357: Drag Your PC Into the Back Yard

00:00SPEAKER- I think I have a new career goal, Brad.

00:03SPEAKER- Okay.

00:03SPEAKER- I was at the park with my friend, Norman Chan.

00:06SPEAKERHi, Norm.

00:07SPEAKER- Hi, Will.

00:08SPEAKEROh, I'm here.

00:08SPEAKERHi, Norm.

00:09SPEAKERHi, Brad.

00:10SPEAKER- I was here this weekend and we were,

00:11SPEAKERwe were, the dogs and the kids were playing

00:14SPEAKERand somebody was having a birthday party

00:16SPEAKERand a guy came in and set up like a fenced area

00:19SPEAKERand a bunch, like a fishing pole rack

00:22SPEAKERand a whole bunch of poles and a whole bunch of buckets.

00:25SPEAKERAnd we were like, what the heck is he doing?

00:28SPEAKERAnd then he started hanging like bubble,

00:31SPEAKERbubble making stuff from the fishing poles.

00:35SPEAKER- Yeah, cast a net.

00:36SPEAKER- Yeah, he was casting a net.

00:37SPEAKERHe started hanging huge, he started making huge bubbles,

00:41SPEAKERlike 15, 20 foot long bubbles in some cases

00:44SPEAKERfor this birthday party.

00:46SPEAKERAnd I assumed that he was like the paid entertainment

00:48SPEAKERfor the, for the birthday party.

00:50SPEAKER- Wait, was he not?

00:51SPEAKER- I don't, I mean, I didn't go out and ask him.

00:52SPEAKERI just assumed.

00:53SPEAKER- I'm sure it was, 'cause then he'd set up like stations.

00:56SPEAKERHe set up like buckets for all the adults and families

01:00SPEAKERwho were part of the party and then they all got to learn

01:01SPEAKERhow to make big bubbles.

01:03SPEAKER- Maybe he's just doing it for the love of the bubble.

01:05SPEAKER- You know, I, a little bit of PTSD

01:07SPEAKERbecause I didn't want to take a picture.

01:09SPEAKER10 years ago on my honeymoon, I was in Prague

01:11SPEAKERand I too saw a fantastic giant bubble making dude

01:17SPEAKERin a park.

01:19SPEAKER- A bubble man.

01:19SPEAKER- And I was like, a bubble man.

01:20SPEAKERAnd I said, wow, that's really cool.

01:22SPEAKERI took a picture and then,

01:24SPEAKERit was just like a long distance, right?

01:26SPEAKERSo I was like right in his face.

01:28SPEAKERI was maybe like 200 feet away, took a picture,

01:32SPEAKERcontinued walking, and then he started walking toward me.

01:35SPEAKER- What?

01:36SPEAKER- I'm like, whoa, no, I don't like this.

01:37SPEAKERWhy are you walking toward me?

01:38SPEAKERHands outstretched.

01:40SPEAKERYou take a picture of the bubble man, he needs payment.

01:43SPEAKER- What?

01:44SPEAKER- The bubble man is gonna get his one way or the other.

01:45SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

01:46SPEAKERAnd he followed us.

01:47SPEAKERI'm like, and then we paid him, paid him off.

01:50SPEAKER- Wow.

01:51SPEAKER- Did you just leave his bubble stuff back behind?

01:53SPEAKERDid he walk away from it?

01:54SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:55SPEAKER- It's high risk.

01:56SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah.

01:57SPEAKERBig smile on his face.

01:58SPEAKERIt was like a horror movie.

02:00SPEAKER- So the kids were totally wrapped by the bubble guy.

02:03SPEAKERAnd I liked that, unlike Maker Faire or whatever,

02:05SPEAKERI guess at Maker Faire,

02:06SPEAKERthey let the kids blow their own bubbles.

02:08SPEAKERI mean, he could have been a fun uncle, you know?

02:11SPEAKER- Beware the bubble man.

02:13SPEAKER- Yeah, but I think he seemed like a professional bubble man.

02:15SPEAKER- Blumhouse Films, that's our next horror movie.

02:18SPEAKER- Oh no, nobody wants that.

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02:48SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

02:49SPEAKERI'm Will.

02:50SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

02:51SPEAKER- And joining us today for the final release

02:55SPEAKERof the Steam Hardware season, one Norman Chan.

02:57SPEAKERWelcome back to the show, Norman.

02:58SPEAKER- I thought you were gonna say for the last time,

03:00SPEAKERfor the final time. - No!

03:02SPEAKERGod, I hope not.

03:03SPEAKERThat's grim, but no, no, no.

03:06SPEAKERThe Steam frame's out.

03:07SPEAKERWe did a special edition on Monday of last week now.

03:12SPEAKERYou did a bunch of video and the world is out.

03:15SPEAKERIt seems like they seeded these wider

03:17SPEAKERthan they did the machines,

03:18SPEAKER'cause I saw them kind of pop up all over the place.

03:21SPEAKERAnd- - You got one, Will.

03:23SPEAKER- I got one.

03:24SPEAKERI got one.

03:24SPEAKERYou get one?

03:25SPEAKERYou get one? - Yes, you get one.

03:26SPEAKER- It's like Oprah.

03:27SPEAKERThey Oprah, Oprah and Steam frames all around the world.

03:29SPEAKER- I did not get one.

03:31SPEAKER- Brad did not get one, I'm sorry.

03:31SPEAKER- Oh, Brad, no.

03:33SPEAKEROkay, I'm sorry.

03:34SPEAKER- I offered to bring it by,

03:35SPEAKERbut we kind of didn't have time.

03:37SPEAKERWhen we were in the same place this weekend,

03:39SPEAKERit would not have been appropriate

03:40SPEAKERto whip out a pre-release VR headset,

03:42SPEAKER'cause I think it would have caused

03:43SPEAKERa little bit of a frenzy there.

03:44SPEAKER- That would have been a weird place to,

03:45SPEAKERI guess the embargo was not even up at that point, so.

03:48SPEAKER- I don't know.

03:50SPEAKERWe get a little bit over paranoid.

03:51SPEAKERObviously, you keep these things discreet

03:53SPEAKERand you be careful with them, but like-

03:55SPEAKER- Oh yeah, no, I'm being-

03:55SPEAKER- No one on the street's gonna know what this is.

03:58SPEAKER- I'm being flip, you know?

03:59SPEAKERI think the two dozen people at that beer garden

04:02SPEAKERprobably would have been okay.

04:04SPEAKER- Well, I mean, there were 10 people there

04:08SPEAKERthat were tech journalists

04:09SPEAKERthat would have been very interested.

04:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

04:12SPEAKERIt would have dominated the- - So that's why it didn't.

04:13SPEAKER- Yes, yes.

04:14SPEAKERIt would have dominated the proceedings.

04:16SPEAKER- Yeah, also, I didn't wanna write on Bart

04:17SPEAKERwith a pre-release headset.

04:19SPEAKERThat seemed like a bad idea.

04:20SPEAKERBut anyway, here we are.

04:21SPEAKERWe're talking about the frame a little bit.

04:23SPEAKERWe're also gonna kinda go over,

04:26SPEAKERlike Valve from that announcement,

04:28SPEAKERwhat was it, last September or October?

04:30SPEAKERThey kind of- - November.

04:31SPEAKER- November.

04:32SPEAKERThey built a whole ecosystem, right?

04:33SPEAKERThey built this whole hardware ecosystem.

04:35SPEAKERThey have a handheld, they have a console type device,

04:38SPEAKERthey have a VR thing, they have a controller.

04:40SPEAKERLike it's, if they had done this in 2002,

04:46SPEAKERwe would be talking about this

04:47SPEAKERinstead of the Xbox right now, I think.

04:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's basically everything

04:50SPEAKERthat a Sony has and more.

04:52SPEAKERI mean, 'cause Sony doesn't even do a handheld at this point.

04:54SPEAKERI mean, I don't really count the portal

04:56SPEAKERin that conversation. - Well, the streaming thing

04:58SPEAKERcounts kind of, right?

04:59SPEAKER- But it is basically an entire console like lineup

05:02SPEAKERand ecosystem of hardware at this point.

05:04SPEAKER- Yeah, but before we get into the-

05:06SPEAKER- The trick is to start with the store.

05:08SPEAKER- Yeah, it turns out if you just started selling games

05:10SPEAKERand make money for 20 years,

05:11SPEAKERthen you have money to do whatever you want afterwards,

05:14SPEAKERI guess.

05:15SPEAKERShould we start by, like, I'd love to get your,

05:18SPEAKERpick your brain about the Steam frame,

05:19SPEAKERbecause while I've spent a lot of time in VR

05:21SPEAKERover the last 10 years,

05:23SPEAKERI've really spent most of my time in mainstream headsets.

05:26SPEAKERI haven't looked at like the big screens

05:28SPEAKERand the Pi Maxes and all the fans,

05:30SPEAKEReven I haven't really spent that much time

05:31SPEAKERin the Apple Vision Pro.

05:34SPEAKERAnd I'm curious what your take is on this compared to those,

05:37SPEAKER'cause this is a kind of more reasonably priced headset

05:40SPEAKERthan any of those high-end options, is that right?

05:43SPEAKEROr no, I don't even know.

05:45SPEAKER- I think he's gotta take price out of the equation

05:46SPEAKERwhen talking about this, right?

05:47SPEAKERLike the price for this just, it has to exist in a vacuum,

05:51SPEAKERbecause we know it's, they're charging more for it

05:53SPEAKERthan they would have hoped, and probably came out later

05:55SPEAKERthan they also would have hoped.

05:57SPEAKERI think, you know, knowing that they had,

05:59SPEAKERthat the hardware was ready,

06:01SPEAKERthe packaging was all done last November.

06:04SPEAKERMy instinct, my gut says they had this even like done

06:08SPEAKERsix months, maybe even a year before that,

06:10SPEAKERbased on the components that they chose.

06:13SPEAKERSo it's mostly getting through,

06:15SPEAKEReither through tariffs or just the software development

06:18SPEAKERof it, but outside of the hardware, it's interesting,

06:23SPEAKERbecause it's a wireless, it's standalone.

06:25SPEAKERIt's a standalone headset that is made primarily,

06:29SPEAKERthe best way to use it is connected to a PC wirelessly.

06:33SPEAKERSo no other headset really does that, right?

06:36SPEAKER- Okay, 'cause like the big screens and the Pimaxes

06:39SPEAKERare all tethered still, right?

06:40SPEAKER- They're all tethered and using lighthouses.

06:42SPEAKERI mean, the Pimax Stream Air has inside-out tracking,

06:45SPEAKERbut big screen uses lighthouses.

06:48SPEAKERA lot of the other big headsets,

06:50SPEAKERExomnium VR1 uses lighthouses.

06:53SPEAKERThose all used to use track controllers,

06:56SPEAKERlike the lighthouse-based track controllers,

06:58SPEAKERor they're made for either VRChat or sim racers.

07:04SPEAKERExactly, exactly.

07:06SPEAKERAnd then for people playing standalone,

07:08SPEAKERlike on the Quest side or the Pico side,

07:10SPEAKERand those have their own stores,

07:12SPEAKERthose are all playing ports of games, right?

07:14SPEAKERGames that are either made for mobile,

07:17SPEAKERlike you think about in the console world,

07:19SPEAKERthese are like more like handheld indie games,

07:21SPEAKERor ported over from a PC version

07:23SPEAKERin which they're two completely different executables

07:29SPEAKERand are packed. - There's an ARM version,

07:32SPEAKERX86 version, ARM Android, X86, yeah.

07:37SPEAKER- So this straddles that line.

07:39SPEAKERIt's the one that walks between worlds.

07:41SPEAKER- So how does it live?

07:45SPEAKERHow does the image quality compare to the high, high end,

07:48SPEAKERI guess is my first question.

07:50SPEAKER- Yeah, and actually--

07:51SPEAKER- It's on the bottom of the high, high end.

07:52SPEAKER- Let me bolt onto that question when you answer this.

07:54SPEAKERCould you also just give people like me

07:56SPEAKERand probably a lot of people listening context

07:58SPEAKERfor what high end means in terms of price these days?

08:01SPEAKER- Oh, sure, sure.

08:02SPEAKERBig Screen Beyond is $1,000,

08:04SPEAKERand they actually just lowered the price by,

08:06SPEAKERI think it's just like 960 bucks,

08:08SPEAKERbut that's headset only and that is display only.

08:11SPEAKERYou think of it as like buying a monitor.

08:13SPEAKERSo it doesn't come with controllers.

08:14SPEAKER- That's the one that looks like a pair of glasses, kind of?

08:16SPEAKER- It looks like Speedo goggles. (laughs)

08:20SPEAKERSo where frame looks like snowboarding goggles, right?

