The main goal of deckard is more of a Virtual theater screen steam deck. It can also play VR games, but streaming(or playing locally) your flat games to your comfortable recliner is what it does best. The 4 face buttons are hugely important for that. As for the index control, there are so few examples of good ways to use the touch pads, and other headsets are doing full handtracking while holding the controllers completely visually now. So no need for expensive hardware built into the controller anymore, grip and trigger at perfect fidelity and the other fingers at hand tracking fidelity is more than enough. Hand tracking fidelity constantly improves with software updates, too.
If this gets deckard down to a price people are willing to pay, good for all of us, even those of us that would choose to pay more, and odds are there might be a more expensive option too anyway. Maybe even the ability to just use index controls if you got them.
I just want a reasonably priced generational bump over the Index. Most PCVR headsets that have pancake lenses are either obscenely priced, are ridiculously heavy, or have reportedly terrible QA. From what I’ve seen lately, usually all three are true.
You can get close in features and price with something like a Pico or a Quest, but they lack direct DisplayPort connection, so it’s compressed wireless PCVR, compressed “wired” PCVR (which basically uses a networking protocol anyway), or no PCVR at all.
Myself, and I’m sure a ton of other people, are hoping for the Deckard to be “huge” for the PCVR market, just like the Index was when it released. Maybe we’re all coping, and we probably even are, but I think a lot of people are generally unhappy with the state of the PCVR hardware market right now.
So all this is to say… I really hope this thing is much better than a glorified flat screen projector.
Basically when not playing VR games, it’ll function like an upgrade to the steam deck. Instead of having to look at a screen attached to your hands, further developing the neck pain most people have nowadays from phone games and handheld gaming, you can sit comfortably instead, no matter where you are. And it’ll be able to stream games up to 4k, instead of the 1280×800 of the current steamdeck. When running flat games natively it might be restricted to 1080p, if not artificially, then at least practically.
But it does also play VR games when you want that.
An upside compared to other standalones is that it should be much easier to port older PCVR games to run on it natively. And there are a ton of good old VR games now that have stood the test of time that most people still haven’t gotten to try. And with a bit of work, a low settings version of half-life alyx could probably run natively now. Along-side a potential flat screen release of half-life 3. Who knows. Would be an interesting way to celebrate it’s function. Now that we have solid evidence that Half-Life 3 is actually nearing completion. And a ton of rumours linking it to a similar timeline as Deckard.
I was excited for Valve to come out with something that pushed vr forward, but if it’s just a budget apple vision for gaming, I have zero interest. At that point, why not just use the regular steam controller 2?
The vr controller looks like a big step backward compared to the index. It looks bulky, but without hand tracking.
No hand tracking would be a huge bummer for VR.
The main goal of deckard is more of a Virtual theater screen steam deck. It can also play VR games, but streaming(or playing locally) your flat games to your comfortable recliner is what it does best. The 4 face buttons are hugely important for that. As for the index control, there are so few examples of good ways to use the touch pads, and other headsets are doing full handtracking while holding the controllers completely visually now. So no need for expensive hardware built into the controller anymore, grip and trigger at perfect fidelity and the other fingers at hand tracking fidelity is more than enough. Hand tracking fidelity constantly improves with software updates, too.
If this gets deckard down to a price people are willing to pay, good for all of us, even those of us that would choose to pay more, and odds are there might be a more expensive option too anyway. Maybe even the ability to just use index controls if you got them.
How do you know all of this?
I just want a reasonably priced generational bump over the Index. Most PCVR headsets that have pancake lenses are either obscenely priced, are ridiculously heavy, or have reportedly terrible QA. From what I’ve seen lately, usually all three are true.
You can get close in features and price with something like a Pico or a Quest, but they lack direct DisplayPort connection, so it’s compressed wireless PCVR, compressed “wired” PCVR (which basically uses a networking protocol anyway), or no PCVR at all.
Myself, and I’m sure a ton of other people, are hoping for the Deckard to be “huge” for the PCVR market, just like the Index was when it released. Maybe we’re all coping, and we probably even are, but I think a lot of people are generally unhappy with the state of the PCVR hardware market right now.
So all this is to say… I really hope this thing is much better than a glorified flat screen projector.
It has huge pent up expectations from the community, that’s for sure.
I see everyone projecting their ideal headset onto the rumors. Hopefully it hits as many checkboxes as possible.
You didn’t answer the original question.
That’s not the person I originally asked.
The person I asked actually did reply to me on this thread… but didn’t answer how they know all this.
Basically when not playing VR games, it’ll function like an upgrade to the steam deck. Instead of having to look at a screen attached to your hands, further developing the neck pain most people have nowadays from phone games and handheld gaming, you can sit comfortably instead, no matter where you are. And it’ll be able to stream games up to 4k, instead of the 1280×800 of the current steamdeck. When running flat games natively it might be restricted to 1080p, if not artificially, then at least practically.
But it does also play VR games when you want that.
An upside compared to other standalones is that it should be much easier to port older PCVR games to run on it natively. And there are a ton of good old VR games now that have stood the test of time that most people still haven’t gotten to try. And with a bit of work, a low settings version of half-life alyx could probably run natively now. Along-side a potential flat screen release of half-life 3. Who knows. Would be an interesting way to celebrate it’s function. Now that we have solid evidence that Half-Life 3 is actually nearing completion. And a ton of rumours linking it to a similar timeline as Deckard.
I was excited for Valve to come out with something that pushed vr forward, but if it’s just a budget apple vision for gaming, I have zero interest. At that point, why not just use the regular steam controller 2?