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[vanillaFace]

Valve showed off an eInk one to people. Is that what you are talking about?

oh interesting is that what it is/was? That's cool. I was thinking like an actual screen you can game on, on the front panel of the cube, lol. I feel stupid saying it, but yeah, as a minimalist aesthetic enjoyer, I think it would be cool.

 

[lastmessiah]

Watch Sony do a 180 on PC ports.
I'm just laughing at them right now.

Why would they? The games are already available on Steam and don't sell particularly well, nor are they even the primary revenue generators for Sony.

 

[Tomeru]

Target audience has nothing to do with you saying this is an ugly device and me disagreeing with you.

Maybe not, but common joe sees this and ps5 on the shelf - what is he (assuming its a he) going to pick? The black box that can play pc games, or the playstion he's gonna play gta6 on?

 

[Topher]

Maybe not, but common joe sees this and ps5 on the shelf - what is he (assuming its a he) going to pick? The black box that can play pc games, or the playstion he's gonna play gta6 on?

I agree with you there. I'm just saying I like the look of the black box. lol

 

[Magic Carpet]

When will ROG announce their version with the latest AMD GPU? Just triple the dimensions of the cube. And lots and lots of RGB lights.

 

[Tomeru]

I agree with you there. I'm just saying I like the look of the black box. lol

Sorry, I just woke up. My response was automatically juvenile.

 

[MGHA]

They announced 3 things...

 

[Topher]

Sorry, I just woke up. My response was automatically juvenile.

lol....nah, all good my man. I'm a total jackass before my first pot of coffee. lol

 

[CrustyBritches]

It doesn't have to.

The base idea here isn't about having a high marketshare of one device. The goal here is to increase the addressable market of SteamOS users.

If this gets big enough, then devs can begin targeting SteamOS releases all on their own, and when that happens, things start getting very interesting for the industry at large.

Yeah, I think many people miss the point of the Steam Deck, Machine, etc.. This is about SteamOS and the future of PC gaming, not console gaming. Valve is not trying to "penetrate" the console market and compete with console makers. This about refining and building a install base for their gaming OS to control their own destiny and hedge against any potential aggressive or monopolistic practices from MS.

The Deck was the tip of the spear for all this. It's like testbed of sorts. I remember reading around launch in 2022 and there were like 300 'Verified' titles and 300 'Playable' titles. Now there's around 19000 Verified and Playable games on Deck according to SteamDB. Something like 7000 'Verified' games. Of course they gain a lot more than that.

 

[Haint]

I've seen many times that it's considered more of a mixed bag for VR purposes than some tend to claim here... for instance, this comment sums it up well:

tl/dr (and this seems to fit with what DigitalFoundry said in the video):
- better raw response times may be possible on OLED screen, yes, for general (non-VR) purposes
- but not always as possible or easy to do truly low image persistence where you actually can strobe with black between frames, at least at these already higher framerates (without backlight toggling you'd have to at least double the framerate to do black strobing, yes? and that just ends up cutting down on the brightness anyway so then you waste a lot of the OLED power);
- this actually matters for VR, where you can be very affected by artificial motion;
- plus, there are (as many PSVR2 reviews pointed out) major complications with "MURA" effect for VR, which many users would is a far worse annoyance than having less constrast

My sense from listening to these conversations is always that the OLED vs LCD thing is a trade-off with various complications. Other choices apart from the sceen, like pancake lenses and very custom factored LCD shape (they discuss a bit the panels in the Valve headset), may have a greater impact than the nice OLED contrast, and there are various OLED factors that cut both ways as far as its speed, depending on how it is used and the overall setup.

At the very least, DF seemed to acknowledge that there are trade-offs here and there isn't any easy solution to pick.