08:25SPEAKERThe Big Screen Beyond uses,

08:28SPEAKERand I think maybe the dividing line

08:30SPEAKERisn't just tethered and untethered.

08:31SPEAKERIt's probably display panel technology.

08:34SPEAKERSo Big Screen Beyond is micro OLED,

08:35SPEAKERPimax stream air, micro OLED.

08:37SPEAKERInsomnium is giant LCDs and lensing.

08:40SPEAKERSo the optic stack is the thing that you're talking about.

08:43SPEAKERThe higher resolution, the higher quality display

08:45SPEAKERis gonna cost a lot more.

08:47SPEAKERAnd so Big Screen Beyond gets, it's under 1,000 bucks,

08:48SPEAKERbut it's just the display, no compute.

08:51SPEAKERYou can't run it separately.

08:52SPEAKERIt doesn't even come with the trackers.

08:53SPEAKERIt doesn't even come with controllers.

08:55SPEAKERTo get into the ecosystem,

08:56SPEAKERit's gonna be like around 1,500 bucks anyway.

08:58SPEAKERBut that one, when I reviewed it,

09:00SPEAKERand that was Big Screen Beyond one and the two,

09:02SPEAKERsame display panels essentially,

09:04SPEAKER2560 by 2560 resolution per eye,

09:08SPEAKERwhich is on the high end.

09:11SPEAKERThere's no, Apple Vision Pro's a unique case,

09:13SPEAKER'cause that's technically standalone,

09:15SPEAKERbut that's higher than the Quest 3,

09:17SPEAKERhigher than the Pico 4, higher than the Steam Frame.

09:19SPEAKERBut that's, I think, the baseline quality for standalone,

09:22SPEAKERthe expectation.

09:23SPEAKERIf you have a good beefy SIM rig,

09:26SPEAKERand you have a 5080 or a 4090 or something,

09:32SPEAKERwhatever the AMD equivalent is,

09:34SPEAKERyou have enough processing power to get a headset

09:37SPEAKERwith basically 2.5K per eye,

09:40SPEAKER'cause you actually wanna rendering it

09:42SPEAKERat a higher resolution and at a higher frame rate.

09:45SPEAKERYou want 120 Hertz, 90 Hertz, as much as possible.

09:48SPEAKERBig Screen Beyond does 90 Hertz at 2.5K per eye.

09:51SPEAKER- Okay.

09:53SPEAKERAnd how do the optics,

09:55SPEAKERthis is the first time I've really used a headset

09:57SPEAKERwith any length of time that has pancake optics.

09:59SPEAKERHow, everything I guess I'd used before was Fresnel lenses.

10:03SPEAKER- Fresnel or hybrid lenses, yeah, yeah.

10:05SPEAKERSo pancake lenses, they first showed up in the mass market

10:09SPEAKERwith the Quest Pro.

10:11SPEAKERAnd just a, I guess a quick explainer

10:15SPEAKERof how they work, right,

10:17SPEAKERis the goal is to make the optic stack as thin as possible,

10:23SPEAKERwhile maintaining what you need from lenses in general,

10:27SPEAKERwhich is to turn a panel that's,

10:30SPEAKERwhether it's an inch in diagonal or two inches,

10:34SPEAKERlike some of the LCDs,

10:35SPEAKERto wrap around as much of your field of vision, right?

10:38SPEAKERAnd the old way of doing it with Fresnel lenses,

10:41SPEAKERlike the first Oculus prototypes and dev kits,

10:45SPEAKERand even the first like a Rift and HTC Vive,

10:49SPEAKERthey're really thick, right?

10:51SPEAKERThey protrude out from your face.

10:53SPEAKERAnd so what pancake, the development of pancake lenses,

10:56SPEAKERwhich is to collapse that lens into something that's,

10:59SPEAKERI don't know the exact measurements,

11:00SPEAKERbut I want to say it's like,

11:01SPEAKERdefinitely less than a centimeter thick,

11:04SPEAKERis that it has, it's actually not,

11:06SPEAKERlike if you think of like a camera lens,

11:09SPEAKERthere are lots of optical elements that are stacked in,

11:12SPEAKERright, of different kind of curvatures.

11:17SPEAKERThe pancake lens has lots of different layers,

11:19SPEAKERbut the layers are really thin

11:20SPEAKERand they bounce the light between each other

11:23SPEAKERusing polarization, like guns in from the LCD panel

11:27SPEAKERor from the world on the outside,

11:29SPEAKERand they bounce back toward the outer lens

11:32SPEAKERand to the inner lens, and they do it a bunch of times,

11:34SPEAKERand they have polarized coatings

11:36SPEAKERso that your eye only sees the final, you know,

11:40SPEAKERresulting light photons that have traveled through this path,

11:45SPEAKERright, this collapsed path.

11:48SPEAKERBut that also means that when light goes through

11:51SPEAKERa polarized layer, like you think of like polarized glasses

11:54SPEAKERfor 3D TVs, you lose light, right?

11:58SPEAKERAnd so one of the costs of doing pancake lenses

12:01SPEAKERis you get, you know, an order of magnitude less light

12:06SPEAKERactually hitting your eyeballs than what the panels emit.

12:09SPEAKERAnd so panel manufacturers, and when you go to,

12:12SPEAKERand I haven't been, but like when people who are in,

12:14SPEAKERthe analysts go to, or supplier conventions,

12:18SPEAKERand headset maker, there are a ton of these conventions

12:20SPEAKERoverseas now where panel makers are,

12:22SPEAKERfrom Sony to some of the other ones,

12:26SPEAKERthey show off their new panels,

12:26SPEAKERthey talk about like thousands of nits of brightness,

12:29SPEAKERlike 6,000 nits, but when they actually hit your eye

12:32SPEAKERafter going through a pancake lens,

12:34SPEAKERit's like maybe a couple hundred nits.

12:36SPEAKERAnd Steam Frame-- - Wow,

12:38SPEAKERthat is a massive deficit. - Oh yeah.

12:41SPEAKERAnd that's why Quest 3 and Steam Frame,

12:43SPEAKERyou're getting like a hundred nits at the eye

12:46SPEAKERwhile the panels themselves may be a thousand nits.

12:49SPEAKERI don't know the exact rating

12:50SPEAKERfor what's on the LCD panel at the Steam Frame,

12:52SPEAKERbut it's good enough, but they're not like HDR,

12:55SPEAKERand brightness is one of those things.

12:57SPEAKERBrightness and contrast, balance with,

13:00SPEAKERthere are things like you want low persistence

13:01SPEAKERto not have ghosting, high refresh rates, all these things,

13:04SPEAKERthat's the things, these are the physics

13:05SPEAKERand like semiconductor limitations

13:09SPEAKERthat make all the dream specs really tough to have

13:14SPEAKERin a VR headset, wide field of view, high pixel density,

13:18SPEAKERlow persistence, contrast. - I was gonna ask,

13:20SPEAKERdo you think the brightness deduction

13:23SPEAKERcontributed to the decision to not use,

13:24SPEAKERI'm sure supply chain and costs may be manufactured as well,

13:27SPEAKERbut like OLEDs would be a lot harder

13:29SPEAKERto achieve desirable brightness with that issue?

13:32SPEAKER- And OLEDs are more expensive, right?

13:33SPEAKEROh, more expensive to manufacture at that size.

13:35SPEAKERSo Sony makes a lot of the popular small OLED panels.

13:39SPEAKERI think Apple Vision uses a Sony,

13:42SPEAKERBig Stream Beyond uses a Sony equivalent,

13:44SPEAKERbut I don't think Sony's their supplier.

13:46SPEAKERBut those are of a sweet spot.

13:47SPEAKERLike I think Sony makes one, sorry,

13:49SPEAKERin like the X-Real glasses, like the display glasses.

13:52SPEAKERThose have 1920 by like 1080 or 1200 resolution.

13:55SPEAKERThose have been in pretty good supply

13:57SPEAKERand the scaling in the manufacturing

13:59SPEAKERhas made that really possible.

14:01SPEAKERBut for VR and AR headsets that wanna use like OLED panels,

14:06SPEAKERreally need to have higher than I think 2.5K

14:09SPEAKERand 4K is like a really nice sweet spot.

14:11SPEAKERAnd then you gotta balance like processing power too.

14:12SPEAKERSo I don't think the supply chain is there for micro OLEDs

14:16SPEAKERthat are in that like one inch, two inch size

14:18SPEAKERthat can deliver 2.5 to 4K at reasonable costs.

14:22SPEAKERLike it would be, if you look at like supplier websites,

14:27SPEAKERlike maybe not as a, as individual buyer,

14:30SPEAKERyou can buy an OLED panel for like two or 300 bucks

14:34SPEAKERand you gotta buy two of those.

14:35SPEAKERAnd so your bill of materials,

14:36SPEAKERlike half of that, half of a thousand dollar headset or more

14:39SPEAKERcould be just in the OLED panels.

14:42SPEAKERAnd then there's no room for all the other parts

14:44SPEAKERthat make up a headset.

14:45SPEAKERPlus you're testing your fulfillment,

14:47SPEAKERyour margin, all of that.

14:49SPEAKERAnd so I don't know if one,

14:51SPEAKERif the technology isn't even there, right?

14:53SPEAKER'Cause I know there are higher than 2.5K OLEDs out there,

14:59SPEAKERbut I know for a fact that Valve wanted

15:02SPEAKERfor their optic stack, really collapsed optic stack

15:05SPEAKERclose to your face and really lightweight.

15:07SPEAKERAnd then the question is whether they could have solved that

15:10SPEAKERwith something that costs like 1500 bucks

15:14SPEAKERor what that price would have been.

15:16SPEAKER- Well, and the big benefit of having the optic stack

15:19SPEAKERclose to your eyes is wider FOV, right?

15:22SPEAKER- Oh, and also weight, right?

15:23SPEAKERSo, and that's how the trade off too,

15:26SPEAKERlike you can, and then you have a panel.

15:28SPEAKERAnd so the difference between making a pancake lens

15:31SPEAKERfor a one inch diagonal panel versus one for two inch,

15:34SPEAKERthat's changed the entire geometry of what your lensing is.

15:38SPEAKERAnd I don't know, again, the size,

15:41SPEAKERthe dimensions of the LCD in the frame,

15:45SPEAKERI haven't taken that apart yet,

15:46SPEAKERbut the thing that they clearly prioritize

15:49SPEAKERto match with this LCD is a short,

15:52SPEAKERlike a small compact optic stack

15:54SPEAKERthat also delivered a really wide field of view.

15:57SPEAKERA field of view here, they always call it

15:59SPEAKER110 degrees horizontal.

16:01SPEAKERI pressed it against my eyes,

16:02SPEAKEReven with the prescription adapters,

16:05SPEAKERI was able to get 118 using like my IPD

16:08SPEAKERand a standardized FOV test.

16:10SPEAKERThat's really wide, that's wider than the Quest 3,

16:12SPEAKERit's wider than Big Screen Beyond.

16:14SPEAKERIt's not the widest of some of the aspherical lens

16:17SPEAKERVR headsets out there that can wrap over 120 degrees,

16:20SPEAKERbut that for me actually is really meaningful playing games,

16:24SPEAKERespecially 2D games that you wanna blow up

16:26SPEAKERand have it not feel like you're looking through binoculars.

16:29SPEAKER'Cause if Steam Frame isn't just for immersive games,

16:31SPEAKERbut also putting a rectangle in front of you,

16:34SPEAKERthe more horizontal space you have in your periphery,

16:37SPEAKERthe bigger that rectangle can be.

16:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say that was kind of the first thing

16:42SPEAKERthat grabbed me is where,

16:44SPEAKERI mean, the index is a nice FOV for the time, it feels like,

16:48SPEAKERbut it still feels like you're looking through one of those,

16:52SPEAKERI'm holding my hands up to my eyes.

16:54SPEAKERIt's like a '60s era scuba diving mask, right?

16:57SPEAKERLike the round rubber tube.

17:00SPEAKERAnd you definitely have the sense

17:02SPEAKERthat you're looking down a tunnel a little bit.

17:04SPEAKERAnd I didn't get this as much,

17:05SPEAKEReven with the glasses inserted in,

17:07SPEAKERbut it definitely when I took the glasses insert out

17:09SPEAKERand put my contacts in.

17:10SPEAKER- I'm curious, did you get the prescription lens inserts?

17:13SPEAKER- I did, I did.

17:14SPEAKERZenni makes some 68 bucks.

17:15SPEAKERAnd one of the nice things about these inserts

17:18SPEAKERis they don't make the depth of the optic sac

17:22SPEAKERthat much thicker.

17:23SPEAKERIt doesn't take away that FOV.

17:25SPEAKERI think-

17:26SPEAKER- Do they just click in?

17:27SPEAKER- They just, they pressure fit in.

17:30SPEAKERSo they're not like magnetically attached, not that nice.

