Valve's New Streaming Trick Won't Just Work with Its Own Headset
In a significant move, Valve has announced that its new streaming-first VR headset, the Steam Frame, will employ a clever trick to make game streaming feel as low-latency as possible. This trick is called foveated streaming, which means the headset requests a higher-quality image for the content right in front of your eyes while lowering the resolution of your peripheral vision to reduce bandwidth and processing demands.
The Steam Frame relies on two key pieces of hardware: a dedicated wireless streaming adapter that sends games from a PC to the headset, and a pair of eye-tracking cameras inside the headset that follow where you're looking. If you're familiar with foveated rendering, which headsets like Apple's Vision Pro deploy for on-device processing, it's similar in concept.
Valve tells The Verge that foveated streaming won't be exclusive to the Frame, but rather will work with any headset that supports eye tracking and is compatible with its Steam Link streaming app. According to hardware engineer Jeremy Selan, supporting the wireless adapter is more difficult without lower-level OS support, as Valve has with SteamOS.
When tested on a nearby PC with the dedicated 6GHz wireless streaming adapter, foveated streaming proved extremely impressive. While playing Half-Life: Alyx on the Steam Frame streamed from that PC, it was almost indistinguishable from running the game locally on the headset. However, it's unclear when foveated streaming will be available on other headsets or which ones might be able to use it.
Despite this, Valve is offering subscribers an opportunity to ask questions about its new hardware through a subscriber-exclusive AMA (Ask Me Anything) session.
In a significant move, Valve has announced that its new streaming-first VR headset, the Steam Frame, will employ a clever trick to make game streaming feel as low-latency as possible. This trick is called foveated streaming, which means the headset requests a higher-quality image for the content right in front of your eyes while lowering the resolution of your peripheral vision to reduce bandwidth and processing demands.
The Steam Frame relies on two key pieces of hardware: a dedicated wireless streaming adapter that sends games from a PC to the headset, and a pair of eye-tracking cameras inside the headset that follow where you're looking. If you're familiar with foveated rendering, which headsets like Apple's Vision Pro deploy for on-device processing, it's similar in concept.
Valve tells The Verge that foveated streaming won't be exclusive to the Frame, but rather will work with any headset that supports eye tracking and is compatible with its Steam Link streaming app. According to hardware engineer Jeremy Selan, supporting the wireless adapter is more difficult without lower-level OS support, as Valve has with SteamOS.
When tested on a nearby PC with the dedicated 6GHz wireless streaming adapter, foveated streaming proved extremely impressive. While playing Half-Life: Alyx on the Steam Frame streamed from that PC, it was almost indistinguishable from running the game locally on the headset. However, it's unclear when foveated streaming will be available on other headsets or which ones might be able to use it.
Despite this, Valve is offering subscribers an opportunity to ask questions about its new hardware through a subscriber-exclusive AMA (Ask Me Anything) session.
. Don't get me wrong, foveated streaming sounds awesome, but how's it gonna affect our wallets in the long run? Are we gonna see a price hike to accommodate all these fancy features or just more bloatware? 
so i was wondering how this foveated streaming thing works... like, does it actually make the game run smoother or does it just trick your brain into thinking it's better? 
and what about the wireless adapter - isn't that gonna be a major hassle to set up? 
i mean, i've had issues with my wifi at home and now you're telling me i gotta deal with this separate streaming thingy too? 
but seriously, if it does work as well as it did in the test... that's some crazy tech right there! 
they're using foveated streaming which basically means it requests more image quality for where ur lookin but reduces res on the sides its kinda like how some gaming monitors do it to save bandwidth lol anyway Valve said it wont be exclusive to their own headset tho, so hopefully other headsets can use it too that would be lit 
. The fact that it works with any headset that supports eye tracking and is compatible with Steam Link is super convenient. But, gotta say, I'm kinda bummed they're not making it exclusive to the Steam Frame... I mean, who wouldn't want an extra reason to cop that thing? 
, always trying to find that one trick to make streaming feel super smooth and low-latency. i'm curious how well this foveated streaming thingy will work on other headsets, tho 
valve's gonna have to fine-tune this thing and make sure it doesn't suck the life out of any poor pc. fingers crossed