WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.540 Everyone knows that outside-in tracking is just better for VR gaming. 00:00:04.540 --> 00:00:09.000 It's faster, more accurate, and it's more reliable. Well, here's the thing. 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:16.960 Valve isn't everyone, and the new Steam Frame took my expectations of a lousy, flaky experience 00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:24.620 in a standalone VR headset with camera-based positional tracking and blew them away. 00:00:24.620 --> 00:00:29.200 They also blew away my expectations for their new Steam Machine and Steam Controller, 00:00:29.200 --> 00:00:38.740 but that's a separate video. We'll have that linked down below. In two words or less, this thing is impossibly good, and, maybe more importantly, impossibly versatile. 00:00:38.740 --> 00:00:45.200 They managed to make it lighter, more comfortable, and higher fidelity than the OG Index for PC VR gaming. 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:50.560 They managed to bolt an ARM-based computer to it that runs mobile VR games and applications. 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:57.560 You can even just sideload an Android APK, and the whole thing runs freaking Steam OS 00:00:57.560 --> 00:01:04.120 with a new element to their proton compatibility layer called PEX that allows you to play desktop VR games. 00:01:04.120 --> 00:01:11.800 I'm talking x86 Windows VR games on your ARM, Linux, VR headset. 00:01:11.800 --> 00:01:17.580 I would might drop this, but I think I'd get in trouble. The last part I wouldn't believe if I didn't experience it for myself, 00:01:17.580 --> 00:01:24.020 but they did all of this with latency that is indistinguishable from the best VR experiences that I've had. 00:01:24.020 --> 00:01:27.860 But is it indistinguishable from the best segue I've ever had to our sponsor? 00:01:27.860 --> 00:01:33.180 Frame is a fundamental shift for Valve. Rather than being an accessory for your gaming PC, 00:01:33.180 --> 00:01:40.980 it's meant to be a standalone device that can also be enjoyed alongside your PC using wireless streaming for VR, 00:01:40.980 --> 00:01:46.460 which sounds horrible, but somehow it's not. 00:01:46.460 --> 00:01:50.260 Let's take a closer look at the hardware. Then we can talk about how they did it. 00:01:50.260 --> 00:01:53.900 The headset that I'm holding is actually made up of multiple components. 00:01:53.900 --> 00:01:59.220 The core module contains the actual computer and weighs under 190 grams. 00:01:59.220 --> 00:02:05.180 Then next is an audio module that can be detached with three clips under the foam gasket. 00:02:05.180 --> 00:02:09.980 Then there's the head strap and a battery pack that is cleverly positioned at the back 00:02:09.980 --> 00:02:14.180 to help counterbalance the device's improving comfort and also to make it a little bit easier 00:02:14.180 --> 00:02:17.460 to cable manage if you wanted to have an external battery pack. 00:02:17.460 --> 00:02:22.900 The optics are simply put flipping incredible, like other leading headsets. 00:02:22.900 --> 00:02:28.500 They're using pancake lenses, but unlike some other headsets that use pancake lenses, 00:02:28.500 --> 00:02:34.740 there was very little in the way of internal reflections visible in the demo applications that I use today. 00:02:34.740 --> 00:02:39.020 It is possible that with brighter light sources, it could show up a bit more, 00:02:39.020 --> 00:02:42.180 but that's going to be something that I'll have to save for the full review. 00:02:42.180 --> 00:02:47.860 What I can tell you is that under each lens is a 2160 x 2160 LCD display 00:02:47.860 --> 00:02:51.780 that's capable of anywhere from 72 Hertz, presumably for power saving, 00:02:51.780 --> 00:02:58.980 up to 120 Hertz with a 144 Hertz experimental mode, just like we had on the Valve Index. 