ELI haven’t been following VR at all (because i haven’t). Why is Quest trash, specifically? It sounds like Frame is little more than a VR display for the Steam Box/gaming PC. Am I grossly misunderstanding the situation?
Comment on i cant wait to get a steam frame
markz@suppo.fi 3 days ago
Me too. From what I’ve heard meta hardware is great, but I wouldn’t take it even if they gave it to me for free.
dumbluck@midwest.social 3 days ago
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The frame is a gaming computer in its own right but can also be used as a display. There’s nothing wrong with the Quest from a technological standpoint. It’s just that you’re forced into the closed Meta ecosystem in order to use it. Many people don’t want to be there these days. Steam hardware tends to be open and moddable. Let’s hope they keep that up with the upcoming products.
dumbluck@midwest.social 3 days ago
All that makes sense. I didn’t realize the Frame could run games on its own. Any idea how powerful it will be? Equivalent to a steamdeck? Is the Quest similarly capable?
echodot@feddit.uk 3 days ago
It’s hard to benchmark because it’s running on a weird system architecture that no one’s ever really seen before.
On paper it should be at least as good as the quest, possibly a little bit more powerful. But there’s an awful lot of optimisation opportunities possible on ARM, but we don’t know if they will be initially realised. Of course you can also run it in display mode in which case it’s as powerful as the PC it’s paired with. At which point only really care about is the screen, comparable to the quest, the lenses which aren’t good as the quests, and the tracking which is probably quite a lot better than the quest. Also when it is paired to a computer it’s done so via 6G wireless rather than a cable, so that’s quite a lot more convenient.
The steam frame also has an expansion port, which is a new concept for VR headsets so we’ll see what ends up happening with that.
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
Unknown.
It’ll be running some kind of ARM soc. Hades has been demoed running flawlessly on it. No VR titles yet, but there is no reason they couldn’t work, too.
pory@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The main (and big) reason to not touch Quest is Facebook. It’s Facebook hardware running Facebook software and everything you do is tied to a Facebook account. VR is a novelty, I don’t think it’s a novelty worth using Facebook or buying a $900+ piece of hardware for (and most non Quests have their own restrictions).
Plus as far as I know, Quest doesn’t work very well as a PCVR headset. So instead of my $2000 gaming PC, I’d be playing these ultra high resolution high refresh rate games on what’s functionally a phone. Frame is designed as PCVR-first.
IamSparticles@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
The top end Quest 3 has an msrp of $500. They can often be found with a discount or used for less. I paid $300 for mine. That’s a pretty difficult price point to beat.
It actually works very well as a PCVR headset. What you need to understand is that it does not work as a dedicated display like traditional headsets do. You have to run a program on your PC that streams the display data to the headset over either a USB or wifi connection. An app on the headset receives and decodes the stream. There are some tradeoffs involved in doing it that way but it works surprisingly well for many use cases. I use mine over wifi with the third party streaming app Virtual Desktop. It’s shockingly smooth and the display quality is very good.
The next thing you should understand is that the Steam Frame is designed to work in exactly the same way for PCVR. That said, I am hopeful it will be more optimized and a smoother ux than a quest due to Valve’s priority on PC gaming. The fact that they include a dedicated 6ghz wifi dongle should give it a significant advantage in both stability and bandwidth. But I expect it will cost more. Probably a lot more. For my part I will have to decide if the benefits outweigh the price difference.
pory@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yes, but that’s Facebook. What i said was “either deal with Facebook or pay $900+”. Neither option is worth it to me for the novelty that VR provides.
markz@suppo.fi 3 days ago
Meta does all kinds of creepy shit, like using the cameras to compile a list of items in your home. I’d rather not do VR at all than use Meta, no matter how good it is.
Grass@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I fucking hate mine but I can’t stop playing beat saber. I only play the pc version with wivrn over wifi. It keeps forcing me into the little virtual scene thing when I would only ever want passthrough, some updates make tracking worse and beatsaber unplayable, controllers are super slippy and easy to drom/throw, management phone app spams you with ads/‘reccomendations’, never remembers my window setup and always forces me on to the store or socials by default and I have no friends that would use any fb/meta gaming socials, default face gasket is awful and I tried an alt strap and lost the original when the most comfortable setup I’ve since tried on someone else’s headset was alt gasket and default strap. Probably other stuff I’ve forgotten.
helimopp@lemmy.world 3 days ago
honestly, we wouldnt be having this conversation if the controler replacemants where cheap (which they are not) so i figure whats the point of getting replacement controllers when i can just get like uhhhhhhh a completely new headset
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
I’d rather go without VR than get a meta headset which is why I haven’t had one for years despite interest in it. I plan to get steam frame. Not sure if at launch if price is too steep, but eventually if it gets discounted after a year.
hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Same. I would never buy a quest, and the frame is what I was hoping something like it would come along.
Except I made the mistake of telling this to my buddy, boisterously, in a group. And he had apparently bought one awhile back and didn’t tell anyone 🙃