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
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.
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.
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!
How…how many dozens of hours you spend on it to be #1?
Dozens of dozens!
I play about an hour every day unless I’m sick, away, or (painfully) injured. I think my most recent play streak was over 6 months of playing every day without a single day off.
I’m a 48yo, BTW 😁👍
I agree with the other guy. Beat Saber is not a novelty game. It’s easy to have short, self-contained experiences with it, but that’s not the same thing. It’s extremely fun on its own merit and worthy of putting dozens to hundreds to thousands of hours into it. I would also put it at the very top of the “exercise game” genre (see a lot of stuff on the Wii), because of how well it masks being very active behind just being fun and because getting better at the game ties more directly to you physically getting better than just about any other game.
That said, I think it’s only a 10/10 game if you’re willing to mod it to add custom songs (there’s literally hundreds of thousands the community has mapped) and a 6/10 game if you aren’t. I haven’t bought any of the DLCs, so maybe it’s an 8/10 with those. I think the modding is extremely easy, but I also know there are a lot of people not interested in doing that even when it’s literally a couple clicks.
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 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.
I loved The 7th Guest VR
Simracing for me. Automobilista 2 in VR is sublime.
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.
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 2 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/
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.
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
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.
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Yes, something that is coming is typically not there yet.
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.
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 its performance with the Steam Machine if it wasn’t working by the time reviewers got their hands on it.
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.
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.
Actually not terrible. Wow.
$1050 is not terrible for you? Ok…
It can do more than some $3500 headsets (run desktop class applications natively)
That’s so extremely vague that I don’t even know how to respond. What’s desktop class for you? x86? What type of “apps” would you want to run on a vr headset?
Price is alright given the market conditions, but the lottery really ticks me off.
Imo the lottery is the most fair way of doing it. Instead of people being lucky to be awake/available right as the announcement dropped, everyone has the same chance of being placed early in the queue.
The lottery is fine, it’s the fact it’s even necessary I abhor.
Would you rather their entire stock gets bought up by bots to be scalped?
No, I’d love there to be enough supply for the vast majority of prospective buyers.
I tried to pre order a zelda anniversary and was too busy and ended up trying to buy it an hour after orders opened and I couldn’t buy it (unless I paid 2x the price on ebay). Lottery is the much better way to do preorders.
Or, you know, producing enough to meet demand from the start. People have gotten so used to sought after items being in short supply, the thought that companies can actually gauge demand quite well and could produce enough stock doesn’t even cross their mind anymore.
I feels like you’re underestimated the word “enough” here. It’s a niche product, no one know what’s the actual demand vs scalper, and certainly no one can know what amount is “enough”.
Also ram is hard to get.
I want to remember people, that I was right and Tyler McVicker was wrong. He predicted a launch price of 1500 Dollars. There were entire articles and discussions in the web around that prediction: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/112988/the-steam-frame-could-be-priced-at-dollars1500-at-launch-according-to-insider/index.html and linked to Lemmy post for discussions: https://lemmy.ml/post/51014971 I just find it fun to see and read what people expected, and then what reality is.
I quote myself:
BTW the article is based off Tyler McVicker’s prediction. He was never good at predicting…
I’d definitely take the 256GB model, if it was available in my country… 😢
A shame - I feel like VR really needs a loss leader to actually build more foundation for developers to actually care… but at least its out now I guess
Isn’t that what meta’s been doing for a decade?
Doesn’t seem to be working too well for them
Doesn’t seem to be working too well for them
Yes, because they didn’t focus on gaming or useful capabilities but instead tried to develop a PG-rated (as in, for kids) platform for work. Meta’s management literally thought everyone would want to strap on a VR headset and wear it all day for work.
Meanwhile, loads of fantastic games had people buying headsets just to play the game they want.
Basically, Meta invested all their time and money in all the wrong things. All the stuff nobody actually wants to do with their VR headset. I mean, come on: They wanted to do away with the controllers! That’s how anti-gaming their focus was.
They tried so hard to push this as a workspace thing due to covid and the apple vr head set. Meta really wanted vr to be for everything but gaming which was the only thing that did well.
They could of been successful too, the first big wave of vr came from the success of the quest 2, and they used all the success to buy all the game devs only to shut down all the games, and force them to work on the meta verse.
It worked pretty good for the quest 2 it was like the first big wave of vr users and devs. Its died off sense then mainly metas fault.
Meta bought up all the popular vr games, did nothing with them and either shut then down or made then work on the meta quest.
Thats of course when mark decided to go all in on this metaverse idea seeing a slight success with the quest 2. They essentially wanted to be the roblox of vr because most of the users only bought the quest to play roblox, and that monkey game that has 3000 clones now.
In a different universe palmer lucky didn’t sell oculus to Facebook, we have a good headset still and hes not out there making ai drones that autonomously shoot down innocent fishing boats off our coast.
I think Valve has realised that it’s really just for a certain niche of gamers and that’s who they’re targeting, unlike Meta, that thought everyone would want to live, work and play in the ‘Metaverse’ which was never going to happen.
The lottery is cool but too bad this time they don’t allow you to join the list for both options to increase your chances of getting one in the first batch. I decided to go with the 256GB one. I don’t think I’ll be using it standalone very much, so I don’t really need the extra storage. And while I believe there will be more people signing up for that one, there will also be more units available, making the chances pretty much equal. Obviously, saving 200+ euros is a plus too.
69€ for the pretty much mandatory “Ergonomic Accessories” pack is just dumb, imo. For a 1000+ euros product I would expect that stuff to be included.
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!
LTT is unreliable at best
I’ve not played any VR for a while, but I remember it being physically exhausting enough that I think my own battery would be empty before the Frame’s
If I get one I’m planning on playing with an external battery attached on my hip lol
Less than I expected yet still expensive. But, I would pay more than double to not get a meta headset.
I would of bought no hesitations for around 750 USD. 1200USD is where I thought it was going to be for the 256, and is the price point I say I have no use for it.
1100 is still too rich for my taste, but I was surprised too.
Yeah, I expected much worse after the Steam Machine price and storage and ram costs going up. On the waitlist for the 256 model, but not sure I’ll actually buy it.
I don’t have VR, but I had been interested in Half Life Alyx and Beat Saber.
Save half life Alex for when you start getting a little bored of vr, really brings back the joy of when you first put on the head set.
Unless you are getting a steam frame, then I feel like you gotta play it first.
Yeah, if I get into vr it’ll be with the steam frame due to refusing to get meta headsets.
I’ll be picking up beat saber and pistol whip since I love rhythm games. Will look into driving, flying, and fpv drone flying games.
You’ll love it. Lots of flat games turned vr too so you might already have some right off the start.
Yeah it looks like I’ll be able to hold off on rushing right to Half Life Alyx. The flat gaming stuff looks cool.
I was refering to games like 7 days to die or subnautica getting either official vr mods or modes. But yeah play flat games in a big picture mode is kinda cool. I felt like a dork in my own house, around people who don’t make fun of me for stuff like that. Its different when you are in vr because you are immersed more, but you’re kind of supposed to look stupid.
The worst was i couldn’t feel anymore like a jackass when I was trying to do the thing where I watch YouTube in vr while doing the dishes with a pinned screen, and then having to talk to my sagnificant other.
Does anyone have an educated guess on my odds of getting picked from the list for a 1TB?
Ughhh. Guess im not getting one of these either.
this is so crazy absurd. so damn expensive.
