He added that many indie games will run just fine on the Steam Frame, along with older back-catalog AAA games (which are still enjoyable) that don't require the compute of more modern titles.
"So I think the point is that you're able to engage with your whole library, right?" said Griffais. "And then have kind of a similar thing as the Deck where you're going to try and figure out if some games are maybe a little bit below the bar in terms of what you would like for performance."
Half-Life Alyx has been the poster child for VR gaming in recent years, and Valve has taken steps to ensure that Steam Frame users can have a proper native gaming experience. “And we're doing the same for Half-Life Alyx, where we're doing a lot of work to support the Frame more natively and trying to remove performance barriers that are induced by some of the translation, the emulation there that you get on normal and modified PC games.,” said Griffais.
While standalone gaming on the Steam Frame is possible, Valve designed the headset first and foremost as a streaming device. To that end, Valve has taken steps to optimize the networking stack and improve performance. One of those steps is implementing foveated streaming to reduce strain on network resources.
“So the Steam Frame has eye-tracking cameras on the inside of the headset that know where your eyes are looking. And when you have that, there's a lot of potential use cases, but the one that we're using most consistently is foveated streaming, which really means when you're streaming, especially VR content, there's a lot of video data that you have to send," Leinbaugh explained.
"But because we know with eye-tracking cameras what part of the image you're looking at at any time, we can refocus some of those resources to make sure that the important parts of the image are treated as like first-class bits. And then the rest gets kind of the last part of the resource pool, which is the part of the image that you can't see and you won't notice the image degradation."
By not treating every bit delivered to the headset the same, Valve can reap performance and image quality gains. "So it's the best analogy really is it's almost as if the part that you're looking at is using about 10 times as much bandwidth and encoding bit rate as it actually is for the entire image, because we just squished it all into that part that follows where you're looking."
The Steam Frame communicates with your PC wirelessly using a dedicated Wi-Fi 6E USB dongle. Data transfers between the two happen over the 6 GHz channel for optimal performance. I inquired about how any disruptions/interference with that wireless link would affect gameplay.
“So there's a fallback mechanism built into that, which, if you have two links active and one of them drops out because of interference, or you walked out of range, or all the many reasons that wireless interference can happen," said Leinbaugh. "If something happens to one of those links, the other one will immediately pick up and cover the gap. And it's just very unlikely that a lot of those sources of interference will hit both links at the exact same time."
Other strategies can also step in; for example, if you have a latency spike, a previous frame can be "reprojected and replayed" to cover small gaps. For extended dropouts, there's no recovery method; the stream will fail, and you'll be booted to the default environment.
There are also other strategies that can step in; for example, if you have a latency spike, a previous frame can be "reprojected and replayed" to cover small gaps. For extended dropouts, there's no recovery method; the stream will fail, and you'll be booted to the default environment.
Pricing, of course, will be a big sticking point with the Steam Frame. Consumers got a bit of sticker shock with the Steam Machine given its hardware specs, and the Steam Frame will likely be no different. The Steam Frame starts at $1,069 for the 256GB SKU and costs $1,299 for the 1TB SKU.
"I think as far as memory prices and those kinds of conditions, we're really in it like everyone else," Griffais explained. "We've been working hard on trying to get the parts that we can get at the best price possible."
While all of us would love for memory and storage prices to fall to sane levels again, it will be a while before we see any relief. "It's an unfortunate situation all around. We wish that gaming hardware was cheaper, but we're definitely trying to be on the cheapest side that we can get despite all those conditions," Griffais explained.
But price increases aren't just limited to the likes of memory, as Griffais added, “Even just things like motherboards, copper, anything, even shipping anything worldwide right now is way more expensive than it was last year and two years ago. So every part of the sticker price is affected there."
The Steam Frame will be available starting September 14, and it will use a reservation system similar to that of the Steam Machine to cut down on scalpers.
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Brandon Hill Social Links Navigation Senior Editor Brandon Hill is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware. He has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s with bylines at AnandTech, DailyTech, and Hot Hardware. When he is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons.
ezst036 It is such a shame that the industry went into chaos the last year or three before Valve's newest releases of the Gabecube and Frame. That chaos is going to overshadow to some degree what these devices could be. Alternatively though, something that people often overlook is Valve's continued investment in the entire graphics stack for Linux, not just for the chips that directly affect them. That adds value to any user who wants any AMD GPU for gaming on Linux and we all benefit for it at a time when pricing is ridiculous. In this sense, Valve is delivering better value and lower prices for people who can't upgrade whatsoever or else, can't upgrade reaching as high up the ladder as they wish they could. Just get an AMD card. Just keep your AMD card and do not spend anything at all. Valve will take care of you. That's the message – for anybody who wants to hear it and respond accordingly to it. Valve is pretty much the best organization in gaming today. Including all their flaws and mistakes. Look at Sony – wow what a grotesque husk. Reply
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/virtual-reality/valve-engineers-discuss-the-duality-of-the-steam-frame-and-pricing-valves-newest-vr-headset-pivots-steamos-to-arm#main
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