Finally I have them all!

Short story: Needed to RMA headset due to stuck pixels in left display. Was asked to send back HMD and wireless adaper but unstructtions were unclear.

Sent back the whole kit, so now I spent a month waiting for Valve to send everything back piecemeal.

Controllers finally arrived today.

I'm still out on the usb cable and cleaning cloth but I don't need either.

Hey guys,

I am one of the very first Steam Frame users; I got mine within 14 days of the initial pre-order queue being closed.

I've already spent about 30 hours with this headset and while I had many issues, I have managed to work around all of them so far. However, my glasses were proving an issue quite early on.

I ordered these custom lenses on the 30th of September and they arrived today. Finally, VR without my glasses getting dirty within 5 seconds, uncomfortably pushing into my face and still being able to see. Glasses also caused massively increased eye strain. I am VERY sensitive when it comes to various aspects of my vision such as my glasses and constrast.

These lenses delivered. With glasses, on a Quest 2 as well as here, the effective sharp FOV I had was extremely small; the headset had to set high up, which was uncomfortable and pushed the glasses against my eyes which then resulted in all kinds of problems.

I ordered these from within the EU and paid about 65€ if I remember right.

I have had the Steam Frame for a couple of weeks now and heres a few thoughts I have collected!

In Concept!

In concept the Steam Frame is a very good idea, the ability to have a very light weight, very powerful headset with SteamOS is very very appealing!

But that's just it, concept doesn't always equal practicality and there are a few areas where as of the current moment it does fall short.

Play Space issues!

I have not seen many people talk about this but there is something I have repeatedly witnessed from the Steam Frame when wirelessly connecting to the PC, even with the dongle.

Quite frequently when playing games like Beatsaber or Until You Fall, I have found that the play space seems to either shift or the headsets tracking gets thrown off a little bit.

What do I mean by this? Well I can sum it up with this! You'll be in the middle of playing and suddenly the Steam Frames passthrough cameras will kick in with an "Out of Bounds" message... Even if you are WELL within the boundary you have set.

Now heres the odd part, that does not happen in standalone.

I have a fairly good network and the dongle was right in the same room as the Frame which begs the question.. what causes this? I am still trying to figure it out, but that's another story.

Overheating!

So this is where I start to get VERY critical of Valves design, I got my Frame within the first week and one of the first things I noticed was an issue with the cooling.

I had codex do a few checks on temperatures and found it constantly hitting 96-97c with Valves fan configuration.

The first thing I did was open up the headset and take a very deep look into what was inside and to my surprise or lack there of.. They used traditional thermal paste which when replaced with PTM7950 (Everyones favorite miracle phase change sheet.) resulted in no more overheating or shutdowns.

However, as an extra precaution I made a fan configuration plugin that allows me to adjust the frames fan speed depending on my tastes and I set it to be more aggressive which dropped the temps down to 85c on average.

Audio!

This is where I disagree with the community, as a previous quest user who absolutely hated the sound of the built in speakers.. I can appreciate the quality bump with the Steam Frame!

I will concede that this is nowhere near Index levels which I did have before, but it's really not as terrible as some people make it out to be.. It's actually totally fine.

The Displays!

They aren't OLED but I won't pretend they are bad either, many people complain about the darks not being dark but I have to ask a very blunt question.

Are you really sure you even care when you're mid VR session? I don't! It does not detract from a game when everything else around me is going bonkers.

Furthermore, I know the VR die hards out there are going to criticize me for this one but I am sorry! The lenses do go hand in hand with the display, the clarity is GOOD! And that's in part due to the pancake lenses along with the display.

The Resolution!

Thiiis is kinda where I am gonna hand Valve the L, The frame can handle far more than 1920x1080p at its highest available resolution for the GUI and games..

On the frame in particular it looks blurry and could be improved particularly for the Steam GUI.. I'm very partial to 1440p and don't think it would hurt anything but thats just me.

