that they just said screw hand tracking. Controllers. And use your eye tracking as the novel impl. Well, I mean, they are technically doing both, right? They they are technically doing both, but the eye tracking works dramatically more.
SPEAKER_01Well, nobody wants this. This is a lot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's sucks. That's a horrible but here's the thing. On the Steam frame, the eye tracking isn't used as a method of interaction at all. Well, yeah. Or at least yet. They haven't shown any of that. I'm guessing that they will eventually implement those types of features. There's so many questions. But there's a lot of questions. SteamOS, like Valve is not a dumb company. They're if they're ha if they have eye tracking, they're going to be implementing some sort of gaze-based interaction method, but we don't know what that's going to look like, and we don't know how comprehensive it's going to be.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00With the I mean, I will say though, that the Steam frame, I think, is going to be a generally pretty great device. I think the downsides that exist, there are other there are either options to implement other features along the way, because even Valve themselves said that there is a PCIe port on the front of the device. Expansion. An expansion port that may be able to be used as a like possible you could add stereo pass-through cameras to stereo color. Yeah. So like this isn't as big of an issue, but mind you, that's not going to be a feature that Valve puts forward because it will bisect the market of the people with the device.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if I'm I don't know if I agree with that. It actually makes sense for them to some extent to come out with an accessory that gives you the password for people who care, right? Like so if this was like the thing that made the headset as affordable, which we don't, we don't know how much it's gonna cost, right? So this all could go right out the window.
SPEAKER_00But like let's I think there will most likely be third-party solutions before Valve comes out with it.
SPEAKER_01Which can be true, right? Yeah. But and maybe that's maybe they already have a partner that's doing that or whatever, right? Like because they were sort of cagey about it. They were, yeah. But it kind of makes sense to like if you need to get like your market is gamers, and you could say maybe gamers don't care about pass-through or whatever. Like they're going for people that have Steam games in their Steam library. This is a Steam device, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So if you want to pay extra to get their pass-through, then you could pay extra for better pass.
SPEAKER_00And that's why they're not interested, it's because this is a gaming device. So everything in their marketing materials
PC-Hybrid Focus Over Standalone
SPEAKER_00100% supports that this is a gaming device. But here's the thing it's not just a gaming device, it's a PC. It's literally a PC strapped to your face. So, like one of the things that they're really pushing and is that because it's a PC, it runs Linux. Technically, I guess you could probably even install Windows on it. They're all they're also pushing the Steam machine, and they're doing, they're focusing on foveated streaming using a wireless dongle that plugs into either your PC, your home PC, or the Steam machine and creates a direct two direct links, one dedicated to the headset, the other dedicated to your Wi-Fi or your internet.
SPEAKER_01They basically dedicated the entire 60 gigahertz band to the video stream.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, which supposedly, from people who have tried it, is indistinguishable from a display port. From a wired, yes, from a display port connection. Yeah. Which is incredible. Mind you, having done some research with dynamic poveated rendering recently and dynamic phobiated streaming, this is definitely doable. Um I I've sort of done a high speed crash course in it recently, and it's 100% an option. And it's going to be an option for a lot of people going forward. It's really in in some ways, it's the only way to deliver that high quality of a video signal at that level of quality without trade-offs, especially wireless.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so far everybody's thinking that it works really well. Everything they're saying is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The other thing is that you'll be able to run, I mean, they've been sort of implying that it's a Steam Deck for your face. Like you'll be able to run anything that runs on the Steam Deck will one will run mostly pretty great on this device. However, gotta temper some expectations here. This is still a mobile arm charm processor. Right. Even the Steam Deck, which it's it's saying that you know you're gonna be able to run uh faster games on the Steam Deck. It's six more six times more powerful than the Steam Deck, the Steam Machine. But here's the thing, it only has an eight gigabyte GPU. And like so I don't understand in some ways I understand the like ecosystem development. Like this is gonna happen and there's going to be subsequent devices, but you for the Steam Machine specs would right out of the box. The only thing that you can change uh easily on in the Steam Machine that's hot swappable is the
Library Openness And Game Expectations
SPEAKER_00RAM. Hot swappable, but yeah, swappable. Sure, user swappable swappable, easily swappable. Don't go don't go pull in your RAM while you're cutting your not gonna have a good time. The CPU is soldered to the board. Which makes sense. I mean the GPU is not removable without deconstructing the entire device. It is very, a very small small form factor device. And I I'm generally a little confused about where in the market this sits for them, because you'll be able to play VR games on this pretty reasonably, but you won't be able to play the best VR games on this very well at all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, what's interesting? So I'm looking at some of the specs here. This answers some of the question, right? Like it's not the most powerful, but it's also has closer to like console power consumption.
