When I look at this announcement, the hardware is very exciting, for sure. But it is Valve’s dedication to Linux that really has me smiling. I don’t see three hardware devices to buy. I see two big proclamations for which the hardware is the message:
SteamOS on desktop! It seemed inevitable but it’s still great to see.
STEAM VR USING LINUX AS ITS TARGET PLATFORM?!?!?
I will grant that it’s very possible I buy all three pieces of the hardware, even though I like building my own PCs. I will also grant that Valve’s support for linux probably would not be what it is without the enshittification of Microsoft’s ecosystem. But in this world I’m gonna go ahead and accept the imperfect good news.
They’ve been pretty great on Linux. They built on the great work of the wine people and have done a lot to push the state forward.
I believe they’ve had a lot of good things to say about the stability of the Linux platform from a development perspective. For all the jank and instability that Linux software exposes, it has a lot more stability in terms of things like kernel and driver interfaces as a point of deliberate design choice. So there’s a lot less work needing to code around the specific versions of drivers being used.
The VR looks interesting. I had bought the HP reverb G2, but Microsoft pulled the plug on windows mixed reality, and I’ve since moved to Linux, so this might be a good replacement.
Apparently there is third party support in Linux under Mondao but it still seems pretty developmental and I haven’t had the time to mess with it yet. I’m still clinging to mine as well, because at least for now it still works and I’ve blocked Windows from rug-pulling my WMR app. I’m sure that’ll only last until the next time I need to reformat and reinstall in a couple of years.
Doubt I would ever do the VR headset. I simply don’t play the kind of games that work well with (or even need) VR. Although come to think of it, a VR Civilization VI game would be wild.
But the Steam Machine would be interesting to replace the old laptop I currently have running as my multimedia box on my television (streaming, retro gaming, steam mirroring, etc…) It would be more powerful than the well worn old dude I’m currently using.
I’ve got a bit of a VR library, but the new ease of setup with this one does have me considering how I’d use the virtual display features. Even with trackpads, a lot of mouse-driven games aren’t great on Steam Deck, but I’m replaying Baldur’s Gate 2 right now and wondering how the mouse controls might work out in VR.
Real glad I can soon ditch the DualSense Edge and its only half-functional gimmicks !
I will miss the adjustable triggers, but I will NOT miss the randomly incorrect button mappings, and “extra buttons” that get fucked up if you ever connect it to an actual PS5
They said they went LCD because of the light loss due to the lenses.
I dunno if they could implement a controlled backlit array + high constrast panel layer at that scale, but it would be killer if they did and made it seem 80% like a real OLED.
Fair assessment. It’s got all the bells and whistles except OLED. Makes me wonder if they’re planning on an OLED model in a year or two like they did with the Deck. They know there will be plenty of double dippers.
Half life alyx was a solid game and I would expect valve to release another VR game for this things release. Even if not, there’s good stuff out nowadays.
Although I don’t get the motion sickness that people have mentioned so maybe I have more options.
I’ll buy the VR headset if, as well as streaming games, you can also play video/mirror your desktop. I know that’s not the market they’re going for, but it seems to me that those are the main use-cases of VR headsets aside from gaming and to my non-tech way of thinking it doesn’t seem harder than streaming a game.
Their streaming system works fine with desktop apps, and it already works with their VR setup on different headsets.
I’ve streamed desktop to a different headset. I was able to also do stuff like mounting an app in a picture frame on the wall of a little VR house.
Using the video player on desktop while streaming was a little jank, but since this is a proper desktop I imagine it’ll be easy enough to switch over and use a normal video player without streaming another computers video player.
They have demos of those things in the trailer. Apparently the pass-through is black and white, but it supports peripherals, so adding a color HD camera to the front to pass-through HQ video while desktop working is completely feasible. It is also just a linux computer, so if Valve doesn’t develop the software for it, someone will. Essentially kicking the (very tiny and limited) vision pro market out from under Apple.
no hand tracking
no color passthrough
no hardware upgrade
no WebXR
no new VR proper content
Still, it’s good obviously, not having to rely on BigTech. This was also possible before though as I pointed out in https://lemmy.ml/post/38899489/22202786 with e.g. Lynx XR1, as a rooted Android standalone HMD with no account required.
