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Yesterday evening I finally had the chance to unbox my Steam Frame and have an initial play with it. Here are my impressions of it after playing for a couple of hours. Note that this isn't intended to be any kind of review, just some jotted notes about things I noticed and concluded. The order might appear a little random too.

Unboxing¶

The first thing I noticed was the obvious lack of any actual instructions. Either I missed the obvious, or there was no leaflet and nothing on the box to tell me how to get it up and running. I had already read online what to do so didn't have any issues, but this still strikes me as odd. I guess the Frame isn't intended for the full consumer market and so the kind of enthusiast who plays with SteamVR is likely curious enough to go find information or work things out, but it still feels like an odd omission.

The other thing that feels like a serious omission is the complete lack of any sort of welcome experience. I remember when I first got my Quest 2, the introduction app was a whole thing and did a great job of showing off the hardware. Heck, even the Steam Deck has Aperture Desk Job. It seems like a very odd choice that something new for the Frame wasn't created.

For example, The Lab is a decade old now; it seems strange to me that they didn't refresh it and promote it as a standalone initial experience for the Frame -- perhaps using it to show off some of the new capabilities or something.

Comfort¶

While I did buy the ergonomic kit, I didn't set any of that up right away. I was keen to try the device out so my initial test was without the top strap in place. While I've since fitted it, and find it a useful addition, I'm amazed at just how comfortable the headset is to wear. I've spent many hundreds of hours wearing the Quest 2 and the PSVR2, neither of which was horrible, but both of them felt uncomfortable after some use. Based on my initial impressions the Frame feels like something that could be worn for pretty long sessions without any problem.

To be clear: The Steam Frame is by far the most comfortable headset I've worn. This in turn makes it feel like the headset with the least activation energy required when it comes to being motivated to "jump into VR".

Controllers¶

The controllers are... okay, I guess. Compared to the headset they feel cheap, which they might well be. Based on my experience with the Quest 2, the controllers are the things that take the most punishment and so they're most likely to be the things that need replacing most often. Perhaps they're designed with the right balance of "last long enough" and "affordable to replace".

The main issue I have with the controllers is they seem to have crammed too much into them. They've put all four buttons on the right controller, and a D-pad on the left controller. Perhaps I'm missing something here but this feels like overkill. I found that this made the controllers feel far too busy. All of this also means that the two top buttons (the ones normally used to pull up menus of some description) feel just out of reach. During my time playing last night I found I was having to constantly readjust my grip to reach different buttons, which then meant I was often having to peek under the headset to actually see where my fingers were landing.

Honestly, in terms of ergonomics, I'd say the Frame's controllers are worse than those of the Quest 2, but slightly better than the ones that come with the PSVR2¹.

There's also the complication of the controller straps that come in the ergonomic kit. I love these sorts of straps (the kind that goes around the back of your hand) as they generally make controller use more comfortable. It's great to not have to keep gripping the controller all the time, and it also feels more natural if you need to throw something in VR. But it really feels like whoever designed the controller layout never spoke with whoever designed the straps. The combination ends up being pretty awkward.

I've never used the Index controllers, but everyone I've spoken to who has always seems to sing their praises. Based on that, the Frame's controllers feel like they can't have come from the same company.

Inside the headset¶

I've read a good few comments from people on Reddit that say that the display in the headset is pretty dark. That wasn't my experience at all. Out of the box I found the display bright enough, and that wasn't even turned up as high as it will go.

The other thing I found was that the display felt like the clearest one I've tried out yet. I wear glasses; I'm short-sighted and have an astigmatism that needs correcting. Given the design of the headset there's no way I was going to wear my specs while using it, so for the moment I'm playing unaided². Despite that I found the display very readable (to be fair, I'm not that short-sighted).

What is slightly disappointing is the lack of an actual "home" when you boot up the headset. This feels like a missed opportunity. Like, sure, the floating menus and the stark landscape are fine and do the job, but the actual home to exist in always felt like a fun thing. Even the Quest 2 has this -- surely it could be done on the Frame?

