TL;DR: Valve launched the Steam Frame VR headset with an Arm-based Snapdragon chip, aiming to run Half-Life: Alyx natively and streamed from PC. The new hardware features a “Frame Verified” status for optimized games, while rumors suggest two upcoming Half-Life titles supporting PC and VR cooperative play.
I thought Alyx had a STEAMOS native build already, is that not true?
Half Life 3 would be such a big sales boost for the Gabecube
I just want to say, I find it so goddamn funny that we got Half-Life 3 before Star Citizen. Anyone remembers that?
Alyx is not Half-Life 3. But that will probably be the case, yeah.
Ngl good decision. When you setup the groundwork developing tech for linux is MUCH easier than windows.
(I just had to wrestle with mingw-w64 for 2 hours straight)
If the price for their device isn’t too high, I might actually finally own a VR headset.
There’s no way I’d ever buy something from Meta. All the other devices are way too expensive and compliated to set up. This new Valve Frame is going to be perfect.
My guess is around $1,000 USD
They haven’t said the final price, but they’ve said it will be cheaper than the index, so definitely the under $1000.
but they’ve said it will be cheaper than the index
I missed this - that would be lovely
I thought they said they are aiming to at least not be more expensive than the Index? So 1000 USD might still be in the ball range, but it might very likely be less expensive.
Seeing as the Quest is their main competitor it’ll have to be less expensive if it’s to gain any traction.
I wonder if they’ll have a package with base stations? I know it doesn’t need it, but it might make for a better experience for those who do want it.
afaik the steamframe doesn’t have the IR detectors required to work with lighthouse based tracking.
trying to use both (steamframe optical track and lighthouse) would be… interesting
The ltt vid said that valve were not going to produce the index hardware anymore. So probably not. But they were open to someone else taking on the index if they wanted.
The Index was $1,000.
If we’re playing by The Price is Right rules, I’ll guess $899.
If we’re playing by The Price is Right rules, I’ll guess $899.
I’ll guess $900.
$1 Bob
I would like to buy a vowel.
Oops Wrong Bob.
I reeeeaaaally hope they do something like how microsoft and playstation purposefully sell their consoles at a loss ( I think it was 360 and ps3 ). One can dream.
Its possible, iirc steam deck was sold at a loss of $150 per unit.
It’s probably going to cost about the same as the Index did
About three fiddy?
Man next year is going to be another good VR year.
I’m here for it.
Ive been out of the loop, what made this year good? Anything notable?
Steam Frame, Arm Proton, and Linux VR on steam.
the gpu is weak, but with proper foveated rendering it is absolutely good enough I think
This is an absolute no-brainer on their part
And here I just want Half Life 3 to be Linux exclusive for 1 year. I mean, if you make a console-like, you might as well go some exclusives. :)
Exclusives are bullshit.
Linux can be installed on any computer for free, so I wouldn’t call not making a Windows binary exclusive, unless all the games I need Proton to run are exclusive too.
If Windows users want to play Half Life 3 they can just ask Microsoft to make a reverse WINE lol
I wonder how well it’d run under WSL? It would be funny as shit to force the Windows Gamers (real Gamers only play MOBAs and eSports /s) to fuck around with compatibility layers like Linux users do.
Exclusives don’t benefit anyone.
Of course they don’t but it would be funny to see if Windows users spend their time with compatibility layers just this once. You know, for the sake of chaotic good.
Great game, but lets get the next installment instead.
Half Life: Alyx, Chapter 2
And then…
Half Life: Fred.
Let’s get an escape room game playing as Eli escaping the crumbling black mesa!
What about Half Life: Barney ?
Half Life: Blue Shift already happened.
(I appreciate the Flintstones joke, though.)
Ah, I should play that
you can play the og, or the black mesa version, although that may not be fully finished
I haven’t played through Half-Life anyway so I’ll do them all at some point. Would you recommend I play the original HL, or Black Mesa? do they work on Linux?
Maybe the demo game is just being on the job in Half Life - The Grind
I was worried when they didn’t show off Alyx on the Frame and only streamed it. Getting Alyx to work natively on the Frame would be fantastic to show off VR on the go.
Does this mean steam is soon to distribute ARM Linux native builds?
Would hope so. Maybe that means linux phones will be able to run steam.
What I wouldn’t give for a Valve Phone now that you mention it.
Valve engineers fed up with software, singlehandedly make arch-based handheld, arch-based gaming console, arch-based VR headset, arch-based smartphone, arch-based EV.
How to print infinite money
You can already run Steam games on Android, using the same protocol as Valve (FEx) with an app called GameNative.