17:32SPEAKERBut there's a shot in an additional video

17:35SPEAKERI'll put out on the Tested channel, Tested Team channel,

17:38SPEAKERwhere I show side-by-side of the lens in

17:40SPEAKERand the lens out.

17:41SPEAKERAnd it's not that thick of a thing.

17:42SPEAKERI think they're able to do that

17:44SPEAKERbecause even with the pancake lens,

17:47SPEAKERthere's an extra little gap that they have.

17:50SPEAKERLike it's not concave or convex.

17:52SPEAKERIt's perfectly perpendicular to the viewing plane.

17:56SPEAKERAnd they need that extra space for the eye tracking camera

17:59SPEAKERto also fit into the optic sac and see your eye as well.

18:02SPEAKERSo all these things, you tweak one thing here.

18:04SPEAKERYou say like, "Ooh, I have a slightly new panel."

18:06SPEAKERWell, the new panel means new lens system.

18:09SPEAKERNew lens system also means like new, like reduced FOV

18:12SPEAKERor you need a whole new system on a chip

18:15SPEAKERto actually pump those pixels out.

18:17SPEAKERSo like these cascading effects,

18:19SPEAKERI think they just, like Valve, for all their ambition,

18:23SPEAKERI've found that with all these products

18:24SPEAKERand maybe this more big picture stuff

18:26SPEAKERwe talked about at the end, they're a very practical company.

18:29SPEAKERLike a lot of the synchs they made are very,

18:31SPEAKERfeel like are born out of practicality.

18:34SPEAKER- I think, yeah, I think that's right.

18:36SPEAKERI mean, I think that was apparent

18:37SPEAKERstarting with the Steam Deck even.

18:39SPEAKER- Totally, yeah.

18:40SPEAKER- The choice that they made to make that thing run

18:44SPEAKERcurrent gen console games at a reasonable frame rate

18:47SPEAKERat 1280 by 800 is an incredibly pragmatic decision,

18:51SPEAKERwhich isn't, it doesn't necessarily,

18:54SPEAKERit's way more Nintendo than Sony or Microsoft, I guess,

18:57SPEAKERif I'm putting it in console space.

19:00SPEAKERWhat, let's see, I think that's the big stuff.

19:04SPEAKERDo you know of any,

19:05SPEAKERlike I know you're more connected to the VR ecosystem.

19:07SPEAKERDo you know of people?

19:08SPEAKEROne of the things I thought was really neat

19:09SPEAKERis that you can just pop off the entire,

19:12SPEAKERlike the guts of the headset.

19:13SPEAKERThey just snap in with three clicks.

19:15SPEAKERYou actually have to do that to put a couple of the,

19:17SPEAKERto put some of the accessories on.

19:20SPEAKER- Put the top strap in, yeah, yeah.

19:22SPEAKERYeah, the core module design, it's,

19:25SPEAKERthis is one of those things I'm not sure,

19:27SPEAKERthey need to follow through to make this actually

19:30SPEAKERlike make sense, right?

19:31SPEAKERLike they split off the speakers, the SC card reader,

19:34SPEAKERthe head strap, the battery to,

19:38SPEAKERin what's essentially or eventually replaceable unit.

19:41SPEAKERAnd we know they're making this enthusiast kit

19:44SPEAKERat some point, right?

19:45SPEAKERWith the index as a hard strap with index style,

19:49SPEAKERmuch nicer speakers and a hot swappable battery.

19:53SPEAKERAnd so what I've heard is the hot swappable battery

19:55SPEAKERwill be actually two batteries.

19:57SPEAKERThey're gonna have essentially the same battery

19:59SPEAKERthat's in the same frame,

20:01SPEAKERthis curved battery 21.6 watt hour in the back,

20:04SPEAKERbut also have some type of magnetic connection,

20:07SPEAKERkind of like the steam controller where then with pins

20:10SPEAKERthat you can then slap another one in the back

20:12SPEAKERat same capacity, double the weight, double the battery.

20:16SPEAKERAnd so what's a like 50 to 55 minute battery life

20:21SPEAKERif you're running games full bore,

20:23SPEAKERyou get almost two hours or maybe up to four hours

20:26SPEAKERin actually streaming games.

20:28SPEAKER- I don't know that I want extra weight on my head.

20:30SPEAKERI think I might just put a battery in my pocket

20:32SPEAKERand run a wire up.

20:34SPEAKER- No, I did kind of like a lot of thinking about this,

20:38SPEAKERboth on the couch with the headset on

20:39SPEAKERand while walking around.

20:41SPEAKERThe weight of the battery,

20:42SPEAKERI like the counterweight of it, right?

20:43SPEAKERLike I don't feel the battery weight in my head.

20:48SPEAKERIt sits more on the top of my head than like in the back,

20:51SPEAKERcupping the back of my skull.

20:53SPEAKER21.6 watt hours, I like, could they have gone with 30?

20:57SPEAKERApple Vision Pro is like a 30 watt hour battery.

20:59SPEAKERThis 21.6 is like a little bit bigger than Quest 3,

21:02SPEAKERbut like what is an extra hundred grams, right?

21:06SPEAKERLike to get 15 minutes more of battery life.

21:09SPEAKERLike how do they end up exactly this size?

21:12SPEAKERAnd I think they probably ended up with this,

21:14SPEAKERagain, being very pragmatic,

21:16SPEAKERthinking about what a hot swappable option would be.

21:19SPEAKERAnd if you stack two of those,

21:20SPEAKERgoing from one hour to two hour dedicated play time,

21:23SPEAKERa local standalone play time,

21:24SPEAKERand two hours to four hours of streaming play time,

21:27SPEAKERthat feels like that's the extent of most people's sessions.

21:32SPEAKERAnd if you're crazy, you buy more of those hot swappable ones

21:34SPEAKERand every two hours of streaming VR chat,

21:36SPEAKERyou swap one in the back, that works out.

21:40SPEAKER- Two hours of streaming VR chat

21:41SPEAKERdoes not sound great to me, Norm.

21:43SPEAKERI'm gonna be honest.

21:44SPEAKER- Oh, some people live and sleep in VR chat, well.

21:46SPEAKER- I know, I know, I know.

21:47SPEAKERI'm not judging, this doesn't seem appealing to me.

21:51SPEAKER- Started to ask, what are they doing in there?

21:53SPEAKERBut better or not, let's just move on.

21:55SPEAKER- They're VR chatting, Brad, they're VR chatting.

21:58SPEAKERLet's see, do you know people making,

22:00SPEAKERlike, that are gonna build, that have committed

22:02SPEAKERto building external, like, non-valve mounts?

22:05SPEAKER'Cause the connector is relatively straightforward,

22:07SPEAKERit's just a plainer, like, a 10-pin connector

22:10SPEAKERor something like that.

22:11SPEAKER- I don't think they've opened that spec out.

22:14SPEAKERThe spec they've opened out is the expansion port,

22:16SPEAKERthe PCI lane, that's under the nose bridge.

22:20SPEAKERAnd so, this actually isn't something

22:21SPEAKERI really mentioned either, but that,

22:24SPEAKERthis has a very nice high nose gap,

22:28SPEAKERand the gasket here is very flimsy.

22:31SPEAKERYou need the ergonomics kit, which has, like,

22:33SPEAKERthe deeper light blocker, if you don't want light.

22:37SPEAKERActually, I don't mind it, 'cause I, like,

22:39SPEAKERhave a little bit of light, seeing my phone,

22:40SPEAKERseeing my keyboard, having air come in.

22:43SPEAKERIt's not that bad, but it's also a very high nose design,

22:46SPEAKERand so, like, eating your Subway sandwich

22:50SPEAKERor drinking a bottle of Coke is much--

22:53SPEAKER- You can drink. - Yeah, you can do that,

22:55SPEAKERexactly, which you can't do in a lot of headsets.

22:57SPEAKER- Yeah, so I put the ergonomic stuff on

23:00SPEAKERbetween the time that we recorded the Monday episode,

23:05SPEAKERand now, are you using the top strap, out of curiosity?

23:09SPEAKER- No, I don't need it.

23:11SPEAKERI think it's completely unnecessary.

23:14SPEAKER- I put it on, and I think I'm gonna take it off,

23:16SPEAKER'cause I don't think it adds anything.

23:18SPEAKERIt's just a pain in the butt.

23:21SPEAKERAnd then the, I do like the nose blocker, though,

23:23SPEAKERI will say, and I've been using the grippy straps,

23:27SPEAKERalthough the one thing I did see yesterday

23:28SPEAKERfrom the community is that there's an enormous community

23:31SPEAKERof people that are making grippy straps

23:32SPEAKERfor Quest controllers that you can 3D print

23:35SPEAKERor hack together out of nylon straps or whatever,

23:37SPEAKERand I assume that the same thing's gonna happen here.

23:39SPEAKER- So yeah, the hand straps, which let you hold,

23:42SPEAKERI think those are essential, especially if you're playing

23:44SPEAKERlike Half-Life Alyx, right?

23:45SPEAKERLike, to get that full finger-tracking,

23:47SPEAKERfinger-sensing with capacitive sensors,

23:49SPEAKERbut that's like the cheapest, easiest

23:51SPEAKERthird-party accessory to make.

23:52SPEAKERThere are factories in China that third-party accessory

23:57SPEAKERmakers for Quest have already made the tooling

24:00SPEAKERand molds to pump out these hand straps

24:02SPEAKERthat cost them 50 cents that they'll charge 10 or 20 bucks

24:06SPEAKERfor, which is already gonna be much cheaper

24:08SPEAKERthan the 60 bucks that Valve charges.

24:10SPEAKERI would say don't buy the Valve ergonomics strap.

24:13SPEAKERI think that's way overpriced.

24:14SPEAKERThe one thing I wanted to add on to the last question

24:17SPEAKERabout expandability, so this bottom PCI lane,

24:19SPEAKERso there's already this RGB camera

24:21SPEAKERthat Arcturus Industries is making,

24:24SPEAKERthey're selling, that's 150 bucks,

24:25SPEAKERand they were closely working with Valve

24:27SPEAKER'cause they're actually the third-party vendor

24:29SPEAKERthat did the eye tracking, or sorry,

24:31SPEAKERthe inside-out tracking stack software.

24:35SPEAKERThey helped do that, they've worked with Valve

24:37SPEAKERfor a long time, and I think there's another company

24:40SPEAKERworking on a face tracker accessory.

24:43SPEAKER- Oh, okay.

24:43SPEAKER- So for VRChat, if you want those facial expressions

24:46SPEAKERand send those signals through your Wi-Fi connection

24:49SPEAKERfor more expressive VRing, that's a perfect place

24:53SPEAKERto plug that in. - That'll snap in there, okay.

24:56SPEAKER- Already more than the Index.

24:57SPEAKERRemember, Index had that frunk, right?

25:00SPEAKERThere was a USB-A port with a cavity inside the Index.

25:05SPEAKER- You put the finger tracker thing in there, right?

25:08SPEAKER- You could, I don't know who really used it.

25:11SPEAKERIt was a weird thing like, okay, no official accessories

25:15SPEAKERto launch with this, and then for the six and a half years

25:19SPEAKERat Index, but now it's really like people, like LED lights.

25:22SPEAKERYou know what actually fits in there, in the frunk?

25:24SPEAKERSo the steam frame wireless adapter perfectly fits in there.

25:28SPEAKERBut you wouldn't, for no reason, but it's just like,

25:31SPEAKERthat just ends up being the right size for it.

25:34SPEAKER- The height of VR decadence is to store your accessories

25:37SPEAKERfor your new headset in your old headset.

25:39SPEAKER- I love it, exactly.

25:41SPEAKER- Like, I'll put it in the bin on the wall over there.

25:45SPEAKER- I found the dark turf, the camera to be pretty incredible.

25:49SPEAKERLike I was, it adds like, so you can reach out

25:55SPEAKERin the black and white camera and pick up a drink

25:57SPEAKERor stuff like, you can know not to kick the dog.

25:59SPEAKERYou can know that you're gonna run over a child

26:00SPEAKERor something, but having the color one

26:03SPEAKERwhen I was especially playing 2D games was really nice.

26:06SPEAKERAlthough I did notice that it kind of made the UI

26:08SPEAKERa little chuggy at times when I had the pass through on

26:12SPEAKERand it was doing something that was pretty CPU bound.

26:14SPEAKER- The interesting thing is it wasn't consistent

26:18SPEAKERand it didn't happen all the time.

26:20SPEAKERIt was just occasionally.

26:22SPEAKERBut I also, like, I really liked the choice

26:25SPEAKERto let people spend the 150 bucks if they want that

26:28SPEAKERand are gonna use that and not build that

26:30SPEAKERinto the cost of the device.