Audio¶

I really like the audio. My VR audio experience comes from the stock Quest 2 and also stock PSVR2. The Frame is obviously very similar to the Quest 2, in that the speakers are "near" your ears but don't cover them in any way. I like this. I like this a lot. I find this a really comfortable way to experience VR (and, while it's not an issue at the moment, the ideal setup for recording your voice for video-making or streaming purposes -- you're less likely to end up shouting). I've never liked the PSVR2 in-ear buds so I'm glad it's nothing like that.

While playing, I found that the sense of direction of sounds was pretty spot on, which is something that very obviously matters to immersion. That level of immersion, combined with an awareness of your own surroundings, feels like just the right balance.

Battery life¶

The battery life is not great, it has to be said. I think I got something like 40 minutes out of the device when I first booted it up. In all fairness, I can't remember what level it was on to start with, and I was also doing an OS upgrade, controller update, and the installation of a game or two.

The second part of my initial session started with something like 95% battery available. That second session ended up on about 20% battery left after playing Alyx for the better part of an hour, give or take (I didn't make a point of actually timing it).

I feel like, with a full charge, and depending on what I do, I might get around 90 minutes out of the device. This feels less than I'd get out of the Quest 2 back in the day.

All of this was, of course, playing a game locally on the headset itself. It will be interesting to see how it compares when in PC-based PCVR streaming mode using the supplied dongle.

Given my interest in using this mostly in standalone mode, I can see myself buying an external power unit and hooking it up while it's stuck in a pocket or something.

Ergonomic kit¶

The ergonomic kit feels like a thing that should have been included in the price, if I'm honest. The additional strap for the headset is, as I mentioned above, nice to have and improves the comfort from comfortable to very comfortable. The straps for the controllers feel a little cheap but do the job.

I've not tried out the nose guard thing yet. There's no doubt that a lot of light leaks around the nose, but at the same time that's actually quite handy for quickly glancing at the world around you if you need to be able to check on something (your phone, or where your fingers are on the controller because of the issues I mention above).

Now, this might just be me being a bit dense: I found the instructions that came with the kit kind of confusing when it came to the controller straps. I got there in the end, but I feel like the visuals printed on the box could have been so much better.

Thankfully my kit was complete. I've seen reports of people finding broken parts, missing parts, or things like two right-handed controller straps rather than a left and a right.

Gaming¶

For my initial session I only played games standalone. While I do have a PC for PCVR purposes, it's still packed away after my move last year. I will drag it out and give it a go at some point, but the standalone gaming abilities are what interest me most at the moment.

Gunman Contracts - Stand Alone¶

The first game I decided to try out was Gunman Contracts - Stand Alone. While the "Stand Alone" in the name is in reference to it no longer being a mod for Half-Life: Alyx, my understanding is that it is intended to be playable standalone on the Steam Frame.

It isn't. It so very isn't.

The FPS was horrible, and I noticed lots of graphical distortion as I tried to play. I never made it out of the home bunker as the whole thing was just a laggy mess.

This doesn't surprise me though. Based on other reviews it looks like it's not the best experience even when playing in full PCVR mode. I've also played it flat-screen on the Steam Deck and it's okay there, but obviously needs some work.

I will revisit this, as I noticed in the settings for it that everything seemed to be turned up to the max. Textures were on Ultra for example, which seems like a wild choice out of the box for a game running on a standalone VR headset. Given this I'm going to assume the game makes zero effort to detect the environment it's running in and to configure good defaults.

Gun Club VR¶

Next up I tried Gun Club VR. This is a game I've played before native to the Quest 2, and also in PCVR. Given it's an older game I had high hopes for it. I was right to. This was pin-sharp and buttery smooth. In terms of how it looked and felt in the headset it was night and day compared to Gunman Contracts.

Sure, I'm comparing apples and oranges there in terms of game age and what's being asked of the hardware, but I think it's a good comparison of the different ends of that spectrum.

While Gunman Contracts left me concerned that a lot of VR gaming would be off-limits on the Frame, Gun Club VR gave me hope that many of the classics will run well (perhaps after some tweaks by the authors).

