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Posted by Philpax 11/12/2025

Steam Frame(store.steampowered.com)
1915 points | 698 commentspage 4
lostmsu 11/12/2025|
Will the eye tracking data be directly available to developers?

Also, can I hack the OS? Specifically interested in direct VR rendering (other headsets don't allow to bypass compositor).

Melonai 11/12/2025|
Pretty sure the OS is just the same old Steam-flavored Linux distro "SteamOS" with ARM support and some new graphics pipeline stuff for the VR portion, though we don't know until it's actually out.

Though Valve has put a focus on developer ease and very low software lockdown in the recent years with their hardware, so I'd say the chances on direct rendering are quite good!

mmis1000 11/12/2025||
Wondering what window/desktop manager will valve ship with the new steam frame. Is there even a desktop/window manager work with 3d space currently? Will that be a mod of kde or something?
zozbot234 11/12/2025||
> Is there even a desktop/window manager work with 3d space currently?

The best known is perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass but there's many others, at varying stages of development. It will be interesting to see if custom OS/UX development is made available for this device. We'd also need quite a bit of custom development to make the OS comprehensively usable with gamepad-like controllers alone (no mouse or keyboard required). The existing work on "10-ft." media center interfaces can provide a useful starting point for this but it's far from covering all possible uses.

aezart 11/12/2025||
Wonder if/when prescription lenses will be available for it. I had to get some for my index since my glasses were too big to fit inside the headset.
klipklop 11/12/2025|
There will be.
dzonga 11/12/2025||
kudos to them for using AA batteries for the controller.

will help the hardware last longer. cz non-removable lithium batteries suck.

SchemaLoad 11/13/2025|
Maybe, but I've seen more controllers destroyed by AA batteries that leaked and corroded the contacts than internal batteries that failed.
jackvalentine 11/13/2025|||
It’s good that we have decent NiMH batteries that I don’t think leak like alkaline ones do (I’ve never seen one!).

Lower voltages, but flatter discharge curve so pretty much everything works with them.

foresto 11/13/2025||||
Let me guess: were they alkaline batteries, left in the device while not in use for several weeks or months?
arduinomancer 11/13/2025|||
I’ve never seen that in my entire life
vadansky 11/12/2025||
>2160 x 2160 LCD (per eye)

Here's hoping it will be like the Deck and we get Frame OLED in a year or so.

archi42 11/12/2025|
Last time I read up on OLED in VR, it was said that pancake lenses dissipate too much light. Might be dated of course, and iirc there is now at least one OLED+pancake HMD on the market.
ghosty141 11/12/2025|||
I have the Bigscreen Beyond 2 which is OLED + pancake fine. But only if you have the perfect light seal that the BSB face gasket ensures. Your eyes just adjust to it and I never thought about it while using it. The upside of having perfect blacks is sooooo worth it in my opinion. Flight sims in VR at night are an amazing experience
charcircuit 11/12/2025||
That is micro OLED and is more expensive than regular OLED.
asadotzler 11/12/2025|||
Several. Vision Pro, Galaxy XR, and Meganex 8K, and more coming like Crystal Super / Dream Air.
abtinf 11/13/2025||
It is unfortunate that it doesn't have a strap that goes over the top of your head. It is extremely irritating that almost every headset does this, then charges extra for an actually usable strap that takes the pressure off of your face.
ehnto 11/13/2025||
Yeah I noticed that as well. There is no material that can defy the physics, top strap is the best.
gempir 11/14/2025||
In the LTT Video they showed an optional top strap from Valve. So it's a thing!
slg 11/12/2025||
It's interesting to see them putting more attention on playing traditional games with this. I have long thought that the most broadly viable use for VR headsets in gaming is giving users a big screen to play their regular games. There just doesn't actually appear to be much market for true VR games considering all the complicating factors like motion sickness or requiring a big play area. It reminds me of the Nintendo Wii. Taking turns playing Beat Saber with a few of your friends is fun just like Wii Sports was, but in the end people are going to spend a lot more time sitting on their couch to play something more traditional like Mario Kart.
mottey 11/12/2025||
If it all launches with Half-Life 3 that works seamlessly across all 3 Steam platforms then we're living in the best timeline...
ehnto 11/13/2025||
I am beginning to wonder if the rumoured HLX is actuallya VR native experience, perhaps Alyx 2. All the leaks have pointed toward increased focus on systems like objects having physical properties that would really add to immersion in VR.
krior 11/12/2025||
> then we're living in the best timeline...

