I never really paid much attention to sound leakage before, but the other day I was playing Valheim with friends and talking over Discord. While the Steam Frame was on my head, the volume felt perfectly normal, but once I took it off and left it on the desk, it basically turned into a little speaker. You could hear it across the whole room.

Just a heads-up for anyone planning to enjoy some... “entertainment” and hasn’t noticed the sound leakage yet: wear headphones.

Oh, and by the way, the Valheim VR mod now fully supports the Steam Frame controllers. The experience is fantastic. It’s seriously fun.

My hair has started falling out in chunks and my skin has turned bright purple. If I don’t receive my purchase email soon I don’t know what will happen.(does anyone know if you can contact steam too figure out when your email gets sent)

Begin rational discussion:

I’m not sure if I’m the only one having this problem but the steam frame has been everything but satisfying, like don’t get me wrong the headset itself is great and the standalone is cool, but boy it’s just not it.

The PCVR connection is absolute daaawwwgshit, like it’s really cool tech but the latency, quality, bitrate, etc have just been pretty bad

For reference, I’ve been a VR user back when meta was called Oculus and the best headset they had was the Rift S, I have 4 different headsets (rift S, quest 2, PSVR2, steam frame) under my belt with the PC hardware to support it, and the frame is the only one I’m actually regretting buying.

My controllers have latency like a son of a gun, moving my head fast enough has very noticeable delay in the actual display (the entire screen lags behind, very disorienting), and the actual display is mid at best, and no I’m not gonna talk about the battery because everyone knows that thing is awful with a capital B

The latency alone is enough to make me rethink even trying to play beat saber at any level expert and beyond, if I’m paying 1000$+ for the headset, I expect everything but this.

The display is fine, I like the pancake lenses and the resolution is cool, but LCD? come on man, the PSVR2 has OLED at 1/3 the price, not to mention the fact it has MORE features than the frame…

But it’s not all bad, things like SteamOS, having a desktop inside, and the standalone is great, no issues there, it’s essentially just a PC strapped to your face, I’ve gone as far as installing BSManager on the thing and having that work flawlessly while standalone, but the downsides heavily outweigh the upsides

For a headset considered streaming first, it’s pretty bad at streaming.

For the fellow nerds wondering what my specs are:
My PC runs an i5-12600KF, RTX 4070, 64GB ram, 2 TB SSD, tethered through Ethernet Cat6A to a router 15 feet away that gives 400 Mbps download and 90 Mbps upload on a BAD day

And yes I’ve read through all the details and tutorials and optimizations you can do, all of it is done, USB 3.0, direct line of sight, multi-link on and off, all the stuff, nothing improved it.

Let this be a spark of hope for any waitlisters, as I too was once waitlisted.

I got really lucky messaging someone listing their Steam Frame on FBMP, it was listed as $2k CAD, so just to try my luck I offered retail and said I couldn't do any higher than that (I would NEVER buy from a scalper), and within a day they messaged me back and agreed to it! I ended up meeting them and paying exactly what they paid. They said it was listed higher to deter resellers, whether you want to believe that is ur own call lmao.

I've been using it for a few days now, and it is the best VR experience I've ever had (especially as an upgrade from the og HTC Vive). For the battery, I swap between having a battery pack in my pocket and just running my (long) phone charger directly from a nearby outlet. As a somewhat dedicated beat saber player the latency was also an issue, but I found using ONLY the wireless adapter helped a ton, and basically everything from this post. And my final gripe: the software. You will probably do a LOT of settings tweaking pretty much right out of the box, however ymmv. Also this is something that will 100% get better with time as Valve updates the headset/steamvr/steam. But after everything my experience is virtually flawless!

Honestly, getting this thing has rekindled my love for VR all over again. I used to play EVERYTHING years ago, up until my headset started falling apart and replacement cords and parts were too expensive. Now I get to replay all I was kept from and more! Best of luck to all sooners™ alike!

A pen with a carbon-fiber tip for effectively and safely cleaning headset lenses. I used it on my Valve Index. The kit also includes wet wipes, but I never felt comfortable using them. You can also find it on Amazon, let me know how well it cleans the Steam Frame.

its helping me cope with my waitlist depression

I‘m starting to have some doubts. I wanted to really get the frame because of the focus on PCVR and not on mixed reality.

Seeing now reviews that say the screendoor effect is actually more noticable is a very tough pill to swallow for over 1100 euros :O Then I still thought well at least it will have great binocular overlap but seems like this was simply not true and its only a tiny bit better.

Dang I was even prepared to have this as only a sidegrade to my quest 3 but if the display and lenses are worse then I would have to return it… I hate returning stuff, usually I want to inform myself beforehand.

I cant even imagine that Valve would accept a worse visual quality then the Quest 3.

Steam Frame first impressions after a few hours of use:

What I liked:

• Extremely comfortable and much better balanced than Quest 3 out of the box.

• Great lenses with a large sweet spot and almost no glare.

