So yesterday i got my Steam Frame and would like to share my first 2-3 hours out of the box experience. But first.. some background Storytime:

After basically a month of wait and reading negative but also positive posts here, watching videos about it reflecting the same issues and thinking about it etc. i kinda lost interest. I was really hyped for VR and a new device at first because before i only played VR on my ps4 with the first psvr headset...but my hype died down quick after realizing how Valve managed the distribution of the frame and accessoires and realizing all the troubles. And when i got my purchase e-mail i sat there for minutes contemplating if i really want to get it. But then i thought if i don't like it i can just resell it for the standart price to make someone else happy not being on reservation so i made the purchase and started praying that GSL did not botch my delivery. They did not and here i am telling you about my experience with the fame.

I unpacked the device and its parts and put them together and the first thing i noticed was the lose connection of the spacer i would need because i planed on wearing my glasses (thin glasses for nearsighted nerds). As i mentioned above i did not yet know how commited i would be to the device in terms of purchasing prescription lenses so there are no lenses. The spacer is very thin and is not adding much space but better than nothing but the magnets holding it and the cushion ontop of it are not as strong as they could be which makes handling the frame a delicate matter. After a first careful test without much pressure to check if and how my glasses fit and determining how the lenses are build in i went to get my self-adhesive felt pads, cut them to small pieces and lined the plastic setting of the lenses so my glasses would not touch the lenses. After another fit making sure my plan worked i started the thing up and basically from there on it went like auto pilot. I did what the frame told me to do, choose language, timezone, enable wifi, auto updated steam OS, linked my steam account on my computer to the frame with frame guard, installed steamvr on my pc, fiddled with some settings, plugged in the adapter in my fastest usb and then tried to start my first game which was no mans sky.

I will leave out the pc streaming part here because it did not went that well which was not really the devices fault but the softwares and missing or bad settings. Alot of stuff to change and fiddle with until it will work as i want it to with PC which i will do over the coming days and maybe update here later. I did a quick break here also because the frames battery was already too low and set it down to charge.

After coming back to it half an hour later i decided to test some of my other chargers to see if i have a PD one to charge while playing and i did so i set myself down on the couch to test the frame as standalone device without my pc. I went to my library and looked under the great on frame tab what was there. I bought some VR titles in advance when i was hyped so i installed "Dungeons of Eternity" to try and what can i say...?

I played for 2 hours straight. It just worked, ran really well and i had fun and no problems atall with the game or the frame. I did not mind the small noise the fans made because the frame became warm while playing and i guess charging at the same time. I did not suffer from dry eyes as much but i could imagine people more sensitive having more issues with it but for me it was no issue and even a positive because no fogging atall which is great! The sound coming from the frame was servicable but i will try headphones for later sessions (after getting and adapter. right now i dont know if the frame support bluetooth headphones?). Anywho... Even with glasses and no additional head strap it felt comfortable, even with the charging cord (mind i played sitting on my comfy couch) moving my head didnt feel weighed down. All in all at that time i realized that if i hadnt attempted the more complicated pc streaming stuff first.. it would've been a "take it out of the box, put it on your head and just play" experience. It was actually great fun.

So as someone going at it with no hype left and actually pretty neutral expectations.. i am pleasantly surprised. I had a good first time use experience and i think the overal experience will be just as good in the coming days. On a sidenote though, having had a good experience and looking forward to more... i think the price is still too much especially with the ergo kit missing which i now see as necessary to get a real good experience. So sorry folks, i will keep that thing.. and sorry for my bad english (not a native) and the typos and a missing tldr. But you can keep the 2 cents.

Packaging, plano lenses, and my -7.00 prescription. Injection molded plastic, three points of contact with rubber pads for a friction fit. I don't know how it compares to others but works well enough for me.

Does anybody know when the ergonomic accessories kit will be in stock. When I received the email for my steam frame it was out of stock, so I wasn't able to get one. My other question is if it was ever in stock in the first place?

I was playing around with SSH to the Frame, so I had it sitting on my desk and thought to cover the lenses with its microfiber cloth. Well that makes the proximity sensor keep the display on, and so I got some nice image retention.

It's not burn in so it is fading away, but I got pretty scared :)

With the fact that some people in the reservation queue are far back enough to need to be recalculated come 2027, how long you think it will take for us waitlisters to get one?

Seriously, I paired the device with my desktop and am able to stream non-VR games just fine, but VR games also only start in desktop mode? I can't for the life of me figure out how to stream VR to the frame? What am I missing?

OS: Debian Linux. Kernel >7.2 Not trying to use the included dongle for now. Just trying to get it working.

Super happy to have been chosen first off, but oh man i love my frame so much. Coming from a quest pro and and index before that, it's such a great upgrade!

