256 GB model: $1,059 USD
1TB model: $1,299 USD
Preorder list randomized, goes out Sept 17th
Power supply not included, costs $29 (same as Steam Deck power supply)
3rd party addon available for color passthrough, Arcturus Vision Camera, $149
bold of them to release a VR headset in the year 2026 lol
Yeah this headset will mostly be playing older VR games, all the new VR games are quest exclusive or so quest focused that everything other than a quest is an afterthought
This is completely out of touch with the reality of where games are right now. Meta has a shitload of shovelware constantly streaming into their store, but Steam has dozens of solid titles that just keep updating and are hands down the premium experience.
Ok let me clearify, it will mostly be playing older VR games and low end indie games. Most of the VR games either arent going to steam or treat steam as seconary, this includes most of the new VR heavy hitters.
Feels like it’s at least double the price it should be. Cool tech but I’ll never be able to afford it if things stay the way they are.
I was hoping for three things out of the Frame:
- Less than $1K
- Solid battery life
- Decent VR titles that play well in standalone mode
That’s a strike out for my expectations.
My issue with VR is the FOV and this headset does not solve it. Every time I try VR it’s very impressive but feels like viewing the world through binoculars because it’s not at the same FOV the human eye has. I know there’s mega expensive ones that do that but I don’t think you can get the whole VR scene to blow up fully without achieving that at an affordable price.
I also generally think that there are other issues too. Putting on your VR gear and taking it off is a barrier to entry that can’t be over-stated compared with content played through a screen.
I guess my TLDR is… Im interested in VR, but outside of Alyx, I find it hard to find games that Id actually be into. Lots of VR games feel like demos or minigames. You do have big games with VR modes, like Skyrim and No Mans Sky, but those werent made exclusively for VR.
So I guess what I’m saying is that the tech feels like it’s there, but the games aren’t there for me. Unless I’m missing something.
Plus, even the cheaper VR options are still pretty expensive. At that price I could just put the money toward a good GPU and get another 6–7 years out of a PC.
I had an Index for a good couple of years and honestly the only game I ever sank a considerable amount of time into was Pokerstars VR. It was a fully realised virtual poker table with fake money that let you play with random people all over the world. The fake money and free to play model did mean you got a lot of kids (I would stop playing during the summer until they went back to school), but you also met alot of grizzled old poker players from all around. A guy who would play waiting to pick up his kid from a night shift who would tell tales from his highroller days in vegas, a nice mom in a trailer park, I once met a guy who was born in the same hospital as me but grew up halfway around the world. The game gave you something to focus on and talk about to break the ice. Even with crappy Meta avatars with just hands and head movement it was enough to make the people across the table real in a way you couldn’t achieve outside of VR. Which is what eventually did it in, they let desktop users play and it just sort of became another faceless online poker game again.
But for that brief time it did feel like how people in the 90s thought we were going to be using the internet in the future, socialising in these digital spaces instead of what we actually have were everyone is completely isolated from eachother.
The big VR game is Beat Saber. Even the people who really like VR stuff talk about how they fiddle with a new device for a couple weeks, then only ever use it for Beat Saber after that.
(Okay, it’s not ENTIRELY Beat Saber, I also know a girl who’s really into VR formula 1 racing games. But even she’s suspiciously good at Beat Saber.)
True. It’s Beat Sabre or VRChat. That’s it.
I have a Windows MR headset I almost exclusively used for Elite Dangerous, and put probably a thousand hours into that game inside the headset alone. Then the Odyssey update didn’t support VR headsets and also broke support for my Tobii head/eye tracker so I just stopped playing.
Other than that, it’s just Beat Saber.
Have you tried oasis? I don’t have win11 so I haven’t been able to give it a shot. Found a decent used quest pro, at least.
https://github.com/mbucchia/Oasis-Driver-for-Windows-Mixed-Reality/wiki
Also, half life:alyx and the many custom campaigns.
The controllers are absolute dogshit and trying to play Alyx with WMR was such a bad experience that I stopped maybe 20 mins into the campaign.
You’d try and aim the pistol and it would have a seizure in your hand so aiming was basically random. No finger tracking, either. Just awful.
IMO the WMR headsets are only fair to acceptable for sim pit stuff and maybe Beat Saber on lower difficulties, and they’re just unusable for anything else.
Whomst among us doesn’t have a great time when their head becomes stuck to the floor and stops tracking so you’re in instant barf town?
Lol fair, tho tbh as long as I kept the lights pretty bright the only time I really had issues was with bow and arrow stuff that needed the controllers super close to your face. Loved Half Life Alyx with Samsung Odyssey plus, it was a heck of an upgrade from hp’s low end wmr.
i feel like technology which selling point is “doesn’t make you sick as much as before” shouldn’t cost 50 hours of work of median treatlerite
I have spent many many hours in Blade and Sorcery, esp. w/ mods. And I will spend many more.
Just saw the Gamers Nexus review (which, btw, such a good channel). My only concern is the battery life. Seems like you can only get under 2 hours per session. Not super surprising, but I’d really want 3-4 hours with something like this if I’m going to shell out $1k.
That said, I was expecting this to go much higher in price. So that was a nice surprise.
VR is surprisingly tiring, idk how often I’ve played more than a couple of hours without a break. I never did any couch VR gaming though.
It doesn’t sound great on paper, but usually I do not want to stand and move in VR for more than 2 hours continuously. I can spend longer in VRChat but most of my time there is sitting down, so I can plug it in to charge while I sit. I have not found a 2 hour battery life on a different headset to be a significant limitation.
I heard it was under an hour
Given the price of RAM and storage right now, that’s pretty good
Its a bit expensive but around the same price as the valve index so not particularly surprising, I can tell they were aiming for something significantly lower.