26:32SPEAKER'Cause like, there's definitely a world

26:34SPEAKERwhere this thing was just, you know,

26:36SPEAKERthese were additional cameras that were built

26:38SPEAKERinto the headset and, you know,

26:42SPEAKERthe overwhelming price of components

26:45SPEAKERand hardware forced that out of the device, so.

26:48SPEAKER- That's the right kind of modularity

26:49SPEAKERand it goes back to, that's a very pragmatic decision

26:52SPEAKERbecause there is like a, maybe it's a small percentage.

26:55SPEAKERMaybe it's only like 20% of the people will not,

26:59SPEAKER'cause I think the monochrome cameras suck, right,

27:00SPEAKERfor a pass through, for comfort.

27:02SPEAKERI think the warping and the,

27:07SPEAKERthey're a nice, like, just like in the Quest 2,

27:10SPEAKERthe pass through was an afterthought because the primary use

27:13SPEAKERfor those monochrome cameras is tracking, right?

27:16SPEAKERSo it makes so much sense from a building a VR headset

27:19SPEAKERjust for like the bare bones, get it working for VR games

27:23SPEAKERto not have the room view be full color.

27:27SPEAKERSo that modularity makes total sense.

27:30SPEAKERPersonally, I think it's essential.

27:31SPEAKERI think if you're playing 2D games,

27:33SPEAKERyou want this full color pass through.

27:35SPEAKERYou want the higher resolution.

27:38SPEAKERThe monochrome cameras actually work in the dark

27:40SPEAKER'cause that's the only way you can see the IR light.

27:43SPEAKERAnd so I would love a way for them,

27:46SPEAKER'cause IR cameras are still working.

27:47SPEAKERThose cameras are still on for world tracking

27:50SPEAKERwhen you have the RGB color cameras attached.

27:54SPEAKERI would love a way for them to detect,

27:55SPEAKERokay, too much of a, too low light environment,

27:58SPEAKERlights went off, then switch over to the monochrome one

28:00SPEAKERso I can see in the dark.

28:01SPEAKEROr let me have some type of toggle, yeah.

28:04SPEAKER- I will say my wife and daughter both hate it

28:06SPEAKERwhen I use the camera and I'm talking to them

28:08SPEAKERand looking at them with the headset on.

28:10SPEAKERThey're profoundly not fans of that.

28:12SPEAKER- Maybe you need an Apple Vision Pro

28:14SPEAKERwhere you can see your eyesight.

28:15SPEAKER- Much worse.

28:16SPEAKER- Rendered parallax eyes looking at them.

28:23SPEAKER- Norm, did you find any issues with the hand movement range?

28:25SPEAKERI found that to be quite good.

28:28SPEAKERI'm old, so my shoulder movement

28:31SPEAKERisn't as good as it once was,

28:32SPEAKERbut pretty much my normal range of movement,

28:34SPEAKERI didn't have any tracking issues in.

28:36SPEAKER- Yeah, this is one of those things that back,

28:39SPEAKERyou know, six, seven, eight years ago,

28:41SPEAKERit used to be such like, oh, inside outtracking

28:43SPEAKERis such a new thing with these standalone headsets.

28:45SPEAKERWhat is the tracking range?

28:46SPEAKERCan I do my Beat Saber?

28:47SPEAKERAnd Valve knows this.

28:49SPEAKERThere's the predictions also really good.

28:51SPEAKEROnce the track controllers move out of track camera range,

28:55SPEAKERthere's a few seconds.

28:56SPEAKERThey still track rotational tracking.

28:58SPEAKERLet's do a few seconds of like, okay,

29:00SPEAKERthey can use IK to figure out where your hand is.

29:03SPEAKERSo yeah, no problem there.

29:05SPEAKER- Okay.

29:07SPEAKERSo I had a couple weird things that have happened since then.

29:08SPEAKEROne is that last night I was trying to play

29:11SPEAKERStar Wars Squadrons, which we'll talk about in a minute,

29:13SPEAKERand the fan spun up, it got really loud,

29:17SPEAKERand I went from like,

29:19SPEAKERI eventually just had to hard reset the headset.

29:22SPEAKERAnd when I came back, I had gone from like 80% battery

29:25SPEAKERto like 20% battery.

29:28SPEAKERSo I guess it was doing some incredible computation

29:30SPEAKERduring that five minutes

29:32SPEAKERwhile I was waiting to hard reset it.

29:34SPEAKERLike, I don't think that's,

29:36SPEAKERlike this is not a deal breaker,

29:38SPEAKERbut it's, you know, you want to talk about the stuff

29:39SPEAKERthat's weird and bad that happens.

29:43SPEAKERThat's kind of the big stuff.

29:44SPEAKERI tested a bunch of games.

29:46SPEAKERWe didn't talk about the local ARM version of Alex

29:50SPEAKERon Monday's show, Brad, which I think,

29:52SPEAKERlike we talked, the FEX stuff is really impressive and good,

29:56SPEAKERand for the most part, it's transparent.

29:58SPEAKERThat's the ARM to x86 emulator.

30:01SPEAKERAnd I was equally blown away by the local version of Alex,

30:07SPEAKEReven though I don't think

30:08SPEAKERI'm probably going to use it very much.

30:09SPEAKER- Wait, so did you try x86 Alex through FEX?

30:13SPEAKER- So x86 Alex for FEX is not performant enough.

30:17SPEAKERSo they don't, it's not an option.

30:19SPEAKER- That was my question.

30:19SPEAKERIt was if it would even run acceptably,

30:22SPEAKERwhich sounds like no.

30:23SPEAKER- No, but the, so streaming Alex is fabulous.

30:26SPEAKERLike streaming Alex, the thing,

30:28SPEAKERI don't think we got into it,

30:29SPEAKERbut like when the wireless adapter works with your wifi,

30:34SPEAKERthe VR streaming is really, really flawless in my experience.

30:37SPEAKERI didn't, I wouldn't have noticed that it wasn't tethered,

30:40SPEAKERI don't think, in most cases.

30:41SPEAKER- I was just specifically wondering if PC Alex could be,

30:44SPEAKEReven at the lowest possible settings,

30:46SPEAKERcould be playable on this thing, and it sounds like no.

30:48SPEAKER- I don't think so.

30:50SPEAKERI think the amount of assets, so they did 16 gigs of VRAM

30:57SPEAKERon this, which is funny because I think the Steam machine

31:00SPEAKERis only eight gigs of VRAM,

31:01SPEAKERand it's a full-ass desktop PC for all intents and purposes.

31:04SPEAKER- Well, it's shared, right?

31:05SPEAKERSo like just by virtue of it being a Qualcomm SOC,

31:09SPEAKERlike a mobile chipset, your standard memory in VRAM,

31:13SPEAKERit's a different type of RAM, and it's shared.

31:15SPEAKERAnd so by choosing that, you get more headroom.

31:18SPEAKER- But they choose the partition split, right?

31:21SPEAKER- I think it's dynamic. - Or does it change

31:22SPEAKERdynamically?

31:23SPEAKER- Yeah, dynamic. - Okay, okay.

31:25SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, it's, I was pretty surprised that Alex,

31:29SPEAKERAlex is pretty heavy.

31:30SPEAKERI don't know, I don't think you,

31:31SPEAKERhave you ever played Alex, Brad?

31:33SPEAKER- Just a little bit. - Okay.

31:34SPEAKER- Oh my God, Brad.

31:36SPEAKEROh my God, someone gets you a Steam frame,

31:38SPEAKERand you, you have a gaming PC, right?

31:41SPEAKER- A very good one, yes.

31:42SPEAKER- Oh my God, you are like the, you are the person.

31:45SPEAKERYou're the guy. - I should play Alex.

31:46SPEAKERI should play Alex.

31:48SPEAKER- This headset has been waiting for you.

31:50SPEAKER- I have a PlayStation VR2,

31:52SPEAKERbut I don't know how ideal that experience is.

31:55SPEAKER- No, no, it's not, no, no, no, no, no.

31:58SPEAKERLike this headset was made for people who skip the index

32:02SPEAKERfor whatever reason, skip PC VR because of weight,

32:04SPEAKERbecause of tethered, and the game has been waiting dormant

32:09SPEAKERfor you, you know, to wear the frame,

32:14SPEAKERwireless play, you have a great gaming PC.

32:16SPEAKERI'm telling you, 120 hertz render skill at two X,

32:20SPEAKERso you actually render it like 3,200 pixels

32:24SPEAKERby 3,200 pixels.

32:25SPEAKERIt looks fantastic.

32:28SPEAKER- Yeah, all right, okay.

32:30SPEAKERSo don't play it on the PSVR2 is what you're saying.

32:33SPEAKER- Oh no, no, absolutely not.

32:35SPEAKEROh, PSVR2 is, it's 2000 by 2000 resolution.

32:38SPEAKER- It's not bad. - But it's not bad.

32:40SPEAKERNo, no, no, it's not bad,

32:40SPEAKERand the controllers are not bad either,

32:42SPEAKERor the haptics are really good on those controllers,

32:43SPEAKERbut it's tethered.

32:45SPEAKER- Yes, yeah, I don't use, I barely ever use VR,

32:49SPEAKERbut when I'm sitting with that headset,

32:50SPEAKERI always run over the cord on that thing,

32:52SPEAKERno matter what I do to try to manage it.

32:54SPEAKER- It seems expensive. - With my chair.

32:57SPEAKER- Well, okay, so the ARM version of Alex though,

32:59SPEAKERthey're doing, it's one of the things

33:02SPEAKERthat I was able to test that uses foveated rendering,

33:04SPEAKER'cause the foveated streaming,

33:05SPEAKERwhen you're streaming from your PC to the headset,

33:09SPEAKERwe talked about this a little bit on the Monday show,

33:10SPEAKERbut we didn't get into it.

33:12SPEAKERThe streaming, they're just sending the pixels,

33:14SPEAKERthey're sending the most data

33:15SPEAKERwhere your eyeballs are actually looking,

33:17SPEAKERand you can actually go into the developer menu

33:19SPEAKERor into the VR settings menu, turn off the eye tracking,

33:22SPEAKERand then it locks that foveated spot in the center,

33:24SPEAKERso you can see how kind of crappy

33:26SPEAKERthe rest of the screen is.

33:28SPEAKERI had that break once or twice

33:30SPEAKERon the first build of the frame software that I had

33:34SPEAKERwhen I was playing, I think, Res, and it was hilarious,

33:36SPEAKER'cause there was like a big smudgy spot in the middle,

33:39SPEAKERand then there was no gradation between the edges,

33:41SPEAKERso you could actually see the spot you were looking at

33:43SPEAKERkind of moving around.

33:45SPEAKERThey fixed that since then,

33:46SPEAKERit was fine every other time I tried it.

33:47SPEAKERBut it's been, that works really seamlessly,

33:51SPEAKERand it works with everything.

33:53SPEAKERThe foveated rendering either has to support it

33:55SPEAKERon the PC side or on the local software, right, Norm?

34:00SPEAKER- Yeah, and Alex, by porting Alex over to ARM

34:04SPEAKERand incorporating foveate rendering

34:06SPEAKERfor their specific tiling system

34:08SPEAKERthat they use for their third buffer,

34:10SPEAKERthat allows them also to enable foveate writing for games

34:15SPEAKERwhere developers provide things like motion vectors

34:18SPEAKERand depth data.

34:22SPEAKER- Does that mean if you have a DLSS integration,

34:25SPEAKERit's easy to put that in,

34:26SPEAKER'cause those use the same stuff?

34:28SPEAKER- I don't know.

34:29SPEAKERI assume it's the same information,

34:31SPEAKERbut I don't know how easy it is for a developer to port that.

34:34SPEAKERI know that that data will allow you, then,

34:37SPEAKERto do better frame of projection.

34:39SPEAKERSo Alex actually runs at 36 frames per second,

34:42SPEAKERdoubled to 72.

34:44SPEAKER- Wow, and at like 1280 by 800 per eye or something?

34:50SPEAKER- I think 1738 by 1738 is her min spec,

34:52SPEAKERbut it really varies wildly

34:56SPEAKERwhen you bring up the performance graphs on the bottom.

35:00SPEAKERIt depends on where you're looking in the scene.

35:03SPEAKERBut you can notice the foveation

35:04SPEAKERwhen you're in Alex running it locally,

35:06SPEAKER'cause you can kind of see the pixelization,

35:11SPEAKERboth in the capture and in the headset.

35:11SPEAKER- Depends on how good your peripheral vision is,

35:12SPEAKERI think, Norm,

35:13SPEAKERand maybe whether you're wearing,

35:15SPEAKERlike I can't see with my glasses on.

35:16SPEAKERI could see it with the contacts on

35:18SPEAKERwhen I was closer to the screen.

35:19SPEAKER- But the point is it works.

35:20SPEAKERYou play the entire game.

35:21SPEAKERThey didn't have to remake any asset.

