Valve’s new Steam Frame is what all the well-connected YouTubers are talking about, but most of them are talking about what it’s like to game on it. That’s great content if you’re into it, but not exactly fodder for Hackaday — with one exception. [Gamers Nexus] gives us a half hour of relatively-unedited footage of them just chatting with the engineers behind the hardware.
It’s great stuff right from the get-go: they start with how thermal management drove the PCB design, and put the SoC on the “back” of the chip, sandwiched betwixt heat pipes. We don’t usually think of taking heat through the PCB when building a board, so it’s a neat detail to learn about before these things get into the hands of the usual suspects who will doubtless give us teardown videos in a few months.
From there wanders to power delivery — getting the voltage regulators packaged properly was a challenge, since impedance requirements meant a very tight layout. Anyone who has worked on this kind of SBC might be familiar with that issue, but for those looking in from the outside, it’s a fascinating glimpse at electrical sausage being made. That’s just the first half.
The heat-regulation conversation is partially repeated the next conversation (which seems to have happened first) where they get into the cooling requirements of the LCD screens. This requires less than you might think, as they like to run warm for fast refresh. It’s really more about keeping your face cool. They also they discuss acoustic vibration — you don’t want your integrated audio shaking your IMUs apart — and why the prototype was being blasted with freakin’ laser beams to monitor it.
If you haven’t seen or read any other coverage on the Steam Frame, you’re going to miss some context here, but if you’ve not hid under a rock for that announcement, this is amazing detail to have. We’re hugely impressed that Valve let their engineers out of their cubicle-cave to talk to media.
Sure, it’s not an open-source VR headset, but compared to the deafening silence coming from the likes of Meta, this level of information is still awesome to have.
I’m so excited to have an open platform for VR, and a big supporter of Arch on ARM will help the community immensely.
I’ve wanted a Linux headset for years, and while it might not be as powerful as the Vision Pro or AndroidXR flagships, having no arduous development requirements or distribution limits will make the Frame far more useful.
IDGAF about VR but if Valve/Steam want to come into a market dominated by dinosaurs and shake things up a bit I’m all for it.
I’ve looked at getting back into gaming a few times but these days I can’t just go out and buy a console and a couple of games and plug it into my TV and go – the console and games are $$$ then I need accounts and subscriptions and updates and everything is online-first multiplayer-first…
And in a few years when my console is deemed obsolete / unprofitable and they switch the servers off, my games disappear and the console is now a brick.
Has anyone mentoned min/max IPD on these yet? Bein’ stuck with close-set eyes (≈54mm) has prevented me from getting into any of the VR systems on the market so far; I don’t want to get my hopes up yet again, these look so fantastic.
The official specs page says “IPD target range: 60mm – 70mm”, so you may be out of luck unfortunately.
Have you tried a Quest 3? It’s good for 53-75 mm
So… This is basically a full Arch Linux ARM64 on premium quality Valve hardware as a VR headset that also happens to play the Steam library without any fuss whatsoever. Take my money!
They have a new video “Valve Steam Deck Secrets: Engineering & Design of Memory, PCB Layout, and Thermals” (not about the deck 2, but the original LCD and Onewer LED), that is also worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvzu-U9mmyA
I am really looking forward to this headset to replace my tethered Vive Pro 2, especially being self-contained . I hope international orders are not too delayed. Some previous Valve hardware has taken years after US release.
Oh wow that guy does anything other than smear campaigns? That’s new. Ignored that trash channel a long time ago.
Wat?
Lol, ok corpo shill.
I’d never seen this channel before before, so I have no idea what the content usually is/used to be like, but there’s nothing at all negative in this video. Indeed, Valve employees do the vast majority of the talking.
Tell us you’re working for Asus or Gigabyte without telling us.
I think he’s referring to the campaign he did against Linus Tech Tips.
Found the astroturfer account.
Asus bootlicker poking their head out of the ground.