This is what we refer to as the textbook definition of cope, it's posted every time someone's favored brand releases a headset with LCD's. They search for ways to rationalize and accept it like some Sonic cycle or stages of grief shit.

mOLED's don't have mura, don't raise the black floor, and also wouldn't have an issue with persistence at the 100 nits they're running these bargain bin LCD's at. Persistence only becomes a problem when you try to drive them to HDR and pseudo-HDR brightness levels at the eye. It's also possible to quality control mura out of standard AMOLED displays to the point it's effectively moot, like the original Vive and Rift did. It was for all intents and purposes a complete non-issue back then cause the panels were properly binned, they were several orders of magnitude better than PSVR2's displays WRT mura. Or rather the early units were, once they started dropping the prices, tolerances loosened and you started seeing some complaints about it. The "raised blacks" on standard AMOLED's were also only barely a hair above total black, think high end plasmas like Pioneer Kuro's for example. In other words their "raised blacks" were still many many many times blacker than current LCD's. "Raised Black" AMOLED's would have real world contrast ratios of around 50,000:1 while the Quest's and Frame's global lit 100 nit IPS LCD's are around 500:1 or 800:1.

If this thing's $600, $700, or $800 like many are speculating, I have no idea who the market audience is. It's a side-grade Quest 3 two years late with bargain bin specs by 2026+ standards. As such it has no appeal for VR enthusiasts, and at expected prices it has no appeal to VR casuals or mainstreamers. Like the Quest Pro, I suspect it'll wind up being a product for no one.

TLDR:
mOLED's don't have mura
mOLED's don't raise blacks
mOLED's don't have persistence issues at 100 nits
Standard AMOLED's can QC out mura
"Raised Black" AMOLED's are barely above total black and are 10x blacker than the Quest and Frame LCD's (literally 10x, that's not hyperbole).

 

[Sorcerer]

I guess I'd be ok with getting the steam controller 2 for $10 when they eventually clear them out again.

I doubt the Steam Controller 2 will be subject to a lawsuit. However, I wonder if people are going to buy them up (just in case) and leave them boxed because they see how much the original can go for nowadays because they think these will also be discontinued.

 

[dcx4610]

This is the most excited I've been for a console in many, many years. I'm a PC player mostly but I always buy consoles. This basically puts a dedicated Steam machine in the living room with my entire library. This will essentially kill the PS5 (barring a crazy exclusive) and Xbox for me for good. I buy a game once and I can play it on my PC if I want or for more AAA titles like Resident Evil, I can play in the living on a big TV with surround sound all while using the same save file. I'm really into that idea.

 

[Kacho]

 

[Minsc]

This is what we refer to as the textbook definition of cope, it's posted every time someone's favored brand releases a headset with LCD's. They search for ways to rationalize and accept it like some Sonic cycle or stages of grief shit.

mOLED's don't have mura, don't raise the black floor, and also wouldn't have an issue with persistence at the 100 nits they're running these bargain bin LCD's at. Persistence only becomes a problem when you try to drive them to HDR and pseudo-HDR brightness levels at the eye. It's also possible to quality control mura out of standard AMOLED displays to the point it's effectively moot, like the original Vive and Rift did. It was for all intents and purposes a complete non-issue back then cause the panels were properly binned, they were several orders of magnitude better than PSVR2's displays WRT mura. Or rather the early units were, once they started dropping the prices, tolerances loosened and you started seeing some complaints about it. The "raised blacks" on standard AMOLED's were also only barely a hair above total black, think high end plasmas like Pioneer Kuro's for example. Their "raised blacks" are many many many times blacker than current LCD's. "Raised Black" AMOLED's would have real world contrast ratios of around 50,000:1 while the Quest's and Frame's global lit 100 nit IPS LCD's are around 500:1 or 800:1.

TLDR:
mOLED's don't have mura
mOLED's don't raise blacks
mOLED's don't have persistence issues at 100 nits
Standard AMOLED's can QC out mura
"Raised Black" AMOLED's are barely above total black and are 10x blacker than the Quest and Frame LCD's (literally 10x, that's not hyperbole).