35:23SPEAKERThey didn't have to scale it down.

35:24SPEAKERIt's low quality, right?

35:25SPEAKERSo it's scaled to the lowest PC setting,

35:28SPEAKERbut these are not,

35:29SPEAKERlike they're not making like the quest equivalent.

35:32SPEAKERIt is that game,

35:33SPEAKERall the mods and workshop content

35:35SPEAKERthat people have made for Alex just works.

35:38SPEAKER- That's the big thing, I think, to me.

35:39SPEAKERI didn't realize how much workshop content there is.

35:41SPEAKERThere's like whole campaigns in there

35:44SPEAKERthat are kind of amazing.

35:45SPEAKERI was like, I loaded up a couple of the top rated ones

35:47SPEAKERand was like, oh, this is fricking rad.

35:50SPEAKERSo, yeah, I was really blown away with that.

35:54SPEAKERI still, like I went out in the backyard

35:56SPEAKERand I ran the local version.

35:58SPEAKERI made about a 25 foot circular play area

36:01SPEAKERand was just walking around like a doofus in my backyard

36:04SPEAKERwith the VR headset on.

36:07SPEAKERI can't imagine playing a whole lot of the game that way,

36:09SPEAKERjust because the difference in rendering quality

36:12SPEAKERon the desktop version streamed

36:14SPEAKERversus that was immediately noticeable.

36:16SPEAKER- What if you dragged your gaming PC into the backyard?

36:18SPEAKER- Oh, put a handle on it.

36:20SPEAKER- I mean, look, I think the real answer

36:22SPEAKERis that I'm looking at the Steam Machine

36:24SPEAKERand that's real easy to move.

36:26SPEAKERAnd when they flip on the radio support for that,

36:29SPEAKERthen it'll be, I think that's the move

36:31SPEAKERis to drag that thing in the backyard.

36:33SPEAKER- I don't think Steam Machine has enough horsepower.

36:37SPEAKER- Yeah, that would be my guess, yeah.

36:38SPEAKERSo it's a really, it's PS5, PS5 Pro equivalent.

36:41SPEAKERSo we're talking about VR style games.

36:45SPEAKERBut you know, drag that big game PC out there,

36:47SPEAKERget one of those, like those EcoFlow 1000 watt

36:51SPEAKERportable battery packs.

36:53SPEAKER- I have a plug in my backyard, man.

36:55SPEAKER- Take your PC to the park.

36:56SPEAKER- That's right, that's right.

36:58SPEAKERUnfold your, hey bubble man, look what I got.

37:01SPEAKERI got solar panels, I'm charging my gaming PC.

37:05SPEAKERI can play for 15 minutes.

37:07SPEAKER- Take your PC on a picnic.

37:08SPEAKERShow it a good time.

37:09SPEAKER- I have a full 16 amp circuit in the back of my car.

37:12SPEAKERI can just plug in everything into that.

37:13SPEAKERIt'll be fine.

37:16SPEAKERSo I tested a bunch of games.

37:17SPEAKERWe didn't talk about all of them on Monday,

37:19SPEAKERbut like a bunch of old kind of first wave VR stuff

37:23SPEAKERlike Job Sim and Res and Beat Saber

37:25SPEAKERand Pistol Whip and Superhot.

37:26SPEAKERI also tested some newer stuff like Gorilla

37:28SPEAKERand the Arizona Sunshine sequel

37:30SPEAKERand the remake locally and streamed.

37:37SPEAKERGenerally speaking, all of that stuff

37:38SPEAKERworked really, really well.

37:40SPEAKERThe streaming was seamless in my experience.

37:44SPEAKERThe one place that there were consistent problems

37:47SPEAKERwere when you had a VR game

37:50SPEAKERthat expected to use a controller.

37:53SPEAKERSo like Superhot, not Superhot, Tetris Effect

37:57SPEAKERor Super Hypercube or one of those games

37:59SPEAKERthat you like, you were supposed to sit there

38:00SPEAKERwith a PlayStation controller and play

38:03SPEAKERnot a hand tracked game.

38:05SPEAKERThe translation, the SteamVR input stuff

38:10SPEAKERand the controller emulation on the frame controllers

38:15SPEAKERdidn't kind of sync up to the point

38:17SPEAKERthat like Super Hypercube thought you had a Vive wand

38:20SPEAKERand you were mapping your sticks to Vive wand inputs

38:24SPEAKERand all that and it was bad.

38:26SPEAKERI asked Valve about that.

38:27SPEAKERThey said they're aware of it

38:28SPEAKERand it's on the list of stuff to fix,

38:29SPEAKERbut like there aren't that many of those games.

38:31SPEAKERSo it was a post launch priority.

38:34SPEAKER- Big list, small team.

38:35SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, pragmatic norm.

38:39SPEAKERI couldn't get Gunman contracts to work right locally,

38:42SPEAKERwhich I realized in retrospect that it does not.

38:45SPEAKERYeah, and the performance,

38:47SPEAKERlike the weird thing about this is they don't use the,

38:51SPEAKERhey, does this work or not work system to say,

38:54SPEAKERhey, this isn't gonna be performant for you.

38:56SPEAKERThey'll let you try it.

38:57SPEAKERIt's gonna be a bad time and then you're gonna be like,

39:00SPEAKERoh, I should stream this game.

39:04SPEAKEROther things like Plevr,

39:05SPEAKERwhich is the Plex VR client from a hundred years ago

39:09SPEAKERwon't work because you can't authorize it.

39:11SPEAKERSo it would pop up a thing on your desktop in Windows

39:16SPEAKERthat says, hey, you need to log into your Plex server

39:19SPEAKERwhere do you put your credentials in?

39:20SPEAKERAnd I couldn't figure out a way to do that.

39:22SPEAKERI'm sure there probably is a way

39:23SPEAKERusing desktop mode or something,

39:24SPEAKERbut on the headset alone, standalone,

39:27SPEAKERthe client seemed to run fine, performance seemed okay,

39:30SPEAKERbut getting that stuff working wasn't great.

39:33SPEAKERAnd then the last one was last night,

39:36SPEAKERthanks to the folks in the chat,

39:37SPEAKERI tried No Man's Sky, which was okay,

39:42SPEAKERbut wouldn't use their wireless dongle

39:44SPEAKERfor no matter what I did.

39:47SPEAKER- How can you tell what dongle isn't used?

39:50SPEAKER- So on the dashboard, there's a little streaming button

39:53SPEAKERthat you can click and it says, hey, we're using multi-link,

39:55SPEAKERwe're using just one, we're using,

39:58SPEAKERor we're using the old way, which is just Steam Link.

40:01SPEAKER- Most, I didn't ever see anything but the old way

40:05SPEAKERfor 2D games, which was kind of a bummer.

40:08SPEAKERSo you get a different UI when you're doing a VR game

40:13SPEAKERand you're using both radios and they're merged,

40:15SPEAKER'cause that's their thing,

40:16SPEAKERis they provide a second Wi-Fi radio,

40:18SPEAKERyou plug it in with the USB,

40:19SPEAKERand it's basically a point-to-point connection,

40:21SPEAKERand then it supplements Wi-Fi with that or that with Wi-Fi,

40:24SPEAKERdepending on what's the stronger signal.

40:26SPEAKER- That's a UI issue.

40:27SPEAKERIt's using the wireless adapter, dedicated one,

40:30SPEAKERit's just not presenting as such,

40:31SPEAKERand this is one of those things where the Steam UI

40:35SPEAKERis always a work in progress.

40:38SPEAKERIt's Steam Deck UI that's then turned to Steam Machine UI,

40:41SPEAKERthat's then turned to the VR version.

40:44SPEAKERThe way to get around that, Will,

40:45SPEAKERis to do remote streaming to PC without launching a game,

40:50SPEAKERso just the desktop, 'cause then that presents

40:52SPEAKERboth of the wireless signals

40:54SPEAKERand then you launch a 2D game from there.

40:55SPEAKER- Got it, and I will say the 2D desktop streaming

40:59SPEAKERis rad, because on my computer with three monitors,

41:03SPEAKERit gives me three different windows

41:04SPEAKERthat I can pop out and put around me,

41:06SPEAKERand it feels like some real Hugh Jackman

41:09SPEAKERand swordfish business, without all the standing

41:12SPEAKERand dancing while you're typing.

41:14SPEAKERAnd not the other thing, Brad's making a face right now.

41:19SPEAKER- No, I just have to pee right now.

41:21SPEAKER- Oh, okay, sorry.

41:23SPEAKERSo I guess there's a couple of things to talk about last.

41:26SPEAKERChet Faliszek, friend of the show, Chet,

41:29SPEAKERdid a video yesterday where he was talking about

41:31SPEAKERwhat's going on with VR game development,

41:34SPEAKER'cause it seems like it's pretty moribund right now

41:37SPEAKERfrom where I sit.

41:39SPEAKERThe sim people are doing the same thing,

41:41SPEAKERbut the mainstream racing games

41:43SPEAKEReven aren't doing VR support anymore.

41:44SPEAKERThey're expecting the community to mod that in

41:46SPEAKERwith Forza Horizon, which I realize

41:48SPEAKERthe hardcore sim people don't give a shit

41:50SPEAKERabout Forza Horizon, but man, that game's pretty

41:54SPEAKERand it looks real good VR, and you put the wheel

41:55SPEAKERon your desk and it feels good.

41:59SPEAKER- Are the, you know, Polyarc just shut down

42:01SPEAKERthe people who made Moss and Moss 2.

42:03SPEAKER- Oh, that sucks.

42:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, they made gorgeous,

42:08SPEAKERreally, really well-made VR games

42:11SPEAKERand they couldn't make it work.

42:13SPEAKERSo, you know, and Meta seems to be backing away

42:16SPEAKERfrom VR entirely in favor of data centers and spy glasses.

42:20SPEAKERSo, like, I don't know who's out making VR games these days.

42:25SPEAKER- It's a lot of people in the community, right?

42:26SPEAKERLike, it's, you know, it's relying on people

42:29SPEAKERto make ports, you know, UE VR is very popular.

42:32SPEAKERThat's a injector that allows stereo rendering

42:36SPEAKERand some motion control in basically any Unreal Engine game

42:41SPEAKERto work in headset and whether the developer

42:43SPEAKERintended to or not, and people can kind of force

42:47SPEAKERstereo rendering on, you know, some games

42:49SPEAKERlike Cyberpunk and, you know, even third-person games

42:54SPEAKERand get them to work in some way.

42:55SPEAKERSometimes it's janky, but the people who can sit through it,

43:00SPEAKERyou know, and who've invested a lot in VR

43:03SPEAKERand want to play it, can play it.

43:05SPEAKERSo, we're backing those supporters

43:06SPEAKERor those developers that way.

43:08SPEAKERAnd then the workshop stuff, you know,

43:10SPEAKERlike Gunman Contracts, you mentioned that, like,

43:11SPEAKERspun off of basically a mod, a VR mod

43:14SPEAKERthat now is its own standalone early access product.

43:17SPEAKER- Okay.

43:18SPEAKER- It's probably worth mentioning.

43:19SPEAKERI mean, this is not relevant to the PC market

43:21SPEAKER'cause these games were never gonna come to the PC anyway,

43:23SPEAKERbut like Sony's PSVR2 development has also flatlined.

43:27SPEAKERLike, there's really not much happening on that side either,

43:30SPEAKERjust as a further sign of the times.

43:33SPEAKER- Yeah, it's telling to me that Valve,

43:37SPEAKERthis is the first VR headset Valve has launched

43:39SPEAKERwithout launching some sort of a bespoke, you know,

43:43SPEAKERAperture Lab-style piece of content around it.

43:47SPEAKER- Let alone like a flagship game, you know,

43:49SPEAKERlike the Alex is still the flagship game

43:52SPEAKERleft over from the last headset.

43:53SPEAKER- They said three games in development eight years ago.

43:57SPEAKER- Look, I think Alex is still the flagship game for VR

44:00SPEAKERin a lot of cases.

44:01SPEAKER- You're not wrong, but also that's like,

44:02SPEAKERthat's kind of a backhanded compliment, right?

44:04SPEAKER'Cause nothing, that just illustrates the point

44:06SPEAKERthat nothing better has come along in the last six years.

44:09SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.

44:12SPEAKERSo, okay, when you hear this,

44:13SPEAKERpre-orders will already be live.

44:15SPEAKERSo, they go live, they went live on the 17th.

44:18SPEAKERThey're doing the lottery thing that they did

44:20SPEAKERwith the Steam Machine again for this, right?

44:22SPEAKERWhether that needs to be necessary or not,

44:24SPEAKERI guess we'll see.

44:26SPEAKERBut the idea is you express interest in a SKU

44:29SPEAKERor multiple SKUs, which are, if you don't care,

44:32SPEAKERand then whichever number you get in the lot,

44:34SPEAKERthey're gonna draw all the numbers in the hat on the 17th.