Anyway IMHO the big questions for VR on Linux more broadly is what changes upstream on KDE in terms of immersive UX? Is KDE Plasma becoming a VR graphical shell? Does it have 3D widgets? Does it impact freedesktop in any way?
Price will make or break this thing. Rumors going around its gonna be around 1k which is a tall ask for the listed specs. 500, I’d buy it without any promise of any Valve backed VR game and I’m not even big on VR. For the rumored price, I’d need to see more commitment from Valve and latest news right now are saying they aren’t developing a VR title.
A $1k would break it in this market… The specs suggest a little lower end generally than Quest 3 hardware wise, or in the ballpark (comparable display and optics, lower quality cameras). The only notable improvement is including eye tracking, which is nice, but not $1k nice…
$500 should be a good target, some tradeoffs with Quest 3 (worse ‘AR’, better eye tracking and PC connectivity).
For the rumored price, I’d need to see more commitment from Valve and latest news right now are saying they aren’t developing a VR title.
Agreed. I feel the same.
But then I start to think about an Indie friendly VR platform might give us in six months. It could be very nice. (The price might look more okay in a year, if this thing incites a VR indie game boom.)
Yeah, at about £500 I’d have got one. I don’t need the full Steam OS or any of that crap. I just want wireless connection to my PC for streaming.
The use of a second wireless dongle could be a double edged sword as well. Right now I can use a Quest anywhere in the house on Wifi. Works better than wired, in fact. The dongle would limit where I can use it.
I’m sure you can also stream to it over a conventional wifi connection as well, the point of the dongle is so that they can guarantee a direct connection with lower latency and on a dedicated radio frequency to avoid interference, which is especially for non-techies who don’t know what they’re doing and just expect stuff to work out-of-the-box. The headset is just running SteamOS and has a regular wifi antenna, so I see no reason why you couldn’t stream to it using plain old Steam Link or whatever if you already know your connection can handle it.
Sadly agree. I’ve been waiting for years, claiming I’d buy whatever they sell… but honestly right now this would feel like a donation more than something I eagerly want, even less need.
FWIW I’m also NOT the market, I have … I don’t actually know how many but at least 5 XR headsets.
@[email protected]@[email protected] seems like there’s more potential for hardware upgrades than with any other headset since the system has separate modules for compute/optics+display/tracking and audio/strap/power but sure, no XR headset is going to be very upgradable given the harsh constraints on size and weight.
Yeah, in theory that’s great but reminds me of my Corsair One proudly featured on my desk right now. It’s a standard PC… but that thing is so well done, so compact, it’s hard to find ways to change anything.
Also it reminds me of the frunk of the Index, super cool in theory, couple of neat projects… but I personally didn’t use it much so we’ll see.
I wish we had a pricing-point for the VR headset. I’m still considering getting a Quest III and break it open a bit, since the hardware is so damn good. This seems marginally under it (monochrome instead of full-color etc) but running SteamOS instead of Android sounds amazing.
But I’d need more information on it first - and granted, knowing if ever it releases over here. 😅
I’ll definitely get the new controller if possible though. Still rocking my original, and it’s still the best way to play mouse-centric games on the couch, I prefer it over a lapboard with an actual mouse.
but running SteamOS instead of Android sounds amazing.
I have put Android and various flavors of Linux on a variety of weird hardware. And I’ve played a decent number of games that run on both Android and SteamOS.
I can go confirm - running a game on SteamOS rather than Android typically makes a big performance improvement.
I’m bracing myself for the Steam Frame to be around $700-800. The monochrome pass through might seem like a downgrade, but mixed reality is also not part of what valve wants to do with the headset, i.e. focus on VR. Everything else seems like they might be pricey upgrades, especially with the eye tracking and streaming tech. They also shifted manufacturing to the US due to tariffs.
Sad about the monochrome passthrough but otherwise pretty hyped for more VR hardware. The Index was a disappointment to me so glad to see it’s more in line with the Quest 3, especially the controllers. They look perfect.
