ericwdhs

@ericwdhs@discuss.online

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair enough, and you’re welcome.

  I will add that I have a Steam Machine I only occasionally use because I have a much better desktop already connected to my living room TV. However, I don’t regret getting it, because it’s genuinely a joy to use every time I have a good excuse to, and it’s a nice refuge from a tech industry that largely feels hostile to its users.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I know you asked for the opposite, but it actually sounds like you’re a good fit for the Steam Machine. You didn’t mention the price being a deal breaker. You will appreciate the form factor and quietness. You want performance, but you’re apparently not a stickler for it, and the Steam Machine should be enough performance for a long while, especially with the market stagnating. You already like Linux. You mentioned a busy life, and the Steam Machine doesn’t require you to build it, makes getting in and out of games as fast as it’s possible to be on PC, and is popular enough that you will have the most possible reference material for quickly setting unique things up (like emulation) or doing troubleshooting.

  Now, it does have less modularity and upgradability than your typical desktop PC, including small form factor builds (usually still at least twice the size and noisier), but how big of a negative that is is up to you.

  You mentioned the Steam Deck being too heavy. Have you tried using it, or is that an assumption based on its listed weight? I personally find it so well balanced that it feels lighter than it actually is, and that’s apparently a common opinion, but I’m always interested in seeing other opinions. It’s probably the best backlog killer available now (including over the Steam Machine) if you can work with its compromises.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From feast to famine: Steam hardware reservations⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  In case this saves anyone else the trouble, I got my purchase email for the Frame (256G) yesterday too. I went through the purchase process a bit too excitedly, and after completing it, I realized I never selected any accessories. I assumed I missed this step on one of the pages I didn’t scroll down on.

  Stupidly, I never checked the Internet to learn the accessories are sold out, which apparently has been news for about a week now. Even more stupidly, I looked at Steam Support options for the purchase, and made the closest selection I could make to what I wanted, a refund request with a comment about actually wanting the purchase just with accessories.

  It turns out the request was either automatically approved or approved by someone who didn’t bother with my comment. I had to make another Steam Support ticket to which they told me to get on the wait list again after which they would make a one-time exception and send me the purchase email again, which I’m currently waiting for.

  So, not a big setback overall and definitely in the territory of first world problems, but I am getting the Frame at least a couple days later than I otherwise would have. Don’t rush through purchases, kids.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This may be the best way to play 2D games*⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep, you got it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This may be the best way to play 2D games*⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Interestingly enough, the focal length of the lenses and perceived distance due to stereoscopic parallax are completely unrelated.

  The lenses can’t reshape themselves, so the screens have to always sit at a constant perceived distance from your eyes, typically set around the middle of where the eyes are used to focusing, about 2 meters away. This isn’t a problem, because the effect of the brain taking depth cues from parallax is much stronger, so the focal length detail just fades into the background.

  What this all means though is that whether or not you need glasses in a VR headset is entirely dependent on whether you need glasses to see objects 2 meters away outside VR. This remains true even when objects in VR are much closer or farther as perceived by stereoscopic vision.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This may be the best way to play 2D games*⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a big VR nerd as well, but I always saw it as a medium adjacent to flat gaming, not a substitute or upgrade, so I’ve pretty much always bounced between the two since the Vive. I am excited for the Frame’s potential as a portable desktop, but I don’t hold any illusions of that being something I’ll regularly use beyond traveling and hotel stays, lazy days in bed, etc. I imagine most people will land in that area once the newness wears off.

  Then again, I’m privileged to have lots of tech and no family members competing for it. I could see someone in different circumstances making the Frame their main gaming device for both flat and VR games, even though that feels as weird to me as the idea of people using the Steam Deck as their main AAA game device, which also definitely happens.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This may be the best way to play 2D games*⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The lenses actually have your eyes focusing on a spot about 6 feet or 2 meters away, about the median distance your eyes should be used to anyway. I’ve seen nearsighted people be surprised they still need glasses in VR.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OOTL I just found out about the valve Index. Whats the difference between valve Index and steam Frame?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In case you’re interested in more of Valve’s history with the tech, look into the original HTC Vive. It’s basically a Valve product in all but name. Valve developed most of the Vive’s core technologies in-house but wasn’t really set up to manufacture a lot of first-party devices yet, so they partnered with HTC for that part. The Index is in many ways a Vive 2.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know if the Frame is exactly the same, but the lens in previous headsets made it so that the screens are in focus at a perceived distance of about 6 feet or 2 meters. I think the only time you might notice that distance is when the screens are purely black.

  Most of the time, you’ll be looking at a virtual environment where your brain is predisposed to determine depth by the parallax effect, both the offset from each eye and how things visually move when you move (faster = closer).

  You should never actually feel like the screens are very close outside your brain conceptually knowing that they are. At most, the actual feeling should be closest to looking through goggles, so if you can handle that, you should be fine.