Not Android, phones based on a desktop Linuc distro (e.g. PostmarketOS, Ubuntu Touch)
probably not, they’ve been building a translation layer called FEX that does x86 -> ARM, reasonable to expect it’s an x86 build optimized for FEX and the hardware specs of the Frame https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX
but honestly who knows, they might just release an ARM native build, it’s their own damn game, they were one of the earliest gaming companies to port games originally written for windows to linux, it’s entirely possible they’ll do a full port (am I remembering wrong internet?)
the FEX thing is underrated, I know FEX isn’t new but the news that we can expect to performantly run almost our entire steam catalogue on ARM hardware is wild
FEX will have a performance penalty for CPU bound games (not for graphics if it supports Vulkan (yay passthrough)) so native is better
Honestly these days the list of things you can’t easily compile natively for ARM is getting pretty scarce. It’s actually kind of surprising to me that there would even be a significant need for an emulation layer, versus just working directly on compiler and runtime support directly.
Steam Frame is going to have a snapdragon processor and will “be a computer”.
So there will be an ARM native Steam client (and Steam OS that may or may not be SteamOS). Just a question on whether that gets a wider release.
But yes. Games themselves will be heavily dependent on FEX.
Eh, if they’re doing it for Half Life Alyx, it’ll likely work like Proton, where Steam will automatically install a native version if it’s available, and you can “force a compatibility tool” if you’d prefer to run the original version through FEX. Presumably any dev would be able to upload a native ARM version for Steam Frame/a hypothetical Steam Deck 2, but I imagine very few will.
Edit: Valve engineers pretty much confirmed this to Gamer’s Nexus, as they described Steam automatically installing the best version for your device, and that you can manually override that.
We’ll see ARM Steam before 64bit Steam.
Isn’t 64bit Steam Client due to drop for Windows imminently? They end 32bit support at the start of next year supposedly.
I doubt “soon.” but hopefully this is a step in that direction.
No, they are building a translation framework for x86
Yes, but they’re making a build specifically for this set. They own all the source code. Presumably that means they made this version native for ARM.
Considering the big rise in ARM PCs it’s completely logical that they start supporting it more too, allowing devs to make and distribute ARM builds.
I’m…not sure what you mean. They’ve just compiled SteamOS and it’s base for arm64. There was nothing stopping that from happening previously. The majority of the client code is closed, and that entire piece of SteamOS is weaved into the OS itself. So they’re just distributing arm64 builds if SteamOS with the client code, not commiting to a standalone client being distributed, unless you’ve seen that somewhere.
No, but it seems like a logical step is all. Allow devs to distribute ARM binaries of their game. Release Steam for ARM.
If they do the work anyhow no sense in wasting it.
I mean…once they have this going, there’s nothing stopping that. It’s essentially the same thing, except the hooks for Mac/Win for the desktop. Linux will already be ready to go. I just haven’t heard them mention it is a point of release is all.
I think they meant the Steam client.
Plus they already said that they would support game binaries built for ARM. Would be stupid not to.
Support meaning in their build system. They’ve already added that as a build option awhile ago. Just means you can set a flag to build for more platforms now, and they have arm64 machine types to handle the builds.
Devs still need to do optimizations to support this in most cases. Some games based on open frameworks won’t have much to do but flip the switch.
“Valve reportedly cooking”
Ever since “cooked” became a thing I have been unable to understand titles like this (or really the slang use of cook)
Based on the article, it looks like Valve is creating a native Linux version of the game.
there is already a native x86 linux version, they are working on ARM version, so that it can on the headset
someone is cooking (in production) vs:
someone cooked (completely did a thing)
someone is cooked (game over, bad decisions were made, here comes the result)
Thank you.
At the risk of sounding like grandpa, I could have sworn in production used to be “is cooking UP” instead of just “is cooking”.
The fluidity of language.
A lot of slang tends to be shortening of phrases, its happened with lots of older slang, though I don’t have any examples off the top of my head right now
Let me tell you about “fraught WITH” instead of just “fraught”
Half Life games for Linux will have been WROUGHT, bruh! 6 7 🤷♂️👏👍🫶🙌🤲👐✊👊🤟👋
I assumed that hla was linux native since it launched.
Edit: It was, the title just sucks. Arm native.
Thanks, I had the same question.
half life alyx only has a windows build
Related: has anyone actually tried Alyx on Linux recently? I set up ALVR with my facebook quest the other month and every game except Alyx was fine. Half-assed googling makes it sound like that was a known issue but there are also probably like five people on the planet trying Alyx in Proton.
Why would you run it in Proton? It’s a native game.
i just played yesterday, alyx is one of the few that run without issues.
oh except, controller plugged in usb prevents it from starting (same as vr home)
why run it in proton?Completely stops it launching? Most recently I could get to the main menu but would crash on loading a save, previously I could get to early quarantine zone before crashing on a level transition when I gave up. But if it’s that simple I’ll have to try unplugging my flight sim gear.
Same. I played it with steam link on my Pico 4 and it runs great. And it’s a phenomenal vr game.
I played the native Linux version of Alyx on my Valve Index last week, worked fine.
I played it with ALVR on Linux with a meta quest 2 from start to finish like a year ago. ran like a champion (ok, it froze like every 3 hours, now that I think of it).