44:37SPEAKERAnd everybody who comes in after that

44:38SPEAKERwill be put at the end of the relevant lists.

44:41SPEAKERAnd then you get to give them your money

44:44SPEAKERin the order in which your lottery number

44:45SPEAKERwas called, basically.

44:47SPEAKERAnd this is kind of their anti-scalper mechanism.

44:49SPEAKER- It seemed to work pretty well for the Steam Machine,

44:51SPEAKERfor the most part.

44:52SPEAKERI didn't see a whole lot of complaints about that,

44:54SPEAKERalthough I think they're gonna be fulfilling orders for that

44:57SPEAKERfor the better part of six months or something, so.

44:59SPEAKER- It also just seems like an anti-annoyance mechanism

45:03SPEAKERbecause it's, I mean, yes, it's random,

45:06SPEAKERbut it's no less arbitrary than sitting in a broken store queue

45:09SPEAKERlike waiting for the store page to load

45:11SPEAKERor having it reject your payment method

45:13SPEAKER'cause the auth server can't work, you know what I mean?

45:16SPEAKER- It's pragmatic.

45:17SPEAKER- It's no less random than that experience,

45:19SPEAKERbut at least you're not sitting there for two hours

45:21SPEAKERhitting F5 trying to get into a store queue, so.

45:23SPEAKER- Yeah, 100%.

45:25SPEAKERLet's talk about this ecosystem,

45:27SPEAKERthe hardware ecosystem before we wrap.

45:29SPEAKERNorm, do you have anything else on Steam Frame

45:31SPEAKERbefore we move on that we haven't covered

45:32SPEAKERor you think that's important that people wanna know?

45:35SPEAKER- No, I think, yeah, the big picture of VR stuff,

45:38SPEAKERyou know, the VR business is what it is.

45:40SPEAKERI think there's still a lot of true believers out there.

45:42SPEAKERI think it's still an incredible, you know,

45:45SPEAKERincredible interface and way to play games

45:50SPEAKERand it's not like it's dead in the hardware world.

45:54SPEAKERThere's gonna be new VR headsets coming from Meta

45:57SPEAKERand other hardware makers.

45:58SPEAKERI think everyone realizes the scope and scale of the market

46:01SPEAKERis just much smaller than we all hoped it would be.

46:04SPEAKER- Well, and I assume that the sim people

46:06SPEAKERare gonna keep doing sim people stuff indefinitely.

46:08SPEAKERThe thing that surprised me having not plugged in my index

46:11SPEAKERmore than once or twice in the last five years

46:13SPEAKERis that there were a ton of like indie,

46:17SPEAKERlike 10, $20 indie games that are,

46:20SPEAKERthat kind of blew me away.

46:21SPEAKERLike I think the last year I really played a bunch

46:23SPEAKERof VR games was the year the last Clockwinder came out

46:25SPEAKERand there was a ton of neat stuff after that

46:28SPEAKERthat I've kind of enjoyed digging into, so.

46:32SPEAKER- The one last thing I guess I'll say is there's,

46:34SPEAKERI think there's a big opportunity

46:35SPEAKERfor this windowed stereo games.

46:40SPEAKERSo not every game needs to be fully immersive

46:43SPEAKERand there are certainly some benefits

46:44SPEAKERof having a fully immersive environment.

46:46SPEAKERBut even a game like Moss, which was like, yes,

46:49SPEAKERyou could look around the world,

46:50SPEAKERbut you could also kind of play it in a window

46:52SPEAKERand there was a lot to be said about playing

46:55SPEAKERlike a flat screen game, but adding some depth in some way,

46:59SPEAKERespecially if developers are gonna be feeding things

47:01SPEAKERto the SDK like depth data and motion vector data.

47:06SPEAKERThere's a way to then inject just a way to see the game

47:10SPEAKERand have it in 3D, whether it's looking into the window

47:12SPEAKERor having some things pop out.

47:14SPEAKERThat's a really untapped photo ground

47:16SPEAKERfor use of VR headsets.

47:18SPEAKER- Is that happening now or is that just something

47:21SPEAKERyou'd like to see happen?

47:22SPEAKER- It's something I'd like to see happen.

47:23SPEAKERThe way it's happening now in other display glasses

47:26SPEAKERis kind of as final pass layer where they're just,

47:29SPEAKERyou know, adding fake 3D, which works okay

47:33SPEAKERfor some content. - Like re-projection

47:34SPEAKERone of the eye viewports or something?

47:36SPEAKER- It's literally like on a per frame basis,

47:40SPEAKERyou know, assuming depth

47:42SPEAKERand then kind of portrait moding,

47:44SPEAKERcinematic moding everything.

47:45SPEAKER- Got it, okay.

47:46SPEAKER- Can I read a real fast question?

47:48SPEAKERIs there a way to watch,

47:49SPEAKERI may have asked this on a podcast recently,

47:51SPEAKERis there a way to watch like older 3D Blu-rays

47:54SPEAKERon VR headsets these days?

47:55SPEAKER'Cause like-- - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

47:58SPEAKER- I'm not gonna lie, it is not the biggest factor,

48:00SPEAKERbut it's a small factor in the fact that my plasma TV

48:03SPEAKERis still sitting in the floor behind me

48:05SPEAKER'cause I think can do 3D

48:06SPEAKERbecause I've always wanted to watch Dread in 3D

48:09SPEAKERand never actually, I've never seen that movie.

48:12SPEAKER- Yeah, the frame and like the hardcore VR people,

48:15SPEAKERit's a reason I wanna get like Plex set up in VR, right?

48:19SPEAKER'Cause people who've ripped DVDs and ripped Blu-rays

48:22SPEAKERand 3D Blu-rays and people have these,

48:25SPEAKERyou know, a bunch of people have servers

48:28SPEAKERwith 3D movie content and like Metas and Apples

48:32SPEAKERwill sell you that 'cause they'll tie into the studios

48:34SPEAKERand like in the Apple Vision Pro,

48:36SPEAKERif you have like the Disney+ app,

48:38SPEAKERyou can watch all the releases that are in 3D

48:41SPEAKERand it looks great.

48:42SPEAKER- Well, that seems worth five grand.

48:43SPEAKER- Well, yeah, and people who've ripped those Blu-rays

48:46SPEAKERor found other ways to get them,

48:48SPEAKERmost of the media apps that are in VR

48:53SPEAKERwill let you just, will run a stereo,

48:55SPEAKERyou know, either fully immersive stereo

48:56SPEAKERor a flat screen stereo side-by-side.

48:59SPEAKER- That might help me get rid of this TV

49:01SPEAKERa little bit sooner then.

49:04SPEAKER- Let's talk about the hardware, the hardware ecosystem.

49:06SPEAKERYou know, like we said at the top of the show,

49:08SPEAKERthey've got a handheld, they've got a console,

49:09SPEAKERthey've got a VR headset, they've got a controller.

49:13SPEAKERLike the question that I got from people early on

49:16SPEAKERwas why did Valve do this?

49:17SPEAKERLike they didn't have to.

49:18SPEAKERThey're happily making 10 to 30% on every PC game sold

49:23SPEAKERfor all intents and purposes.

49:26SPEAKERAnd, you know, they're not selling enough hardware

49:30SPEAKERto increase their kind of installed base,

49:34SPEAKERbut they are definitely engaging,

49:36SPEAKERI think with the highly, the most highly engaged users

49:39SPEAKERon Steam probably would be my guess.

49:40SPEAKERLike, what else do you think?

49:42SPEAKERIs there anything else going on, do you think?

49:46SPEAKER- I mean, just my understanding of the way that company works

49:50SPEAKERis the people who work on it,

49:52SPEAKERlike as long as the money printer keeps working, right?

49:58SPEAKERAs long as Steam is still at the top store

49:59SPEAKERand like, you know, it survived the Epic Games, right?

50:03SPEAKERPush, right?

50:04SPEAKERAnd their install base is just only still growing.

50:07SPEAKERSo it's making money to keep the people there happy.

50:10SPEAKERYou gotta let those people do the fun things that they want.

50:13SPEAKERAnd so every product that's come out of there hardware wise,

50:16SPEAKERit comes out of the wants of the people who work at Valve.

50:20SPEAKERThey wanted handheld.

50:21SPEAKERThey wanted a way to play their games in living room.

50:24SPEAKERAnd then they kind of justify it by doing the math of like,

50:26SPEAKERokay, then how can this, can it grow the ecosystem?

50:28SPEAKERSure, they're doing some foundational work

50:30SPEAKERto get SteamOS working on, yeah.

50:34SPEAKEROn desktop computers and in our machines.

50:37SPEAKERLike that's great for the, you know,

50:39SPEAKERfrom a long-term business perspective.

50:42SPEAKERAnd that might be great from a short-term,

50:44SPEAKERokay, we can justify this

50:45SPEAKERbecause now we have enough Steam decks out there,

50:47SPEAKERsurprisingly popular that we can, you know,

50:49SPEAKERput more development effort into there.

50:51SPEAKERBut I think if it only ended up being the hardcore

50:55SPEAKERweirdo tech people who have these products,

50:58SPEAKERthey'd be okay too,

50:59SPEAKERbecause none of these are really moneymakers for them.

51:02SPEAKERThey're like passion projects

51:03SPEAKERthat find some way to justify their existence.

51:06SPEAKER- Do you feel like, like you've spent time

51:09SPEAKERin Valve talking to people walking around

51:10SPEAKERand do you feel like there are still VR true believers

51:14SPEAKERthat like, that's why we have the frame?

51:16SPEAKEROr is this a gateway drug to another,

51:19SPEAKERto the next generation arm powered Steam deck?

51:22SPEAKER- I think yes, but I think those numbers are diminishing.

51:25SPEAKERAnd I don't think those numbers

51:26SPEAKERare in the game development side.

51:30SPEAKER- Okay. - Number of true believers?

51:31SPEAKER- True believers, yeah.

51:33SPEAKERI think everyone was fascinated with VR, you know,

51:36SPEAKER10 years ago as an input mechanism and the type of games,

51:41SPEAKERbut like, I don't think we're gonna see

51:43SPEAKERanother Half-Life Alyx from them.

51:45SPEAKER- Like, I have friends who started out

51:49SPEAKERas consumer VR software developers

51:50SPEAKERnow have moved on to doing B2B stuff

51:53SPEAKERand like business and education.

51:55SPEAKERLike there's a lot of,

51:56SPEAKERthere's a lot of, hey, I need to train my mechanics

51:58SPEAKERhow to work on a new engine.

52:00SPEAKERAnd they'll build that tool in VR.

52:03SPEAKERAnd then the mechanics learn to work on the engine in VR,

52:05SPEAKERright, that kind of stuff.

52:08SPEAKERAnd I feel like there was a moment in like 2016, 2017, 2018,

52:15SPEAKERwhen every game designer I knew was like,

52:17SPEAKERoh my God, look at all the verbs we can give players

52:19SPEAKERif we have fingers and hands, right?

52:21SPEAKERIf you can fing things, then anything's possible.

52:25SPEAKERAnd then nobody bought headsets

52:26SPEAKERor not enough people bought headsets,

52:27SPEAKERor they bought them and put them in drawers,

52:28SPEAKERwhich was maybe the worst possible outcome.

52:31SPEAKER- And also like the fact by virtue of these controllers,

52:35SPEAKERthese track controllers just having more abstractions

52:38SPEAKERby having more buttons.

52:40SPEAKERAnd one of the primary ways of using this

52:43SPEAKERis to use them as a game pad.

52:45SPEAKERLike the fight's been given up, right?

52:47SPEAKERLike the most room-scaled enabled device they've made,

52:52SPEAKER'cause remember, room scale is such a big valve thing.

52:54SPEAKERYou walk around your room,

52:55SPEAKERthese games would be designed to really be physical

52:57SPEAKERand you have physicality and embodiment, right?

53:01SPEAKERThe most room-scale enabled piece of hardware they've made,

53:04SPEAKERbecause it's wireless streaming, right?

53:06SPEAKERIs best use sitting on the couch,

53:09SPEAKERplaying a giant 2D screen in front of you.

53:11SPEAKERI mean, it all works great in room scale.

53:12SPEAKERI'm saying like the vast majority of content

53:15SPEAKERis gonna be flat screen 2D team games.

53:19SPEAKER- It's funny because I didn't,

53:20SPEAKERI hadn't really thought about this

53:21SPEAKERuntil we were getting ready to do this episode.

53:23SPEAKERBut like in a lot of ways,

53:25SPEAKERthe high watermark was that first Vive announcement.

53:28SPEAKERLike when they were at GDC in the room under the escalators

53:32SPEAKERand you and I went in there and they were like,

53:35SPEAKER"Oh yeah, we can only do one."