SPEAKER_00So TDP and all that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the TDP on the on the the uh chip on the CPU is 30 watts and 110 watts for the GPU. So like you're talking about 140 watts total versus like my machine, which uses over a kilowatt.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00But my my machine uses double this. The problem is that generally this the the benchmarks from existing hardware have shown that this is about on the level of a PS5. But the PS5 came out in 2020. And PS5 can't play Steam games, right? So that's like You can't play Steam games, but it's only $500. Yeah. This is and they've said they've been they came out with this and said this is not going to be a subsidized device.
SPEAKER_01Right, right.
SPEAKER_00You're going to be paying PC prices for this. Yes. Yeah. So that's so the Steam Frame, I'm pretty sold on. I think it's a great device. I think it's actually the the most exciting thing about the Steam Frame for me is the reported weight. Yes. Apparently, the the design, everyone who's most of the people that have worn it have said this is the most comfortable VR device I've ever worn because they've split up the weight between the back and the front. Yeah. But that's not it. Kind of like this, but better because they're from the factory. Yeah. It's well, and it and it's comfortable with the bigger. I don't know why it took anybody this long to just say, like, hey, let's just have a wire that goes from the battery to the head.
SPEAKER_01It's the most obvious thing. Like, I was so mad when Apple didn't do it either. I'm like, especially because they had an external battery and you put it in your pocket. Like, come on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And the biggest problem with the Apple Vision Pro is its weight. That's why it has failed to move. Well, the price is the gigantic price. The price is why it's failed to move. But it's going to continue to fail to move if they don't manage that weight better. And but this is the so the Steam frame, I get it's going to be a pretty good hit. It's going to do well with their core demographic. I think it'll probably see crossover sales into other, you know, quest.
Missing Features: Pass-Through And Hands
SPEAKER_00It'll it, you know, it's definitely going to put the quest three as a run for its money. And it may, you know, completely uh dominate in other parts of the sector. But the Steam frame, I or sorry, the Steam Machine, I'm much Much more skeptical on. I think it's gonna have a hard time in the market at its price point up to like performance ratio unless they do like a price cut, which they do, they'll do price cuts on their hardware. So what it is though is that Valve, they generally have software solutions, and the fact that you're running on Linux gives you performance headroom in a lot of these places because of the lack of Windows blow. And for the for the Steam frame, they're doing a translation layer that allows you to run Windows apps, x86 apps on ARM, much like their translation layer for Windows Linux on the Steam Deck. That's gonna be a real sort of point to see how much performance they're able to get out of this vex translation layer. I think most things will run okay. I'm from my experience using Game Native, I was able to get Quake, which is a full fat game, running on my phone with my phone controller thing, the GameServe G8 Plus at 60 frames per second, though it drop frames a lot. But then when I tried to run heavier stuff, not so much. Yeah. And well, and also some some things just won't work. Like it's not that they run poorly, they just don't run. Right. Yeah. The general design of the device, I think, is smart. The battery's in the back, it's got like this soft, sort of permeable back that they split the the battery up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like it's kind of this shape without being able to like it's kind of this shape, but the better so there's a hole in the middle. The battery's like this kind of thing right here.
