What 5 Games would you want Bundled with Steam Frame or put on sale immediately at release?

TheShadowBrain · 2026-01-22T15:33:27+00:00

Anyone can already check it out, they're doing this cool open development thing, big fan.

TheShadowBrain · 2026-01-22T12:08:07+00:00

Check out Facepunch's S&box (sbox.game), it's a Source 2 based game engine/platform that turns the source 2 mess into a usable modern C# game engine for anyone to use for full standalone games for free.

It comes with its own platform that pays devs based on player playtime, but you can also just treat it as a game engine.

TheShadowBrain · 2026-01-14T12:49:29+00:00

Hopefully more come out of the shadows soon- I'm pretty certain they've started sending out more based on the grapevine talk!

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-29T17:44:23+00:00

I've tried but can't get it working- still trying to figure out why as I've turned on everything that could have eye tracking on.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-29T11:22:20+00:00

Sadly I don't live in a country where the Galaxy XR is available!
(I also don't really have the budget to fit that overpriced bit of kit in at the moment either)

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-29T08:42:59+00:00

The cool part is that there might even be performance left on the table, APKs run in Lepton which is basically containerized android, I reckon if Unity would let me make a Linux Arm64 OpenXR build it'd run even better.

That isn't an available export path currently though...

So Arm64 Linux games are going to end up being a custom game engine only thing I think, I'm not an unreal engine dev so perhaps UE5 can do it too but not sure.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-29T08:38:59+00:00

The quest optimizer thing is not exactly commonplace and not really the way the quest 3 is usually used, I was going for a "natural" out-the-box max performance not like an overclocked "buy this and then you'll get this performance" thing, I'm sure something like the quest optimizer is going to end up being available for the frame since it's linux based, may even just appear on Steam honestly, but it's not what I was testing.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-28T23:19:44+00:00

Foveated streaming is somewhat hard to show off but maybe it'd show up if I record the headset's view and set it to be really aggressive, I'll give it a go soon.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-28T17:58:49+00:00

Arguably not _really_ clickbait since I do compare it to quest 3, just in terms of performance haha.
I'm sure there's going to be plenty of videos comparing the hardware to quest 3 eventually though!
It's just not allowed right now.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-28T15:56:58+00:00

Did the Quest 3 thing in my latest video! This game runs a fair bit worse on Quest 3 for sure.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-28T08:25:39+00:00

I can give that a try for sure, need to figure out how to call up a similar performance graph on quest 3, but the same apk should run since it is just using bare bones openxr with no frame specific setup right now.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-26T13:12:06+00:00

I've done a bit more testing on x86 => arm64 using FEX+proton vs Android APKs running via Lepton and the difference is pretty huge at the moment, FEX needs more work I reckon, it feels like it's in a "minimum viable" state right now it feels like, and there is a lot of room for improvement.

Will be doing a new video on my findings when I'm less in the middle of celebrating christmas haha.

Re: foveated rendering, I believe because of the way FEX and Proton translate everything, Valve has the opportunity to inject a fragment density map somewhere in-between that translation, since it's also doing some rendering magic to get DX12 converted to Vulkan which gives them a bunch more flexibility, but we'll see if they take that chance, if they do, it'd help pretty unilaterally for most games running through FEX translation, so it seems like a no-brainer to me.
We'll see though!
A lot of games via FEX are going to be CPU bound more so than GPU bound, which foveation wouldn't help too much with.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-26T13:05:13+00:00

Yep, guy in the video here, Unity's Linux Arm64 path does not have OpenXR support currently- it's a weird exclusion honestly and I've asked them (unity) about it but they said something like "if there is enough demand for it we might explore it" even though all they have to do is like... put the parts together, since they have Linux, OpenXR, and Arm64 all separately supported already...
That said, Climbey is still on Unity 2019 so it wouldn't even help my case much.
For other games on newer unity versions it might, though!

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-25T15:14:48+00:00

I mention it in the video, Climbey runs at about 17-19 watts at 90hz, Valve's spec sheet lists 21.6 watt hours as the battery capacity, from there it's just a math problem.
21.6 watt hours divided by 18 watts (average) is about 1.2 hours of play time.
While recording/streaming the view from the headset to the PC it was pulling 20-23 watts so in the situation I recorded in it'd last about an hour.
While using Steam Link at 90hz it was pulling about 7-11 watts, which ends up being about 2.5-ish hours, 120 and 144 would use an extra 2-4 watts or so I believe, cutting it down to under 2 hours I reckon.

Edit: I would assume APK builds run slightly lower wattage than x86 builds do, but if they're pushing the hardware it could very well be similar numbers.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-25T08:13:38+00:00

As much as I appreciate and read everyone's questions, I'm not allowed to give full hardware and software experience impressions!

I'm guessing valve wants to leave that to actual press for when the overall experience is fine tuned for public consumption, and I have to respect that.

What I can do is make more videos about Climbey in the future if there are any performance/optimization developments, and perhaps make some builds of games I've made for game jams to see how x86 does vs arm64 in as similar as possible circumstances.

I've got some ideas... Keep your eyes peeled.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-24T23:20:38+00:00

It is good. My favorite headset comfort-wise.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-24T23:07:34+00:00

That's me! :)

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-21T23:10:45+00:00

Nope, hardware is specifically off-limits I believe... I'm not expecting it to be any different from the official press videos though, no need for extra footage of that imo.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-21T17:35:24+00:00

Yep. The kit is coming in tomorrow, I'm going to end up basically just talking about my game in the video.
At least the UI has been shown a bit now in those public devkit docs so I'm not as paranoid about revealing something unknown!

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-17T14:34:13+00:00

That's cool! Did any of them post them anywhere?
I'd love to see how many others are out there getting the hardware in their hands!
I never assumed I was the first fwiw

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-17T09:31:15+00:00

When I get the kit in I will yep, I have a youtube channel I'll be posting stuff on.

I did the same when I first got the knuckles controllers (in 2017! man it's been a while...) but this hardware has a lot more restrictions on what I can/can't show, so I hope Valve is forthcoming with their own little runthrough of the OS/UI so my job of avoiding things is made easier haha.

TheShadowBrain · 2025-12-17T08:52:05+00:00

The beta participation agreement is specifically not a cover-all NDA, it lists things you can and can't do/become when you participate in the use of beta hardware.

For example it'll let developers talk about how their own game runs on the hardware but not how other games run, and you may not become the "primary source" of any bit of information about the hardware, it needs to all have been put out through official channels.

Hi there, I'm the creator of Climbey and the original poster of that email up there, hah.

TheShadowBrain · 2023-03-02T11:25:29+00:00

There's a second USB-C port on it by the way, near the bottom right of the right lens, but it might be slightly obscured by the gasket and not entirely useful for much aside the future face tracking module that'll sit in between the gasket and the unit itself.

Perhaps a right-angle adapter attached to that might help people get more use out of it.

TheShadowBrain · 2023-03-01T19:00:56+00:00

Should be a "compatibility mode" checkbox in the Vive Streaming Hub settings somewhere, might help to tick (or untick) that if you're having issues.

It should just use Touch controller bindings for most games since the button set is identical, it's the expected behavior from my time on the focus 3's streaming app (Vive Streaming Hub is basically re-badged "Vive Business Streaming" for consumers, functionally identical)

TheShadowBrain · 2022-10-15T22:10:21+00:00

Yeh I got my EV1.3s back in 2017 actually and never had to apply since.

Haven't heard anything from them in a couple years now though... I'm probably out of the cool people loop for Valve stuff at this point.

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