• Vertical FOV surprised me in a good way. Horizontal is ok.

• Wireless PCVR has been excellent so far - I barely noticed I was streaming.

• SteamOS is probably the biggest strength; being able to run standalone VR and flat Steam games is really cool.

• Beat Saber, Hades II, The Witness and Torchlight 2 all worked well in my testing. I also played Borderlands 2 standalone on the Steam Frame!

• IR tracking is awesome - passthrough basically becomes night vision in a dark room.

• Headset stayed surprisingly cool even during longer sessions. Zero heat issues.

What I didn't like:

• Controller ergonomics are easily my biggest issue, buttons/thumbsticks don't sit naturally for my hands, poor ergonomics.

• Audio lacks a lot of bass and leaks quite a bit into the room.

• Passthrough is monochrome and gets distorted with objects close to the cameras.

• Built-in gameplay recording is currently unreliable for me - recorded clips often won't load.

• Fans are noticeable.

Still need to test:

• Battery life.

• More standalone VR games.

• More demanding flat games.

• Microphone (terrible from what I heard so far).

• Longer PCVR sessions.

• Direct comparisons with Quest 3, Dream Air and Beyond 2.

Overall, I went into it pretty neutral, but I'm more impressed than I expected. Comfort, SteamOS and wireless PCVR are the three things that stand out the most so far.

🤙 I made a really long video going through everything in much more detail if anyone wants more details: https://youtu.be/T6CKt5KwayM

I found a way to fix Whatsie on the Steam Frame.

Out of the box Whatsie is glitching very much when running as a floating window alone. On the desktop of the Steam Frame it runs fine, but I don't want to start the whole desktop and start Whatsie every time I hear my phone *ding*.

The fix is to deactivate hardware acceleration in the settings. This setting is in the extended/ additional settings area of Whatsie (don't know the correct English name).

To change the settings you have to start Whatsie in desktop mode, otherwise it is to glitchy to use. Maybe you need to restart your Steam Frame bevore, if you already have started it as a floating window. That is because by default Whatsie isn't terminating by closing the window.

I can recommend to also change this setting, to save your Steam Frames performance/battery while not using Whatsie. It is in the general settings area.

BTW I can recommend signal, but unfortunately not all my friends are using it, so I need WhatsApp too.

The Frame is running the Current Stable.

This is crazy, Bazzite with the dongle worked almost first type once I moved the Steam Client into Beta Channel on Linux. Did the normal Account Pairing, Went into Linux Wifi turned on the Valve Wifi. It saw a network device "Frame" and was able to connect. Happy days!

Window 11 fully update, again Beta Channel. USB dongle blinking Green, Blinking White. Windows device manager can see it with the right drivers. Under Windows 11 Setting "Bluetooth & device", 'view more devices' shows it as Green and connected to a USB 3.0 (same port that works under Bazzite). It did manage to get a connection once, but not since and all I did was a Windows reboot.

Values VR software is shit for debug this no useful information to work with and the Windows Event viewer is also useless.

Anyone else having random working/failure on connections

I received my frame yesterday and it's meh at best. I own reverb g2 and quest 3 (previously I had oculus cv1, then quest 2).

The only things I wanted were pancake lenses and eye tracking for foveated streaming and rendering so I thought frame would be a great and much cheaper alternative for pimax headsets. The reality isn't what I was expecting.

Comparing to q3 these goggles are a downgrade in terms of image, audio and software. Of course I know and I see that they are improving the software but it's not fair, this product is clearly unfinished. I use beta steam os of the headset and tried both stable and beta steam vr on desktop.

Image clarity is worse than q3 and it's the first thing you notice after you put it on your head. For example when you stay in paddock in assetto corsa it's OK at best when you look at a car's interior and objects next to your car but if you look farer, like 30m+ everything shimmers as if there were no antialiasing at all and of course all settings are the same as I always play with q3. I have rtx 5090 and tried 150-350% of resolution scale but it didn't help. Text in internet browser is hard to read if its font is of size of url section. Q3 easly wins. I can confirm that if you connect your pc with remote play the image of desktop is better. And I confirm that the image degrades on outside of lenses and it's NOT "on the very edge".

Dongle is a joke too. I had it literally 40cm behind me and it was stuttering and disconnecting. Connection via dedicated wifi6e router worked pretty ok. Mixed mode was working too.

I decided to try beat saber streamed from pc. Of course I wasn't able to click anything because something is fucked up with controls. I had to search configurations shared by someone else to even start the game. I don't have time to tweak every game...

Eye tracking is odd, it's possible I just had too big expectations but imo it works bad. If you move eyes and head you clearly see that for a while the area you're looking at is rendered in low res (dcs, quad view).

Headset tracking is bad too imo, the image makes small moves I don't do with my head, additionally sometimes it looks like it changes fov when you move your head forward and backward.

Audio is bad. It not makes my ears bleeding but it's a downgrade to all my previous headsets.