SPEAKER_00Well, but it's designed to clutch the battery. I think in in their design is that there's no weird fumbly bit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we'll put a picture up here, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you can you can like sit back. I think you can lay down. Yeah, you can even lay down because it's there's not this huge gap in between where your head is. It's literally just like this like layer that's about that thick. It's so much slimper. The other thing that I think is really smart is that the entire front module is detachable. Yes. So you you'll be able to have completely custom strap solutions, which for the I mean, that's one of the coolest things about the VR community, and something that I mean has made the quest three usable is that the original straps that came with the quest two and the quest three were abysmal. And I I can only imagine how many people got a quest two or quest three or quest three. I hate this. And they were like, this is this experience is awful, and then never use it because the out-of-the-back strap was you have to spend another hundred bucks. The seam frame strap looks usable and good. Yeah. And especially if you don't have all that weight sitting on the front of your device, it's gonna be more comfortable. But if you want something that's closer to like the index, uh what's that strap called? The uh the one with the hang down.
SPEAKER_01No, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00The Frankenstein thing that people put together. It was for the index.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I've seen it, but I don't know what you call it.
SPEAKER_02But yeah.
SPEAKER_01So the uh the core module, which is the front of the headset, is 185 grams. Jeez. And the full thing, like with the head strap, with the back strap, which includes the speakers, by the way. So when you detach it, you lose your speakers. 440 grams for the whole thing. So balanced out on your head, that's like what three-quarters of a pound, something like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's the sounds very, very comfortable. Because this is heavier than that, and I find it comfortable just fine. Like I can wear this.
SPEAKER_00Well, once it's once it's balanced, but you have the battery on the back. My only my only concern is that it's I don't understand how they're able to balance it when there's not any rigidity because it's a soft membrane. Well, your your your skull is the rigidity. No, but like you to create counterweight, you have to have a your skull, that's your neck.
SPEAKER_01Like I'm saying, I'm telling you, like your your head is what's holding the whole thing together, and so a counterweight just attached because it's not moving around on the back of your head, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. Is that how it works? I think so. I think it's a little bit more complicated.
Quality Of Life: Boundaries And Friction
SPEAKER_01I don't think so. It's pretty, I mean, because it's a simple, it's just a head strap. Like, there's no there's not really rigidity here. I mean, this is technically this doesn't flex while you're wearing it, right? Like you it's I think it just ha this happens to be ri rigid, you know, but yeah, I think your your head makes it your your head is what makes the whole thing rigid.
SPEAKER_00Okay. All right. I'll take your word for it on this one. Yeah. I I think it's I think it'll do well. It seems like I'm C machine, I'm a little bit more skeptical on. Uh but the interesting thing is that the way that they've developed the system and the software is that if you're developing VR games for, say, like Pico or Quest devices, if you're running OpenXR, supposedly you should be able to run APKs from VR apps running OpenXR on the Steam frame, and they should work as long as they're not dependent on meta meta or Pico APIs. So that means that I mean it's probably not going to be that seamless, but what it does mean is that porting to the Steam frame should be relatively easy because there's a direct line there. It makes me sort of curious as to why they're focusing so much on the Steam machine element and the hybrid streaming scenario. If their standalone product is that performant.
SPEAKER_01I mean, obviously the Steam Machines are going to be able to do more, right? Like in terms of Yeah. Like you're you're still never gonna be able to beat a an actual desktop compute like that kind of TDP power consumption, etc. Like the power behind it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I guess they just want really high quality games available on the system.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. A really interesting potential idea uh was brought up on the upload VR podcast. I think it was Ian that that brought this. That like imagine like hybridizing the game experience where part of the game is processed on the headset and the heavy hitting parts of the game are so sort of like a split inference. A little bit, yeah. So like let's say you're in like you know a cutscene or something like that, that's playing off. So instead of waiting for like the next thing to load, like you skip loading scenes w while you're using the headset compute and then seamlessly switches over to streaming from the Steam Machine or whatever. They're not saying that that's a that's what this is gonna do, but that's a that's a possibility with this type of closed even more integrations.
