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Title: Reservations Go Live for Valve's Steam Frame VR Headset. An Experiment
in Progress?

Link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/09/14/201...

Reservations are now live for Valve's "Steam Frame" VR headset (with its
Linux-based SteamOS and an ARM CPU). "It starts at $1,059 for 256GB or $1,299
for 1TB," reports CNET, "and every purchase includes a copy of Half-Life:
Alyx if you don't already own it." Reservations are open through Sept. 17 at
10 a.m. PT, "with customers randomly assigned a place in line after the
reservation window closes." CNET's editor at large even argues that the Steam
Frame "isn't necessarily the future of XR, as much as it's a framework for
evolving beyond the present." Their review calls it an "ambitious" VR headset
that "feels like an experiment in progress." The ability to run other apps in
windows can make Frame feel, at times, almost like a computer. Linux apps in
desktop mode range from Chromium to Firefox to a bunch of other tools. I
watched YouTube in one window while playing Portal 2 in other, and started to
marvel at how flexible Frame could be. But VR games require a full immersive
takeover of the headset... The Steam Frame can convert games intended for
both PC VR and even Android APK files, using a conversion tool called
Lepton... I haven't sideloaded anything yet, but Steam Frame in theory could
be a Rosetta Stone for VR gaming, even tapping into some Android XR titles,
but not out of the box... 2D games can be projected onto a near-range or
farther-off theater mode screen that can be dragged around, resized and
turned into a curved or flat monitor, much like with the Apple Vision Pro,
Samsung Galaxy XR or Meta Quest. You can download any game in your Steam
library to test, even if it's not technically listed as "Great on Frame"
yet... But the name "Frame" suggests a framework, something Valve's team
acknowledged when I spoke to them during my review process... "We want this
to be your PC, and people mod it, take it apart, make accessories for it,"
says Jeremy Selan, a software developer on the Steam Frame team. "We'll be
putting out the CAD for all these [Steam Frame] systems. This is entirely
based on open-source technology stacks based upon SteamOS. Our hope is that
this isn't just one device, that this would be sort of the root of a growing
SteamOS ecosystem. It already encompasses gaming and Proton and SteamOS and
those Linux gaming capabilities. This is going to lay the foundation for a
new sort of evolutionary tree of that, to also bring it into the VR and XR
space."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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