53:36SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Okay, Norm, you go do this

53:37SPEAKERand I'll ask you questions afterwards."

53:39SPEAKERYeah, I'm terrible at rock, paper, scissors.

53:43SPEAKERAnd then Chet was like, "What the hell are you doing?

53:45SPEAKERPut them both in, put them both in, please."

53:49SPEAKERAnd like that was a heady moment, right?

53:52SPEAKERLike that was a, my brain has never experienced

53:57SPEAKERthe things that I saw in that room before.

53:58SPEAKERI would like to do them again.

54:00SPEAKERAnd I don't think that that effect is diminished,

54:03SPEAKERbut I also, 'cause I did hundreds of those demos afterwards

54:06SPEAKERwhere I showed people that I demoed my software,

54:08SPEAKERI demoed other stuff.

54:10SPEAKERAnd I just don't feel like we have enough,

54:14SPEAKERthere's enough people that have bought the headsets

54:16SPEAKERto get that, to make that world possible

54:18SPEAKERwhere people are making a lot of those games

54:20SPEAKERand we're seeing that stuff on the regular.

54:22SPEAKERIt feels a lot like mid nineties shooter time

54:25SPEAKERin a lot of ways.

54:26SPEAKER- And the friction of what those headsets,

54:27SPEAKERactually the reality of owning a headset.

54:29SPEAKER- That's exactly it.

54:30SPEAKERThat is a hundred percent.

54:31SPEAKERLike speaking as somebody who is maybe less VR committed

54:35SPEAKERthan you guys or more on the VR sidelines,

54:38SPEAKERwhatever you want to say.

54:39SPEAKERBut like, especially hearing you guys say

54:41SPEAKERthat the best use case for this thing

54:43SPEAKERis to play large 2D games.

54:45SPEAKERLike I have a large 2D screen in my living room already

54:48SPEAKERand I can still get up and get a drink

54:50SPEAKERin the middle of using it.

54:51SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

54:51SPEAKERLike that's the friction.

54:53SPEAKERIt's not even just the upfront cost.

54:55SPEAKER- And it's not the best 2D screen you'll have.

54:56SPEAKERIt'll be like physically bigger, you know,

54:58SPEAKERit'll be bigger than the biggest projector

55:02SPEAKERyou can get in your living room.

55:03SPEAKERBut the resolution and the contrast,

55:07SPEAKERI will still, I prefer,

55:08SPEAKERI went through with thinking of this,

55:09SPEAKERlike would I prefer playing the latest,

55:11SPEAKERlike, you know, if GTA 6 was available,

55:13SPEAKERwould I prefer playing it in headset, in a frame

55:17SPEAKERor on my, and then, you know, granted I have a nice OLED TV

55:20SPEAKERlike, or the OLED TV, I'm like, ah, I love the OLED TV.

55:24SPEAKERAnd same with like my widescreen monitor.

55:26SPEAKERI'd rather play those games on a 240 Hertz, yeah.

55:29SPEAKER- And again, you can still interact with your children

55:31SPEAKERwhile using that TV or get up and get a drink

55:34SPEAKERand not have a giant thing strapped to your head and yeah.

55:36SPEAKER- It's less giant these days, but yeah.

55:38SPEAKER- For airplanes, but in bed, in all the other places

55:41SPEAKERyou can't have that big TV.

55:45SPEAKER- I mean, I played a lot of Zero Company laying in bed

55:47SPEAKERand then would fall asleep with the headset on my face

55:49SPEAKERand be like, oh God, this is so uncomfortable.

55:50SPEAKERWhy did I do this?

55:52SPEAKER- Would you guys ever use, well, Norm,

55:53SPEAKERyou may have with Vision Pro, like in the course of testing,

55:56SPEAKERlike I cannot imagine ever wanting to wear a VR headset

55:59SPEAKERin public, like even on like an airplane

56:00SPEAKERwhere you're stationary. - Oh, I do it all the time.

56:02SPEAKERI went through, I wear, it's altering between,

56:05SPEAKERthe Vision Pro's amazing on an airplane

56:07SPEAKERand it's perfectly socially acceptable now.

56:10SPEAKER- Well, that one, I guess, if it's like AR by default,

56:13SPEAKERlike if it's passed through where you can see

56:15SPEAKERyour surroundings at all time with like floating windows,

56:17SPEAKERthat's a little different.

56:18SPEAKERIt's more of the sensory deprivation,

56:19SPEAKERlike dark room VR thing.

56:21SPEAKERLike I don't want to be that unplugged

56:22SPEAKERfrom my surroundings when I'm out in public.

56:25SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

56:26SPEAKERAnd then those display glasses are,

56:28SPEAKERthat's the happy medium where they just look like

56:31SPEAKERbulkier sunglasses and they have optical passthrough,

56:34SPEAKERbut then you can also put a floating 3D window

56:36SPEAKERin front of you.

56:37SPEAKER- The last time I wore, I took an international flight.

56:39SPEAKERI saw a couple of people wearing the passthrough glasses

56:42SPEAKERand was kind of surprised.

56:43SPEAKERBut I mean, in that context,

56:45SPEAKERwhen you're on a 17 hour plane ride someplace,

56:47SPEAKERit kind of makes sense.

56:48SPEAKER- One, I have one last follow-up before we wrap up here,

56:53SPEAKERwhich is the idea of the Steam Deck 2 on ARM,

56:55SPEAKERwhich feels like it is becoming more and more

56:57SPEAKERof an accepted like fait accompli kind of thing.

56:59SPEAKERLike most, some people seem to just assume

57:01SPEAKERthat's where this is going, but like, is it?

57:04SPEAKERIs it really worth it?

57:05SPEAKER- I don't know the trajectory of ARM chips,

57:09SPEAKERlike laptop equivalent ARM chips.

57:11SPEAKER- That's exactly what it is is who in the ARM space

57:14SPEAKERcan deliver the GPU you would need for a Steam Deck 2?

57:16SPEAKERLike, I don't think it exists, yeah, right, right.

57:19SPEAKERLike that's not gonna happen.

57:20SPEAKERSo like, I don't, unless they're like,

57:24SPEAKERbut Valve doesn't have the volume to make this happen.

57:26SPEAKERI was gonna say, unless they like contracted with Qualcomm

57:28SPEAKERor somebody to spin something up for them custom,

57:31SPEAKERbut they're not gonna do that

57:32SPEAKER'cause that's not how Valve makes hardware decisions.

57:34SPEAKERSo I don't see where that hardware is gonna come from

57:37SPEAKERto make that happen, even if it's worth

57:39SPEAKERthe extra headache you need to make it work.

57:43SPEAKER- Yeah, they're so tightened with AMD

57:46SPEAKERand remember, even with Steam Deck,

57:49SPEAKERit was, they did a custom AMD chip

57:52SPEAKERwhere they paid for like the layout of the,

57:55SPEAKERyou know, the reconfigured layout of the chip

57:57SPEAKERand using these fabs to manufacture that.

58:00SPEAKERAnd the drivers are all really AMD optimized

58:03SPEAKERand not having to go through that additional emulation layer

58:07SPEAKERfrom ARM to x86, I think it's compatibility for software.

58:11SPEAKERIt makes so much more sense to stick with x86.

58:14SPEAKERAnd their efficiency, I mean, it's meeting halfway, right?

58:16SPEAKER- Right.

58:17SPEAKER- The x86 stuff, the more higher power x86 stuff,

58:23SPEAKERI think it makes a lot of sense.

58:24SPEAKERBut again, happy to wait until the right tech is there.

58:27SPEAKER- Right, like Intel is also getting into that space,

58:29SPEAKEReven not to say they're gonna use Intel,

58:31SPEAKERbut there's like, there's more competition

58:32SPEAKERand more like drive to make better,

58:35SPEAKERmore efficient mobile x86 gaming parts

58:37SPEAKERthan there ever has been.

58:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I'll say I tested some of the Snapdragon xElite

58:43SPEAKERor 10 Elite, I can't remember whether it's 10 or X for them,

58:45SPEAKERbut laptops, I think they have a newer generation since then.

58:49SPEAKERThose had really capable GPUs

58:54SPEAKERfor the games that worked on them.

58:55SPEAKERThe problem was that the Windows ARM

58:57SPEAKERto x86 translation layer was kind of shit

59:00SPEAKERfor games specifically.

59:01SPEAKERIt was fine for a lot of normal applications.

59:04SPEAKERSo like there are parts that are off the shelf-ish

59:09SPEAKERthat, you know, or that, you know,

59:11SPEAKERif we're looking at Valve,

59:13SPEAKERthey're gonna do the thing where they take the ones

59:14SPEAKERthat don't pass spec for the high-end laptops,

59:17SPEAKERlike they did with the APUs,

59:18SPEAKERand they'll pick a stripped down version.

59:20SPEAKERThey're definitely more capable than the RDNA 2 point,

59:23SPEAKERwhatever GPUs that are in the current Steam Deck though.

59:26SPEAKERNow, the real question is Pragmatic Valve,

59:29SPEAKERI don't think is gonna release a new Steam Deck

59:31SPEAKERuntil such time as there's a new console generation,

59:35SPEAKERunless there's like a Steam Deck Lite

59:38SPEAKERthat's an ARM based thing.

59:39SPEAKERBut I think in the current RAMpocalypse,

59:41SPEAKERthat's not probably likely.

59:44SPEAKERSo yeah, I don't know.

59:45SPEAKERI'm pretty bullish on ARM as the next,

59:50SPEAKERyou know, ARM being the next architecture for a frame,

59:53SPEAKERor for Deck rather, at least.

59:56SPEAKERHow do you guys think that this compares to Sony

59:58SPEAKERand Microsoft and Nintendo's platforms,

1:00:01SPEAKERlike their whole ecosystem?

1:00:02SPEAKERBrad made a face.

1:00:04SPEAKER- It's a broad question.

1:00:05SPEAKER- Yeah, I know.

1:00:06SPEAKER(laughing)

1:00:07SPEAKERLike, does this feel as coherent as Nintendo's,

1:00:10SPEAKER"Hey, you can plug the thing into the dock.

1:00:11SPEAKER"You can play it on the handheld."

1:00:14SPEAKERThey have motion controllers.

1:00:15SPEAKERIt's basically halfway there.

1:00:16SPEAKER- No, no, I mean like, the people who are buying,

1:00:19SPEAKERI think the market of PC gaming is still,

1:00:25SPEAKERI think, much bigger than console gaming overall.

1:00:30SPEAKERAnd the people, Steam Deck showed that the people

1:00:33SPEAKERwho want the Just Works console gaming experience

1:00:37SPEAKERwere happy to jump on and buy Steam Deck

1:00:40SPEAKERbecause they got exposed to the deep library

1:00:45SPEAKERthat Steam has, and the jank of the first generation

1:00:48SPEAKERreally got figured out by the time Steam Deck OLED came out.

1:00:55SPEAKERI think pricing affects everyone.

1:00:58SPEAKERSo the next generation of hardware,

1:01:00SPEAKERif they're gonna still make dedicated console hardware

1:01:02SPEAKERbeing $1,000, Valve's actually coming in

1:01:04SPEAKERat a pretty good spot of still having that library.

1:01:09SPEAKERAnd I think it's gonna be like a secondary device,

1:01:11SPEAKERkind of like how people think of, they buy an Xbox

1:01:15SPEAKERor a PlayStation and a Switch because you only get

1:01:18SPEAKERsome of those games there.

1:01:20SPEAKERThey're not gonna stop buying consoles

1:01:21SPEAKER'cause that's where you're gonna get GTA 6 or Mario.

1:01:25SPEAKERBut I think they might buy this

1:01:27SPEAKERinstead of buying a laptop or something.

1:01:29SPEAKER- Yeah, and I don't think this is, I mean,

1:01:31SPEAKERI haven't used all this stuff personally,

1:01:33SPEAKERbut my sense is it's nowhere near as turnkey

1:01:35SPEAKERas something like the Switch 2.

1:01:37SPEAKER- Oh, sure, yeah. - It probably never will be

1:01:39SPEAKERin terms of the ease of plugging a dock into your TV

1:01:42SPEAKERand dropping the thing in and pulling it out,

1:01:43SPEAKERand that's kind of the, that's all of the setup required.

1:01:47SPEAKER- I think Gen Z doesn't care.

1:01:49SPEAKERI think Gen Z is more savvy.

1:01:50SPEAKER- Yeah, maybe.

1:01:51SPEAKER- I think younger people, I've seen a lot of Steam Decks.

1:01:55SPEAKERI've seen a lot of Steam Decks, more Steam Decks in public

1:01:58SPEAKERthan I would say even Nintendo Switch 2's in public,

1:02:01SPEAKERor some airports.

1:02:03SPEAKER- Interesting.

1:02:04SPEAKERYoung people or old people?