Where is the Frame supposed to land in regard to PSVR2 weaknesses (motion clarity, text clarity, edge to edge clarity, poor mura in dark areas) and Quest 3's weaknesses (bad blacks) I wonder.

Will it solve all of them? That's what I'd hope for.

 

[Jesb]

I can't believe the controller. Brutal

 

[Kacho]

You can set the LED light on the front to show download progress

1:53

 

[Haint]

Where is the Frame supposed to land in regard to PSVR2 weaknesses (motion clarity, text clarity, edge to edge clarity, poor mura in dark areas) and Quest 3's weaknesses (bad blacks) I wonder.

Will it solve all of them? That's what I'd hope for.

They really should have just built the same device as a fantastic stand alone mOLED headset and sold it at cost. It certainly would have been north of $1000, but they would have absolutely locked up the VR enthusiast and xReal/Viture audiences without question and put all the Chinese spyware and start up companies out of business (i.e. Pimax, Play For Dream, Bigscreen, Etc...). I have no idea who a $700 or even $500 Quest 3 side grade is meant for, their addressable market is a very small subset of Valve fanboys and the conspiracy weirdos who are convinced Zuck Cuckerburg beats off to them as he spys through Quest cameras.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

This is what we refer to as the textbook definition of cope, it's posted every time someone's favored brand releases a headset with LCD's. They search for ways to rationalize and accept it like some Sonic cycle or stages of grief shit.

mOLED's don't have mura, don't raise the black floor, and also wouldn't have an issue with persistence at the 100 nits they're running these bargain bin LCD's at. Persistence only becomes a problem when you try to drive them to HDR and pseudo-HDR brightness levels at the eye. It's also possible to quality control mura out of standard AMOLED displays to the point it's effectively moot, like the original Vive and Rift did. It was for all intents and purposes a complete non-issue back then cause the panels were properly binned, they were several orders of magnitude better than PSVR2's displays WRT mura. Or rather the early units were, once they started dropping the prices, tolerances loosened and you started seeing some complaints about it. The "raised blacks" on standard AMOLED's were also only barely a hair above total black, think high end plasmas like Pioneer Kuro's for example. Their "raised blacks" are many many many times blacker than current LCD's. "Raised Black" AMOLED's would have real world contrast ratios of around 50,000:1 while the Quest's and Frame's global lit 100 nit IPS LCD's are around 500:1 or 800:1.

TLDR:
mOLED's don't have mura
mOLED's don't raise blacks
mOLED's don't have persistence issues at 100 nits
Standard AMOLED's can QC out mura
"Raised Black" AMOLED's are barely above total black and are 10x blacker than the Quest and Frame LCD's (literally 10x, that's not hyperbole).

You are incorrect.

First, I didn't talk about a black floor at all, not sure where that's coming from; of course contract is going to go higher on OLED than LCD, that's why it's a trade-off. There's this weird cult of OLED that thinks it doesn't have trade-offs and complex consequences when it certainly does.

This discussion is all specific to the overall configuration of current headset tech, which is to have pancake lenses -- which are frankly non-negotiable now for VR, long before LCD vs OLED can be considered. Once you decide that, and want a great FOV, and want minimal sickness for the user (extremely low persistence) -- with all that, you then face brightness challenges to get enough light to overcome the pancake.

This isn't just me, did you watch the actual Digital Foundry video that we were responding to? I'll quote it

First of all, what makes the Quest 3 so good for me is the fact that it's able to do like essentially perfect motion clarity. They they specifically drive the LCD, the low persistence LCD in exactly the right way that allows it to update with no motion blur.

The reason you don't really see this on desktop monitors so much is because it would have a gigantic impact on brightness. And in fact that's why we typically don't see OLED displays in these headsets, with this level of low persistence, it turns out because OLEDs can't get bright enough to actually do it at this rate. Unfortunately.

