"It just works": Valve talk the Steam Frame, Android games on SteamOS, and putting a PC on your face

How the Valve Index successor is each astir the games – particularly the ones you already own

The Steam Frame, a caller VR headset Valve conscionable announced alongside a caller Steam Machine and Steam Controller, is some a simpler and much analyzable virtual world kit than 2019’s Valve Index. While it lacks the Index’s fancy finger-tracking controllers, the hybrid headset tin tally Steam games consecutive from its ain onboard storage, aided by controllers that follow a much accepted gamepad (or Steam Deck)-style layout. The Frame’s goal, therefore, is to fto its wearers play arsenic galore VR and non-VR games arsenic imaginable – with its ARM-based Snapdragon spot posing some challenges and opportunities to dispersed that compatibility into Android VR games arsenic well.

The tricky spot is that whereas Android games are built for ARM hardware, PC games are usually intended for the wholly antithetic x86 architecture – the benignant powering your PC oregon Steam Deck close now. To find retired much astir the Frame’s (and by extension, SteamOS’s) ambitious level crossover plans, I took a interruption from waving astir its controllers successful Valve’s offices past period and spoke to hardware/software technologist Jeremy Selan, decorator Lawrence Yang, and hardware/acoustic technologist Joy Lyons. Question one: does each this mean Android games connected Steam?

"We don't person immoderate factual plans today," Selan replied. "Our archetypal toed successful the h2o is with VR content, due to the fact that the accepted mode for mobile VR is to bash that via the Android platform. So we're going to let radical to people those Android VR titles to Steam. But it's surely a caller exertion we're truly excited about."

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

"It does unfastened up a batch of possibilities" added Yang. "We're truly arrogant of each the enactment that folks did connected Proton, but besides connected FEX."

FEX whitethorn beryllium a acquainted sanction to Linux geeks: it’s an x86-to-ARM emulator that’s been successful unfastened improvement for years, with Valve a cardinal sponsor. Now, conscionable similar however Valve’s Proton compatibility furniture has been wrangling Windows games to tally connected the Linux-based Steam Deck, FEX is being baked into SteamOS too. As the Frame is simply a SteamOS instrumentality itself, it’ll beryllium capable to tally made-for-PC games arsenic good arsenic Android VR fare.

"It's benignant of brainsick that the existent mentation of Hades 2, which is made for a PC, is moving connected SteamOS, which it was not made for, but besides moving connected ARM, which it was definitely not made for," Yang said. "And due to the fact that of FEX and Proton and the layers of each the things that we did, arsenic a lawsuit and a subordinate you tin conscionable play these games and person entree to mode much games connected this instrumentality without having to deliberation astir it.

"And [while] we're nerding retired and excited astir each of these method details, we conscionable privation the lawsuit to spot however galore games they tin play."

"If we've done this right," Selan continued, "they don't really person to deliberation astir immoderate of this. They conscionable bring up Steam, they spot their catalogue, they deed play, and it conscionable works."

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

To beryllium sure, my clip playing Hades 2 and Hollow Knight: Silksong successful the Frame’s 2D theatre mode didn’t propulsion up immoderate indications that they were emulation jobs – again, overmuch similar the seamless mode successful which Proton gets Windows games moving saccharine arsenic a seed connected Linux. And portion the scope of Steam games that volition tally connected the Frame’s ain Snapdragon spot is inactive going to beryllium restricted by its constricted graphical horsepower, determination is simply a certain, reassuring familiarity to putting connected the Frame, seeing the aforesaid SteamOS interface you’ve clicked done a 1000 times connected the Steam Deck (or Steam’s Big Picture Mode), and launching the games that whitethorn person held pridefulness of spot successful your room for years.

According to Yang, Valve volition besides beryllium sending Steam Frame dev kits to makers of some VR and non-VR games, to assistance place nascent compatibility issues: an identical strategy to the 1 employed earlier and aft the Steam Deck’s nationalist launch. It’s besides different awesome that Valve don’t spot the Frame’s entreaty truthful overmuch successful accepted hardware presumption arsenic they bash successful its room of standalone-compatible games. Likely thousands, fixed the size of the Steam catalogue, and surely acold much than successful Meta’s Quest store.

Such is Valve’s attraction connected games that they’ve intentionally passed connected making the Frame acceptable for mixed reality, the virtual/physical blending diagnostic that Meta and Apple precocious stake large connected with their Quest 3 and Vision Pro headsets. That said, it can grip mixed world with the close third-party hardware additions, with a 2 x 2.5Gbps enlargement larboard allowing the requisite camera tech to beryllium hooked up – and SteamOS isn’t apt to get successful the mode either.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

"We did look into it," Selan replied erstwhile I asked astir mixed world support. "With the beforehand port, if radical are enthusiastic astir exploring that benignant of stuff, we surely person the imaginable for this, but we person been precise intentional astir focusing connected the halfway gaming experience. So I don't privation to accidental we're not interested, but successful presumption of the priorities, we've enactment a immense magnitude of our engineering effort into the streaming, and we’ve enactment a immense of an engineering effort into locally playing your catalogue. Those are truly the 2 pillars of what we're aiming to execute successful this product.

"If determination are different categories of games that, implicit time, go much wide exciting, we'd emotion for them to find a location connected Steam, and past we'll marque them work. In the adjacent term, particularly astatine launch, the things we are genuinely focused connected is conscionable your Steam catalogue.”

"We should besides accidental that, you know, this is simply a computer, and the extremity user, it'll beryllium their computer, and they tin load immoderate they want," Lyons added. "This isn't a closed ecosystem. So determination is Desktop Mode, and you tin load immoderate bundle you privation connected this instrumentality to alteration those experiences."

"Absolutely the aforesaid arsenic Steam Deck," said Selans. "The aforesaid spirit."