SPEAKER_00Right. So like we just really don't know what they have a lot of. So you could do like heavy scene geometry rendering on the server device and then have more real-time like interaction and maybe GUI stuff running on the on the edge device.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So possibility of like smoothing out the whole, you know, tethered experience or whatever. Again, we don't know if that's what's gonna happen, but it's an interesting possibility. And like with the tight hardware integration they have here in the optimizations, they could do that, right? Because they are that's what makes that little dongle work so well, because they have like firmware-level access to what it's a device dedicated to that to one thing. So there's no weird, like, oops, the driver isn't support or whatever. Like they have it all like cleaned up and filled out edge to edge.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So more possibilities arise. I mean, this is literally like Apple's whole business model is like the full vertical integration.
SPEAKER_00It definitely it see it you can see that there's a really tight integration in their hardware divisions because supposedly
Gaze Input Questions And Roadmap
SPEAKER_00even the steam controller is tracked um in headsets. So when you see the con the steam frame controllers themselves and the steam controller, you'll be able to see virtual representations of them in your hands, and even the buttons depressing when you press them. The other thing is that the steam frame controllers themselves are effectively every single interaction method that is available on Steam Deck is replicated on the controllers themselves.
SPEAKER_01They're also probably or not probably, they're they're well more than likely gonna be better tracked because they have like more than double the IR LEDs. It's like 17 or 18, something like that. That's great.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean uh what I play a lot of games in my headset. I mean like regular, like flat games. There was some leaks that there was gonna have some sort of 3D layer situation. I'm I'm guessing that's a SteamOS feature, and that we'll hear they didn't announce anything about that. I'm guessing that's a Steam OS feature, and that will be sort of later down the road when the product actually ships. Yeah. Oh, one thing is that the we haven't talked about is the the the displays. Yeah. Yeah. So this one I'm not I okay, I'll say I was expecting this to be a higher spec device. When I'd heard about this, I was expecting them because there were also some rumors that they were trying to hit a twelve hundred dollar price point. At twelve hundred dollars, I was expecting either micro OLEDs or LCD with local dimming. Yeah, like or a next generation OLED screen. This is none of those. It's an LCD screen. Also, they have not announced a price, but rumors are that it's gonna be around $700. I would say $699 if I was to throw a dart at it. But they said it's gonna be less than the index.
SPEAKER_01Right. That's so that's the one thing we know for sure. It's gonna be less than a thousand.
SPEAKER_00So but but this is a 72 to 144 hertz at the experimental range, 72 to 120 in its normal range, 2160 by 2160 per eye resolution, which is uh effectively it's like a 2% bump over the quest three. It is almost exactly the same as quest three, and it's got almost an identical field of view of the quest three, but it is running pancake optics. There is no going back on the pancakes. We are there if you do not launch a product that does if you do if you launch a product that does not have pancake optics at this point, your device is DOA. Sorry, Sony, but that's the case. Yeah. And what we
Wireless Foveated Streaming Dongle
SPEAKER_00know from previous discussions about the PSVR 2 and the Quest III and the Quest 3S is that OLEDs and pancakes, or at least modern implementations of them, do not go well together. Current OLED technology, which is crazy because TCL literally just literally just announced this new OLED technology days after the Steam Frame announcement. But that's not that device is not in this device. But hopefully it does mean good things for the future of like range headsets. But here's the thing: having used the Quest 3 for as long as I have, the panels get the job done. But I will say that in a couple scenarios in the last couple weeks, I have run into remember when I was doing the uh Blumhouse enhanced cinema thing, one of the problems that I ran into was that they were trying to get to this like really, really dark movie watching experience, but they had stuff going on in in the periphery. The headset could not get dark enough to make anything have any contrast. There was a gener there have been very few experiences in the Quest 3 where I have noticed it as dramatically as I did during this Blumhouse enhanced cinema thing because you're trying to have uh this dark movie watching environment, but then there's still stuff going on, and so they're still illuminating, so they can't get the blacks in the movie watching part as low as they possibly can.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that was really disappointing. And I kept messing with the contrast. So in that scenario, I very quickly realized that there are limitations to these L C Ds, but it was the first time that it had really had that s that type of problem with my L C Ds at least. What do you what do you think about that?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I haven't come up against it, like where I'm like, oh no. Like I'm I like I'm personally not that worried about the screens. Obviously, I wish it had higher resolution.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The resolution, I think, is actually the thing that I'm least worried about is the L C D tech. Yeah. Well, actually almost it sort of the other side.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But that's also mostly coming from my wants as an immersive video game.