Half-Life: Alyx¶

The third and final game I tried out was Half-Life: Alyx. I've played this in full PCVR mode before, and do feel it's pretty much the peak VR experience. The idea that this could work standalone was wild to me. I know Valve have worked hard on making it work, and are promoting it to the point of bundling it with the Frame³, but it still felt like it was going to be a bad time.

It wasn't a bad time. It was a good time.

While it's very obvious that the graphics have been dialled down, and while I did see a fair bit of pop-in of assets from time to time, generally it looked good and performed well. In my peripheral vision I could obviously see that the resolution was super-low, but no matter where I was directly looking, I saw a quality image (presumably eye-tracked foveated rendering at work, although I've not checked if it is used in Alyx). There was almost no stutter, no lag to speak of, and it felt as good as I remember when playing it in full PCVR mode.

Conclusion¶

Overall my first experience is pretty positive. Out of the box the Steam Frame is the most comfortable VR experience I've had yet. Given I'm writing this just one week after getting the purchase invitation email, I have high hopes for this device. It seems obvious that there's a load of software and firmware improvements to come, and I can imagine a good third-party market of add-on products to augment the use of the headset (mics, headphones, care and storage, power without full tether, etc.). I also imagine there will be a scramble to optimise a good number of VR games and experiences to get them working well standalone.

It is, without question, expensive for what it is. I very much doubt that this was Valve's intention or doing. The demand for various types of hardware is having a broad impact and I don't need to detail that. Taking this fact into account, this feels like a great little product that's only going to improve with time.

While I'm not sure I'll return to recording VR videos again, at least not with the frequency I used to, I will be returning to enjoying playing VR again thanks to this little device making it very accessible.

Introduction¶

An occasional collection of things I've recently found on the Internet and added to my bookmarks.

Weird little guys of FOSS¶

As the name says: a collection of "weird little guys" of the FOSS and adjacent worlds. Massively subjective, of course, but I don't think I've seen one (that I know of) that I disagree with yet.

Ball Splitter¶

The sort of thing that's fun to run up, muted, during boring meetings.

Deadpan Photography: Enjoying the Pretence¶

I love this style of photography, but I don't think I've ever seen an actual name for the style before. Now I have.

Stargate Worlds — Fan-Made Private Server¶

I don't need another game to invest all my time in at the moment. But if I did, I think it could be this. I love all things Stargate.

Geminispace topology¶

A map of Geminispace.

Kepler protocol specification¶

Yet another smolweb protocol, and yet another derived from or related to Gemini. I doubt I'll do anything with this one (Rogallo supports enough as it is for now), but it's worth keeping a link to it.

GitHub star history¶

A GitHub star history that doesn't need access tokens and the like.

Everybody's Lost Their Minds¶

A pretty great rant about all things AI.

Flet¶

I build enough applications using Textual; it might be interesting to play with a framework that works on all sorts of platforms (as opposed to just in the terminal).

Great on Frame¶

Games that are verified to work standalone on the Steam Frame.

Leaving DigitalOcean, one site at a time¶

I've not used DO for a while now, but I have been thinking about setting up a small host again so I can play with Gemini and Gopher. Having used DO in the past, they were at the top of my list.

Now I'm not so sure I need them there.

endoflife.date¶

End-of-life dates for... so many things!

Team Fortress 2: VR Mod¶

I used to have so much fun with TF2. The idea of TF2 in VR... hell yes please!

I think, in part, I regret upgrading any of my Apple devices to the 27 line of operating systems. While my experience as a whole has been pretty favourable, the one thing I was looking forward to is not just disappointing, but is a huge step backwards.

I don't use Siri for many things, but I do use it a lot for a small number of core things. On any given day I'll lift my watch up and speak to it to set a timer or a reminder. Occasionally I'll ask other things, but they're the main uses. Thanks to the fairly recent addition of on-device voice handling, these requests have been near-instant.

With the new Siri that comes with iOS 27, etc., if I'm really lucky the reply will be super slow (getting on for 20 seconds or so to do the job), but more often than not it just doesn't work at all. Either it tells me that my main device isn't available right now¹ (which I take to mean my iPhone, which is wild given it's always in my pocket at the time), or it just busy spins for ages and then simply times out and does nothing.