00:02:58.980 --> 00:03:03.060 As for why Valve decided to use LCD rather than OLED, 00:03:03.060 --> 00:03:07.900 it basically came down to the light losses due to the pancake lenses. 00:03:07.900 --> 00:03:11.060 Since I'm pointing at them, on the inside of each lens, 00:03:11.060 --> 00:03:18.460 maybe you can even see them if you went cross-eyed enough, is an eye tracker that's obviously going to be great for social VR experiences, 00:03:18.460 --> 00:03:25.060 but perhaps more importantly enables Valve to do what they call foviated streaming, 00:03:25.060 --> 00:03:28.700 which I'm going to have to explain later because it gets a little in the weeds. 00:03:28.700 --> 00:03:36.460 First, let's take a look at the controllers. Valve fully acknowledges that these are very similar to other designs in the market, 00:03:36.460 --> 00:03:42.700 but they wanted something that was both great for VR and also great for your non-VR applications 00:03:42.700 --> 00:03:46.220 if you just want to use your headset as a giant virtual display. 00:03:46.220 --> 00:03:49.700 And they still managed to add some Valve touches to them, 00:03:49.700 --> 00:03:54.460 putting capacitive sensing on all input surfaces and on the grips, 00:03:54.460 --> 00:03:59.580 so you can still do five-finger tracking just like the Knuckles controllers from the Valve Index. 00:03:59.580 --> 00:04:03.260 They have two-stage actuating triggers, two-stage actuating grips, 00:04:03.260 --> 00:04:11.220 which unlocks a ton of control customization. They use the same magnetic thumbstick as the new Steam controller for better reliability 00:04:11.220 --> 00:04:20.820 and a very small dead zone, and they each have their own independent gyros that can be rebound for aiming or whatever you want. 00:04:20.820 --> 00:04:25.260 I can't tell if they were being suggested there, given the popularity of certain VR applications, 00:04:25.260 --> 00:04:30.300 but I can't say for sure that they weren't. Both controllers have an integrated IMU to track positional data 00:04:30.300 --> 00:04:35.380 and 18 infrared LEDs that can be tracked by the four high-field-of-view cameras 00:04:35.380 --> 00:04:44.220 that are integrated into the frame's core module. These were strategically positioned so that even if you were, say for example, drawing an arrow from a quiver, 00:04:44.220 --> 00:04:49.900 it should be able to maintain tracking. Now, I didn't get a chance to try that, nor did I get to fire up Beat Saber, 00:04:49.900 --> 00:04:54.660 my favorite application for evaluating controller tracking under extreme conditions, 00:04:54.660 --> 00:04:59.420 but from just shaking them around in the menu, they seem to track extremely well. 00:04:59.420 --> 00:05:03.260 Valve is claiming about 40 hours of battery life off of a single AA, 00:05:03.260 --> 00:05:09.420 and this battery compartment is a perfect transition into the customizability that's on display with this headset. 00:05:09.420 --> 00:05:13.660 They're going to have an optional accessory kit that includes knuckle straps for the controller, 00:05:13.660 --> 00:05:19.140 as well as a second head strap with a top Velcro piece if you like a bit of additional support. 00:05:19.140 --> 00:05:23.580 I personally liked it better, but I also didn't feel like it was necessary, 00:05:23.580 --> 00:05:29.300 like it is on the much heavier Apple Vision Pro. There's a lot more to customize on the frame itself, too. 00:05:29.300 --> 00:05:32.860 It includes a spacer gasket for folks with long eyelashes, 00:05:32.860 --> 00:05:38.660 and to improve compatibility with glasses, but Valve fully acknowledges that not everyone will want to use that, 00:05:38.660 --> 00:05:43.700 because it does take away a little bit from their claimed about 110-degree field of view, 00:05:43.700 --> 00:05:46.780 so they are working on prescription lenses for the headset itself. 