Recently I covered the draft code to add a full VR mode into the KDE Plasma desktop, and it has only continued to get more advanced with recent updates.
The Steam Frame is a “streaming first” headset - *because* the onboard chip is too feeble for a full onboard OS gaming support.
That means it is a tethered device (WiFi or Wire - still a tether)
The Meta Quest series all support tethering (Wired - OR - WiFi) and the older Occulus devices RELY on a tether. The PS VR can be used on a PC with SteamVR so there’s no stopping it from being used like that too.
Valve’s engineers emphasized that the company sees the Steam Frame as a “wireless streaming-first device.”
[…]
But that’s not the only way the Steam Frame can game. The company also showed off the x86 version of Hades 2 running standalone (as in not streaming from a PC) on the Steam Frame. And the game ran just fine and looked good at what Valve reps told me was 1400p in a window inside the headset, which I could actually resize to something that filled a large part of my field of view.
“The magic trick is that the game doesn’t know it’s running on an Arm chip,” designer Lawrence Yang told me. The game may be designed for a Windows PC, but “it’s actually running on Linux, running on Arm.”
That happens thanks to Fex, which is an emulation layer, so that will almost certainly mean increased power consumption / shorter battery life.
The software in the OP has very low requirements compared to a game.
It is only rendering a few 2d planes with textures in an empty space with no lighting or shadows to compute and the ‘background’ is a static image. I would expect that to change to include pass-through video, which is also essentially streaming a texture onto simple geometry with no complex shaders.
You can see, in Linus Tech Tips preview: https://youtu.be/dU3ru09HTng?t=58 that they are displaying the Steam Library in a way that is very similar to the software in the OP.
It includes KDE Plasma due to being SteamOS, can run x86 applications natively due to FEX, and we have video of the actual device’s output showing that it is rendering the same ‘2d planes with window contents in 3d space’ as the software in the OP.
e: forgot the first part of the Tom’s Hardware quote
@FauxLiving and what OP is doing doesn’t require much - but I was’t commenting on OP’s post, I was commenting on the reply claiming the Frame was ready for a full OS. Which it isn’t.
But it’s still a full fledged ARM computer running SteamOS including full desktop support. It’s just a matter of time until you can put a mainline Linux distribution on it and have it do whatever you want.
My guess is that Valve market it as a streaming-first device because they don’t have as many VR titles in their catalogue that can run on it as Meta has for the Quest. It’s a safer bet not to rely on devs porting their lighter games to the Frame.
And if they do not manage to get Alyx running on it comfortably nobody will blame them because they never promised it in the first place.
But it is not an exclusively tethered device. Never was. It is a full on gaming PC. Just not one with the power to run newer games. But it’s plenty powerful enough to run all of the Team Beef ports. And besides playing those and lighter flat games I will enjoy playing around with a fully functional Linux OS on a VR headset.
I’m very out of the loop with VR stuff, but am i correct that currently VR on linux is a no go? and frame can not be ran from my linux gaming rig? last I’ve used any VR set was like 10 years ago with oculus rift and i could only play a few games on windows, or use the oculus store…
dreaming of playing all of the gta games in VR some day
No, VR works on Linux. One of the easier ways to get it running on something like Meta’s Quest 3 is Valve’s Steam Link. And older tethered headsets like Valve’s Index work as well.
And there are even open source solutions like ALVR to work with streaming headsets.
I would be incredibly surprised if the Frame is not running SteamOS, which includes KDE Plasma and so any merged PRs will be included in a system image update.
Or, alternatively, as with essentially everything that’s released which has 2 or more MOSFETS soldered together, someone will get Linux running on it within a few hours.
Frick, my desire to have a Steam Frame is rising daily.
Yeah, but the Frame is one of the few headsets that will enable us to use this stuff directly on the headset.
@bjoern_tantau @artyom How do you get that to compute?
The Steam Frame is a “streaming first” headset - *because* the onboard chip is too feeble for a full onboard OS gaming support.
That means it is a tethered device (WiFi or Wire - still a tether)
The Meta Quest series all support tethering (Wired - OR - WiFi) and the older Occulus devices RELY on a tether. The PS VR can be used on a PC with SteamVR so there’s no stopping it from being used like that too.
I find your computing erroneous.
The Steam Frame has hardware similar or better than the Quest 2, which can run games natively on the headset so it will be capable of local rendering.
It runs SteamOS, which includes KDE Plasma (and so, would eventually include any merged changes such as this).
As to the capabilities, it can run the x86 Windows version of Hades 2 @ 1400p using the onboard ARM processor.
https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/gaming-headsets/hands-on-with-valves-new-steam-frame-headset-arm-powered-mixed-mode-device-uses-new-fex-translation-layer-for-traditional-x86-games
The software in the OP has very low requirements compared to a game.
It is only rendering a few 2d planes with textures in an empty space with no lighting or shadows to compute and the ‘background’ is a static image. I would expect that to change to include pass-through video, which is also essentially streaming a texture onto simple geometry with no complex shaders.
You can see, in Linus Tech Tips preview: https://youtu.be/dU3ru09HTng?t=58 that they are displaying the Steam Library in a way that is very similar to the software in the OP.
It includes KDE Plasma due to being SteamOS, can run x86 applications natively due to FEX, and we have video of the actual device’s output showing that it is rendering the same ‘2d planes with window contents in 3d space’ as the software in the OP.
e: forgot the first part of the Tom’s Hardware quote
@FauxLiving and what OP is doing doesn’t require much - but I was’t commenting on OP’s post, I was commenting on the reply claiming the Frame was ready for a full OS. Which it isn’t.
The frame runs SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux and it’s, by all definitions, a full OS.
It won’t replace my desktop, but doesn’t need to.
Stream first != stream only
How do you get from it literally running on SteamOS to not “ready for a full OS”?
But it’s still a full fledged ARM computer running SteamOS including full desktop support. It’s just a matter of time until you can put a mainline Linux distribution on it and have it do whatever you want.
My guess is that Valve market it as a streaming-first device because they don’t have as many VR titles in their catalogue that can run on it as Meta has for the Quest. It’s a safer bet not to rely on devs porting their lighter games to the Frame.
And if they do not manage to get Alyx running on it comfortably nobody will blame them because they never promised it in the first place.
But it is not an exclusively tethered device. Never was. It is a full on gaming PC. Just not one with the power to run newer games. But it’s plenty powerful enough to run all of the Team Beef ports. And besides playing those and lighter flat games I will enjoy playing around with a fully functional Linux OS on a VR headset.
I’m very out of the loop with VR stuff, but am i correct that currently VR on linux is a no go? and frame can not be ran from my linux gaming rig? last I’ve used any VR set was like 10 years ago with oculus rift and i could only play a few games on windows, or use the oculus store…
dreaming of playing all of the gta games in VR some day
No, VR works on Linux. One of the easier ways to get it running on something like Meta’s Quest 3 is Valve’s Steam Link. And older tethered headsets like Valve’s Index work as well.
And there are even open source solutions like ALVR to work with streaming headsets.
They’ve already talked about adding Android APK support, and some APKs have appeared on Steam.
Their goal seems to be for Meta Quest games to not need recompilation, just for the developer to add it to Steam
I’d like to point out that monitors are a streaming-only device also
I would be incredibly surprised if the Frame is not running SteamOS, which includes KDE Plasma and so any merged PRs will be included in a system image update.
Or, alternatively, as with essentially everything that’s released which has 2 or more MOSFETS soldered together, someone will get Linux running on it within a few hours.
What I wouldn’t be sure is how pleasant is to use the desktop.
I’m sure you can open it, but might be unoptimized.