I think it’s just not trying to be a pass through headset, like the vision pro and galaxy xr, which is honestly fine with me, if it keeps the price from going into the thousands. If it’s feature built for giving a virtual display for gaming, and does that better than anything else (and I think it will, given the special dongle specifically for streaming games), then that has value.
Really excited for this and hopefully that means steamvr on Linux will actually start working better! The current Beta build is much better but still lots of work to do.
I’m definitely getting the frame as upgrade from quest 3 which I rarely use due to it being attached to Meta. The controller is no brainer considering that old steamdeck controller is still one of the best controllers on the market. Not sure about steam machine mostly because I just built my own PC - would have totally waited for it if I knew it was coming but it looks so slick.
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I’ve been saying for years that VR can get off my lawn until I can buy Linux native hardware. I guess I’m interested in VR, now.
is well said.
I need to buy all of these.
Where steamphone
When I look at this announcement, the hardware is very exciting, for sure. But it is Valve’s dedication to Linux that really has me smiling. I don’t see three hardware devices to buy. I see two big proclamations for which the hardware is the message:
SteamOS on desktop! It seemed inevitable but it’s still great to see.
STEAM VR USING LINUX AS ITS TARGET PLATFORM?!?!?
I will grant that it’s very possible I buy all three pieces of the hardware, even though I like building my own PCs. I will also grant that Valve’s support for linux probably would not be what it is without the enshittification of Microsoft’s ecosystem. But in this world I’m gonna go ahead and accept the imperfect good news.
They’ve been pretty great on Linux. They built on the great work of the wine people and have done a lot to push the state forward.
I believe they’ve had a lot of good things to say about the stability of the Linux platform from a development perspective. For all the jank and instability that Linux software exposes, it has a lot more stability in terms of things like kernel and driver interfaces as a point of deliberate design choice. So there’s a lot less work needing to code around the specific versions of drivers being used.
The VR looks interesting. I had bought the HP reverb G2, but Microsoft pulled the plug on windows mixed reality, and I’ve since moved to Linux, so this might be a good replacement.
Eyy, Reverb gang.
Apparently there is third party support in Linux under Mondao but it still seems pretty developmental and I haven’t had the time to mess with it yet. I’m still clinging to mine as well, because at least for now it still works and I’ve blocked Windows from rug-pulling my WMR app. I’m sure that’ll only last until the next time I need to reformat and reinstall in a couple of years.
Doubt I would ever do the VR headset. I simply don’t play the kind of games that work well with (or even need) VR. Although come to think of it, a VR Civilization VI game would be wild.
But the Steam Machine would be interesting to replace the old laptop I currently have running as my multimedia box on my television (streaming, retro gaming, steam mirroring, etc…) It would be more powerful than the well worn old dude I’m currently using.
They did at least do: https://www.meta.com/experiences/sid-meiers-civilization-vii-vr/5781689118524197/?srsltid=AfmBOoqbqaOcZk-uwva84T4NpmPU5A6M8h1LPhsJc2EkCyD5ujrcFI_m
No idea if it is vaguely any good or not…
I’ve got a bit of a VR library, but the new ease of setup with this one does have me considering how I’d use the virtual display features. Even with trackpads, a lot of mouse-driven games aren’t great on Steam Deck, but I’m replaying Baldur’s Gate 2 right now and wondering how the mouse controls might work out in VR.
Real glad I can soon ditch the DualSense Edge and its only half-functional gimmicks !
I will miss the adjustable triggers, but I will NOT miss the randomly incorrect button mappings, and “extra buttons” that get fucked up if you ever connect it to an actual PS5
If Valve makes ARM Linux work properly as a gaming/desktop OS, I will uhh hmm.
I will buy this thing.
I wonder if they’re still using Arch for the basis of this. Its ARM version is kinda not so great, although not terrible either.
This could be huge for ARM adoption on PC. Exciting stuff!
let’s hope they sell these globally this time.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/11/valve-reveal-the-new-steam-frame-steam-controller-and-steam-machine-with-steamos/
well fuck
Been waiting for this vr headset to release for years, only to find they’ve used lcd’s instead of OLED screens. I’m so disappointed and pissed.