00:05:46.780 --> 00:05:50.020 We even saw a box of them, but there's no specific timeline on that. 00:05:50.020 --> 00:05:55.100 IPD adjustments are handled with a little knob on the top that spins a cog on the core module, 00:05:55.100 --> 00:05:59.980 and this is really cool. Right between the goggles at the bottom here is an expansion port 00:06:00.020 --> 00:06:03.700 that allows up to two 2.5 gigabit mippy cameras, 00:06:03.700 --> 00:06:08.940 or a single camera with a PCIe Gen 4 by one slot, 00:06:08.940 --> 00:06:12.420 allowing all kinds of possibilities for additional accessories, 00:06:12.420 --> 00:06:17.540 like if you wanted color cameras, for instance. The built-in ones are only monochromatic, 00:06:17.540 --> 00:06:21.500 or if you wanted, I don't know, a smell sensor. 00:06:21.500 --> 00:06:29.900 The sky's the limit. Since we're on the subject of the cameras, Valve says that they will work for inside outtracking even in pitch darkness thanks to IR emitters 00:06:29.900 --> 00:06:39.740 that are built into the headset itself, and you can expect tracking performance on the order of about 200 to 250 updates per second, 00:06:39.740 --> 00:06:43.380 which is about on par with the Valve Index. 00:06:43.380 --> 00:06:48.140 Not something that I expected. Now that I've had a chance to gather my thoughts and eat some crappy airport food, 00:06:48.140 --> 00:06:53.700 let's talk about how Valve is delivering a PCVR-like experience wirelessly 00:06:53.700 --> 00:06:59.100 when big names like Apple and Meta have tried and never really succeeded. 00:06:59.100 --> 00:07:05.220 It starts with the least interesting looking part, this 6 GHz Wi-Fi dongle. 00:07:05.220 --> 00:07:09.820 Valve built the headset with two radios and two antennas for Wi-Fi, 00:07:09.820 --> 00:07:14.660 along with a third dedicated antenna for your controllers or your Bluetooth peripherals. 00:07:14.660 --> 00:07:18.500 One of those Wi-Fi antennas handles 5 GHz for your game downloads, 00:07:18.500 --> 00:07:24.540 your multiplayer data, your voice chat, etc. The other one connects to a very high-end home router, 00:07:24.540 --> 00:07:31.100 or more likely, Valve's dongle using the so far mostly unused 6 GHz band. 00:07:31.100 --> 00:07:34.860 This is a perfect use case for 6 GHz, 00:07:34.860 --> 00:07:38.700 since it lacks the wall penetration that you might want for home Wi-Fi, 00:07:38.700 --> 00:07:43.740 but it excels at avoiding 2.4 and 5 GHz channel congestion 00:07:43.740 --> 00:07:52.340 while pushing huge amounts of bandwidth. With that said, while the theoretical maximum is right up there with wired connections, 00:07:52.380 --> 00:07:57.620 in the real world it falls well short of that, so what's the secret? 00:07:57.620 --> 00:08:04.220 Foveated streaming. Seeing this in action blew my flipping mind. 00:08:04.220 --> 00:08:08.420 Basically, the idea behind it is similar to foveated rendering, 00:08:08.420 --> 00:08:12.260 where the headset tracks your eyes and tells your GPU, 00:08:12.260 --> 00:08:16.020 hey, only render the area of focus at full fidelity 00:08:16.020 --> 00:08:23.860 and save your resources on the rest of the scene. It's a technique that's been used to great effect on the handful of PSVR2 titles that exist, 00:08:23.860 --> 00:08:27.300 but has been largely untapped on the PC side, 00:08:27.300 --> 00:08:30.500 largely because it depends on game developers to implement it. 00:08:30.500 --> 00:08:34.500 And also, most headsets don't have built-in eye tracking, so why would they bother? 00:08:34.500 --> 00:08:39.020 Foveated streaming then. Again, same idea. 00:08:39.020 --> 00:08:43.020 Focus your resources wherever the eyes are looking. 00:08:43.020 --> 00:08:47.980 Except in this case, it's not the GPU saving on rendering resources, 00:08:47.980 --> 00:08:52.260 it's the video encoding stream saving on bitrate. 