SPEAKER_01Well, right. And that's the thing. I mean, we're we're if we're on the same resolution for the past two years on the Quest 3, which was not amazing at the time either. It feels like this should have been a little bit more of a bump up in terms of screen. But there may not be, I mean, this kind of again circles back to the TCL announcement.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There's really nothing in that middle ground right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like you're either at this level or you have to go micro-OLED.
SPEAKER_00Which you're gonna dump the price dramatic.
SPEAKER_01I mean, like where they say the screens alone in the in the Apple Vision Pro are cost more than a quest. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like so And also if you're running those the if you're running panels at these super high resolutions, that takes power and it takes processing power as well.
SPEAKER_01Which means heat, which means more cooling, which means more weight, which means battery.
SPEAKER_00It's very clear that Valve was trying to hit sort of like a center mix point, you know.
SPEAKER_01This doesn't seem like it's not an enthusiast device, I don't think. They're going for a larger market, like again, going for gamers. The the fact that they made it more comfortable, like that is such a big like most enthusiasts will we'll we put up with it because we love it, right? Yeah. But like your average your average person won't. They're like, well, no.
SPEAKER_00Get this off my face right now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So it does seem it's probably very smart. While it might be slightly disappointing to us as enthusiasts, it's probably a really good thing.
SPEAKER_00It's a little disappointing from an immersive video standpoint because uh, you know, 8K video is effectively as high as it can go.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And also the more disappointing element is that Valve has said that they are not attract they're not working with any video vendors. There is no video strategy for the platform. Effectively, the only way to run video to watch videos in this headset will be to uh pull up an opera browser on Linux and use
Standalone Limits And Deck Parity
SPEAKER_00their built-in OpenXR player, right? Well, they're like their web browser player. Right.
SPEAKER_01That's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Isn't that not XR or Web sorry, WebEx or something?
SPEAKER_00WebXR. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01WebEx are a player.
SPEAKER_00Or, you know, and but there's, you know, I'm unsure if Netflix and Hulu's HTCP implementation can run 1080p videos on on Linux.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Like these are a lot of questions that so watching videos on these is going to be at best a substandard experience unless you're you know sailing the open seas. Right.
SPEAKER_01And to be fair, that is basically where you're at with a quest three.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it's it's similar. Mind you, Meta has recently made some very dramatic inroads. But but in terms of watching like wood movies, right? Like you're not watching 4K videos on the MetaQuII or the Steam Frame without piracy, effectively.
SPEAKER_01Again. And and again, because like you can lay down and while wearing this headset, this means it's a way to make it.
SPEAKER_00Or I guess your own plex rips, uh, that's not technically illegal.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, that's the part that makes it like super appealing to me. The one time I really not the one time, but one of the ways I like to use this is like in a hotel instead of using their shitty TV or even a laptop, like watching a movie in bed, but you gotta set up with this thing. There's no laying down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I think one thing I'm really excited for, the two, the two most exciting features for me are the eye tracking and the form factor. Yeah. I think those two things are the things that are the biggest problems with the quest three. If the quest three had had those things, I think uh, and meta should have had them, it would have extended the lifespan of the quest three dramatically.