The Weight!

..Or lack there of! Which is a good thing, I LOVE the weight of this headset and I cannot state that enough.

For the hardware packed inside? Valve NAILED it, You all need to understand. This thing is AWESOME! Like legitimately you barely feel it on your head and its soooo good! SO GOOD!

Oh my god I could go on for hours on how good this thing feels on the head but I won't cause it would get annoying lol

The Accessories!

They add so much to the frame, light blocking, a top strap to make it feel better on the top of your head, hand grips to actually allow you to fully use the controllers..

But this is where I gotta ask a question to Valve..

WHO ON EARTH THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO SELL THESE AS $60 DLC!? Just package them in!

These are ESSENTIAL to the Frame in my opinion, they add SO MUCH to the headset that it is genuinely worthwhile.. and it baffles me that they are not baseline with the headset.

The Controllers!

They're good, They're what I am used to as a quest user but a little bigger, and they have finger tracking!

Theres really not much else to say! they do what controllers do! I wont over-complicate it with tech specs and lengthy explanations about finger tracking quality or controller tracking, they just work and thats the important part.

SteamOS!

It's buggy! But it's SteamOS!

I won't pretend it's a polished, flawless experience right out of the gate, theres a lot of issues that need ironing out like the play space issue I mentioned above and a few other things but if you ask me?

It's progressing fast! Get on the beta branch for the best experience and watch as every 2-3 days theres another update that improves things!

The nice part is however it does allow for a lot of tinkering!

The Price..

I'm straight up just gonna say it, The price is bad.

The thing is however.. That's not Valves fault and I won't blame them for it.

We all know the supply constraints and theres not one particular thing responsible for it, a lot of things are culminating into it being as expensive as it is.

The Gaming Experience!

All in all, it's hit or miss because its in active development and people need to set reasonable expectations.

You are buying Valves brand new standalone headset, they have never had a standalone headset, this is also valves first android device.. so theres a lot for them to work through.

I'll use Megabonk as an example because I love the damn game!

Two weeks ago it could barely hit 45 FPS at 720p, now? I am hitting 45 FPS at 1080p on MAX settings!

That's a big bump and that's without me doing any configuring! So hang in there, it does in fact get better.

Conclusion!

It's good and bad and everywhere in between!

This is not as flushed out as something like the steam deck and likely wont be for a while, but if you're okay with that experience and love to tinker?

Theres no better headset.

Maybe I'm just an unc boomer, but I don't understand why anyone cares about "low quality" pass through. I keep hearing that you can't read your phone through it, and I'm baffled by why anyone would want to. If I'm lucky enough to have an hour to play a game, I'm going to play the game, not stop in the middle to scroll insta. The only time I care about passthrough is to make sure I'm not going to smash into some furniture, which the pass-through is fine for. What is happening on your phone that can't wait for the abysmal 1 hour of battery time to run down before you can take off the headset and look at your phone? Help me understand, I'm honestly wondering WTH I'm missing by not using my phone between shooting aliens in the face.

Just got my AMVR ones... so far I have no complaints. I'm pretty sure I have the "updated" ones however, due to not seeing any visible layer lines. I'm wanting to get a second pair as spares, and considering the other options.

I do have a -6.25 prescription though, which is the entire reason why I initially went with the AMVR ones.

I'm looking for a game I can sink a lot of time into. I gave modded Skyrim ago, and it is a mystical experience (I can spend hours hunting elk) but I've just played too much Skyrim and need something to sink hours into on the steam frame.

What's been your go to game, hoping for games with deep experiences.

After a few days of casual use the fingers are detaching further and further away from actual finger positions. Left hand has ring and pinky fingers always half bent now and right hand has index always slightly bent. No amount of drumming or fiddling with connection/settings helps.

Shipping a 1000€+ product in this condition is not ok, not to mention it's missing hand straps by default (always out of stock) and the 40-50m battery life is really rough. It's basically a wired headset but forced to transmit wireless video. Really expected better from Valve.