  Also, in case it’s related to your fear, the widespread idea of screens permanently damaging your vision is a myth. It came about, because children who needed vision correction would naturally sit closer to televisions to be able to see them. The televisions got blamed for poor vision when the actual cause and effect were swapped. At most, screens can cause some eye strain, but it’s the same idea as holding a muscle in one position too long, uncomfortable but not actually debilitating.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Frame Officially Has FCC Certification To Sell In The USA - Steam Deck HQ⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, but that’s not abnormal stuff. Every anticipated hardware device has people digging into documents, patents, etc. for clues ahead of release, tracking milestones, etc.

  Then again, I was an active participant in similar efforts for both the original Steam Deck and Valve Index releases, and I follow a few other tech spaces that see this continually even right now, so maybe my standards for “normal” are way off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Frame Officially Has FCC Certification To Sell In The USA - Steam Deck HQ⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They were targeting sub-$1000 before things got crazy. If it was going to be exactly $1000 and it sees the 40% jump the Steam Machine did, that would be $1400. I think storage and RAM are a lower percentage of the Frame’s cost which would theoretically push it down further, but then again, that may be countered by the market continuing to get worse. Still, I’ll be very surprised if they price it a ton higher than $1500.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Frame Officially Has FCC Certification To Sell In The USA - Steam Deck HQ⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Obviously, my experience is anecdotal, but I got both Valve-developed headsets at launch, the HTC Vive and the Valve Index, the latter of which I think is still very close to the sweet spot for VR tech 7 years on. I’ve purposely avoided all the Meta headsets.

  The stock Vive only using straps for support was indeed a little uncomfortable to wear, but the experience was still compelling enough to use it for hours. I did eventually do the welding mask mod for it that greatly improved the comfort and added over-ear speakers like the Index later got.

  Fast forward to the Index, and I still use it off and on. It was comfortable enough out of the box to never modify, and I’ve even fallen asleep a few times in the thing. The Frame further shrinking the front and moving weight to the back for balance can only be better.

  I think VR overall is only a failure for those who bought into the hype that it’s an evolution that would eventually replace flat gaming (see the Ready Player One vision). That’s never going to happen because the abstraction that allows you to press a button, move a mouse, tilt a stick, etc. to simulate an action taking much more energy to perform in the real world is a huge convenience we’re never going to give up en masse. It’s perfectly fine for VR to remain a niche, adjacent medium.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Frame Officially Has FCC Certification To Sell In The USA - Steam Deck HQ⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I peeked. It didn’t seem that bad, just memes and shitposts.

  I also don’t mind releases taking the “when it’s ready” approach. It’s kind of refreshing actually.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Machine LED support on Linux has been merged into OpenRGB⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never used any of this and can’t find documentation on the hardware sync plugin, so forgive the maybe dumb question. How far can the configuration realistically go? Let’s say my ideal setup is splitting the 17 LEDs into something like:

  6 for CPU usage with red as the active bar marking out 50% to ~100% usage and blue as negative space

  1 spacer

  3 for temperature going up from blue to red

  1 spacer

  6 for GPU usage with red as the active bar marking out 50% to ~100% usage and blue as negative space

  How close would I be able to get to that?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve says iFixit will keep selling Steam Deck batteries after all. Valve won’t be sunsetting the battery yet.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As far as I understand it, there’s no actual “official” definition. Second-party can mean both:

  From the main supplier but retaining a different supplier’s branding (as opposed to rebranding, which makes it first-party again even if the manufacturer doesn’t change).

  OR

  The buyer, analogous to the second-person point of view (“you”), so in that context, a second-party battery would be one you build yourself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Frame's "Great on Frame" Page Is Now Live⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s possible, but I believe that Valve employee’s exact wording was something like “we’re trying really hard to beat the original Index price ($999).” To me that reads like beating the Index price wasn’t a guarantee and that if they did beat the Index price, it wasn’t by much, so I’m assuming the pre-RAMpocalypse price was $900 to $1000. The Steam Machine saw a 40% price increase due to the current market. RAM and storage is a lower percentage of the Frame’s hardware, so I think it’ll probably see a 20% to 30% price increase. That gives an approximate range of $1100 to $1300, but I’m guessing on the higher end to either not be surprised or pleasantly surprised. I don’t think they’re factoring in the (heavily subsidized) Quest 3 price much at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Frame's "Great on Frame" Page Is Now Live⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m an Index (and Vive and OG Controller and Link and Deck…) early adopter too, and it helps to remember this is all part of the same effort building on itself. Valve’s hardware division was much less mature in the Index days. Don’t forget that only a few years before, they basically developed all the tech for the Vive themselves, but still needed to partner with HTC for the manufacturing side. I’m glad the new stuff has better push.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Steam Frame's "Great on Frame" Page Is Now Live⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Index also didn’t have what’s basically a full ARM device inside, but yeah, I still think anywhere from $1200 to $1500 is most likely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Deck: Does anyone have an idea or way of estimating how many Steam Deck are in use? (Speculation)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, the inverse problem also exists, multiple users on a single device causing that device to get over-reported. This is most commonly seen with cyber cafes in Asia. The effect is present all year (and is another reason to expect the actual Deck percentage to be slightly higher), but it spikes every February as Chinese cyber cafes get busy over Lunar New Year.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Deck: Does anyone have an idea or way of estimating how many Steam Deck are in use? (Speculation)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As I understand it, the survey flags a random sampling of logged in Steam user accounts to run the survey on each month. For each selected user, the survey prompt then pops up the next time they’re online on the device they’re online with as an offline device can’t receive the survey notice.

