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.
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.
I hope my old PSVR model (the second revision that came for the PS4) is the one that causes dizziness (thus blocks the enjoyment) whenever I try VR gaming… Because it is a technology that I truly don’t want to miss 😅
I know there are some workarounds to get your VR legs and such, but I honestly think I am broken.
In case you haven’t tried, the 2 biggest “vr hacks” for motion sickness are:
Have a small circular rug that’s a different texture than the ground its on, so you can feel when you step off of it.
And have a single, small, directional fan aimed at you (not overhead.)
Those 2 help keep you grounded and oriented without taking you out of immersion.
But, some games just suck and the locomotion isn’t smooth, and can’t be saved.
I haven’t tried the rug trick, gonna check it out.
The worst feeling for me is when the character jumps or falls (fall would be the accurate term).
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
Just had a funny thought of a tech bro with the Arch based EV, deciding to install Manjaro instead, and breaking their EV after a bad update.
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)
GameNative works on Android. Not sure what it uses behind the scenes to run windows software, tho.
Edit: I might’ve misinterpreted what you wrote, oops. Nonetheless, I’ll keep this as it’s still afaik correct info.
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
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.
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.
FEX will have a performance penalty for CPU bound games (not for graphics if it supports Vulkan (yay passthrough)) so native is better
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.
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)
I swear proprietary software companies make their software intentionally obtuse so they can sell cloud features and support contracts
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. :)
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.
If it’s like anything else running in WSL, absolutely as slow as balls. Most Linux apps are written with the assumption that filesystem operations are incredibly fast, whereas that’s not true with Windows. Most games open one big file and do big reads from it so it’s not such a problem, whereas something like Git assumes that touching tens of thousands of files should be basically instant.
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
Sound logic.
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.
that would be great if they made Linux exclusives.
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.
Half Life 3 would be such a big sales boost for the Gabecube
“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.
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 🤷♂️👏👍🫶🙌🤲👐✊👊🤟👋
there is already a native x86 linux version, they are working on ARM version, so that it can on the headset
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.
deleted by creator
I thought Alyx had a STEAMOS native build already, is that not true?
Not for ARM processors
Oh you mean running directly on the headset? That would be a literal game changer!
Great game, but lets get the next installment instead.
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.
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).
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 tried last week but was getting some odd pausing issue. Using alvr and a quest 2 headset. Haven’t figured out what setting is wrong to cause that.
This is an absolute no-brainer on their part
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.
the gpu is weak, but with proper foveated rendering it is absolutely good enough I think
The article’s title is ass, HL: Alyx already has a native Linux build. They’re working on an arm build.
That said, last I checked it’s generally recommended to run the Windows version through Proton instead, since it performs better that way. Maybe we could see that change?
