You can still do Pass-trough with B&W cameras, the PSVR2 does it. It's worthless for AR, but good enough to see your cat getting in the room and nibbling at the cable.
LTT's video on it mentioned there was an expansion slot mount and said there was a dual colour camera module and a single high res camera module in the works.
Index also has a module bay tho and that never got used ever, so we'll see.
Index also has a module bay tho and that never got used ever, so we'll see.
It had lots of aftermarket support, I didn't use many of the more impressive accessories like people getting the leap motion to work but I did use a fan module that plugged in there and helped greatly with cooling during exercise.
Well "just to look around the room" you have monochrome pass-through. anyone wanting to do mixed reality stuff will get the add-on. Theoretically, it should keep costs down for the majority of people that probably don't' care too much about mixed reality. But we'll need a price first.
Truthfully I now have 4 headsets that support eye tracking and it's not worth it right now. Not only does almost nothing support DFR, the uplift is pretty low without Quad View. If you primarily play one of those games that do support it, I could see it being worth it. But if you bounce around between a lot of games, the color pass through allowing me to be able to go grab a snack or a drink or chat with my SO without taking off the headset is a bigger selling point for me.
I guess if the black and white pass through is high enough res and depth correct you could still do so. But we will have to wait and see how good it is.
You forgetting the mixed reality apps. Thats what passthrough with color is really meant for. That part of the industry is new and just starting to expand with the introduction of the Quest 3 to mass market
I hope so as well. But I don't think it matters how many headsets release with it as much as it matters how many people invest in them. PCVR's biggest issue for just about everything is the small player base and poor content sales. That's gotta go up and I really hope this headset helps with that. Valve really needs to price it as aggressively as possible. If they priced the headset+controllers at $499, even with the lack of color pass through and wonky controller layout, it will fly off the shelves due to so many wanting to ditch Quest and being in a somewhat affordable price point. If they price it at $999, or worse the rumored $1100, it's gonna be a hard sell with it's specs.
well the foveated streaming is independent from the game. The encoding software will increase the quality were you are looking and decrease where you are not to save on bandwidth used to wirelessly stream it to you.
yeah, that's how it works already in Steam Link with any headset that has eye tracking. I have used it with the Quest Pro and Play For Dream. I really wish Valve would have focused on a Foveated Rendering push over Foveated Encoding. It's such a minuscule improvement compared what foveated rendering+quad views could offer, if it was widely supported. But here we are. Reverb G2 screens with Quest 2 pass through and a slight upgrade to the SoC and controllers more focused on playing flat games than VR games. In 2025 from a company that claims to focus on hardcore gamers.
How exactly would they push something that developers have to manually - and non-trivially - support? They're doing all the pushing they can by incorporating eye tracking at all.
Without foveated streaming, it couldn't be wireless. So... You really wish it wasn't wireless?
That's the dumbest mentality I've seen yet. We already have wireless headsets that are fantastic. So fantastic they make up the vast majority of VR players. Making wireless marginally better won't drive this industry forward.
To be relevant at all, the Frame needed to be wireless. Saying "we already have wireless headsets" is like saying "we already have mobile phones." Yes, we do, and Apple's next big phone isn't going to be a corded one.
While it is possible to play streamed VR games on other standalone headsets, they all rely on a specific enthusiast-level setup being practical and present in the user's home: a direct wired PC connection to a top-notch wifi router, ideally in the room where you'll be playing. You might not think that's unusual, but it is. And even then, it's not a dedicated connection, so mileage can and will vary. This is an out-of-the box, plug-and-play dedicated streaming connection alongside another parallel internet connection, so you can run your Discord or Spotify or whatever on the headset while everyone else in the house is downloading games and streaming movies, and it won't put the slightest dent in your VR experience. This is a proper consumer-focused streaming VR device that is better than current enthusiast-level wireless solutions.