I remember seeing a whole lot of posts in here where people would wake up to find out that their Frame completely bricked itself out of nowhere and had to RMA it and get a new one shipped out. I remember a bunch of comments along the lines of that happening because of this or that about charging it, something about USB A to USB C adapters or something.

Is that still a thing? What should I look out for? My order email finally came in, and now I feel paranoid like a first-time mother expecting a baby.

After the startup, and the frame logo animation I'm stuck on the "Loading User Data" screen.
I can launch Dolphin, and Discover and desktop. I can open non-steam applications via the plus button, successfully playing a video on Vacuumtube.

However, attempting to launch Steam or any game within desktop doesn't work.

Just found out this is happening to users across Steam.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1xftk0k/what_happents_anyone_have_same_problem/

Probably a good thing this is a widespread issue, because they might fix it quicker.
Notably this is not happening on my desktop.

EDIT: If you are experiencing this, the standard advice people were following on Desktop or Steam Deck was to wipe certain files or Steam altogether. This is not fixing the problem, and since it is a widespread issue, I would advise against doing anything like that on Frame, until we know more.

2nd Edit: Now my desktop steam client is down and my Steam Deck.
How am I going to get my Steam Fix if my Steam Frame, Steam Deck and Steam Machine are out of Steam?

3rd Edit:
All 3 devices of my tested devices are now online.
This occurred for each one, separately over about half an hour.
If yours isn't working yet, hopefully it will soon.

Importantly, I didn't change any settings, or delete a license.
Valve must be rolling out a fix that is slowly coming across the system.
Good luck Framers!

Just bought my steam frame. Last VR was odyssey+, which was great until Microsoft killed it. Any new VR game recommendations? Or tasks to use with the frame?

Are there any projects trying to convert the Arcturus camera for use in anything else besides the steam frame? Even if some "hacky" thing with an ESP32 or something?

https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/SteamHardware/SteamFrame/-/blob/master/documents-expansion-port/20261001_External_Interface_Front_Port.pdf?ref_type=heads

Or is it even possible in the future?

I need to decide if i want to return it if will never work with anything else.

Thanks for any leads! <3

After waiting for prescription lenses from zenni I have got the chance to use and enjoy my steam frame.

Everything seems good so far but I have noticed what I initially thought were smudges from my eyelashes causing light blur to be a bloom like effect coming from bright windows. In games it's not noticeable to me so far but if you open to windows and have one be white and put it to the side it bleeds into the rest of the space and creates a light smudge effect. After keeping the frame on for a while I get used to it and it bothers me less.

Is this just me? Has anyone else noticed this and is there a setting to tone this down? It had me constantly checking and cleaning the lenses but they look dirt and smudge free.

I run Steam a little unconventionally by running it through containers by using Wolf (Games on Whales) on Proxmox. I use Proxmox to basically run my homelab and to share my gpu with services as they need it. Games I normally play are usually one player survival games like Subnautica or Grounded, so online competitive gaming isn't an issue for me. The setup allows for sharing Steam with basically any device with a local connection.

I've had some decent success with connecting this setup with Steam Frame as well , but this is mostly for official 2d and vr games through Steam. Anything that requires a special setup like the Soma VR mod usually requires a few sessions with Claude or your ai agent of choice to help fix any issues. I was wondering if anyone else has a weird setup like mine for streaming games to their Steam Frame.

I'm expecting my frame to arrive at the end of the week, and I already own a copy of WMG on Steam with all of its DLCs (as well as one on my Quest 3, also with all of the courses).

I read somewhere that Mighty Coconut released a Frame-ready version, but I don't understand if that means it's a third version that I'll have to buy yet again, or if the Steam version that I already own works on Frame.

Can someone with the headset pls confirm this for me?

