is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
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Valve is about to launch a new virtual reality headset, and with it, a comprehensive new approach to what a VR device should be. Most VR headsets I’ve tried have ended up collecting dust after the novelty wore off, and I thought I had sworn off VR for good. But after trying Valve’s new headset for myself at the company’s headquarters, I was nearly ready to put down my credit card before I walked out the door.
The new headset is called the Steam Frame, and it’s trying to do several things at once. It’s a standalone VR headset with a smartphone-caliber Arm chip inside that lets you play flat-screen Windows games locally off the onboard storage or a microSD card. But the Frame’s arguably bigger trick is that it can stream games directly to the headset, bypassing your unreliable home Wi-Fi by using a short-range, high-bandwidth wireless dongle that plugs into your gaming PC. And its new controllers are packed with all the buttons and inputs you need for both flat-screen games and VR games.
The pitch: Either locally or over streaming, you can play every game in your Steam library on this lightweight headset, no cord required. I think Valve may be on to something.
The Verge’s Sean Hollister wearing the Steam Frame. Photo by Everything Time Studio / The Verge
As I explored an industrial level in Half-Life: Alyx, jumping from floor to floor and blasting headcrabs, I couldn’t tell at all that the game was being streamed to me from a nearby PC. I felt like I was playing it through a hardwired connection or natively on the headset itself.
The dongle, which comes in the box with the headset, streams your games over 6GHz spectrum — that’s its only job. It means that the experience has “low latency, high bandwidth, and lots of robustness,” Valve hardware engineer Jeremy Selan tells The Verge.
The Steam Frame’s box, which contains the headset itself, its wireless controllers, and its wireless adapter. Photo by Everything Time Studio / The Verge
When you’re streaming, to make what you’re looking at appear sharp and with low latency, the Frame uses a technique Valve calls “foveated streaming.”
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