SPEAKER_01Wouldn't have been a $500 headset either, though, right? Like this will be the cheapest headset you could possibly get with eye tracking. Like it is a premium feature.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's gonna enable, you know, their dynamic, dynamic phobioid rendering, their dynamic uh photo streaming, which is they've talked more about with the eye tracking and potentially, you know interaction methods, but they haven't really announced anything on that. Yeah. Generally, I think it'll be successful. I I think the steam frame itself is a much more interesting uh device. Oh, it says Wi-Fi 7?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's actually Wi-Fi 7, which is still, I mean, it's basically the same thing as uh six, but it's yeah. It's still 60 gigahertz. So yeah, it's dual radios five and six gigahertz. Interesting. Um the Wi-Fi on the headset is f is Wi-Fi 7, the wireless adapter is 6e. And again, there's almost no difference between 6e and 7. So that's interesting though.
SPEAKER_00And the speakers are uh dedicated into the head strap.
SPEAKER_01Right. So they get removed if you switch head straps. If you want like a third-party head strap.
SPEAKER_00There's also I read that there's not an audio jack. There's not a 3.5 meter audio jack. Interesting. So you'll have to use the wireless or or an adapter if you want to use headphones. So there's gonna be there's gonna be a lot of audio bleed,
Comfort And Weight Distribution
SPEAKER_00audio leak on this device, unless you use that USB port in the back, which is a USB two, not three, for like a USB like audio adapter.
SPEAKER_01I wonder if they could get Bluetooth working again in a more optimized fashion, like without delay, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um to this day, it's I mean, it's just not what Bluetooth had. I try it every couple months and it's Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it may not ever be possible because it's just not in the technical. Well, Apple got it working. Well, but the Apple doesn't you just use Bluetooth, they have their own wireless chip. And they had to come out with like they revise the AirPods Pro 2 to be able to do losses. Yeah. So it's like, yeah. I think dedicating just on Bluetooth, it may not be possible. Maybe with another version, you know, another Bluetooth 10 or something like that. But yeah, since it was never designed to be zero latency.
SPEAKER_0045 watts, too. Interesting. Oh, and it's got a micro SD slot.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, that's a great one.
SPEAKER_00Not an express slot, though.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's okay. I mean, like it's probably for game store, it goes fine. Yeah. Fast enough. Or video storage.
SPEAKER_00The fact that it has expandable storage. That's great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So it's two fifty six gig or one terabyte built in storage and then a micro SD slot, which and I heard that you you can just like pop your like storage from your Steam Deck into it.
SPEAKER_02Cool. Yeah. I wonder if the Steam Deck is tracked.
SPEAKER_00It probably doesn't have any IR lights, but they know what the device looks like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it totally could be. It has like a fancy little like indicator light across the top. Maybe it tracks that or something.
SPEAKER_00That would be cool to have like mixed experience between your Steam Deck and your Steam frame.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean there's Yeah. There's a lot of it. I'm just it's so curious. I mean, this is kind of the genius of Steam though, too. It's so open-ended. It partially because they don't lock shit down.
SPEAKER_00Like that's Valve is sort of like if Waz had been the head of Apple. Yeah. It's like Tinkerer's Paradise, but also like an ecosystem.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's like it's there if you want it, but you don't have to use it. Like we're not gonna lock you in. You don't have to buy the the one terabyte version you can pop a card in. I mean, like that's that's that's cool. You know, like we in a in a world where like most tech companies are just tight just tightening the screws every chance they get.
SPEAKER_00You know. Well, and that and that's another thing we have to sort of comment on is the steam, the price of the steam frame and the price of the gate cube is less than a Galaxy XR, most likely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00So three things. You could yeah, and the Steam controller. You could probably have better performance than the Galaxy XR. Standalone. Standalone. For less than the Galaxy XR. Yeah. But slightly worse screens. Well, actually dramatically worse screens.
SPEAKER_01But the thing is, like, and and I think this is probably true for the larger like populace or whatever, that like the experience is gonna be better. Like,
Modular Front And Straps
SPEAKER_01if the experience is better, that matters more than the text specs, right? So like if the screens are a little less or whatever, but like it's more comfortable to wear, the games are more fun, or everything works better, there's no glitches, whatever, right? Like we obviously don't know what exactly what the Galaxy XR is like to work, uh play with yet. But like ultimately that's gonna win over like, oh well, this one has better screens. You know, most people don't agreed.