Even after reading all the reviews I think I’m still going to go through with the purchase. The software can only improve

A lot of people say over and over again to get a 45W powerbank(s) and play hooked in from a pocket, backpack or a fanny pack. I agree that it's super convenient, but if you want to cover the energy expense of a running Frame (and aren't focused on recharging its battery fast), 20-25W will do that no problem.

~45W is the max draw if you want to power it and recharge its battery at full speed at the same time. That might be the case if wearing a powerbank is not comfortable for you and time spent should be minimised, but I don't think it's a typical scenario. And if you want to juice it up when it's off or sleeping between sessions, you only need max recharge wattage and 25W will cap it.

So you'll be fine with a cheaper 20/22.5/25W powerbank, and if you get two plus a charger then that should get you running infinitely, swapping them out as often as capacity allows.

I can't seem to find a way to bind keyboard keys to the controllers. I am navigating via the remote play options to controllers bindings, and then editing per game. But I don't see a way to choose any keys beyond those already present on the controllers

Yippe! That is all

My Est. time was by Dec 30th

No issues with Windows, no issues with Steam Deck, but I can't work out how to get SMAPI to work on the Frame - has anyone had any success? I want to mod it up!

I tried the Linux install...maybe I need to emulate the Windows version through Proton and just not have cloud saves..?

Thanks for any help.

Day 1 Reservation list here, 256 GB Steam Frame

Today Oct 25, at 17:00 Mountain time Canada I got my email. When they updated the estimation for purchase I was 'between now to DEC 30th'. I don't usually post anything in Reddit but I wanna contribute to updates for everyone. STAY STRONG. I've lost all my hype for this headset but I'm glad I finally got it!

anyone got any recommendation for a stable power bank? I don't wanna kill my battery with a old power bank, I got and would prefer 4-6 hours of playtime stream PCVR

Disclaimer: I brought this thing with my own money and received no special discounts or any communication from the store. This is my own thoughts, unprompted by anyone, and just here to share my opinion.

If you are hunting for a case for your Frame, you probably saw the repurpoused shell that has a fabric loop but no way to secure the controllers with ergonomic straps properly.

This is an improved version of that, immediately obvious by it having a plastic handle that has a nut to slide the handle up and down. It is also improved that there are loops to hold the controllers properly in place, rather than just molding in. They work with the ergonomic kit strap just fine, unlike the other case. You do have to press them in the loop a bit. I would say that the lens are decently protected (I used an old sleeping mask as a lens protector but I think it's unnecessary now that I keep this in the case). The rear battery strap is also held in place by velcro, in addition to the overlapping fastener.

I have put my Frame in and shook the bag. I cannot hear anything rattling inside. There is a suspended net pocket that is above the controls and rear unit for the antenna and other stuff. Currently it holds the cleaner fabric and a case of AA batteries. It is not a terribly hard case but does seem to offer resistance to crushing from both the sides and from ontop. I would not throw it around or allow it to be put with a bunch of heavier bags on top of it, nor allow it to compressed. But I feel that for the price, it still offers reasonable protection. As much as a decent laptop bag would to a laptop.

Overall, I would rate this as a decent-to-good case for the Frame. Too bad that this is nobrand stuff that you will have to hunt down to find. I would not be surprised if it's the same maker as the other kind and this is a variation. I think the only real criticism I could level against it is that putting in a charger and a cable might be a bit much for it? It is still a good enough to use and store my Frame.

https://github.com/elliotttate/SteamFrame-Advanced-Options

I'm not taking any credit for this github project except because I had nothing to do with it, and it's the strangest thing because the repo isn't findable with a normal google search as of this post - chatgpt specifically directed me to it when I was looking for solutions to the now-infamous 232mbps bit rate limit and that's how I found it.

SteamFrame-Advanced-Options is slick as hell. There are built-in profiles that target things like best picture, lowest latency, something in between - you name it. You can customize these profiles or create your own - allowing you to change the actual codecs, the bit rate, the encode rate, and much much more.