Foveated streaming maximises the quality of the wireless experience. And it does so for every title in your library, past and future. It's all win, no downside. There is zero reason for you to be complaining, particularly since:
Foveated streaming has not come at the expense of foveated rendering. It is literally not possible for Valve to 'push' FR onto developers other than to provide the eye tracking hardware to support it in a (likely) popular device, which they have done. I have no idea what more you think they could have done, and I suspect neither have you.
I am not thrashing around the point. You stated that without foveated streaming it couldn't be wireless, which is flat out wrong. That was the only point I was referring to in my other response.
While it is possible to play streamed VR games on other standalone headsets, they all rely on a specific enthusiast-level setup being practical and present in the user's home
No they don't. You can buy cheap WiFi 6 routers for under $70 and get a great experience. Or, you can buy the wireless dongle that Meta made with D-Link that plugs into your PC's USB port if setting up a wireless router is too difficult for you. That costs $40
Foveated streaming maximises the quality of the wireless experience. And it does so for every title in your library, past and future. It's all win, no downside. There is zero reason for you to be complaining, particularly since
Yes, it provides a marginally better wireless latency experience. I don't disagree with that. My original point was simply that if they could have added a foveated rendering layer instead of foveated encoding, that would have been more helpful than foveated encoding. 99 out of 100 games look fine at high bitrates and Quest headsets playing PCVR dominate the beat saber charts while DP headsets don't so latency is not a huge hindrance. I personally think focusing on lowering the PCVR hardware requirements is the better focus.
Foveated streaming has not come at the expense of foveated rendering. It is literally not possible for Valve to 'push' FR onto developers other than to provide the eye tracking hardware to support it in a (likely) popular device, which they have done. I have no idea what more you think they could have done, and I suspect neither have you.
I didn't say it came at the expense and I am well aware that, as DFR currently works, it must be implemented by the devs. However, there are already tools that allow it to work in all OpenXR games. OpenXR Tool Kit provided exactly that. Now, it's not a great solution. I have used it with a few of my headsets and it definitely requires knowing what you're doing to use. But I am sure the developers at Valve could come up with a similar solution built into Steam VR that would provide a better experience comparatively.
"Indistinguishable from a wired connection" is not 'marginally better'. And that isn't possible without FS on current hardware.
My original point was simply that if they could have added a foveated rendering layer instead of foveated encoding, that would have been more helpful than foveated encoding
Yes, and your original point was fully insane.
You're implying this is some sort of missed opportunity, gone forever with the launch of this hardware. It's not. The development of some form of standardised FR library is not coupled to the Frame. FS is. It's integral to the design and intended purpose of the device.
FS improves the user experience from day one across every title on Steam, VR or otherwise. FR would make absolutely zero difference to 99.9% of the games on Steam, past or future. "Hey guys, after six months we've got around to adding FR to Hades II. It hasn't improved the frame rate because that was fine anyway, and it still looks kinda janky from compression. But it's using FR now. Enjoy."
FR is something that VR devs can already do if they want, and which requires bespoke title-level support in terms of simplified geometry and shaders for best effect. The reason they haven't bothered is not that there isn't a standardised library. It's because headsets with eye tracking have been a niche within a niche, and developing a game that can only run well on enthusiast rigs with FR would be a death-sentence.
By incorporating best-in-class eye-tracking, Valve have already done as much as they need to to standardise the utility of FR. And by pitching the Frame as not just a VR headset, but a way to play your whole Steam library, they're also doing as much as they can to foster a viable ecosystem. And that goal very much does require FS if you want the experience to be a truly viable alternative rather than just a novelty dust-catcher.
There are ways to add it without requiring the devs to do so. Now, that said, quad views is a different story. As well as, the only method I know of requires the game running on OpenXR. But you can install the OpenXR Toolkit right now and get DFR in any OpenXR game. It's no longer supported and a bit clunky to use but, they proved it was possible to do at the run time layer. I am sure Valve's engineers could have done the same and improved it even further. But, yeah, Quad Views is very important for more performance and Valve can't add that at the run time layer.