So LCD that's you know you're able to use, they're able to leverage that brightness to get a very low persistence basically no visible motion blur or or sample and hold blur, right? And when a screen is all around you, this makes a gigantic difference.

Micro-OLEDs can pull it off with various trade-offs, and those trade-offs are often not going to be worth it. The idea that OLED / contrast is the only factor that matters is simply absurd. Valve cares a great deal about comfort, we've already seen that in their insistence on extremely low persistence, great FOV, and even if you think back to the way Alyx refused to have a stick-movement option in its initial release, insisting that you can do teleport instead and not make most of your target audience sick. Of course they are going to consider this carefully and make the trade-off in that direction.

EDIT: and here is the additional Valve quote they brought up on DF:

That's an extremely low number, and as DF said, likely not achievable with OLED/microOLED because you can't strobe it the same way to get these crazy low ranges like you can with the backlight toggling etc, and certainly not while preserving enough light through the pancake.

Clearly this is a choice where Valve went with motion quality and VR gaming comfort, not raw image contrast quality. To deny there's a trade-off that has to be made with OLED vs LCD is simply to ignore reality.

 

[Minsc]

They really should have just built the same device as a fantastic stand alone mOLED headset and sold it at cost. It certainly would have been north of $1000, but they would have absolutely locked up the VR enthusiast and xReal/Viture audiences without question and put all the Chinese spyware and start up companies out of business (i.e. Pimax, Play For Dream, Bigscreen, Etc...). I have no idea who a $700 or even $500 Quest 3 side grade is meant for.

Owning both Quest 3 and PSVR2, I wonder what the selling point is supposed to be then.

 

[Haint]

Owning both Quest 3 and PSVR2, I wonder what the selling point is supposed to be then.

There isn't one, which is why the product and their "trade offs" are so baffling. They're never going to compete with Facebook or Tiktok on low cost mainstream headsets, their only viable paths were either affordable highend or balls to the wall highend and selling it at cost to lock up the enthusiast market completely and drive their disproportionately sized wallets to Steam software sales. Instead they chose some bizarre middle ground that caters to no one.

 

[hinch7]

Owning both Quest 3 and PSVR2, I wonder what the selling point is supposed to be then.

Better Steam and PC games integration. Also stuff like foveated streaming with eye tracking to improve streaming quality to what you're seeing which saves a lot of bandwidth, so potentially lower input lag while offering better image quality. The headset is among the lightest too at 435g, which should make it more comfortable than most other VR headsets; including Quest 3 and PSVR 3 which are north of 500g.

 

[Jesb]

Not powerful enough with next gen around the corner. controller doesn't look comfortable.

 

[BlueManifest]

Not powerful enough with next gen around the corner. controller doesn't look comfortable.

Controller is comfortable from hands on impressions

 

[Cakeboxer]

The controller looks awful and i don't like the stick placement already tells me it's going to be unergonomic..

 

[Haint]

You are incorrect.

First, I didn't talk about a black floor at all, not sure where that's coming from; of course contract is going to go higher on OLED than LCD, that's why it's a trade-off. There's this weird cult of OLED that thinks it doesn't have trade-offs and complex consequences when it certainly does.

This discussion is all specific to the overall configuration of current headset tech, which is to have pancake lenses -- which are frankly non-negotiable now for VR, long before LCD vs OLED can be considered. Once you decide that, and want a great FOV, and want minimal sickness for the user (extremely low persistence) -- with all that, you then face brightness challenges to get enough light to overcome the pancake.

This isn't just me, did you watch the actual Digital Foundry video that we were responding to? I'll quote it

Micro-OLEDs can pull it off with various trade-offs, and those trade-offs are often not going to be worth it. The idea that OLED / contrast is the only factor that matters is simply absurd. Valve cares a great deal about comfort, we've already seen that in their insistence on extremely low persistence, great FOV, and even if you think back to the way Alyx refused to have a stick-movement option in its initial release, insisting that you can do teleport instead and not make most of your target audience sick. Of course they are going to consider this carefully and make the trade-off in that direction.