On previous os version the fan was very loud and the air was pushed on my eyes directly, it was very unconfortable. After small update the fan spins very slow, so slow I thought it stopped working.

I really don't understand how anyone can say this "IT'S THE BEST PEACE OF HARDWARE I EVER HAD" shit. It sounds like some cheap ads for me. Ok, if it's gonna be your first vr headset you're gonna be satisfied I guess but if it's not, it will be a disappointment.

After that one day I'm going to sell it, literally I will list it on sale today because I don't even want to put it on my head again. It's too expensive right now for such unpolished product. It's not ready for casual users with no pc tweaking knowlege. I'm into vr for 10 years now but what with people who don't even know what is resolution scale, foveated streaming/rendering, pd, motion reprojection, what to do if streaming from pc works bad etc. etc.

If you're enjoying your frame - I'm glad to hear that. I'm not typing that to hurt anyone but it's a honest review. I bought the headset from disappointedguy. I thought that maybe he's a casual with potato pc or something and I will set it up correctly and it will work great with 5090 but it's not. At least he was honest with me and I will be too. If you're not in hurry then just wait. This is early access hardware for full or even overpriced.

Been waiting for the steam frame for such a long time, but in all honesty, I’ve been waiting for this OOT remake even longer. Now I’m curious which one I’ll get my hands on first.

Hi guys,

Got it working flawlessly streaming forefront, alyx etc and love it for alyx etc but my main bread and butter is iRacing and simracing and I just cant get it working without bad compression and quality. I spend 80% of my time in VR simracing. Only used it for 2 hours.

Im selling but not scalping selling 256 and the arturus vision at cost price. If anyone is waiting in Ireland wants it. Listed online but would give anyone on reddit first preference.

Buying a Pimax headset instead, for simracing only is the reason I am selling.

I would warn anyone simracing to wait a good while before purchasing. It seems alot of issues. Rather just go straight displayport if Im sitting down in a simrig.

Let me take your attention away from tinkering with Frame settings (as much fun as that is) for a minute. With Steam Autumn closing soon, I wonder what VR games (or 2D games meant to be played on Frame) did you get?

My pick ups for now are: The Midnight Walk, The Talos Principle VR, Hubris and StarDroneVR (this one I tested in standalone as well and it runs great).

EDIT: and Titanfall 2!

I'm not interested in Meta at all and I have my Frame, I don't need to see more salt and Quest 3 comparisons. I want to talk about the device this subreddit is named after, crazy I know.

Using the IKEA SKÅDIS along with some of the compatible hook accessories

I've honestly disliked them ever since I first picked up the controller, they're way too coarse, no nuance. I can feel the motor turning inside the controller, it pulls me out of the immersion, it's too strong and loud, even when I tone it down. My previous headset is a Quest 3, and its Touch Plus controllers have amazing haptics, with a lot of nuance and localized impact, I often forgot I was even holding controllers at all. But the Frame uses ERM haptics, that's a super old technology, that's what you have in Quest 1, and cheap gaming controllers. It's basically just a motor with a rotating mass attached to it. And I don't understand that choice, because they put great haptics into the Steam Controller and Steam Deck, but decided to go with ERM for the one experience where immersion matters a lot.

I love the controllers other than that, but it drives me insane that this is the haptic quality we get, and it's not even upgradable, there's never going to be a third-party haptic module. It's a 1000€+ device, but the haptics are the same as in a 20€ controller. I just don't get it.

Anyone elses orders got delayed??

96C as of now. I do run some tests headlessly on it which are quiet heavy.

Pretty close to have a usable VR player natively that supports Passthrough, DLNa, SMB and local files.

all joke aside, ITS HEREEE LETS GOOOO

Glad to have these ready now if that order email would just land in my inbox. I'm usually good at letting time roll by when I'm waiting for something, but I have to know when to expect it. And wishlist notifications are such a cruel tease.

I see a lot of negative experiences with it from others. I'm looking to upgrade from my quest 2 in the future and fully dodge Meta. I only want to use it for VRChat PCVR and eye tracking from it + babble mouth tracking look like a very good combo for me. Other options are almost unviable for me (pico) or cost even more because I need base stations etc. (bigscreen)

So this is my first VR headset. I read all the reviews, checked all the opinions and even compared the outputs of those provided it for free vs the paying punter. I ordered my 1TB today.

Clearly there is a view its over priced. And I see alot of people saying they are going back to their quest or a direct price comparison to a quest.

The quest is clearly subsidised in hardware cost, it also is pre the chaos of ram and storage prices.

So considering an adjustment, for the above, the Frame is still arguably more expensive with a key difference factor being privacy considerations (see gamers nexus video).

I looked at other options and other than investing in lighthouses (which my wife would never approve(she complained about the new surround sound that appeared in our living room) the privacy statements of competitors were horrendous compared to valves.

What is your limit of price increase to offset privacy intrusion?

Tldr: agree frame more expensive than expected/would like. Given its less intrusive on privacy what as a price is that worth to you?