1:02:05SPEAKERI assumed Steam Decks was an old guy thing.

1:02:07SPEAKER- No, I think young people, yeah.

1:02:09SPEAKERYoung people, I mean, they're happy to deal with the jank.

1:02:14SPEAKER- So when one of my daughter's friends' parents says,

1:02:17SPEAKERhey, what should I get my kid?

1:02:18SPEAKERI'm like, do they wanna play Mario games?

1:02:20SPEAKERDo they wanna play Animal Crossing?

1:02:21SPEAKERIf they say no, and they're like, do they play Fortnite?

1:02:25SPEAKERNo, then the Steam Deck is the answer, right?

1:02:30SPEAKERI do kind of wonder, 'cause there's still rough edges,

1:02:34SPEAKERto Brad's point.

1:02:35SPEAKERYou still occasionally have to load up

1:02:37SPEAKERand switch the Proton version and all that,

1:02:38SPEAKERbut it's relatively seamless.

1:02:41SPEAKEREspecially anything with a green check mark

1:02:43SPEAKERjust kinda works now in a way that it didn't

1:02:45SPEAKERwhen the Steam Deck was new, which is nice.

1:02:48SPEAKERSo, yeah, I don't know.

1:02:49SPEAKER- I mean, think about when we were younger, right?

1:02:51SPEAKERYou know, consoles were plug and play.

1:02:54SPEAKERThey had all the quality assurance,

1:02:56SPEAKERand we all had N64s and PS1s,

1:03:01SPEAKERbut when we were in our college years,

1:03:03SPEAKERPCs were the things that unopened up, right?

1:03:07SPEAKERAll types of tinkering and gaming,

1:03:09SPEAKERand yeah, it required jank, driver installations,

1:03:11SPEAKERand we didn't have, we didn't even have a Steam store.

1:03:14SPEAKERBut we were happy to do that.

1:03:15SPEAKER- We had to go to download.com to get our patches.

1:03:17SPEAKERIt was a nightmare, file-planted.

1:03:19SPEAKER- And it was super satisfying, and we had the time,

1:03:21SPEAKERthe extra time and the motivation

1:03:23SPEAKERto really dive in that space,

1:03:26SPEAKERand maybe the scales were different,

1:03:28SPEAKERbut I think today, yeah, if you're elementary school

1:03:30SPEAKERor middle schooler, that's Nintendo Switch territory.

1:03:34SPEAKERYou want that plug and play and the reliability,

1:03:36SPEAKERand that's how much time that they'll have,

1:03:38SPEAKERbut high school or in college,

1:03:40SPEAKERthat's perfect for Steam Deck.

1:03:42SPEAKER- I will say my daughter started asking

1:03:43SPEAKERabout the Steam Deck recently.

1:03:44SPEAKERShe's 13 now, and she's like,

1:03:46SPEAKER"Hey, what can you do on this thing?"

1:03:48SPEAKERI was like, "Well, you can play Hollow Knight,"

1:03:49SPEAKERand she's like, "Oh, okay."

1:03:50SPEAKERI mean, you can play Hollow Knight on the Switch too as well,

1:03:52SPEAKERbut she's more interested in those kinds of games

1:03:56SPEAKERin a way that she wasn't two or three years ago.

1:04:01SPEAKERA couple questions from the community

1:04:03SPEAKERafter that last week's episode.

1:04:05SPEAKERI think I said this in the episode, but I'll say it again.

1:04:07SPEAKERThe VR streaming from the Steam machine

1:04:10SPEAKERand from Linux clients is not working right

1:04:11SPEAKERwith the wireless adapter.

1:04:13SPEAKERThey know that it's on the list.

1:04:14SPEAKERI had a question to Valve,

1:04:16SPEAKERand they said it's on the post-release list,

1:04:19SPEAKERbut they don't have any TA yet.

1:04:23SPEAKERThe, that's, I think we hit everything else, actually.

1:04:26SPEAKEROh, the last thing I'll say is that the VR radio

1:04:28SPEAKERis kind of janky if you're dual-booting

1:04:30SPEAKER'cause it confuses, it shows up as the same machine,

1:04:33SPEAKERI think, in Steam on both devices,

1:04:36SPEAKERand it causes weird things to happen, basically, so.

1:04:41SPEAKERAnd that's pretty much it.

1:04:42SPEAKERLike, the overall feeling I have on this ecosystem

1:04:45SPEAKERis that they've consolified a lot of the stuff

1:04:48SPEAKERthat PCs have traditionally done poorly, like suspend,

1:04:52SPEAKERright, like suspending your machine.

1:04:55SPEAKERLike, if you suspend a PC in Windows

1:04:58SPEAKERwhile you're playing a game,

1:04:59SPEAKERthe game is almost certainly gonna crash

1:05:01SPEAKERwhen you come back, in my experience,

1:05:03SPEAKERor at least you'll have to restart it

1:05:04SPEAKER'cause the performance will be weird or janky

1:05:06SPEAKERor something like that.

1:05:07SPEAKERAnd that stuff just kind of works.

1:05:08SPEAKERLike, you can put the Steam Deck to sleep and wake it up,

1:05:10SPEAKERand it comes right back where it left off,

1:05:12SPEAKERjust like your PlayStation or your Xbox does.

1:05:15SPEAKERI feel like feature parity across the board

1:05:17SPEAKERin terms of cloud saves and multiplayer

1:05:19SPEAKERand all of that kind of stuff is just there now.

1:05:22SPEAKERAnd really, my only question is what's the,

1:05:26SPEAKERlike, would I buy a Steam machine in 2026

1:05:29SPEAKERwhen I know that we're looking at 2027 new console releases,

1:05:32SPEAKERpotentially, from at least Sony?

1:05:35SPEAKERAnd that's kind of the end,

1:05:39SPEAKERlike, next generation of consoles is kind of the end game

1:05:41SPEAKERfor this current gen hardware, I think, right?

1:05:43SPEAKER- I don't think anyone seriously considering

1:05:47SPEAKERbuying next gen console because they wanna play,

1:05:50SPEAKERlike, GTA 6 or something, I don't think

1:05:52SPEAKERthat's the right Steam machine market right now.

1:05:54SPEAKERLike, if you're looking to buy a Steam machine,

1:05:55SPEAKERyou're looking to play, you're buying games on discount

1:05:59SPEAKERand having so many more games, not just indie games,

1:06:02SPEAKERbut, like, you missed out on all these--

1:06:04SPEAKER- 20 years of bad catalog.

1:06:05SPEAKER- Exactly, and a lot of PC games that still run great,

1:06:08SPEAKERnew PC games that still run great at 1080 on Steam machine.

1:06:12SPEAKERSo I think, like, value proposition,

1:06:13SPEAKERyou're gonna get a lot out of Steam machine

1:06:18SPEAKERand we're not gonna go into, like,

1:06:19SPEAKERhow comparison pricing to build your own PC,

1:06:21SPEAKERbut, like, to also bring it into the living room, right?

1:06:24SPEAKERAnd so there's, like, this great intersection

1:06:27SPEAKERof people who want the convenience

1:06:29SPEAKERof having something that just works

1:06:32SPEAKERand is, like, living room acceptable, right, and quiet,

1:06:37SPEAKERbut also are happy to do a little bit of tinkering

1:06:41SPEAKERand going through some jank menus to get the library.

1:06:45SPEAKER- I will say, while my wife absolutely

1:06:47SPEAKERdoes not like the Steam frame,

1:06:49SPEAKERshe's a big fan of the machine

1:06:50SPEAKERand actually I've caught her playing stuff on it before,

1:06:52SPEAKERso that's a first 'cause she doesn't even really engage

1:06:55SPEAKERwith the consoles in there, except for the Switch, so.

1:06:58SPEAKERAnyway.

1:06:59SPEAKER- I mean, you look at pricing, right?

1:07:00SPEAKERLook at, like, how cheap,

1:07:01SPEAKERlike, Nintendo never discounts their games, right,

1:07:03SPEAKERbut there's some great games, like, oh my god,

1:07:05SPEAKERlike Katamari, five bucks, five bucks.

1:07:08SPEAKERIt's like thinking about, like, movies that go on sale,

1:07:10SPEAKERright, it's like, you know,

1:07:12SPEAKERas opposed to buying $30 Blu-rays,

1:07:14SPEAKERyou're getting the iTunes, you know,

1:07:16SPEAKER$2 discount for movies and, like, more often than not,

1:07:18SPEAKERI'm like, okay, I'll add that to my library and now let's see.

1:07:22SPEAKER- It's that big tub at the entrance of Fry's, you know,

1:07:24SPEAKERlike, hey, there's hundreds of discs in here,

1:07:26SPEAKERjust loose, not even stacked, just,

1:07:28SPEAKERyou gotta dig through it and it's all, yeah, I get it.

1:07:33SPEAKERI guess that'll do it for us.

1:07:33SPEAKERNorm, what should you,

1:07:36SPEAKERlike, you have a bunch of videos for this up, I think, right?

1:07:38SPEAKER- I got one long 75-minute video on Tested,

1:07:43SPEAKERwhich you can watch and then a second on our second channel,

1:07:47SPEAKERanother video going up later today as we're recording this.

1:07:50SPEAKER- That's Tested Team? - It shows a little more,

1:07:52SPEAKERyes, Tested Team for Half-Life Alyx mobile.

1:07:54SPEAKERSo I did some capture.

1:07:56SPEAKERIf you wanna see what that foveation looks like,

1:07:58SPEAKERI have some extended sequences in Half-Life Alyx

1:08:01SPEAKERthat you can watch. - Oh, that's fun.

1:08:01SPEAKER- And a conversation with Valve about it.

1:08:04SPEAKER- Have you absorbed any of the other folks doing work

1:08:07SPEAKERwith the frame yet?

1:08:08SPEAKERHave you watched any of those other videos?

1:08:09SPEAKERAre you still, like, madly churning out your own stuff?

1:08:13SPEAKER- Oh, no, no, I spent, the embargo was yesterday,

1:08:16SPEAKERso yeah, spent yesterday morning kinda surveying the field.

1:08:19SPEAKERI love surveying the media landscape.

1:08:22SPEAKERThat's all I'll say about that.

1:08:23SPEAKER- Okay, okay, sounds good.

1:08:25SPEAKER- Steve's video was great.

1:08:26SPEAKERI love Gamer's Nexus's video.

1:08:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought they did a performance of Valve

1:08:32SPEAKERthat was pretty impressive, I thought.

1:08:35SPEAKER- Unmatched, yeah. - Yeah.

1:08:36SPEAKER- And, like, I love the bloody-minded focus

1:08:39SPEAKERon let's see how this thing performs

1:08:40SPEAKERso that then we don't have to make any kind of,

1:08:43SPEAKERlike, I'm not saying he doesn't wanna do this,

1:08:45SPEAKERbut keeps him from having to make qualitative judgements

1:08:47SPEAKERthat make people yell at him.

1:08:48SPEAKERSo that's good for him. - Also, the emphasis

1:08:49SPEAKERon privacy and the difference in, you know,

1:08:51SPEAKERwhy you would buy into the Valve philosophy

1:08:54SPEAKERand how they treat users versus meta.

1:08:57SPEAKER- It was actually really funny.

1:08:58SPEAKERThat was one of the things that came up in the comments a lot

1:09:00SPEAKERin the Discord after our first episode came out.

1:09:03SPEAKERAnd the number of people saying,

1:09:05SPEAKER"Hey, I don't give meta my information anymore,"

1:09:07SPEAKERwas really high.

1:09:09SPEAKERI was way more than I was expecting,

1:09:10SPEAKERso good for the audience.

1:09:12SPEAKERGood job, guys.

1:09:14SPEAKERWell, that'll do it for us this week.

1:09:15SPEAKERNorm, thanks, always a pleasure to have you,

1:09:17SPEAKERand hopefully there'll be another season

1:09:18SPEAKERof Steam hardware soon so we can, you know, do this again.

1:09:22SPEAKERIt's been great having you in, what,

1:09:24SPEAKERthree or four times now, I guess.

1:09:26SPEAKER- I love it, always love being on,

1:09:27SPEAKERand yes, I would love for Valve to work on more hardware

1:09:31SPEAKERand hopefully still keep us all included.

1:09:33SPEAKER- I think they're taking a vacation now if I had to guess,

1:09:35SPEAKERbut I could be wrong.

1:09:37SPEAKER(upbeat music)

1:09:40SPEAKERThanks, Norm, for coming by.

1:09:41SPEAKERThat was always fabulous.

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1:10:13SPEAKER- We can't eat podcasts.

1:10:15SPEAKER- I mean, we could, but I think we'd lose a lot of weight,

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1:10:22SPEAKERThis is the part of the show

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1:10:33SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.

1:10:34SPEAKER- Thank you, yes.

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