EDIT: and here is the additional Valve quote they brought up on DF:

That's an extremely low number, and as DF said, likely not achievable with OLED/microOLED because you can't strobe it the same way to get these crazy low ranges like you can with the backlight toggling etc, and certainly not while preserving enough light through the pancake.

Clearly this is a choice where Valve went with motion quality and VR gaming comfort, not raw image contrast quality. To deny there's a trade-off that has to be made with OLED vs LCD is simply to ignore reality.

I take it you either didn't read or didn't understand the Reddit copy pasta you posted? Second to last paragraph RE: OLED Black Smear "To combat this they don't let the pixels turn off completely...but now you have artificially reduced the contrast". This is referring to the so called raised blacks or "SPUD" toggles in early AMOLED VR displays. As I said, high end mOLED displays do not have any of these issues you're talking about, they're perfectly capable of delivering 100 nits to the eye with pancake lenses. It's a cost trade off, not a technical one. These technical problems you're talking about are only an issue when trying to drive mOLED's to HDR levels, or with cheaper lower quality panels. The actual trade off you may have seen with mOLED's in this headset would be a slightly smaller FOV, but it would be so minor someone would have to point it out to you in a side by side, and certainly no where near the grand canyon gulf between display technologies.

 

[Topher]

Controller is comfortable from hands on impressions

Yeah, Oliver on DF talked about that. He seemed very impressed

 

[BlueManifest]

The controller looks awful and i don't like the stick placement already tells me it's going to be unergonomic..

Again, wrong

And the stick placement is just slightly different from the dual sense, the touch pads make the sticks look higher than they actually are, where your thumbs land on the sticks will be very similar to how they feel on dual sense

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

There isn't one, which is why the product and their "trade offs" are so baffling. They're never going to compete with Facebook or Tiktok on low cost mainstream headsets, their only viable paths were either affordable highend or balls to the wall highend and selling it at cost to lock up the enthusiast market completely and drive their disproportionately sized wallets to Steam software sales. Instead they chose some bizarre middle ground that caters to no one.

Again, you've completely ignored the very specific trade-off that DigitalFoundry discussed, the heart of the whole debate: motion and persistence.

As I said, high end mOLED displays do not have any of these issues you're talking about, they're perfectly capable of delivering 100 nits to the eye with pancake lenses

False -- you can drive that brightness only if you don't care about sample-and-hold motion blur, which is the whole problem.

We're not talking about the actual framerate of LCD vs OLED; the "ultra low persistence" issue is that Valve is driving extremely low timing for persistence, so that you have the image only displayed a small fraction of the time. This is critical for not feeling a blur effect during fast movement.

Quoting again:

That 300 microsecond range is not strictly possible to achieve with OLED in any practical way, you'd have to actually switch to black frames to strobe it and then the effective brightness would be too low, not the 100 nits you cite in that case. With LEDs, you have better options to do this by actually toggling the backlight at these speeds.

This is what the reddit post was explaining (that the image must be displayed only a fraction of the time to avoid the motion issue), but you just seized on some part I didn't even refer to about contrast and ignored the whole topic from the DF video we're discussing, and how DF actually said OLED (in a video released today) is indeed a trade-off in this area and can't yet achieve the same motion comfort.

Here's more from DF:

And the motion clarity is supreme.

And yeah, unfortunately, when you're strobing the screen, 300 microsconds per frame, that also rules out things like uh individual backlight elements, right? You can't do zones. You can't like adjust the contrast in any meaningful way. It would just be too impossibly slow. Yeah.

And that's essentially the problem they're solving, which is why we need a self-lit panel that can get bright enough for this to really work. Uh, and unfortunately, OLED just isn't yet there. Even though it has a very low pixel response time, there's still sample and hold blur to contend with. So, it requires this kind of it would require black frame insertion rather than strobing, right? Because it does not have a backlight to strobe.