256Gb version!

Comfort for me is fantastic, i use the included spacer cause i have long eyelashes and it's amazing to not feel them brush against the lenses for once.

Wireless connection is fantastic and super solid. Use the included USB fr if you have a PC.

Really really missed the finger tracking, glad to have that back.

Love the usb-c charger placement on the back (really missed that)

I will say I'm a little disappointed with the speakers BUT for what they are they are good

Overall I'm impressed and pleased with it!!

I recently saw a lot of discussion about what speed usb port should be used. Most people recommend using usb 3.2 gen 1 or higher. So I thought I was good using my front panel USB(which is USB 3.2 gen 1). I was noticing a lot of latency spikes sporadically. I switched to a usb 3.2 gen 2 on my motherboard and the latency spikes disappeared.
Is this a result of the faster USB port? or because it’s connected directly to the motherboard?
Or both potentially…?

Someone mentioned this was possible but I didn't find any easy tutorials so I dug a little deeper. I've only done a little experimenting so far but the results are not bad but quite laggy.

First (order doesn't actually matter) on the steam frame run

ffmpeg -i /dev/video99 -c:v h264 -preset ultrafast -tune zerolatency -f mpegts "udp://ip_addr:1234?pkt_size=1316"

Where ip_addr is the address of the machine where you will be running vlc (or other software)

On your PC, start vlc with

"c:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --network-caching=50 --live-caching=0 --clock-jitter=0 "udp://@:1234?pkt_size=1316"

Or whatever is appropriate for your software.

This got the lag down a fair bit but it's still very noticeable. It was suggester that lower than 50ms for the network-caching value could cause frame drop.

I tried ffplay and if anything, the lag was worse. The following recipe was suggested but it was still pretty bad

ffplay -fflags nobuffer -flags low_delay -probesize 32 -analyzeduration 0 -framedrop -f mpegts "udp://ip_addr:1234?pkt_size=1316"

where ip_addr is the address of the machine *ffplay* (not ffmpeg) is being run on. (The @ didn't seem to work).

Without specifying the packets size, it wouldn't work. That may be something with some piece of my networking equipment so YMMV.

Someone out there may have better recipes or ideas and I'd be happy to hear about them. This might be useful as a jumping off point for others.

Was lucky enough to get my frame day one so I've been putting some hours on it, I got the ergo kit with the hand straps, is anyone else noticing the battery doors on the controllers starting to loosen up? They have some give to them and I can push them back in but there's always a gap between the controller body and the door, straps are not over tightened. Another thing is on the right controller sometimes the pinky finger stay halfway curled in games with full finger tracking, I'm hoping it's a software thing as it seems to go away when I disconnect the controller and reconnect it, but it happens in VR chat and half life alyx, I don't wear rings or anything and it still does it when I'm not even touching the controller. Just want to know if anyone else has noticed these things, thanks

Anyone else having the issue of motion smoothing not being able to be enabled? Like I can enable it pwr application, but it doesn't seem to work even then... Maybe on No Mans Sky? Like it does seem to half the framerate on NMS, not certain if it's smoothing it though.

But yeah, in the Steam VR settings it tells me "Not Supported"

I have a 4080 and updated drivers/software.

First off, I'm loving the Frame! Sure it has its faults, but I'm having a blast!

While the Frame is a great time, playing in my not so well ventilated office, not so much. Ideally, I wanted to play in my living room, its spacious and where I spent most of my time with my Quest 2 when I didn't have to be tethered to my PC. It's the best place to play in my home.

So starts the obsession to find a way to extend the adapter to the living room. While my office is literally next door, the adapter simply doesn't work through walls. So what do I do? Go through the wall!

I installed low voltage mounting brackets in my office and in the entry way to my house. I my office I installed a brush wall plate for the USB-A to A (male to male) cable to go through. In the living room, I installed a USB 3.0 wall plate for the Frame adapter.

IT WORKS!!!

Just got done playing a session of HLA and Arizona Sunshine 2, no lag, dips, or connection issues!

Here are the items I used for the project:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0GXPT3Y34?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0B18CQ71H?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B071X8RLJL?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0DYSJVKG4?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

By the way.

The USB plate doesn't sit flush with the listed low voltage mounting brackets listed. It's not awful by any means, just letting everyone know!

They look like they'd work really well for vns, or games with very minimal buttons needed. Is there any way to use them via steam input or something?

Sometimes when i click the switch button it just becomes black and i can only use color. Also now when I take the accessory off everything becomes black. Anybody have this problem?

Has anyone that:

1. Did NOT get into the initial queue / waitlist
2. Later got an email saying they were added to it

Actually get the chance to purchase the unit and receive it in the mail yet?

