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Steam Frame

(store.steampowered.com)
880 points Philpax | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0.824s | source | bottom
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modeless ◴[] No.45904494[source]
Foveated streaming! That's a great idea. Foveated rendering is complicated to implement with current rendering APIs in a way that actually improves performance, but foveated streaming seems like a much easier win that applies to all content automatically. And the dedicated 6 GHz dongle should do a much better job at streaming than typical wifi routers.

> Just like any SteamOS device, install your own apps, open a browser, do what you want: It's your PC.

It's an ARM Linux PC that presumably gives you root access, in addition to being a VR headset. And it has an SD card slot for storage expansion. Very cool, should be very hackable. Very unlike every other standalone VR headset.

> 2160 x 2160 LCD (per eye) 72-144Hz refresh rate

Roughly equivalent resolution to Quest 3 and less than Vision Pro. This won't be suitable as a monitor replacement for general desktop use. But the price is hopefully low. I'd love to see a high-end option with higher resolution displays in the future, good enough for monitor replacement.

> Monochrome passthrough

So AR is not a focus here, which makes sense. However:

> User accessible front expansion port w/ Dual high speed camera interface (8 lanes @ 2.5Gbps MIPI) / PCIe Gen 4 interface (1-lane)

Full color AR could be done as an optional expansion pack. And I can imagine people might come up with other fun things to put in there. Mouth tracking?

One thing I don't see here is optional tracking pucks for tracking objects or full body tracking. That's something the SteamVR Lighthouse tracking ecosystem had, and the Pico standalone headset also has it.

More detail from the LTT video: Apparently it can run Android APKs too? Quest compatibility layer maybe? There's an optional accessory kit that adds a top strap (I'm surprised it isn't standard) and palm straps that enable using the controllers in the style of the Valve Index's "knuckles" controllers.

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1. nabakin ◴[] No.45906840[source]
And foveated streaming has a 1-2ms wireless latency on modern GPUs according to LTT. Insane.
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2. CobrastanJorji ◴[] No.45907240[source]
Wow, that's just 1 frame of latency at 60 fps.

Edit: Nevermind, I'm dumb. 1/60th of a second is 16 milliseconds, not 1.6 milliseconds.

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3. bspammer ◴[] No.45907427[source]
Much less than, 1 frame is 16ms
4. sph ◴[] No.45907523[source]
60 fps is 16.67 ms per frame.
5. redrblackr ◴[] No.45907720[source]
No, thats between 0.06 and 0.12 frame latency on 60fps. It's not even a frame on 144Hz (1s/144≈7ms)
6. tshaddox ◴[] No.45908417[source]
That's pretty quick. I've heard that in ideal circumstances Wi-Fi 6 can get close to 5ms and Wi-Fi 7 can get down to 2ms.

I's impressive if they're really able to get below 2ms motion-to-photon latency, given that modern consumer headsets with on-device compute are also right at that same 2ms mark.