00:08:52.260 --> 00:08:56.060 So you get crystal clear, high bitrate encoding, 00:08:56.060 --> 00:09:01.500 exactly where your eyes are looking, and then a little bit blurry everywhere else. 00:09:01.500 --> 00:09:05.740 At least in theory, in practice it reacted so fast 00:09:05.740 --> 00:09:10.140 that no matter how quickly I tried to move my eyes, I wasn't able to catch it. 00:09:10.140 --> 00:09:15.340 But I also don't feel too bad about that. Valve put on an incredible demo for me in Half-Life Alyx, 00:09:15.340 --> 00:09:19.820 where they highlighted the maximum fidelity window as I was looking around. 00:09:19.820 --> 00:09:24.500 And even though they say it's only about 10% of the total video stream, 00:09:24.500 --> 00:09:30.140 it ends up being a pretty large window, wild as for the encoding latency. 00:09:30.140 --> 00:09:33.540 Well, thanks to some clever parallelization of the encoding, 00:09:33.540 --> 00:09:38.940 you can expect anywhere from 1-2 milliseconds of extra latency on a modern GPU 00:09:38.940 --> 00:09:43.460 and 4-5 for a slightly older but still VR-capable one. 00:09:43.540 --> 00:09:47.500 Not enough to notice or to contribute to significant motion sickness. 00:09:47.500 --> 00:09:52.740 And it keeps getting better. I managed to get almost 50 feet away from the dongle 00:09:52.740 --> 00:09:58.140 without a noticeable difference in the experience. Now, granted, this is still line of sight, 00:09:58.140 --> 00:10:01.740 but it's a lot further than I can get with a tether. 00:10:01.740 --> 00:10:05.220 Now, I did bring up the possibility of more than one of these devices 00:10:05.220 --> 00:10:11.540 causing interference with each other. And Valve said that while they have operated multiple headsets concurrently in the same space, 00:10:11.540 --> 00:10:16.260 they haven't explored more demanding use cases like packed VR cafes. 00:10:16.260 --> 00:10:21.540 Moving on to audio, the built-in solution is both incredibly impressive 00:10:21.540 --> 00:10:26.900 and also a little disappointing. I'm impressed by the audio quality. 00:10:26.900 --> 00:10:30.420 They apparently had to use opposing drivers to cancel out the vibrations 00:10:30.420 --> 00:10:35.060 to make sure that the inside-out tracking wouldn't get messed up, and they sound fantastic. 00:10:35.060 --> 00:10:42.500 As for the mic, I didn't get a chance to test it, but Valve assured me that the mics should carry on the index's incredible reputation 00:10:42.500 --> 00:10:48.900 for stellar microphone performance. I'm disappointed because I literally had the engineer who worked on the index 00:10:48.900 --> 00:10:55.020 and this new headset in the room with me, and when I asked her for a gaming headset with all this same audio black magic, 00:10:55.020 --> 00:10:58.380 she just shrugged. So, sorry, y'all. 00:10:58.380 --> 00:11:02.820 I tried. In all seriousness, the speakers don't fire directly into your ears, 00:11:02.820 --> 00:11:08.020 so there is a bit more sound bleed than with the index, but it doesn't seem like a game breaker, 00:11:08.020 --> 00:11:14.300 depending on what you're watching and who's around. The last couple of experiences I want to talk about are a huge deal 00:11:14.300 --> 00:11:20.420 whether you plan to use them or not. The first is FEX, an open-source project that Valve has been contributing, 00:11:20.420 --> 00:11:23.540 and this is a quote, quite heavily to. 00:11:23.540 --> 00:11:26.900 It's a translation layer that allowed me to experience 00:11:26.900 --> 00:11:30.580 a completely standard Windows x86 game, 00:11:30.580 --> 00:11:34.900 Hades 2 in this case, running directly on the hardware on the frame. 00:11:34.940 --> 00:11:38.580 I'm talking x86 code designed to run on Windows, 00:11:38.580 --> 00:11:42.620 running on a Snapdragon 8650 running Linux. 00:11:42.620 --> 00:11:45.820 Holy freaking mind-blown. 