Several people I know are in this situation (including myself) but the website says "2027" and we can't tell if they've already sold out and we're basically in line for the next batch 12+ months from now... or if there is a chance we might get a unit that physically exists today.

This is the only thing that I really care about Steam Frame: to play vr mods with Xbox/Steam controller scheme without much modification and adjustment. Is that possible and convenient now? Can you play vr mods like Luke Ross mods and UEVR mods with Steam Frame controllers with the shining new buttons now?

I had tried different cables and configurations on my motherboard, but a 5m active 3.0 extension cable and swapping my headset to a 5ghz network instead of 6 has fixed all of my connection issues. Previously it was under my desk, even when it was in direct line of sight to me that seemed to be enough to kill it's consistency. Still can't seem to get my adapter to want to pair on it's own each startup though..

Trying to install but getting:

error: failed to init transaction (unable to lock database)

error: could not lock database: Read-only file system

Not very knowledgeable about Linux but willing to learn. Thank you.

My partner and I got our purchase emails about a month apart, but the boxes are different. What does it mean?

Like Tyrel Wood used to do, but he has not got one, yet.

Valve may be experimenting with CPU schedulers to reduce latency on the Steam Frame and they shipped scx to dynamically handle scheduling.

/etc/default/scx is owned by scx-scheds 1.1.2.linux.steamos.3-1
/usr/lib/systemd/system/scx.service is owned by scx-scheds 1.1.2.linux.steamos.3-1
/usr/bin/scx_lavd is owned by scx-scheds 1.1.2.linux.steamos.3-1

And Valve's settings:

[steamos@frame ~]$ cat /etc/default/scx
# List of scx_schedulers: scx_beerland scx_bpfland scx_chaos scx_cosmos scx_flash scx_lavd scx_p2dq scx_rustland scx_rusty scx_tickless
SCX_SCHEDULER=scx_lavd

# Set custom flags for each scheduler, below is an example of how to use
SCX_FLAGS='--pinned-slice-us 500 --lb-local-dsq-util-pct 0'

Out of the box, this is disabled, but it looks like it's somewhat tuned and ready to be used.

In games such as Metal Hellsinger and A Fisherman's Tale I was noticing juddering in rendering, but I didn't want that to be the sole evidence on possible improvements in changing the scheduler.

Benchmarking with perf:

Before:

[steamos@frame ~]$ perf bench sched pipe
# Running 'sched/pipe' benchmark:```
# Executed 1000000 pipe operations between two processes

 Total time: 11.614 [sec]

  11.614539 usecs/op
      86098 ops/sec```

After:

[steamos@frame ~]$ perf bench sched pipe
# Running 'sched/pipe' benchmark:
# Executed 1000000 pipe operations between two processes

 Total time: 3.452 [sec]

   3.452527 usecs/op
     289642 ops/sec

To turn it on you'll need to enable developer mode, and have a password set so that you can use sudo.

The command to enable it immediately in a konsole terminal is:

sudo systemctl enable --now scx

And it'll be active until steamos updates.

To revert it run:

sudo systemctl disable --now scx

It's possible Valve will make this the default in future.

Here is a link to 3d printed accessory that let me use my bobo batteries that I was using for my meta quest 3 with my Steam frame. You do need the pd100 powerbank from the bobo website in addition to this accessory but it works great. I already have 3 batteries so hot swapping is no issue and I can tell you I played for over a hour on 1 battery playing Forefront at 144hz 500 game res and i didn’t even come close to touching the Steam Frames battery. Anyone here is the link if interested,

https://www.tycotech3dprinting.com/products/steam-frame-battery-mount-for-bobovr-75001?variant=49254807765175

I made a strap battery cover for my tiny hands! The actual issue with the Frame Controllers isn't that they're too big, it's that with the stock straps they simply place your hands way too low. Likely so that the hand tracking still works. But I don't care about having high fidelity hand tracking, so I made this. Now I find that the controllers are actually incredibly comfortable with this mod! I absolutely love them now!

This is a difficult print, so if you decide to print it yourself make sure to max out your printer's overhang performance.

You'll also need a bit of velcro on the inside so that you can attach the strap. Otherwise you can reuse all the original stuff.

These are based on the original Valve CAD files, so they should fit perfectly if your printer is good enough to print the fine details!

More details about it in the printables link! Let me know of any feedback ya'll have or suggestions for improvements! I'll do my best to win the fights with Fusion 360 to get what I want. It was a struggle modifying this file lmao.

I am in reservation queue for a chance to buy the Steam Frame in 2027 (no exact date) and I'm wondering: Won't the Quest 4 (supposedly to be released in 2027) be much better technically when i finally get to buy the Steam Frame?

Some rumors include 3200x3200p OLED lenses with 120° FOV. Only downside would be again giving out all your personal data to Meta. What do you think?