SPEAKER_00And for I still haven't tried a Galaxy XR. There's no place to try them in our area without purchasing. Yeah. We've talked about getting one. There's a nice payment plan we could put together. Yeah. There are some things that we're working on that might necessitate some eye tracking based devices. But that means that the Steam frame is the easiest access to Right.
SPEAKER_01Except that it's not out yet, and we don't really know when it's gonna be. Yeah, we just know like 26.
SPEAKER_00But I'm saying 700 bucks. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm I'm gonna go on record and say it's right. I feel like that's been the biggest like consistent the consent.
SPEAKER_00If it was $599, I think they would ship twice as many. Yeah, but there is a weird environment for pricing things at the moment.
SPEAKER_01Um But I mean, like, you know, the 3S was on sale or is, I guess, technically still on sale at Costco for $199. Well, it's all sold out. Exactly. That's my point, exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00It's sold out immediately. Yeah. Like like uh CarMac said once upon a time, is like every uh there's a certain threshold where every time you drop the the price, a hundred times a hundred more people buy it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, or a hundred times. It might even be double, like a double every hundred dollars drop or something like that. It's no CarMak's a smart guy. So it's cautious. So I I definitely I'm I try to match my design decisions in in software to to match his uh because he he's uh he's a cool guy. Yeah. So if they could hit, I mean, especially on sales and stuff, like if they could get this during a sale to 550.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00There you go.
SPEAKER_01And maybe they'll do a bundle thing, right? Like where it's like it might be 500 bucks each thing, but then maybe put together it's like 1300, $1,200 somewhere. Oh, that'd be great. I would love that. You never know, right? Like, or it's like or it's $1,400 and they throw in the controller. Who knows? You know, they could, they may not, who knows?
SPEAKER_00You know, there's a lot of and a little nervous about the steam machine price, personally. Yeah, same. I mean, the thing is I I don't know that they'll they'll be able to move this at the price that they are expecting. There was a little uh awkwardness when Linus was in the room with them and he was like, Oh, you're you're shooting for a console-like price with them, right? And and he was in the room with them and he's and they were like, Oh, what's that console price? And he said, $500, and all the air got sucked out of the work. And Linus
Resolution, Optics, And LCD Tradeoffs
SPEAKER_00just went, huh?
SPEAKER_02And everybody went, Oh no.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so which is fine, I mean, it's fine for me. I don't it's fine for me because I have a 4070 Ti super in my machine, so I'll be able to run stuff perfectly well on this device, and it'll go great with the little Wi-Fi dongle that comes in the box with the Steam frame. Exactly so So I've got a good enough Steam machine on good. Yeah, so I think for me, day one purchase is probably gonna be the frame. The frame and the steam controller. I got you. Is okay, so I just want to gush about the steam controller. So I have two OG Steam controllers. I have two OG seam controllers. And the best thing about the original seam controllers is it had dual track pads. And so you can use them for games that I like to play a lot, real-time strategy games that require almost certainly require a mouse. Though these days, especially on Xbox, you can play AoE One, you can play Age of Mythology, you can play Age of Empires 4, all with controller, and it almost sort of controls better with a controller, especially since it's more of like a layback and play type of situation. Anyways, that's a whole situation. But playing with the dual trackpads on the Steam controller was always really great because you have this very precise analog control method that's sort of much more precise than analog sticks. And so on the new Steam controller, every single control method from the Steam Deck is there. So all of the pre-programmed Steam Deck community profiles work out of the box with the Steam controller, which means that there's hundreds of thousands of controller profiles that work out of the box with this new Steam controller, which is brilliant. It's great. I love it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'll be honest, I hadn't actually looked at this at all.
SPEAKER_00Because you know, I'm like, and then it's also using TMR sticks, which are the best on the market.