They said they went LCD because of the light loss due to the lenses.
I dunno if they could implement a controlled backlit array + high constrast panel layer at that scale, but it would be killer if they did and made it seem 80% like a real OLED.
Hmm. Ok. That’s fair I guess. Still bummed, but I guess I’ll give it a try when it’s released. Still better than a quest.
Fair assessment. It’s got all the bells and whistles except OLED. Makes me wonder if they’re planning on an OLED model in a year or two like they did with the Deck. They know there will be plenty of double dippers.
I waited long enough. Just gonna go ahead and get the psvr2 with the pc adapter.
VR is the most expensive toy you will use for a couple of hours before getting bored of it.
I’ve already had a headset for years, and it’s incredible. You don’t know what you’re talking g about.
My 200 hour playthrough of Skyrim VR back in 2019 justified my headset purchase and GPU upgrade (gtx 1080, oooh, aaah) all by itself.
I play my index every week. I’m still not bored.
I just checked and I’ve gotten over 100 hours out of mine so far.
Depends on what kind of person you are. I know of individuals who practically live in VR.
I guess that’s fair.
I found most VR games I tried to be shallow experiences. Resident Evil was cool but it made me feel motion sickness after about 30 minutes.
Half life alyx was a solid game and I would expect valve to release another VR game for this things release. Even if not, there’s good stuff out nowadays.
Although I don’t get the motion sickness that people have mentioned so maybe I have more options.
It’s much better for games that were designed around VR in mind.
Some of my personal favorite recommendations:
Elite Dangerous is phenomenal in VR. Same for Star Wars: Squadrons. But I’m a big space sim fan.
I’ll probably use VR mostly to play sims. Elite Dangerous, X4, I also have a few racing sims.
But ultimately depends on the price. I’m not going to sell my organs for what is essentially a really cool immersive gimmick.
Racing sims are 11/10 in VR. Any cockpit game really. No going back for me.
House of the Dying Sun is a space sim with a strategic map view in addition to piloting a fighter yourself.
It is so good in VR.
I’ll buy the VR headset if, as well as streaming games, you can also play video/mirror your desktop. I know that’s not the market they’re going for, but it seems to me that those are the main use-cases of VR headsets aside from gaming and to my non-tech way of thinking it doesn’t seem harder than streaming a game.
Their streaming system works fine with desktop apps, and it already works with their VR setup on different headsets.
I’ve streamed desktop to a different headset. I was able to also do stuff like mounting an app in a picture frame on the wall of a little VR house.
Using the video player on desktop while streaming was a little jank, but since this is a proper desktop I imagine it’ll be easy enough to switch over and use a normal video player without streaming another computers video player.
They have demos of those things in the trailer. Apparently the pass-through is black and white, but it supports peripherals, so adding a color HD camera to the front to pass-through HQ video while desktop working is completely feasible. It is also just a linux computer, so if Valve doesn’t develop the software for it, someone will. Essentially kicking the (very tiny and limited) vision pro market out from under Apple.
Yes but …
Still, it’s good obviously, not having to rely on BigTech. This was also possible before though as I pointed out in https://lemmy.ml/post/38899489/22202786 with e.g. Lynx XR1, as a rooted Android standalone HMD with no account required.
Anyway IMHO the big questions for VR on Linux more broadly is what changes upstream on KDE in terms of immersive UX? Is KDE Plasma becoming a VR graphical shell? Does it have 3D widgets? Does it impact freedesktop in any way?
(copy of https://lemmy.ml/post/38899489/22202838 as I posted there first)
Price will make or break this thing. Rumors going around its gonna be around 1k which is a tall ask for the listed specs. 500, I’d buy it without any promise of any Valve backed VR game and I’m not even big on VR. For the rumored price, I’d need to see more commitment from Valve and latest news right now are saying they aren’t developing a VR title.
A $1k would break it in this market… The specs suggest a little lower end generally than Quest 3 hardware wise, or in the ballpark (comparable display and optics, lower quality cameras). The only notable improvement is including eye tracking, which is nice, but not $1k nice…
$500 should be a good target, some tradeoffs with Quest 3 (worse ‘AR’, better eye tracking and PC connectivity).