Needs to run GNU Hurd for that.

Zambyte 11/13/2025||
If we're going that route, it should really be Lisp :)
VikingCoder 11/13/2025||
YouTube just happened to show me Gamers Nexus Lossless Scaling & Lossless Frame Generation video just now. [1]

Which, I can't help but wonder. If this ran on the Frame... To aid in streaming from your desktop... In conjunction with Foveated Streaming...

What's even more bonkers to me is the idea that this could really be baked in to the streaming, if you think about it.

Server generates 100 beautiful frames in one second.

The streaming hardware reminds the server that with the current network conditions, that it can only handle X bits per second.

The Frame says, "Hey, here's where the eyes were looking, here's where they are looking, here's where they're projected to look."

The Server knows how many actual frames it can send in a second.

But the Server can run the same Lossless Scaling & Lossless Frame Generation that the client will run.

The Server can then compare the predicted frames against the actual frames, and it can send the delta needed to correct the predictions. Especially in areas close to where the eyes are looking.

The Client consumes the stream, predicts frames, applies the delta, and ends up with better framerate and quality...

Can you do this all low latency, too? I suspect so.

Add it all up, and this is pretty bonkers. I mean, it's kind of obvious that that's how streaming "should work," but I think I hadn't really put it all together yet in my mind. My mental model was too "off the shelf." It didn't include how much effort the client could do... And that the server could then also do, to help the client... It's really a beautiful pairing, when you think about it.

What's really bonkers is that Steam could learn what final images are supposed to look like, for a given game, and train AI specifically for that game. Update the server and the client, and bam, everyone gets better quality. With zero developer interaction.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w_Hqngky0s

WithinReason 11/13/2025|
This would solve the problem of bandwidth which is not a problem (250MB/s is enough, Valve says)
VikingCoder 11/13/2025||
This immediately made me wonder about a Steam Machine driving multiple Steam Frames for multiplayer games.

That could be super easy for a developer to make, all in one process, with no networking requirement for the game logic...

taeric 11/12/2025||
I'm unreasonably excited on all things Steam nowadays. I still like my PS5. And the PSVR2 is quite amazing for the games it has. But Steam has been amazing in getting back into games for me in ways that I did not anticipate.
nick49488171 11/12/2025|
2160x2160 in each eye for the headset
moffkalast 11/12/2025|
110 deg fov is a bit on the low side but I guess it'll have to do. I hate how 90% of VR headsets are designed to feel like you have binoculars strapped to your face, absolutely zero peripheral vision.
hinkley 11/12/2025|||
One of the reasons I put off getting corrective lenses for a long time and kept trying to use contacts despite how horrible they make my eyeballs feel, is that I have an extremely wide peripheral vision. I can see my fingers wiggle behind the plane defined by my shoulders, I will react to motion out there.

Having my FoV dumbed down to 90º sounds like hell, especially in a game where we are looking for opponents.

Playing Doom on a widescreen monitor with the FoV modifications made it a lot less annoying. I want that even more today.

lynnharry 11/13/2025|||
Have you tried rimless glasses? I don't think you need eye sight correction for your peripheral vision.
reliabilityguy 11/13/2025|||
> I can see my fingers wiggle behind the plane defined by my shoulders

I am a bit confused: you can see your shoulders while you are looking forward?

hinkley 11/13/2025|||
The normal human field of vision is about 190°, which mine is just about. If you don’t have a stoop that will catch the front edge of your shoulders. Fingers wiggling with your shoulders slightly overextended is just easier to see than a shoulder shrug.

It’s the amount of compute power that my brain allows for peripheral vision that’s the only unusual thing. But it makes video games feel claustrophobic to an unpleasant degree.

embedding-shape 11/13/2025|||
> I am a bit confused: you can see your shoulders while you are looking forward?

I can just about see my shoulders when i look forward, I'd probably also say my field of vision to be "the plane of view defined by my shoulders".

yencabulator 11/13/2025|||
It's not that they're "designed to feel like", it's that the technology for better than 110 degrees just isn't there yet.
moffkalast 11/14/2025||
There are tons of pro level headsets that go up to 170, the tech definitely exists, it's just not as cheap cause you need larger displays if you want to maintain dpi.
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