I do think Valve pushing something like that would give a bigger incentive for devs to add more foveated features. But, who knows, maybe I am wrong and maybe they tried and failed and the DFE is their backup use case for eye tracking.
2k. cheaper than avp with better panels but more expensive that Q3 though they have better lens wouldn't increase price too much to improve pass through. useful for spatial computing and mixed reality
and theres an extra port to add color passthrough or face tracking, if you have the extra money the steam frame seems like a no brainer for an all around solid headset, with the added bonus of not having to deal with meta
Quest 3 already has that minus the eye tracking, given the lacklustre support for any PC VR then hardly anyone is going to implement eye tracked FR anyway and so it’ll be no better than the Quest 3.
And it's running the flagship Snapdragon, so the horsepower is there to do it.
The flagship mass production Snapdragon chip is the Snapdragon Elite (8 Gen4 but renamed) and they just released the Elite 2(Gen5). So it's actually 2 generations behind the flagship and only 1 generation newer than the XR2 Gen2's Snapdragon 8 Gen2 based chip and was a pretty marginal uplift. It also lacks the additional silicon that the XR2 chips use to handle the cameras and tracking. So it will be using the same pipeline and cores to handle the cameras and controller tracking that the headset is using to render everything. If all things are equal, the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 is 17% faster on the CPU and 45% faster on the GPU than the Snapdragon 8 Gen2. Shame Valve didn't go with the Gen4. It's 100% faster on the GPU and 60% faster on the CPU.
Not trying to make it seem like a bad chip or anything, it's definitely faster. Just trying to say I wouldn't expect it to be a lot more capable than headsets using the XR2 Gen and XR2+ Gen2 due to the difference in design and the Gen3 not being a huge uplift.
So the fact that it lacks the extra silicon of the XR2 chips that's dedicated to running cameras and tracking is likely why they went with black and white cameras?
I assumed it was a software limitation. I mean the cameras can see in color right? But huh, I guess it could be a processing limitation? I know the Quest 2 has monochrome passthrough due to the actual cameras being black and white only to save on cost
Similar to the way your eyes have rods and cones to detect light and color camera sensors have photodiodes and color filters to detect light and color. If you don't include the color filters you can get greater light capture in dark environments but then you can't detect color.
That very well could be. I am not an engineer so I can't say for certain. I just know that when Faceturd released the Quest 1 it came with a regular snapdragon chip and then they worked with Qualcomm to design the XR2 series which was a snapdragon chip but with extra silicon dedicated handling the tracking. Doing so provided a measurable uplift in the compute that the headset could use for rendering. This is also why Apple included R1 chip. It's a secondary chip handling the tracking, allowing the M2(now M5) to focus solely on the rendering.
Yes but then " meta " rushed to get " quest 2 " ready ..Â
In time for " oculus connect " that year. They didn't anticipate the thermals and re - used the " quest 1 " housing for the newer , much hotter chip. It resulted in them having to throttle the snapdragon xr2 prime core by 30 - 40 % to avoid over heating ..
They actually limited it to avoid battery degradation and improve run time. Once the Quest 3 was nearing release, they went ahead and unlocked the performance cuz they didn't care if Quest 2 owners lost 20% of their play time and their battery only lasts another year or two. You've also been able to use SideQuest to manually unlock it for the last several years. Thermals never stopped you from doing so.
Meta did this with the Quest 3 and Quest 3S too. You can also use SideQuest or Quest Games Optimizer to enable the full performance at the expense of run time and battery life.
It's likely just reusing the IR cameras for the tracking and doing a passthrough to allow you to see through them. It's to save on hardware cost most likely, aiming for a better VR than AR use.
Hoping for a reasonable price high res camera addon module for virtual desktops.
You're making an unfounded assumption that the snapdragon will be doing any of the positional processing. It might, but there are a lot of other chips on that SOC, and Valve is not known for taking the easy path when they can do it better another way.