00:11:45.820 --> 00:11:50.420 They're planning a compatibility list, a la great-on-deck for the future. 00:11:50.420 --> 00:11:57.180 But wait a second, running on Linux? Yeah, Valve's been busy porting SteamOS to ARM. 00:11:57.180 --> 00:12:01.060 How did they drop so much news on one day? 00:12:01.060 --> 00:12:04.620 The frame does everything that you know and love about SteamOS, 00:12:04.620 --> 00:12:07.780 like fast suspend and resume and performance overlays, 00:12:07.780 --> 00:12:11.180 except on your VR headset directly. 00:12:11.180 --> 00:12:14.900 And as I mentioned briefly in the intro, if you blinked you might have missed it. 00:12:14.900 --> 00:12:19.260 With this new ARM processor comes the ability to, supposedly, 00:12:19.260 --> 00:12:24.260 run Android APKs by directly side-loading them onto the Steam frame. 00:12:24.260 --> 00:12:28.140 And given how many VR experiences are designed to run on mobile devices, 00:12:28.140 --> 00:12:34.580 this is a colossal win. And with Valve's commitment to putting microSD card slots on all their devices, 00:12:34.580 --> 00:12:39.820 it can't be too hard to install. Now, there are still some areas where the frame doesn't seem to be industry-leading. 00:12:39.820 --> 00:12:46.420 The light seal isn't perfect, especially if you compare it to the Beyond 2 with its custom 3D printed gasket. 00:12:46.420 --> 00:12:51.220 The pass-through cameras, they're just monochromes, so don't expect to be wearing your frame out and about 00:12:51.220 --> 00:12:55.380 like people did with the Apple Vision Pro for the first week or so. 00:12:55.380 --> 00:12:58.700 From my very brief and admittedly not side-by-side experience, 00:12:58.700 --> 00:13:04.100 it's also not the highest clarity nor highest dynamic range display I've ever seen, 00:13:04.100 --> 00:13:09.060 and it's not as light or compact as, say, the big screen Beyond 2. 00:13:09.060 --> 00:13:14.260 But it's the overall package that should have the entire rest of the industry stopping and going, 00:13:14.260 --> 00:13:20.900 how did Valve, who, as of 2021, supposedly had less than 350 employees, 00:13:20.900 --> 00:13:29.140 manage to outmaneuver monsters like Meta, who spent 17.7 billion on Reality Labs just last fiscal year? 00:13:29.140 --> 00:13:32.940 I would ask Gayben how it happened, but I'm pretty sure he's busy on his yacht. 00:13:32.940 --> 00:13:36.780 All I know is that I want one, whether it's for wireless PC gaming, 00:13:36.780 --> 00:13:42.700 native gaming on the road with minimal bulk in my bag, or even just relaxing on the couch watching movies on the big screen. 00:13:42.700 --> 00:13:47.100 What kind of sucker needs a big TV when this thing exists? 00:13:47.100 --> 00:13:51.100 So, with the frame clearly taking the place of the Index and Valve's lineup, 00:13:51.100 --> 00:13:54.940 what happens to all the users of the Index and, maybe more importantly, 00:13:54.940 --> 00:14:00.060 the third-party ecosystem that exists around its base stations and knuckles controllers? 00:14:00.060 --> 00:14:07.420 The short answer is the Index is EOL. But the long answer is Valve would love to see other players in the VR space approach them 00:14:07.420 --> 00:14:11.980 about continuing to support or even continuing to manufacture these devices. 00:14:12.620 --> 00:14:17.100 Whether that'll happen, I don't know, but at least Valve is open to the conversation. 00:14:17.100 --> 00:14:21.020 If you guys enjoyed this video, go check out part two on the Steam Machine, 00:14:21.020 --> 00:14:24.620 as well as the new 2026 edition of the Valve Steam Controller. 00:14:25.580 --> 00:14:28.780 Mind-blowing stuff today. I can't believe they blindsided me with this. 00:14:28.780 --> 00:14:32.460 They're like, come down, we'll tell you nothing. You have four hours to do everything. 00:14:33.980 --> 00:14:35.180 Nyaaah!