Before I spend tons of time trying to debug some intermittent connectivity issues I wanted to ask if some of you were also on the beta channel and experienced issues with streaming since yesterday. I think my issues started around when the update for the Frame arrived, but I was also trying out a seated game outside my normal play area so I don’t have a perfect apples to apples comparison. For me its about 80% smooth sailing but sometimes I get a 5-20 second dropout in visuals, not the usual second or two I get when I turn my head too fast (that is probably caused by my subpar WiFi which we currently don’t have a setting to disable for streaming). These dropouts don’t return me to the passthrough as would be expected, they last for much longer, and happens out of the blue, even if I don’t turn my head risking destabilising the 6GHz connection.
I’m running:
- Fedora 44 on AMD CPU/GPU
- Dedicated Wifi 6 travel router with only the Frame connected wirelessly
- Travel router WAN port to home network
- PC - > USB ethernet adapter - > ethernet cable -> travel router
- Steam Link dongle connected through a 3’ USB 3.0 extension cable.
The weird thing I notice with this update is suddenly the dongle is really picky about what USB port it’s plugged into. And before anyone says anything: they’re identical USB 3.2 ports on the same controller.
I’ll get frame drops, artifacts, and screen tearing if the ethernet adapter is in port “1” and the dongle is in port “2”. If I flip them and restart Steam VR it works perfectly.
Is the dongle even capable of using a full 3.2 port?
inxi -Jsays it’s a 3.0 device andlsusb -tsays it’s 5000M (USB 3.1 gen 1 speed) even when plugged into a 3.2 port.It’s not, but I wanted to point out my issue wasn’t due one of them being a slower port (e.g. 2.0).
I’ll let you know when I get my chance to order at the end of 2027 😂
Hopefully all of us beta testers have ironed out the kinks by then xD
Wish I could offer more help, but until then, enjoy!
Thank you for your service, and luck
It’s pretty awful now. My gf was trying out Beat Saber streamed from her PC for the first time and she said that it was absolutely awful with artifacts all over. I then spent some time troubleshooting it since I “knew” that it worked well for me just yesterday but when I tried playing Blade & Sorcery today I saw what she meant. Absolutely unplayable with the streamed dashboard jittering around and the stream turning into mush and the camera was jumping all over the place.
USB dongle was quite similar experience and the Wi-Fi7 AP I have next to the play space has 6GHz band.
Since your router also runs on the 6GHz band make sure the channels the dongle and the router use are far enough apart. Other than that, did you install an update on the beta channel around Friday? That’s when my issues started.
Oh sure there’s some concrete between and I don’t keep it plugged in. I doubt there’s really any issue on the network itself as I’m measuring very low ping and fast transfers between machines. It probably updated around Friday but I didn’t use it until the moment in my previous comment.
Sounds like we indeed got a borked update then, let’s hope they’ll get it fixed soon. I did some testing yesterday. Before I had the dongle about 1.5m away and to my right but I tried to hang the dongle over my monitor right in front of me and almost within arms reach. That completely eliminated the problem, so it might be some signal strength or packet loss recovery optimisation they borked. I haven’t tried a room-scale game yet to see if that also has issues but I suspect it.
Isn’t Beat Saber standalone? I’ve only been playing standalone games, tethered to a power outlet. A battery pack should also work.
Sure it is. Modded works but not the most intense stuff. It’s enough for me since I’m pretty much at the Expert - Expert+ level but my gf is somewhere around Expert+++. She also really wants to play some of the extended experiences from time to time and the loading times are not up to her standard.
It is, and it plays great. It’s also really good for stream testing, ez to get into and see/listen for issues.
Wish I knew how modded BS runs on the standalone frame, I recall there being some visually intense tracks people made that were wicked fun
My Frame was bricked by the charging issues from the previous update, about to RMA.
However before that, I investigated streaming issues on 6GHz and pinpointed it to Windows losing the region settings. That’s because 6GHz wifi requires a narrow band setting that’s different in each country (and broadcasting beyond the allowed band is illegal). For some reason, Windows just did not pick up the region from nearby devices and thus sometimes didn’t see the Frame’s 6GHz hotspot (this is what the dongle connects to).
It’s probably not related to your issue, since it caused complete loss of connection, not intermittent dropouts. Either way, might be worth checking if the region is set correctly.
Streaming on Linux worked flawlessly, it’s possible to set the region there easily.
I never had any dropouts just by moving around, though.
I’m sorry to hear you were hit by the charging issue. Region settings are set correctly so that shouldn’t be the issue. Maybe I’ll just have to wait for a new update.
I remember there being a setting to disable multi-link. I think then it should stay with the dongle.
Can’t test it though. My graphics card (Vega 64) seems to be too old for streaming. Gotta get around to making a bug report about that.
I have already tested that setting. It disables the dongle and goes WiFi only. Nothing seems to ve able to do the opposite.
Leave WiFi enabled and manually disconnect any WiFi you’re connected to on the steam frame. It’s not an ideal solution but it does let you stream exclusively over the dongle.
