There’s a fair bit of difference between streaming pre-recorded large frame video versus low latency live streaming with small frames and a bit less size efficient but more CPU efficient encoding, etc…
And because of how SoC chips are binned (what components are offered together, economy of scale, etc), once you pick a SoC with a GPU with enough power to accelerate this decoding, you also have enough power total to do other stuff like on-device gaming simply because if you ask for a cheaper CPU it will cost you more for them to make a custom assembly (unless you ask for a large enough volume of custom chips).
And don’t forget foveated rendering. Most of the magic making it capable of gaming with high quality comes from that. They didn’t put the highest tier chip in, they reduced the work it has to do instead
SatyrSack@quokk.au 1 day ago
The point they are getting at is that in order to stream games to a VR headset, that headset needs to have a certain amount of compute power in order to interpret the stream while also handling tracking, connecting to controllers, etc. That amount of compute power is also capable of running games in standalone, so they may as well support that option as well.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 22 hours ago
But that isn’t true at all, and I’ve still seen no one from valve actually claim it is true.
artyom@piefed.social 1 day ago
That makes no sense. It requires more compute to run a whole-ass game along with tracking controllers than it does just tracking controllers.
SatyrSack@quokk.au 1 day ago
Streaming to a VR headset involves the headset computing more than just controller tracking. It needs to interpret the incoming stream and all sorts of other various things that need to be computed. A VR headset that has a processor that is powerful enough to stream heavy games is also powerful enough to play light games in standalone.
artyom@piefed.social 1 day ago
Yes but not much. Again streaming games from weak hardware is a whole industry. It’s the point of platforms like Luna, GeForce Now, Stadia, etc. Streaming from cheap Android TV boxes and such. Valve even sold their own cheap streaming box, the Steam Link.