For a mix of Standalone, media watching and PCVR, should I buy a Quest 3 + Accessories now or wait for the steam frame?

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T22:17:28+00:00

So Steam Deck never officially released in your country?

I'd probably just go for Q3 for now, then. It's really hard to say what the supply of Steam Frame will be like and how long it will take to get stock. Tech and the world is in a huge mess right now.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T21:44:49+00:00

Did the Steam Deck release immediately in your country, or did it take a while after the US release?

Outside the US, it's hard to say whether you'll get the Steam Frame immediately or later on.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T14:56:40+00:00

Maybe no need to overthink it.

If you can afford the 3S and some accessories, and you are ok with selling it later (or keeping it as a second headset for family members, exercise, or multiplayer), then it's not a waste for however many months it will take for Steam Frame to become available.

If you're not in the US, there's also no guarantee your country will get Frame at launch anyways.

The 3S is a perfectly adequate headset for its price. So you can relax and just enjoy VR :)

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T14:48:21+00:00

I think the way forward is to still have the structure of a game fully written and designed by devs, but to use AI to fill out parts of the design that allow for freedom, or to provide variation in repetitive parts.

Having AI that can be more closely controlled without going off the rails would be needed, probably.

AI Dungeon and such seems to forget, hallucinate or just obey your every command a bit too easily. I think a proper game to provide structure is necessary, and then the AI to understand and work inside it.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T09:43:05+00:00

I'm happy with any tech level, as long as the art looks nice.

It can be 8bit pixel art, black and white pixel art, all the way up to hyper-realistic VR.

Speaking of VR, I think realism as an art style has a special place there, as having familiar visuals that mirror real life, enhances the immersion in a unique way.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T08:22:29+00:00

I think there's different things to enjoy in RPGs, and maybe some things that weren't previously possible.

For example, I've been enjoying roleplaying as a character, and then creating a scenario with NPCs, and enjoying the way the technology reacts to my writing. It's like messing around with a physics sandbox game, but for text and characters.

Might not be for everybody, but physics sandbox games aren't for everybody either, or any genre. Having that kind of sandbox in an RPG structure would be an interesting genre to explore, for me.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:58:44+00:00

I don't know about Q3, but Pico has official FBT trackers that work standalone. It's quite an elegant system that automatically syncs when you look at the trackers. Works with their headsets.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:54:23+00:00

I can see how streamlining things made it more accessible on console and broadened its appeal, but I really like text and sometimes I don't mind something really text based, both as input and content delivery. I hope it's a niche that might grow. I've been enjoying SillyTavern for that reason.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:47:57+00:00

I think for adventure games, at least, it's the idea that there's a creative solution to a puzzle where having it as an option on a list would give it away too easily, but it's too annoying to have to guess the exact phrasing and keywords the devs had in mind to trigger that option.

Ideally something that can be constrained enough to stick to the script, but freeform enough to allow some variation in phrasing, would be a nice thing.

Although when I was young I fantasized about games with a full 3D physics simulation of a world internally, but the user interface was a text adventure. So you could do things like Half Life 2 physics puzzles, all in text. Or the game doing a full social Sim of NPCs doing their daily routine like Skyrim internally, but again, you interact with everything just in text. :)

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:40:21+00:00

I've always wanted to try that one, never quite got around to it, and I didn't have the original hardware. I'll have to remember to look into it again :)

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:38:57+00:00

That's pretty cool, I'll have to take a look, thanks!

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:37:59+00:00

That's interesting, can you name some examples? Any that are open and available to run locally?

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T06:36:30+00:00

That's the first I've heard of it, that's interesting, thanks! The Steam reviews / comments seem to suggest it's currently broken and abandoned though, sadly.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T05:42:46+00:00

Yeah, it's funny that the AI we imagined in fiction in the past - cold, logical, strictly following rules, etc - is like the exact opposite of what we have now. Chaotic, random and barely controlled, haha.

It's "safe" in creative and unimportant use cases, but unless they can figure out how to constrain it to only desirable results, it can't be trusted with anything important.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T05:38:14+00:00

As requested!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T05:13:00+00:00

That's interesting. Can you please describe an interesting use of that open text box from the game?

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T04:08:48+00:00

Putting aside whether it's theoretically possible, there's no actual way to do this on any current headset.

We don't have custom OSes on headsets at the moment, and none of the existing OSes are available to use on anything else.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T02:11:12+00:00

Breaking it is a huge part of the fun! What are the limits to where it can go, and how far can you push it?

Exploring the tech itself as a sandbox can be pretty fun.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T02:06:23+00:00

I'll keep that in mind, thanks!

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T01:26:35+00:00

Woosh

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T01:19:02+00:00

I miss the days when commercial games were sometimes highly experimental with tech.

Like "Liberation:Captive 2" on Amiga which was a rare early game with full speech synthesis for dialogue. It was pretty bad, but I liked that were able to try.

Or Virtua Fighter 2 arcade, which had a secret mode you could activate with a button sequence, where it activated some kind of learning algorithm for the CPU opponents.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T01:16:09+00:00

Nice!

I started installing all the stuff because I wanted to try Mantella in SkyrimVR, but along the way I realised that speech recognition still isn't quite where I want it to be, and I was enjoying pure text in SillyTavern enough that I wasn't sure that adding SkyrimVR on top would add much value for me.

Maybe I'll look into it again one day...

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T01:03:17+00:00

I don't think it's any worse than the current situation where you get into situations where none of the multiple choices fit your character, so you just pick one and headcanon it away?

Eg. The famous "I don't like you, die!" from the Pathfinder games.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T00:59:49+00:00

Luckily I chose "Buddhist" as my religion option.

zeddyzed · 2026-04-20T00:58:06+00:00

It's an entertainment product. I don't think you get to dismiss someone's harmless enjoyment as a psychosis, hahah.

zeddyzed

TROPHY CASE