It can also do a stress test on your exact network config to see what stable speeds are possible and it'll tell you key pieces of information, such as if your dongle is in a USB 2 port instead of a USB 3. In my case I actually was using an older extender that was giving my dongle USB 2 speeds, even though it was in a 3.2 port. Easy fix, got a new extender.

Obviously this is a lot to chew into for the community and I can't wait to see what profiles people come up with. I hope the author (elliotttate?) is both okay with me telling everyone about this and that he gets the proper credit deserved.

Again, very polished piece of software and I ran into zero issues. If you choose a bit rate over 232 it informs you that you will need to install a patch to allow an override of to 500mbps - no reboot, nothing, it's just wa-bam and you're in.

I tested H264 as well as AV1 and a plethora of bit and encode rates on everyone's favorite vr port, Titanfall 2.

I'll warn you that Valve is not fundamentally reinventing the wheel with any of the networking they are doing (though the multilink is clever) - you just can't have it all. If you go for max encode rate and bit rate you'll have a very good experience but it's still not *display port* quality and at significant input lag to boot. Mind you, I absolutely love the quality at this level, but certain scenes are *still* problematic for the compression algos and you can be adding input lag on top of that. There is a reason Valve chose these stock values and they aren't bad values for the everyman - though it troubles me that they hard throttle the bit rate while *also* exposing UI controls to lift it up to 350, which of course does nothing.

My testing was of a particular level in Titanfall 2. The level "Cause and Effect" , has both a very well algo performing situation (back in the past where everything is shimmery and new and well lit), and a bad algo performing situation (the present calamity with lots of darker areas and similar shader tones, lots of blacks and reds). Going back and forth you can tell that the past version is going to be absolutely near perfect with higher bit rate and encode, the present, still will struggle a bit but is much improved by higher rates. It's worth trying a higher rate for sure.

I'll tell you right now max encode (read not bit rate) rate has a very strong effect on latency. The stock value of 1536 is nowhere near the max of 2048 and if you bring it to max you will experience noticeable input lag. It really taxes the encode and decode processes.

Bringing the max bit rate from 232 to something like 400 on the other hand is an almost unnoticeable trade off and I can recommend it for those with a strong network setup.

In fact my favorite setting in my brief 2 hours of testing is simply upping the bit rate from 232 to 400 and leaving everything else with stock valve values. I feel like you get that wonderful Steam frame latency but also very good image quality on all but the trickiest streaming scenarios. It makes me very happy and I'm thinking it might also for some of the other image snobs out there, to whom I say, I am among you!

I also *highly* recommend disabling both ASF (Advanced Supersample Filtering) AND "Sharpen Image before Encoding(Fidelity FX CAS)".
The former trades sharpness for blur and the latter is unsettingly sharp even at the lowest value IMHO. I think they made more sense in the valve index when the jaggies were more jarring, but now the sheer amount of pixels is doing a good job of getting rid of jaggies.

As a bonus I also want to say this made flat games like Avowed playable for me; I can finally see detailed scenes in the far off distance, and also just cruising around on remote desktop is great, as long as you've made the remote window the biggest size possible. Speaking of better remote desktop - Also consider changing Overlay Render Quality to LOW.

TL;DR - Download release 1.8.2, run it, patch the override, set bit rate to 400mbps and profit. https://github.com/elliotttate/SteamFrame-Advanced-Options/releases/tag/v1.8.2

This just made the Steam Frame that much better!

EDIT: I threw the hardest games for compression algos at it - no man's sky, Skyrim, and arken age. Near flawless in all cases and the best wireless VR I've ever seen. Note that all I've done is turn up the bit rate to 400. I have ASF and CAS sharpening off. I have the foveated encode rate (size of the box) to 1024. All other settings are stock. I am using multi link with a dedicated 5ghz router and the dongle is within 10 feet and in view and using a 3.2 USB slot. Both are on 160mhz channels. Stock 10 bit HEVC encode codec.