Steam Frame - Hacker News

Posted by Philpax 11/12/2025

Steam Frame(store.steampowered.com)

1915 points | 698 commentspage 5

heisnotanalien 11/13/2025|

Yesss. I will never buy anything Meta so happy to see this.

divan 11/13/2025||

Are there any real-world tests or reviews of foveated streaming in actual gameplay? I’m wondering how it holds up in fast shooters where you depend on tiny cues in your peripheral vision. Wouldn’t the lower-resolution periphery make it harder to notice subtle movement?

PoisedProto 11/17/2025|

There are some reviews like LTT that talk about it's impact. I'm not sure about the subtle movement though. I think they're lowering the quality to what your peripheral vision is already, so I don't think it would effect anything negatively. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU3ru09HTng

senectus1 11/13/2025||

Not a single piece of footage with someone wearing glasses and the Steam Frame

I guess we get screwed over again :-(

WhyNotHugo 11/13/2025||

I find it mind boggling that so many VR headsets cannot be used with glasses.

Imagine an engineering team and developers working on the device. There must be a pretty large proportion of folks with glasses. Does the fact that they cannot use their own product not raise a flag in any way!?

Anyway, for this particular model, others indicate that there may be an (optional?) spacer.

“Optional” sounds kinda sucky. Someone buys the headset, has a friend over, and the friend can’t use it because support for glasses is optional? It’s not like glasses are a niche thing.

vimredo 11/13/2025|||

The LTT video on the Steam Frame mentions an optional spacer for glasses and that Valve is working on getting prescription lenses for the Steam Frame.

ixwt 11/13/2025||

I'm in the same boat. But the specs do mention "Eye Glasses Max Width 140mm"

senectus1 11/13/2025||

oh i missed that. nice, I'm hopeful.

AISnakeOil 11/12/2025||

Valve just defeated Meta and Xbox in one go. nice.

foxandmouse 11/12/2025||

Interesting they went with the 8 Gen 3 instead of something like the X Elite. From what I’ve seen, the 8 Gen 3 actually outperforms the Elite in emulation and running PC games. I wonder if that factored into the decision.

craftkiller 11/12/2025||

Excited to see that it uses LCDs instead of OLED! One of the things holding me back from head-mounted displays is the short lifespan / burn-in issues of OLED. Also loving the replaceable batteries on the controller.

marcosscriven 11/12/2025||

Personally I much prefer OLED, especially for VR, and haven’t had any burn in issues with OLED in any form for years.

craftkiller 11/12/2025||

Even modern OLED experience burn-in (despite them announcing every year that "this time we solved the burn-in issue!"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whuHuM9h88M

VR is particularly bad for this because, on OLED, higher brightness = greater burn-in and VR headsets generally significantly over-drive their tiny displays.

Naturally the solution to all of this is MicroLED which will have the benefits of OLED without the downsides. But until then, the only device I'm using OLED for is my phone (and only because I no longer have a choice).

0x457 11/12/2025||

> Even modern OLED experience burn-in (despite them announcing every year that "this time we solved the burn-in issue!"):

Yes, but it's not degrading as fast as OLED haters makes you think. I spent days playing the same games (so HUD is in the static place) on multiple OLED screens I owned for years. No noticeable burn-in and still looks better than my only IPS screen.

AndroTux 11/12/2025|||

OLED only burns in if the content is static for hours. If your head is that stable while using VR, I give you $5.

t-writescode 11/12/2025|||

OLED is always burning in as a feature of it. It’s just much less noticeable when it’s:

  * cooled aggressively 
  * constantly changing colors (more even wear)

But it is still always losing durability in a steady way.

hnuser123456 11/12/2025||

I used colorcontrol to enter the service menu of my LG C2 and disable all anti-burn-in features. No auto dimming, no auto picture level, no anti-logo, etc. The only one I kept is pixel shift because it's only noticeable if you're looking at the edge of the screen when it moves, it's a tiny movement. I skip the "pixel cleaning" prompt every time it wants me to wait. When I'm gaming in HDR, I use filters to increase the exposure to get the maximum brightness range of the panel. Been using it like that for ~8hrs/day for over 2 years now. Zero detectable hint of burn-in.

Fabricio20 11/12/2025||

If you want a different anecdote, I have a LG C1 that got burn in after a year of use, playing FFXIV. I can see a blue outline of where my minimap and hotbars are. HUD burn-in. The only thing I disabled was the dimming feature, because it's outright annoying to use, where every time i'd scroll it'd make the text on a page illegiblly dark. (Dark mode pages, white text becomes dark gray while scrolling then back to white when stopped... sometimes not!). I moved that TV to the living room and got a non oled samsung instead which is what I use now.

craftkiller 11/12/2025|||

Do your VR games not have static HUDs / UIs? It has been a long time since I picked up a VR game since I no longer have the room.

rft 11/12/2025|||

I have seen different options of "HUDs" in VR games, not all are actually "heads up". Adding them to the proper context sometimes makes more sense than having them floating in mid air like in pancake view. Examples I have seen are 1) ammo count on the weapon directly, 2) score and score board to the side or projected onto the "floor", 3) attached to cockpit elements in space/flight sims and 4) somewhat affected by physics so they rubber band a bit with movements. I can't come up with an example of fully static HUD elements, but I am sure I have seen some.

And even if fully static contents were a problem, I guess the foveated streaming would introduce enough noise to counter burn-in.

ghosty141 11/12/2025|||

Not really, most HUDs are fixed to thigns like your hands, guns, etc. or don't exist at all.

Static objects in your view are VERY nauseating (at least in my experience).

SkyPuncher 11/12/2025||

I'm just not convinced it's really much of an issues now-a-days. We have an OLED in our main space and it's on nearly all day (I like keeping sound on while I work from home).

Zero sense of burn in.

karlkloss 11/13/2025||

Steam does a lot of things right here, but also some things wrong, which is unfortunately a dealbreaker for me.

I read the specs and got excited, until I read about the resolution. 2160x2160 is what I have now with the Pico 4, and while it's ok for entertainment, and acceptable for browsing and reading, it's far too low for professional work.

Linux would have been great, but I can't justify spending money on a headset with exactly the same low resolution as my current one.

Also, I've become used to color passthrough, and going back to monochrome would feel like a big regression.

arduinomancer 11/13/2025||

To be fair its obviously not meant for professional work

Valve is a game company

bottlepalm 11/13/2025||

I don't think any VR headset is good for professional work due to the focal plane mismatch which causes eye strain with long term use. Unless you like using a computer with a screen 4 feet away. For most people that's pretty uncomfortable for productivity work.

sergiotapia 11/12/2025||

It will be strange to be playing on a big VR screen with your controller and it's colored and beautiful and everything around it is black and white.

I wonder what their solution to that is. Virtual environments?

VikingCoder 11/12/2025|

They mention tracking the new Steam Controller, too.

Which makes me wonder if they'll make a new Steam Deck that has the IR emitters in it, so the Frame could track the Deck?

I wonder if the two working together could work well?

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