If I try to use Siri on the iPhone itself, it either just busy waits for ages without getting anything done, or it finally tells me it isn't working.

I was one of the people who upgraded to the 16 Pro because of the promise of "Apple Intelligence". I was, unsurprisingly, kind of annoyed that they didn't deliver. But it was fine, the phone is a good one and it's still serving me well. Also, if I'm honest, I was comfortable with the idea that they chose to not really implement anything² rather than implement something bad.

Sadly though, based on my experience so far, they've implemented something bad. Since upgrading, on the Watch and iPhone, I've found that it's either horrifically slow or it just doesn't work. On top of that, I've lost all the benefit of the on-device voice handling of my watches.

Actually a little sooner than I was expecting -- look what turned up today!

When I saw this morning, based on tracking, that it had made it to the national distribution centre down in England, I was expecting it to head up this way today and perhaps be out for delivery tomorrow. But, no, a little later in the morning I got an email to say it was up here and would head out this afternoon.

I probably won't be giving it a spin this evening, mainly because I had plans to stream some more Atomfall and I'm actually really into the story right now. The other reason is that I'm still waiting for the charger and ergonomic pack to show up. Not that I need them (it's not like I don't have a charger that'll work), but it would be nice to have those extra items to hand when I first have a play.

Realistically, I'm probably not going to get the chance to fire it up until Friday evening. That's fine, I'm in no rush. I've gone this long without playing much VR; a couple more evenings won't hurt.

Meanwhile, I've found out that Gunman Contracts - Stand Alone will actually work in standalone mode on the Frame. Yes, I know the name might suggest that, but the "Stand Alone" in the name is in reference to the fact that it's no longer an Alyx mod. This makes me quite happy. This is a game I've been looking forward to playing for a couple of years now and the prospect of being able to dive into it on the Steam Frame, without needing to faff with my PC, very much appeals.

I'll be sure to jot down some impressions once I've had a proper session.

I've just made a small update to GopherMap. While doing some work on Rogallo I noticed that, somehow, I wasn't showing a type "badge" for PNG files (p). I spent a moment or two trying to figure out what was wrong with the code in Rogallo, and then realised that I'd managed to miss out both PNG and RTF files in GopherMap itself.

So this release adds those types.

At this point I believe that GopherMap now knows about all the canonical and most useful non-canonical types.

At some point I should probably look at Gopher+, which I suspect will also mean some changes to Port70.

I sat down at my desk at about 08:40 this morning and, five minutes later, got an email from Valve to say they were preparing my Steam Frame for shipping! On visiting the site, it said it was shipped.

Checking with the carrier, there's the usual message to say they're aware of the package but haven't picked it up yet. At this rate, it does look like I'll have my hands on it this week.

Time to have a proper look into what games and apps will run standalone on it. The updated Alyx I know about (which does have me wondering if the workshop items will work -- the original Gunman Contracts should be fun), but I've not really checked yet what other actual VR titles will run without the need for a PC.

It looks like things are moving a wee bit quicker than I remember when I bought the Steam Controller, with the status of my Steam Frame purchase moving to "packaged" pretty quickly.

I'm curious as to when it will arrive. The small number of times that I've purchased Valve hardware, I've generally found the actual shipping (once it's shipped) to be reasonably swift.

I could be in the position of being able to play with my new headset before next weekend. While I'm most interested in the standalone experience, I might have to dig out the VR gaming PC, update a bunch of things on it, and give it a general tidy. It's getting on a bit now, but it will be interesting to test out the wireless PCVR mode.

I didn't have to spend too long in the Steam Frame reservation queue. I'd just sat down on the sofa, after having dinner yesterday evening, opened the MacBook to hack on some code, and had this turn up:

I didn't hesitate. However, during the checkout journey, there was a glitch. I opened the email, clicked on the link to go and confirm the purchase, and on the Steam site I was greeted with a message to the effect that the quantity I was buying was too great! It wouldn't let me proceed to the payment. I clicked on the button to view my basket and this is what I saw:

This did make me slightly nervous for a moment. It was an obvious glitch, but was it double-counting the same unit, or had it somehow added two units to my basket? Given that I couldn't progress without doing something, I removed one and... it was all okay.

