Steam Frame

The Steam Frame came out a few weeks ago, and I've had mine for almost two weeks now. The general sentiment around the hardware is that it's marginally better standalone than a Quest 3, but is almost double the cost.

That's a tough sell for most consumers, but this device wasn't exactly made for you. It was made for me.

To get a picture for what the Frame is, let's catch you up on the flagship Valve hardware.

The Machine

In the beginning, there was the Steam Machine. No, not that one, the original machine. Although a failure, Valve released a custom Linux distribution (Debian-based) in 2013 as their take on a console OS. They partnered with OEMs to bring machines running it to market, but struggled with adoption due to poor Linux compatibility.

The philosiphy is what's important here: Windows sucks (duh), lets make cheap hardware viable by driving adoption of a free (as in beer) operating system. You kill a few birds here with regards to allowing low-spec machines to survive, eliminating licensing costs, and corralling users towards your marketplace (by being the best Linux games storefront, period).

The OEM model is a testament to this, Valve cares about their margins deeper than any other company and doesn't care about the hassle of running a competitive hardware business. It made sense, but was nearly a decade too early. The audience? Enthusiasts with too much money who want to suppliment their regular PC.

The Index

By 2019, PCVR was well supported but sorely lacking in hardware innovation. At this point you could only realistically choose between an awkward HTC vive (I'm thankful the wands never stuck), or the depreciated Rift CV1.

Valve's relationship with HTC was a more successful version of what they tried with the machines; HTC made and sold hardware, Valve does the software. But the Vive was imperfect,and so without regard to pricing the Index came out.

I sincerely doubt Valve wanted to release their own hardware, but their hand was probably forced by HTC's unwillingness to actually innovate further (re: Vive Pro). It's interesting how little Valve actually cares about their own hardware, the Index was plagued with stock problems throughout it's entire 6-year lifespan. Yet the software was so rapidly developed and whipped into a truly remarkable platform for others to find their niche in: Bigscreen and Pimax come to mind.

The audience? Enthusiasts with too much money, who are also weird nerds.

The Deck

...Is a new frontier, and the most successful one in Valve's hardware space. By the Deck's release, companies like GPD had been creating handheld Windows PCs since 2015. But it's hard to understate just how quickly the PC handheld market segment snapped into existence as soon as the Steam Deck was released.

Why? Software magic. Learned from the original Machines failures, Proton was introduced as a mainstay feature of Steam for Linux. Run Windows builds of games, no problem! Even gain some FPS for doing so (thanks DXVK). All on cheaper hardware and free (as in beer) software.

Yet, the deck hardware is underpowered and a little expensive for what it is (today, the subsidized launch price was great). The audience? Enthusiasts with too much money, who want to suppliment their reglar PC.

The Frame

Despite decidedly not being a weird nerd with too much money, I scraped enough together to move my CV1 to the butterfly farm and buy a Steam frame.

The hardware: Underpowered.

The software: Magical.

The audience? Enthusiasts with too much money.

Understandably, spending $1200 to play Beat Saber is ridiculous, but I'm spending the money because it runs Linux. I hardly recommend anyone buy this thing. You should already know if this is a device you want.

As a tinkerer, getting Beat saber to run at 144Hz standalone, rock solid, and with mods enabled is a dream. I control the hardware, the software, the everything. I already pay double for my phones to have this luxury, and what a luxury it is. It's seriously cool how, since FPS>Resolution, I can force foviated rendering to obliterate the environment outside of what I'm looking at, scale render scaling as low as I can tolerate, crank the refresh rate, and enjoy Beating my Saber as much as I can handle.

It's crazy how I can run Half Life Alyx at all on this thing. And if the defaults are to my taste, I can tweak.

It's crazy how the preinstalled software doesn't need an account. You can go to a desktop mode or launch any apps without even having a Steam account. SteamVR still works (although have fun legally obtaining games to run).

It's just so incredibly fun to pay for something and know that it cannot be taken away from you. That it wont be used to spy on you. That the money I spent is justifying the continuous improvement of open source VR/XR software. And that this hardware release, with all of its kinks yet to be ironed out, paves such a strong path for future vendors to release cheaper, better, more tailored hardware.

The only thing I will ever miss is outside-in tracking.