SPEAKER_01Which is true also of the the ones with the steam frame. Yeah. Uh but this I didn't realize the grip-enabled gyro. Yeah. So you can like grip the thing and then so I'm like, okay, that could be a game changer for driving gains, right?
SPEAKER_00Like uh I will say though that holding it up something like that and doing like that with your hands gets tiring. Yeah, I guess. If you just made like a stick that holds it, there you go.
SPEAKER_01Which I mean they might because like so the charger is also this wireless transmitter is also the charger, like has a little magnetic dock, which is awesome.
SPEAKER_00But maybe they could magnet dock to like a little, you know, well, and and some and some of the more and some of these these small little things are things that Valve really excels at. One of the problems with so I have a PC at my house that I use for gaming quite a bit, but it doesn't have a sleep to wake feature. If I want to log into my device, I have to, it brings up my Windows login. You can't get rid of it. Yeah. You have to go into the you have to do like BIOS hacks, registry hacks, registry hacks to be able to get rid of that. And I don't want to do that. Right, because it's a security issue. So what do I do? Every time I want to log into my PC, I have to go in, turn on the virtual keyboard, yeah, and like, you know, tick, tick, tick. And that is maddening. That's so maddening. With this, you just press the button, it turns on your Steam machine, and you're in. That's it's little, it's turning the PC into a console, but the console price isn't there, and they're gonna have a hard time with that. Yeah. Or at least we don't know what the price is, so try to hit that console price and you're good. See, because the way the consoles work is that they they expect to sell software, so they they subsidize the price of the the the hardware with their software. Steam is the largest PC games uh retailer that exists, period. Even big box stores. Yeah. So like they I don't understand why they're so reticent to subsidize the price from Steam.
SPEAKER_01I'm guessing because so far they haven't had to.
SPEAKER_00And that's most likely it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so they sort of balk at the idea, but they're already the biggest game companies. Well, and I read today that uh per employee, Valve makes fifty million dollars a year per employee. It is the most efficient Oh my god, it is the most efficient profit, private profit-driven company in the world.
SPEAKER_01I mean, and they're not even like starting wars across the globe or anything.
SPEAKER_00Like it's uh it's a very Valve is a relatively innocuous capitalist enterprise, and I admire them greatly, even if Gabin does have like 12 mega yachts or something something crazy like that. Where's my mega yacht?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, come on, man. Share the wealth.
SPEAKER_00Hey, you know, he's giving us the Gabe Cube. So Gabe's yeah.
SPEAKER_01But uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00All right, that's that's pretty much all we got on the the Steam environment, the new Steam hardware rollout. It's it's it's an interesting time to be alive. I wasn't sure it would have we'd we'd ever see it, but it is here, and it's the steam frame is pretty exciting. I'm I'm actually very excited for it. Yeah. And I think it's uh it's a much better device uh for the commun for the community than I think the index was. I think the index was too much for too little and uh just was a tiny percent uh and didn't really move uh the industry very far. It did a lot of really good really specific things really well, but not well enough to justify uh the price. Or at least it didn't do them different enough from existing
Dark Scenes And Contrast Limits
SPEAKER_00methodology, where this device makes really intelligent cuts and hits certain performance thresholds really well and expands the usability of the device really dramatically to be a major, major competitor to the quest, which I think most people that I've talked to want to de-meta their lives as much as possible. And this is the first real way to do that in any meaningful capacity.
SPEAKER_01So yeah. Exciting times. I mean, yeah, we're looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_00Uh all right, so we're we've been changing things up a little bit. This might be our new format going forward. Yeah, we're playing with it. Yeah, I thought I like it. It gives us sort of the depth. I think Z-axis is sort of uh the more natural sort of fit for our type of structure. I like it. Tell us what you think. Don't forget to subscribe, share, hit the like button, you know, all that stuff. We want to go out to more people. We've been hitting some better performance metrics recently because people seem to really like our reviews and this format. So we're going after that.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_00All right. Thank you and see you around. Peace.
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