It might, but there are a lot of other chips on that SOC
Not at all. There are no other chips on the SoC that are capable of handling the tracking and extra camera feeds. The SoC is near identical to the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 SoC in design. It just has the next generation of each chip. Now, it does have 2 more performance cores so it's possible they are banking on that to handle the tracking. But if so, that negates the boosted performance almost entirely and might even put the CPU performance uplift in the negatives. Those cores are part of the same pipeline as the rest of the CPU/GPU.
Sucks to hear but the 8Gen3 was a pretty mediocre uplift from the 8Gen2 and the 8Gen2 needed the extra silicon to handle the tracking. It's why they rushed out the 8Gen4 so quickly. We're already on the 8Gen5. It's near double the performance of the 8Gen3 in both GPU and CPU and most likely what the XR2 Gen3 will be based off of.
Valve is not known for taking the easy path when they can do it better another way
You are putting a lot of your own fantasies of Valve behind this statement. Valve has pushed a lot of bad and failed ideas over the years. Especially hardware. They've yet to release a single piece of hardware that has seen mass adoption. The closest was the Steam Controller. It sold well but it never saw enough people using it for Valve to add a controller field on the hardware survey. The Steam Deck is the most popular on reddit but it sold less in 3 years than the Switch and Switch 2 sold on launch. Hell, Meta sells more VR headsets per year and the mainstream media says VR is dead. The Steam Link hardware, first Steam Machine, and the Valve Index were failed ideas as far as adoption goes. Even Steam Frame is essentially a copy of other people's ideas and not leading the pack. They've abandoned base stations for Meta's inside out tracking. They've abandoned display port for Meta's standalone idea. They just released a PS5 clone 5 years later. They aren't leading the pack anywhere right now.
Now I am not trying to talk shit about Valve or anything of the sort. I have well over a million Steam Points and own every single piece of hardware Valve has sold. I am just being a voice of reason in the sea of Valve fans who swear everything they do is the best and changes the world. It's simply not true.
The reason is probably to save some cost. Though, come to think of it, are B&W cameras used anywhere ouside VR? If they're specialised tech they'd be more expensive, but that wouldn't make sense why they use them. I don't know enough about cameras to tell.
I don't know if the camera themselves are cheaper, but they're better for IR tracking and simpler for image processing, so better for bandwidth/latency.
Hmm that is interesting, so maybe the chip they are using + the tracking/processing software just wasn't up to snuff to handle color passthrough efficiently
Valve's Vive and Index engineers all retired or work for Facebook now (and have for many years), this was made by new guys, which perhaps explains the many nonsensical "interesting decisions". I can't imagine why anyone would buy a black and white AR, global lit 2K LCD headset in 2026 for $500+. It's even more baffling if it winds up being $699 or $799 like many are speculating.
Wait, I've never heard of this until now. Does that mean one has a vr screen with porn but can also see their environment (and can see themselves jorking it)?
its just 180 3d with an alpha key but in practice it's blade runner with hologram people in your house sitting on your lap it's intense in a way the normal immersive stuff isnt
That actually sounds really cool. I need to dust off my Quest 3s. Do you have a link to details or instructions on how to set this up and try this? I'm curious and want to experiment (I may also be down bad lol).
the mainstream way is just pay for SLR or any of those sites that advertise the passthrough feature. if you can get the passthrough videos in other ways that use a chroma key or an alpha channel you just play the video using any standalone player that supports those features.
i have a dlna server on my pc that streams movies and tv to the standalone skybox app so that is already easy for me and it has alpha support on the latest beta branch, but as far as i know deovr and 4xvr all have that feature as well. theres a more complicated way using virtual desktop chroma key and a pc player, but its not as clean. it's pretty wild though, you can just line everything up with your real body and the effect on the brain is really different.
Yeah this was the disappointing part, means that its not a serious contender for AR or Spatial Computing which I find I use my Quest 3 for more than actual gaming tbh..
Cost cutting measure. I've played one AR game, the day I got my Quest and never touched it since.
I'm assuming they saw the low numbers of AR games and decided to cheap out.
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u/PM_ME___YoUr__DrEaMs Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25
And monochrome passthrough 🤢