Agreed. I feel the same.
But then I start to think about an Indie friendly VR platform might give us in six months. It could be very nice. (The price might look more okay in a year, if this thing incites a VR indie game boom.)
Yeah, at about £500 I’d have got one. I don’t need the full Steam OS or any of that crap. I just want wireless connection to my PC for streaming.
The use of a second wireless dongle could be a double edged sword as well. Right now I can use a Quest anywhere in the house on Wifi. Works better than wired, in fact. The dongle would limit where I can use it.
I’m sure you can also stream to it over a conventional wifi connection as well, the point of the dongle is so that they can guarantee a direct connection with lower latency and on a dedicated radio frequency to avoid interference, which is especially for non-techies who don’t know what they’re doing and just expect stuff to work out-of-the-box. The headset is just running SteamOS and has a regular wifi antenna, so I see no reason why you couldn’t stream to it using plain old Steam Link or whatever if you already know your connection can handle it.
Sadly agree. I’ve been waiting for years, claiming I’d buy whatever they sell… but honestly right now this would feel like a donation more than something I eagerly want, even less need.
FWIW I’m also NOT the market, I have … I don’t actually know how many but at least 5 XR headsets.
@[email protected] @[email protected] seems like there’s more potential for hardware upgrades than with any other headset since the system has separate modules for compute/optics+display/tracking and audio/strap/power but sure, no XR headset is going to be very upgradable given the harsh constraints on size and weight.
Yeah, in theory that’s great but reminds me of my Corsair One proudly featured on my desk right now. It’s a standard PC… but that thing is so well done, so compact, it’s hard to find ways to change anything.
Also it reminds me of the frunk of the Index, super cool in theory, couple of neat projects… but I personally didn’t use it much so we’ll see.
I wish we had a pricing-point for the VR headset. I’m still considering getting a Quest III and break it open a bit, since the hardware is so damn good. This seems marginally under it (monochrome instead of full-color etc) but running SteamOS instead of Android sounds amazing.
But I’d need more information on it first - and granted, knowing if ever it releases over here. 😅
I’ll definitely get the new controller if possible though. Still rocking my original, and it’s still the best way to play mouse-centric games on the couch, I prefer it over a lapboard with an actual mouse.
I have put Android and various flavors of Linux on a variety of weird hardware. And I’ve played a decent number of games that run on both Android and SteamOS.
I can go confirm - running a game on SteamOS rather than Android typically makes a big performance improvement.
Gamers nexus said the price category can be assumed to be around the index. Which i find a bit excessive, but maybe i misheard.
I’m bracing myself for the Steam Frame to be around $700-800. The monochrome pass through might seem like a downgrade, but mixed reality is also not part of what valve wants to do with the headset, i.e. focus on VR. Everything else seems like they might be pricey upgrades, especially with the eye tracking and streaming tech. They also shifted manufacturing to the US due to tariffs.
Sad about the monochrome passthrough but otherwise pretty hyped for more VR hardware. The Index was a disappointment to me so glad to see it’s more in line with the Quest 3, especially the controllers. They look perfect.
I think it’s just not trying to be a pass through headset, like the vision pro and galaxy xr, which is honestly fine with me, if it keeps the price from going into the thousands. If it’s feature built for giving a virtual display for gaming, and does that better than anything else (and I think it will, given the special dongle specifically for streaming games), then that has value.
Yeah I can see why they’d not implement it, not even that interested in AR, it’s just a nice QOL feature that I’d miss.
happy noises
Really excited for this and hopefully that means steamvr on Linux will actually start working better! The current Beta build is much better but still lots of work to do.
I’m definitely getting the frame as upgrade from quest 3 which I rarely use due to it being attached to Meta. The controller is no brainer considering that old steamdeck controller is still one of the best controllers on the market. Not sure about steam machine mostly because I just built my own PC - would have totally waited for it if I knew it was coming but it looks so slick.
Very excited for Linux in 2026!
I mean I think better Linux SteamVR is a given since they are selling the new steam machine as an option for streaming to the Frame.