So as of right now I'm paid up, I have an active order, and now I wait for physical delivery. The estimated delivery time seems to be between 3 and 5 (working?) days.

Meanwhile, I now need to figure out what to do about prescription lens inserts. The inserts that Valve recommend on the Steam Frame page are currently "coming soon", which is mildly annoying. I have noticed in the Steam Frame subreddit a couple of people mentioning other companies who are already manufacturing and shipping inserts. I might take a look at them.

The need for prescription lenses is one annoyance of VR for me. Sure, it's easily fixed, but it's a bit of a shame when, upon opening the box, I have to go with a blurry experience for a wee while. Of course, I could wear my glasses in the headset, but based on my experience when I got my Quest 2 back in late 2020, that's not comfortable and there's the danger of scratching the glasses, headset lenses, or both.

It's not worth the risk.

It's getting on for six years now since I got my first VR headset, and it's the best part of five years since I sorted myself with a PCVR setup. Between then and now I've played a lot of VR games and spent a lot of time in VR.

This last year, though, aside from a quick dabble with the PS5 version of Zero Caliber, I've not really been in VR. Mostly this is down to me moving late on last year, and evenings and weekends now being busier with other things. It's sort of always felt like a hassle to have to set up the PCVR rig (when you live alone it's fine to have your PCVR rig lying around the living room all the time; when you share with other people and your cat... not so much).

So when I saw the Steam Frame announced and realised that it would likely give me standalone access to some PCVR-level games (yes, I know, not really PCVR, but I would hope that there will be a push to get many games running standalone), I was tempted. Very tempted. Not only does it offer a good-quality standalone headset, it's also still designed as a full PCVR headset. Feels win/win.

Fast forward to yesterday evening...

I don't know that I'll return to recording PCVR quite yet -- I guess that'll depend on what the Frame offers in terms of being able to record -- but I aim to dive back into any parts of my catalogue that will work with the device. I think a full revisit to the world of Half-Life is necessary if nothing else.

Late on last week I was doing a PR review at work and noticed that, for some odd reason, the author of the PR seemed to have absolutely nuked all of the indentation in the code. While not a problem given the nature of the files I was reviewing, I wasn't happy with their apparent disregard for style and good practice, and was about to leave a remark and a request for changes. But something seemed off. So I did a refresh of the page and... everything fell into place.

Weird.

Since then I've seen the issue on multiple machines. To be fair, each time it's been in Safari, and each time I've been busy with something else so haven't had the chance to really dive into it. But given it's suddenly cropped up, at the same time, on multiple machines, with nothing else changing, it feels like something on the GitHub side of things.

Perhaps I'm letting a bit of bias creep in here, but I feel like this sort of thing is happening more and more on GitHub. It's not that long back since social previews suddenly broke, for example. It's hard to shake the idea that changes are being made without regard to comprehensive testing, and likely without regard to how things connect.

Now, at this point, it would be easy to reach for the "well they're obviously using agents to do most of the work" argument -- and I'm sure plenty of people would -- but that doesn't quite fit with my experience. Having experimented with such tools for a good chunk of this year now, both for personal and, more recently, professional projects, I've generally found that such tooling easily helps with catching such issues.

Plenty of times now, when using something like Antigravity or Claude Code to work on some code, I've found that with reasonable care (you know: the sort of care you'd put into your work anyway) you can quickly and easily uncover connections and knock-on effects you might not have immediately noticed. Moreover, if LLMs are useful for anything when it comes to coding, it's for writing tests¹. With that in mind you should be able to reasonably expect the number of silly bugs to go down.

Unless, of course, there's no human in the loop anywhere, or the human in the loop lacks adequate training and experience, or, I guess, they simply lack the ability to give a shit.

I wonder when this particular issue will get fixed? I should probably go and see if it's reported in the GitHub forums anywhere. I know for sure that there's little point in actually reporting it as a bug; my experiences with that in the past haven't been great, and the GitHub subreddit has seen enough stories of people getting nowhere.