  Let’s say I game with my desktop 20 times per month and my Deck 10 times per month, but I’m only actually connecting it to the Internet 2 times a month for updates. In that scenario, it seems the desktop would be 10 times more likely to get the survey even though that doesn’t reflect the actual usage spread.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Deck: Does anyone have an idea or way of estimating how many Steam Deck are in use? (Speculation)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  See my other comment here. I’m in the “active Deck user, but not as main PC crowd.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Deck: Does anyone have an idea or way of estimating how many Steam Deck are in use? (Speculation)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  @thingsiplay@beehaw.org Does this work like Reddit tagging?

  I have a Steam Deck I would consider to be in active use, but it’s a secondary system for me, and the times I’m using it most heavily are done without Internet. I don’t believe it’s ever been counted in a survey, and I imagine there’s a bunch of users in the same situation.

  The same kind of thing used to happen with VR headsets before they switched it to counting any headset used in the last 30 days (determined by whether the driver was launched). I always used to get the survey when mine wasn’t plugged in, and it always annoyed me to not be counted in the VR userbase. Lol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has anyone here got their Steam Machine yet?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I just did some testing.

  The game ran a quick benchmark and set stock settings of 1080p, medium preset, FSR scaling, and quality scaling mode to yield a steady 60 fps with about 70% GPU usage. The frame generation was enabled, but there was enough horsepower for it to not actually be used. The picture was a bit grainy however.

  With both FSR scaling and frame generation disabled still at medium and 1080p, it’ll play around 45 fps.

  I would say the optimal settings are close to stock, but you’ll want to upgrade from FSR 3 to FSR 4 released recently on Proton Experimental. This will probably be unnecessary later when FSR 4 gets rolled into the regular Proton releases. The game looked much less grainy with this.

  To do this, on the Steam page for the game, you’ll want to go to Settings (the gear icon) > Properties > Compatibility > enable “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool” > Proton Experimental. Do note the settings in game are currently hard coded to say FSR 3, so you won’t see it mention running on 4.

  There’s probably more tweaking that can be done, but that’s kind of getting away from the point of this thing. I have a beefy PC and would still be happy to play it as above.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has anyone here got their Steam Machine yet?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice. I already have that one. I’ll check it out in a few resolution-settings configurations later tonight.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My steam machine arrived!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel sorry for anyone that doesn’t have at least one area they are enthusiastic enough about to splurge a little in. Still, can we really call it consumerism when Valve releases hardware so infrequently? Seriously. 11 years between controllers? 7 years between VR headsets? 6+ years expected between handhelds?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My steam machine arrived!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, I never claimed it filled a necessary niche. It’s a luxury good by definition. I just don’t mind having multiple options, redundancy, and overlap in hardware roles even if that means some of it gets underutilized. That said, I’m not planning to keep the thing under the TV indefinitely. It’s going to justify its standalone performance at least occasionally.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My steam machine arrived!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re just not seeing outside the bubble of the use cases that make sense to you. I already have great daily driver PCs currently running a mix of Bazzite and CachyOS (and Windows, ew), and I have built a couple SFF PCs before, so I’m no stranger to all of that. I can’t speak for anyone else here, but part of why I find the Steam Machine compelling is it covering the opposite end of that spectrum to a degree other SFF options haven’t reached.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My steam machine arrived!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lol. Don’t assume I’m going into these purchases on blind fanboyism, and don’t confuse “niche” with “bad.” I just have very good experiences with their hardware going all the way back to the OG Controller, Link, and the Vive (which I consider theirs more than HTC’s), and that informs decisions that follow.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My steam machine arrived!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just tested it. Yes, it does. It woke it from sleep and also woke it from shutdown.

  CEC, on the other hand, is behaving weird for me. That’s probably a software issue Valve will soon patch or an issue with my TV. I have a 2017 4K Samsung that I will never connect to the Internet and have never bothered to update. I’ll just keep its remote handy in the meantime.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My steam machine arrived!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “Not that much smaller” is doing some heavy lifting. Every SFF build or mini PC compromises something, price, size, thermal performance, whatever. Physics necessitates it. It’s perfectly fine for you to not value size so much that a 3.8L case isn’t compelling to you over let’s say a 6L ITX case (or the 8L you really need for a discrete GPU), but it’s also okay to feel the opposite.