 

[ByWatterson]

This appears to be a very underpowered device.

Who is the audience for this? Is it just a little foothold into the console space, since generations don't really apply here?

 

[DavidGzz]

Jesus, that controller is massive - how are smaller hands supposed to hold it?

These are tiny girl hands wrapped around it easily. I don't think it's as big as you think it is. Also, it lasts like 5 times longer than the PS controller lol

 

[BlueManifest]

This appears to be a very underpowered device.

Who is the audience for this? Is it just a little foothold into the console space, since generations don't really apply here?

If your talking about the console 80% of people on Steam already have good PC's, the console is made to be low cost to get more people into Steam that don't want to spend a lot on gaming pc and is easier to use in a living room

And it may look underpowered compared to most pc's but when compared to consoles its in same ball park, performance should be very close to base ps5

 

[ByWatterson]

If your talking about the console 80% of people on Steam already have good PC's, the console is made to be low cost to get more people into Steam that don't want to spend a lot on gaming pc and is easier to use in a living room

Right, but if it is comparable in power or maybe even less powerful than PS5 (Moore's Law is Dead) and comparably priced, but lacks Sony exclusives...what's the advantage here?

I get how it's a knife to Microsoft. I don't get how it would compete with Playstation.

 

[BlueManifest]

Right, but if it is comparable in power or maybe even less powerful than PS5 (Moore's Law is Dead) and comparably priced, but lacks Sony exclusives...what's the advantage here?

I get how it's a knife to Microsoft. I don't get how it would compete with Playstation.

I updated post with more

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Right, but if it is comparable in power or maybe even less powerful than PS5 (Moore's Law is Dead) and comparably priced, but lacks Sony exclusives...what's the advantage here?

the Steam store is the advantage

If I could have the Steam store on our PS5, I'd never buy anything from the official PS store again, not a chance. Total game changer for price... and then for variety, genre breadth, etc.

 

[BlueManifest]

Right, but if it is comparable in power or maybe even less powerful than PS5 (Moore's Law is Dead) and comparably priced, but lacks Sony exclusives...what's the advantage here?

I get how it's a knife to Microsoft. I don't get how it would compete with Playstation.

There's no need to build a $1,000 console for enthusiasts because Steam already has an option for enthusiasts and that's building your own pc

What Steam doesn't have is something easy to put under your tv for a low cost like a Xbox or ps5 which it will have now

 

[SmokSmog]

R5 7600 + RX 7600M
16GB RAM + 8GB VRAM

5060Ti 16GB is 80-90% faster in raw power then when you include DLSS4 it's over.

 

[awwr999999]

Duke for comparison.

Looks like it was designed for morbidly obese hands.

 

[DavidGzz]

Right, but if it is comparable in power or maybe even less powerful than PS5 (Moore's Law is Dead) and comparably priced, but lacks Sony exclusives...what's the advantage here?

I get how it's a knife to Microsoft. I don't get how it would compete with Playstation.

It's PC gaming simplified. Steam has a lot of advantages. No pay to play online, countless Indy exclusives, and early access games like Titan Quest 2 for example, and even PS studios games for those who care(TLOU2, GoT, etc). There are console gamers who are intimidated by shopping for a gaming PC. My daughter would totally get this. She could care less about power and it will play most anything flawlessly, anyway. Even the Deck is fine power wise and this is a lot more capable(6x the power?).

There is a reason Steam had 41.6 million concurrent users as a recent record. It's awesome.

 

[Haint]

Again, you've completely ignored the very specific trade-off that DigitalFoundry discussed, the heart of the whole debate: motion and persistence.



False -- you can drive that brightness only if you don't care about sample-and-hold motion blur, which is the whole problem.

We're not talking about the actual framerate of LCD vs OLED; the "ultra low persistence" issue is that Valve is driving extremely low timing for persistence, so that you have the image only displayed a small fraction of the time. This is critical for not feeling a blur effect during fast movement.

Quoting again:

That 300 microsecond range is not strictly possible to achieve with OLED in any practical way, you'd have to actually switch to black frames to strobe it and then the effective brightness would be too low, not the 100 nits you cite in that case. With LEDs, you have better options to do this by actually toggling the backlight at these speeds.

This is what the reddit post was explaining (that the image must be displayed only a fraction of the time to avoid the motion issue), but you just seized on some part I didn't even refer to about contrast and ignored the whole topic from the DF video we're discussing, and how DF actually said OLED (in a video released today) is indeed a trade-off in this area and can't yet achieve the same motion comfort.

Here's more from DF:

All VR displays use the strobing you're talking about to improve persistence, including AMOLED and mOLED's, all the way back to the OG Vive and Rift. This is not Index and Frame specific functionality, nor is it limited to LCD's. You are quoting what are effectively marketing bullet points from Valve trying to cast cheap LCD's in a favorable light to sell the headset, or perhaps justify an unexpectedly high price tag. Did they not quote a microsecond range of the OG Vive? Seems a curious ommission if they're trying to extol the virtues of LCD's at the expense of OLED's. Regardless, high end mOLED panels are capable of over 5,000 nits at the display, leaving ample amounts of headroom to lose to pancakes and low persistence strobing while easily delivering 100 nits to the eye.

I'm not even arguing whether LCD's may or may not have a theoretical microsecond advantage in persistence, I'm saying it's completely moot as a practical matter if you're only trying to deliver the 100 nits the Frame is outputting, and that as trade offs go, it isn't even in the same Galaxy as the image quality trade off between a 500:1 70% SRGB IPS LCD and an Infinity:1 100% P3 OLED. You're under the impression we're arguing about what size square tires to put on a Ferrari when I'm actually telling you to use round ones.

 

[CGNoire]

Looks like it was designed for morbidly obese hands.

Hahaha....
...they should have called it "The Gabe" controller.

 

[Radical_3d]

This is all exciting news but…

I think Valve is making a mistake here by being stingy and not subsidising a hardware that comes with their 30% cut store pre-loaded and that coincidently is the most popular store out there for PC gaming so it's not like people is going to massively flock from that, as if it were the Windows Store. And if they wanted affordability they should have used a SoC from AMD (they make quite a few of those) so they don't have to pay for the RAM and the VRAM.

The end result is a machine with macrocephaly that is going to wipe the floor with the consoles CPUs while also not needing so much CPU since it's not running stupid Windows (with RAM to spare on top). At the same time it's anaemic GPU released already one generation dated it's going to struggle both in raw power and in the VRAM department giving the user more headaches than it needs, as Battaglia said.

They had the chance to launch next gen two years ahead of the competition. With a 9070 it'd be basically a PS6 with less CPU (not that it matters in a world with PSP3 and Switch 2 as the new targets) and waaaaaaay less problems with bandwidth with the memory split in two pools (that's the upside of paying twice for the RAM) and yes, less RT but two years ahead! On the other hand you're going to have a poor man's PS5 without the advantages of console environment. Another blatantly bad decision is the storage situation, where you have the hard drive that suffocates itself (the David Carradine SSD too soon?) or pay for the 2TB that it's likely putting you closer to the otherwise also 2TB Pro price.

I want to upgrade my old PC just for gaming purposes and a little bit of coding but this is definitively not the way right now.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Looks like it was designed for morbidly obese hands.

I mean, the engineers were probably American, so...

On the subject - did anyone notice how smart it was to get 6Ghz band exclusively for streaming to the Frame, since it is not used by anything other device in your network? If I understand correctly this means much greater fidelity for VR if you choose to stream from your PC or Steam Machine as compared to stand-alone gaming?

 

[Zathalus]

Judging by the comments Valve had made, this looks like it will be ~$700. They specifically said it won't be priced like a console but like an entry level PC.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Being able to stream from PC to the Steam Frame sounds so cool. Can't wait to play my games on the backyard.

And that over dedicated 6Ghz band not taken by any other device.

 

[lifa-cobex]

 

[pepeno]

Every report I have seen, from very credible people in the VR field, report that many PSVR2 headsets suffer from varying amounts of mura due to inconsistent lighting of the pixels. I've never heard your explanation that states this isn't the case. I'm not saying you are wrong, but could you point me to a source that corroborates this assertion?

Edit: I also want to point out that the artifacts these people see are irregular and not uniform, which is quite different than uniform grid pattern that we describe as the screen door effect. I was able to find some through the lens footage of a PSVR2, and the mura was indeed visible.

I am the source. I had PS Vita so i know what perfectly mura is while other reviewers probably never saw Vita in their life, I had PSVR1, I have PSVR2 I also have right now Pico4 and had Vive, Rift, Quest 2 and 3. And I just ordered Play for Dream MR as I was waiting for Frame to see if it will sport at least 3k per eye but didn't so PFD it is.

PSVR2 "mura" is the same exact thing as PSVR1 had. It's not mura it's just how their screen door effect works. Both PSVR1 and PSVR2 are completely black when pixels are off like watching black screen. There is no mura there like on PS VITA where you had blotches of slight green tint on parts of screen when you loaded up completely black screen in pitch black darkness.

Essentially as your display moves toward gray part of spectrum you start to see SDE more and more because in bright conditions it is pretty much invisible. That's just how sony display works how they structured spaces between pixels and etc.

But it is really SLIGHT effect occuring mostly on gray parts of display. And it was the same exact thing on PSVR1 just a bit stronger since PSVR1 had lower res but back then you had it too in bright parts of screen as well again due to much larger space between pixels. But even with that PSVR1 had still the best SDE of all GEN1 vr headsets.

In my opinion it is just some kind of coating or polarization layer that scatters light. This is why for example PSVR2 image is slightly blurrier than what resolution is supposed to give you because that polarization or coating layers scatters light effectively stretches light to neighboring pixels hiding black spaces between pixels. This works great when you display bright stuff but when there is no enough light like in gray situation suddely that coating/layer might not work at all and puff you see SDE.

The difference here is that on Pico4 and Quest 3 you can see SDE all over the screen all the time. They have good res but you can still slightly see it. On PSVR2 you can't see normally SDE it's only when you display picture changes toward gray when you start to see it. It's improvement over Quest3 type devices.
And then you have OLED colors and blacks that just shit all over LCDs in Quest3/Pico and this upcoming Frame.

If Sony had better drivers for their controllers on PC i would reccomend it over Quest3/Pico4 any day of the week but alas Sony can't into BT drivers and every BT dongle has some kind of issues.

 

[Cakeboxer]

And the stick placement is just slightly different from the dual sense,

Exactly.

 

[Sybrix]

What do we think the likley price point is for the Steam Frame?

I might actully get this, i've been wanting a decent wireless VR headset for my PC, this having Steam OS and access to my Steam Libary without even turning on my PC is amazing.

 

[Ellis]

Would make for a tidy little low powered emulation machine, but it would need to be under £300 for me to consider buying.

That controller would be straight on FB marketplace. That does look terrible.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

What do we think the likley price point is for the Steam Frame?

I might actully get this, i've been wanting a decent wireless VR headset for my PC, this having Steam OS and access to my Steam Libary without even turning on my PC is amazing.

I think Valve mentioned or people wildly speculated this will be below the price of the Index. I see it's Out of Stock on Steam (FR) but price is showing at 1079€ for the whole package (with base stations), so my guess would be 899€. Mind you this is with tax (as all prices are in Europe).